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@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 1:53 PM, Raimond Spekking raimond.spekking@gmail.com wrote:
- 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@en.wikipedia.org".
@ isn't valid in usernames on Wikimedia so no one can create Simetrical@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=histo...
- 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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