Also remember that whether whatever settings for transwiki import you
make, someone can always just use Special:Import using an XML file to
import.
However, that obviously doesn't appear to commonly happen, because
Special:Import is Sysop only. As is Transwiki import.
So with the current restriction on Imports, there is absolutely no
reason why allowing Transwiki imports from anywhere is bad.
But going along with that @... Yes, that is a nice addition which would
make transwiki import a feature we could allow even non-admins to use.
Though if we're going to do that, we should probably add a
'import-overwrite' permission which determines if a user can import
pages which already exist. I don't think it's a good idea for a general
user to be able to import a pile of revisions onto an already existing
page. Someone could easily import a pile of crap into a good wiki
article, and then a sysop would have a huge amount of pain trying to
sort it out because they can't simply delete the whole page. So
overwriting imports should be Sysop only.
Next we should probably also add a rate-limiter, and also limit
non-admin imports to a certain size. (To prevent users from using the
fact that TransWiki import uses a HTTP request on the server side to try
and DoS attack a wiki). However it would be good to allow a user to
select a range of revisions. So if they really need an entire page, they
can import the start, continue the import, and continue on. Bot
frameworks like Pywikipedia could then easily turn this into a bot
import task and slowly import an entire page without causing server load.
There is an extra feature or two I would go for two.
Title renaming primarily. Sometimes a Wiki has a completely different
naming structure, and as a result you need to move a page after
importing it. However, what if the wiki already has a page with the same
name as the article on another wiki, but that article isn't the one that
we want to import. So it would be nice to be able to specify a title to
import to.
For a common example:
Wikipedia often uses ()'s for disambiguation, however this is not always
needed for a wiki.
For example, Wikipedia could have the article *[[*Chess Pieces (MÄR)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_Pieces_%28M%C3%84R%29>*]]* however
on the Marpedia <http://mar.wikia.com>, the topic is MÄR and therefore
the extra (MÄR) is not needed.
So if we were to transwiki import, we'd have to import to the article
*[[*Chess Pieces (MÄR)*]]* on the Marpedia, and then move it to
*[[*Chess Pieces <http://mar.wikia.com/wiki/Chess_Pieces>*]]*. But it
would be much nicer if we could import directly to the article *[[*Chess
Pieces*]]* as we don't need an article like Wikipedia's *[[*Chess Pieces
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_Pieces>*]]*.
However, of course, moving is just an extra thing to do. However, let's
jump over to the Animepedia <http://anime.wikia.com> for a different
example.
On the Animepedia we use a subpage structure to create a sort of
Mini-wiki setup, in which each different anime Universe gets it's own
dedicated area for articles on the various series, characters, and other
things inside the universe (Giving each and every one an article no
matter what the notability is).
Here's the catch.
Perhaps we want to import Wikipedia's *[[*Naruto
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naruto>*]]* article. However on the
Animepedia, such an article would be named *[[*Naruto/Naruto
<http://anime.wikia.com/wiki/Naruto/Naruto>*]]* (The first Naruto is the
World name (universe), the second is the actual article name.)
You'd think we could just import and then move it. However, on the
Animepedia *[[*Naruto <http://anime.wikia.com/wiki/Naruto>*]]* is a
World page. Basically an index page for the world listing all the
articles in that world in groupings, and also holding a link for easy
article creation.
So you can see the issue, especially if the world page has been in
existence for a long time. And needing to move a page, delete a
redirect, transwiki import a page, move it, delete the redirect, and
move the original page back isn't really an acceptable task if the
transwiki import could simply be given a name to import to instead of
just importing to the same title.
While you're at it with the alterations. It might be nice to append a
(@wikipedia) or something to comments to differentiate exactly which
revisions come from the other wiki. Though there might be some max
comment length issues.
I would honestly love Transwiki import upgrades like this, especially if
they get rolled out to Wikia. It would make importing articles tagged
for deletion on Wikipedia for notability issues much easier. And for
wiki like the Narutopedia or other Wikia wiki that would be great since
a number of Wikipedia pages get deleted, or merge/reduced due to
notability, in a case where a wiki focused on that topic could nicely
continue that data and make use of it as it does have notability there.
Oh great... I did it again with my long ass e-mails...
~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of:
-The Gaiapedia (
http://gaia.wikia.com)
-Wikia ACG on
Wikia.com (
http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG)
-and
Wiki-Tools.com (
http://wiki-tools.com)
Angela wrote:
On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 11:01 AM, Simetrical
<Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 1:53 PM, Raimond
Spekking
<raimond.spekking(a)gmail.com> wrote:
1. Are there any points why such a transwiki
(from all into all) would
be bad?
Yes. Create an account named Simetrical on whatever obscure wiki you
like, make an article, import it to enwiki, and you've just framed me
pretty convincingly and confusingly.
The solution to this is to change the history of imported pages to
never assume Simetrical on Wiki1 is the same person as Simetrical on
Wiki2. For example, if importing from en.wikipedia to en.wikibooks,
the page history should attribute edits to
"Simetrical(a)en.wikipedia.org".org".
@ isn't valid in usernames on Wikimedia so no one can create
Simetrical(a)en.wikipedia.org on Wikibooks and try to cause problems
with it.
Here's an example:
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/index.php?title=User:Simetrical&action=hist…
- made from manually editing the XML before importing it, but doing
that isn't allowed on Wikimedia projects. Also, it would sometimes be
better to link to the user page on the original wiki and not to
Special:Contributions (though not if the original wiki has been taken
offline, so ideally, there would be an option about where the link
went).
Advantages:
No one can frame you for something you didn't do.
You would know exactly who made the original edit AND where they made it.
When content is imported to another wiki, someone can't later make the
username Simetrical and claim wrongful attribution for those edits.
If Simetrical already exists on that other wiki, they won't get mad at
being given edits that aren't theirs.
It gives some attribution to Wikipedia which is especially useful if
people are importing content to non-Wikimedia projects.
Angela
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