Brion Vibber wrote:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
Special:Import: available only to sysops, this special page gives users the ability to import full histories into a wiki, using the XML output by Special:Export.
I don't have much knowledge about XML, but I guess it would be very easy to manipulate the edit history of an article before importing it. We trust our users and especially our admins, but we can only do so because everything they do is logged somewhere. Will the imports be logged, too? Will there be a notice like "article imported by [[User:blah]]" in the edit history?
This all could be useful at Wikisource where it might be necessary to review copyright issues. We have had one situation where an Canadian sourced article that was used with permission of fr:wikipedia. The person who got the permission did not appear to have discussed GFDL, and the apparent permission did not mention the possible transfer to another project. The transferor became the contributor from a Wikisource perspective. The article was eventually deleted as a copyvio, but it underlines the kind of difficulty that can arise when files are transferred.
I don't object to this being done by a sysop, but would this mean a sysop at the source or target project?
Special:Import is not complete and has been disabled until such time as it is complete.
All in good time.
There will be a number of ways it can be used (not yet implemented):
- Full administrator's import. Do whatever you want, since you've got
the keys and can insert things manually via SQL, but it's more convenient.
- 'sysop' import from authorized sources only (ie, direct import from
one Wikimedia wiki's export to another), with logging and marking of all imported revisions with a comment notice, and perhaps limited to last-revision-only.
Sometimes that full record of past versions may be needed.
Ec