Help talk:Transwiki

Initial instructions

I've created this page to provide an initial set of instructions on the exact process for transferring articles into and out of Wikiquote. It's more specific than what Meta:Transwiki has, but the latter has some details I've omitted here, so it's still a good idea to review it. This page has two urgent needs at the moment:

• Instructions on how to copy page histories into an edit box.
• Examples

I invite the community to comment on this instruction set and enhance it as needed. (I'm still working on it, too, but I don't want to hog all the fun. ☺) If there are any questions or concerns about the policies or procedures discussed, please bring them up here on the Talk page so we can thrash them out. Thank you. — Jeff Q (talk) 06:18, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Deleting transwikied articles

We are currently having our third round of discussions on Votes for deletion on whether to delete articles that have been transwikied to Wikisource. Current policy follows the m:Transwiki policy of retaining these articles as a link to the new location, which Wikiquote follows only irregularly and no project that I'm aware of follows completely. (Some totally ignore this practice and just delete the supplanted article.) Unless there is some significant objection to this, I expect to update Wikiquote policy after the current vote to reflect its outcome, which will almost certainly recommend universal deletion. — Jeff Q (talk) 00:16, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Seconded. I think a documentation on Transwiki is okay ... most of transwikied article from Wikipedia hasn't been through transiki pseudo-namespace and directly posted. In comparison, keeping a track on the log is far decent in my opinion: people can reach those tracks via search. --Aphaia 00:20, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Folks might also want to review the earlier discussion at Category talk:Transwiki#Speedy delete old articles? for alternatives. — Jeff Q (talk) 00:34, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

As I said on WQ:VFD, I vote for killing those articles. The biggest rationale, in my opinion, is keeping Special:Random useful. Landing on a "this article has been transwikied" is probably not the intention of someone clicking "Random" on WQ. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 04:46, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Ah, Random feature is very importanto to browse Wikiquote. My reason for support those deletion is similar, but from mainly benefits on maintenance. They occupy also Special:shortpages, Special:Ancientpages and Special:Uncategorizedpages. --Aphaia 05:30, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

My memory is faulty. I thought that I had copied over the ambiguity of the Meta policy in Help:Transwiki, but upon review, I realize that I'd assumed that we'd want to delete transwikied articles, as is the common practice. Since I had had the nerve to add it to Category:Wikiquote official policy, too, I guess the issue was already resolved. I think we can treat the latest speech VfD as an enthusiatic consensus to practice this policy. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 09:21, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Related discussions

• WQ:VFDA#A Tryst With Destiny from 4 Apr 2005 (UTC) to 29 Apr 2005 (UTC); then the transwikied page was kept.
• Category talk:Transwiki#Speedy delete old articles? from 8 Apr 2005 (UTC) to 10 July 2005 (UTC)
• WQ:VFDA#Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death from 5 Jun 2005 (UTC) to 20 Jun 2005 (UTC), then the transwikied page was deleted.

Automated transwiki

As I've been filling in the gaps in our and Wikisource's transwiki operations for the speeches we've moved from here to there, I've made some notes on an idea I've been contemplating ever since I started working on Transwiki: how to automate the process. Considering how easy it is to fail to do the required steps, and the problems that remain even when one does everything "correctly" ^PS, I took the liberty of pseudocoding a process that improves on the existing meta practice as well as our own (and Wikipedia's, and probably others). A rough idea of the improved results can be found in the logs and talk pages of some of the transwikied articles that I did some auxiliary work on, like wikisource:Talk:Ich bin ein Berliner and wikisource:Talk:MacArthur's Farewell Speech to Congress.

My process only covers the inital transfer from one project to another, but that's the hardest part, IMHO. If anyone's interested in this, take a look at User:Jeffq/Transwiki automation and post comments on its talk page. Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 14:04, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Notice that the posted edit histories of nearly all transwikied articles share the same flaws:

• Timestamps whose timezone cannot be determined. They're actually the (unknown) timezone of the transwiki editor, which is not only undetectable in principle but may or may not include a daylight saving time adjustment.
• No links to the user pages of the original article's editors. Note that, to work correctly, they would need to include a proper project prefix (e.g., "q:en:" to link from Wikisource to en:Wikiquote).
• Discussion pages of the original article frequently (nearly always?) absent. These often have a bearing on the content of an article. Also missing are the discussion page's edit histories, which are useful in tracking down further information, since people frequently fail to sign their postings.

Just some food for thought. Of course, without an automated process, the already absurdly complex transwiki process could hardly bear these additional burdens. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 14:04, 29 July 2005 (UTC)