I recently helped fix a blocker for the 18 year old feature request at "T17583: Enable importing across all Wikimedia projects."[0] Now I am wondering two things:
* Is it still a generally valuable and desired thing to have any Wikimedia wiki be able to import content from any other public Wikimedia wiki? * Are there any technical volunteers out there who have the energy to try and bring this across the finish line if it is still wanted?
The slightly longer version of this story is that [[User:This, that and the other]] did some great work on this problem in 2015, but did not get the whole project done. We have working configuration in the Beta Cluster.[1][2] We also have a very stale, but readable, config patch in Gerrit showing how it could be deployed for production.[3] What we don't have at this point is a compelling use case for this change and a champion to touch code and have conversations until it is all working.
[0]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T17583 [1]: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/mediawiki-config/+/2df0598d2116ef8725896e860ff5ab5c6022df3b/wmf-config/CommonSettings-labs.php#387 [2]: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/mediawiki-config/+... [3]: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/mediawiki-config/+/258943
Bryan
If I understand your question correctly, I ran an RFC about a similar topic a few years ago: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Default_import_sources
Back then, it was closed with several specific default wikis.
I personally don't see a big problem in allowing everything, but other people may have a different opinion, so maybe it's worth running an RFC in a similar format.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
בתאריך יום ג׳, 24 במרץ 2026 ב-19:26 מאת Bryan Davis via Wikitech-l < wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org>:
I recently helped fix a blocker for the 18 year old feature request at "T17583: Enable importing across all Wikimedia projects."[0] Now I am wondering two things:
- Is it still a generally valuable and desired thing to have any
Wikimedia wiki be able to import content from any other public Wikimedia wiki?
- Are there any technical volunteers out there who have the energy to
try and bring this across the finish line if it is still wanted?
The slightly longer version of this story is that [[User:This, that and the other]] did some great work on this problem in 2015, but did not get the whole project done. We have working configuration in the Beta Cluster.[1][2] We also have a very stale, but readable, config patch in Gerrit showing how it could be deployed for production.[3] What we don't have at this point is a compelling use case for this change and a champion to touch code and have conversations until it is all working.
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/operations/mediawiki-config/+...
Bryan
Bryan Davis Wikimedia Foundation Principal Software Engineer Boise, ID USA [[m:User:BDavis (WMF)]] irc: bd808 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
Is it still a generally valuable and desired thing to have any Wikimedia wiki be able to import content from any other public Wikimedia wiki?
Yes and no. The demand on importing "content" pages is not high - despite there exists a "move to [insert sister project here]" option in XfD (seen on zhwiki), the usage is really low, as those who picked the wrong project to contribute on probably lack the ability to write anything good enough in the first place. Also, moving to Wikinews is not an option due to licensing issues.
However, sharing templates between projects is still useful, especially for new and small wikis and the incubator. Small wikis can benefit from importing established templates and modules from larger wikis, translate the messages, and further modify it per local consensus, while handing off the issue of attribution to the system. However, this is not often seen on older wikis, as Special:Import is not as easy to deal with as an `git pull`.
I agree with that. I wish there were an easier way to install modules and templates to a newly established wiki, instead of manually copy-pasting the scripts and manually resolving all the dependencies.
On Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:25 AM 1F616EMO via Wikitech-l < wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Is it still a generally valuable and desired thing to have any Wikimedia wiki be able to import content from any other public Wikimedia wiki?
Yes and no. The demand on importing "content" pages is not high - despite there exists a "move to [insert sister project here]" option in XfD (seen on zhwiki), the usage is really low, as those who picked the wrong project to contribute on probably lack the ability to write anything good enough in the first place. Also, moving to Wikinews is not an option due to licensing issues.
However, sharing templates between projects is still useful, especially for new and small wikis and the incubator. Small wikis can benefit from importing established templates and modules from larger wikis, translate the messages, and further modify it per local consensus, while handing off the issue of attribution to the system. However, this is not often seen on older wikis, as Special:Import is not as easy to deal with as an `git pull`.
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