Wikibooks talk:Requests for Import

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

What if we plan to cut, paste, then re-edit the material from Wikipedia for our WikiBook? Should a request still be made? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Anthonyfontana (talk • contribs) 19:35, 5 Feb 2007 (UTC)

Well, anything that's transwikied needs to be edited and adjusted to be a book page, rather than an encyclopedia article. Copyright-wise, import is the safest option if you're going to use an extensive part of the WP article. If you're only using a sentence or two, you could just cite the article as a reference, but if more than that, Import is the best option. It's easy to do, so when in doubt, request an import. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 19:48, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Imported Attribution

What if,

1. Article "A" is edited by "User:Ans" in wikipedia.
2. Article "A" is imported to wikibooks.
3. "User:Ans" in wikibooks is not the same person with "User:Ans" in wikipedia?

This will be the miss-attribution.

Can we make the attribution in the imported pages, to be something like "User:Ans@wikipedia" or "User:Ans (imported from wikipedia)" appearing in the revision history. The mediawiki software should automatically insert text stating that the revision is imported, so, it will be clear that the editor appearing in that revision may not be the same person as in wikibooks. We should requested this features in the software (if not yet implemented). --Ans 06:04, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a problem, but we pretty much just have to wait for SUL to be enabled for that. In some cases accounts can be renamed by b'crats for now (at least here... wikipedia's policy does not acknowledge this issue). --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 22:53, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

The import does appear in Special:Log/Import, and it also appears in the revision history. You're correct that attribution can be a problem when the same username exists here. With the XML export-import, it is possible to modify the revision history (in particular to make all usernames point to Wikipedia), but the XML import feature is either supersceded by import, or is disabled, or is broken (not sure which). This issue will be solved by SUL though. For now we grin and bear it. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 02:35, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

1. SUL is only specific to wikimedia sites. If the page is imported from other sites (wikia, for example), SUL won't solve the issue.
2. Special:Log/Import doesn't indicate which revisions are the imported revisions. Let consider the revision history of PageA after merging,
   • 2007-11-14T06:07:06 A (Talk | contribs) m (3 revision(s) from wikia:PageA) <-- import log
   • 2007-11-14T04:14:04 B (Talk | contribs) (8,800 bytes) (removal of tag) <-- imported revision edited by B@wikia
   • 2007-11-14T03:08:51 B (Talk | contribs) (8,870 bytes) (typo) <-- pre-existing revision in wikibooks
   • 2007-11-13T04:57:43 B (Talk | contribs) (8,877 bytes) (added links) <-- imported revision edited by B@wikia
   • 2007-11-13T04:55:00 B (Talk | contribs) (8,855 bytes) (page brakes) <-- pre-existing revision in wikibooks
   • 2007-11-13T04:47:32 C (Talk) (8,844 bytes) (added picture) <-- imported revision edited by C@wikia

   As shown above, although it has import log, but in this case, we can't distinguish the revision edited by B@wikia and B@wikibooks. Moreover, for the first revision edited by C@wikia, the user C@wikibooks doesn't even exist (notice that it has no contribs link). What if, later, someone register for the user C@wikibooks and automatically get the attribution?

3. Special:Contributions/Username doesn't indicate, which edit is the imported edit. People looking at the contributions page may not aware of this problem, and possibly perceive the wrong information.

--Ans 08:45, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

That's only true to an extent: if you look at this history, for example, you can see where it says

10:02, 27 April 2007 SB Johnny (Talk | contribs | block) m (10 revision(s) from w:Euphorbia lathyris) (undo)

Any time the import tool is used, it makes this note in the history, with an embedded link back to the original document (which may have changed since). Again, this will all be moot once Single User Login is activated (apparently they're in the debugging stage now). --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 15:42, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh nm, I see what you mean. Still won't be a problem after SUL. --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 15:51, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

1. SUL will have the name confliction issue. For the name collision, one user will be forced to rename. After such rename, the imported attribution will also be automatically changed to reflect such renaming. This will still be a miss-attribution.
2. Instead of importing, why not preserve the attribution by inserting the History section (according to GFDL) into the book contents? This method is just simple, and no need to request admins to do this task. Admin task should be minimal, as much as possible. --Ans 14:50, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikinews?

Rather then copying and pasting material from other Wikimedia projects, Wikibooks administrators can import pages from English Wikipedia, English Wikiversity, English Wikisource, Simple English Wikibooks and English Wikinews.

Most wikinews pages can't be imported here, since its license (cc-by) is incompatible with gfdl here. --Ans 14:26, 15 November 2007 (UTC)