Crowdsourced Annotations for Finnegans Wake
WinnegansFake is a decentralized scholarly apparatus. Every reader who discovers a multilingual portmanteau, Dublin topographical reference, Viconian cycle, or musical motif is invited to contribute annotations directly through GitHub Pull Requests.
Save your GitHub Personal Access Token in your browser to fork, branch, commit, and submit PRs with zero command-line tools.
A Pull Request (PR) is the standard collaborative mechanism used across open-source software. When contributing to WinnegansFake, you do not edit the main repository directly. Instead, you:
Create your own personal copy of the repository on your GitHub account.
Create a feature branch, locate the target page JSON file, and add your annotation item.
Run automated schema and copyright checks locally with pnpm validate.
Submit your proposed addition on GitHub for peer review and automated CI validation.
Here is the complete sequence of Git terminal commands to contribute an annotation from start to finish:
Go to github.com/tekromancy/WinnegansFake and click the Fork button in the top right. Then clone your fork locally:
git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/WinnegansFake.git
cd WinnegansFake
pnpm installNever commit directly to main. Create a dedicated branch named after the page or topic:
git checkout -b annotate-page-003-commodius-vicusAll annotations are organized cleanly by title, book/part, and chapter/episode: annotations/<title>/book_<B>/chapter_<C>/page_<PPP>.json
For example, open annotations/finneganswake/book_1/chapter_1/page_003.json in your code editor and add your annotation object to the annotations array:
{
"id": "003.01-03",
"line_number": 1,
"target_phrase": "commodius vicus of recirculation",
"annotation_text": "Allusion to Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) and his Scienza Nuova, positing the cyclical evolution of human civilization through four recurring ages. Also Latin vicus (lane, hamlet) and Commodore John Barry.",
"categories": ["viconian-cycles", "etymological-polyglot", "dublin-topography"],
"cross_references": ["004.18", "628.16"],
"sources": [
"McHugh, Roland. Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th ed.), p. 3",
"Atherton, James S. The Books at the Wake, pp. 29-34"
],
"contributors": ["your-github-username"]
}Before committing, run our validation tool. It checks JSON schema syntax, coordinates, character length safeguards, and line rules:
pnpm validate
# or validate just your modified file:
node validate.js --path annotations/finneganswake/book_1/chapter_1/page_003.jsonYou should see: ✅ All annotation file(s) passed validation successfully!
Stage the modified file, write a clear commit message, and push to your GitHub fork:
git add annotations/finneganswake/book_1/chapter_1/page_003.json
git commit -m "feat(annotations): add Vico recirculation gloss for 003.01"
git push -u origin annotate-page-003-commodius-vicusVisit your fork on GitHub or the upstream repo. You will see a banner saying “Compare & pull request”.
feat(003): add Vico gloss for 003.01target_phrase must be strictly under 150 characters and contain no newlines. Target only the anchor lemma or phrase, never full copyrighted book passages.
line_number must be an integer between 1 and 40, corresponding to the standard Faber/Viking line count for that page.
annotation_text must be at least 10 characters, providing substantive scholarly commentary, translation, or motif context.
By contributing, you agree that your annotations are dedicated to the public commons under CC BY-SA 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International).