I think
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18022
(Special:Import will eat all ampersands!) is a serious bug that
deserves more attention (than I can give today).
It will introduce corruptions to one's wiki pages that will only be
noticed months later, by which time they will be intertwined with
other edits.
That is much worse than if it just stopped working.