Wikibooks:Request for enabling special:import

What Special:Import does
This tool is used for transwiki, available to administrators. I have used it on wikiversity to import pages from wikibooks and meta to wikiversity. In contrast to the copy-and-paste transwikis that are the current norm, imports bring over the entire page history with all changes.

Advantages

 * 1) Import ensures that page edit histories are brought over, in better compliance to the GFDL than the current system of copying the page history, because one can search the history to distinguish between major and minor edits, etc.
 * 2) Import would put the transwiki-from-elsewhere process firmly in the hands of people on the wikibooks side, rather than the random dropping of materials that happens now. Hopefully the wikipedians/wikiversitans/etc. can be convinced to make this a policy on their sides as well.
 * 3) Using import rather than manual transwiki might help remove the "stigma" of materials being "exiled" into wikibooks (a feeling I myself suffered from for quite some time as a wikipedian).

Disadvantages

 * 1) Naturally, this means more work for administrators.
 * 2) Using edit counts for voting elegibility will go out the window, since any edits made on a wikipedia page before the import will be attributed to that username on wikibooks.

Votes (wikibookians)
(Support or Oppose with comments. If undecided, use the talk page.)


 * 1) Support -- SB_Johnny | talk (I'm the one making the proposal, so of course I support it :).)
 * 2) Support If material is moving to here from there, then it makes sense to facilitate that movement. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:55, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) Support good idea, makes users requesting imports able to make use of new material quicker with edit history intact. --darklama 23:54, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * 4) Support The disadvantages don't seet too worrysome. Cleanup after sloppy copy-pastes will mostly fall on admins anyway as they do much of that type of work anyway. Measuring voting elegebility will not be completely out the window, but sometimes it may be difficult to see if a user's edits are wikibookian edits. --Swift 14:58, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
 * 5) Support. This is an invaluable and foolproof tool. If this goes through I think cut-n-paste transwikiing should be banned altogether. GarrettTalk 23:28, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
 * 6) Support. Does anyone know how many pages might be expected to be imported to Wikibooks in a year? --JWSurf 00:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
 * 7) support - Makes preserving the history, a requirement of the GFDL, easier. Easier is better. Gentgeen (I'm also a wikipedian) 03:24, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
 * 8)  Support Better tools are good for everybody. Kellen T 09:50, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
 * 9) Very Strong Support -- More like why isn't this turned on by default?  As far as the number of pages imported to Wikibooks in a year, it is on the order of about 500-1000 pages (at least for last year).  Or about 3-5 pages per day on average unless admins are getting lax.  Much of that is cruft that an admin might not import directly, but much of it is content marked for deletion on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.  This has been an invaluable tool on Wikiversity, and I'm very, very, very, (to the point of ad nausium) glad that I have the option to use this tool to move content from Wikibooks to Wikiversity.  Performing similar content transwiki without this tool (for example, the Wikimania content) was a total pain in the rear.  It has its shortcomings and bugs, but it is very much worth it.  --Rob Horning 20:50, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Votes (wikipedians, see talk)

 * Facilitates moves of materials to where they belong. This is good for the Wikipedia project, and so I support it. --Improv 16:16, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

=Additional request=

Special:Import is now enabled. A few more votes for the following (wikimedia only requires a few) would further facilitate the process:

Part 2: make "Transwiki:" a full namespace:

By making transwiki a namespace, we will be able to put the imports there directly, rather than importing into the main namespace. This has 2 main advantages:
 * 1. No clutter in the main namespace.
 * 2. This would allow for stable redirects for use on the wikipedia side (makes the templating easier). The Transwiki:Pagename could then just have a redirect to the page's actual location. (Note that wikipedians frequently complain that the pages they thought were moved here don't seem to be here... in most cases they actually are here, but wikipedians are generally not accustomed to our way of naming things (as books and chapters), and the fact that a search on wikibooks isn't going to move them straight to an article).

Votes

 * Support -- SB_Johnny | talk 19:44, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support. and after this you are going to tell us that you absolutely must have something else that requires a vote, I suppose? I'm just kidding with you, this makes good sense. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:50, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * LOL. No, not for a while. If we like the way it's working for the forking purposes, we might want to enable import from wikisource for annotated books, but let's take it one step at a time :). I had meant to ask for this at the same time (actually, I meant to ask guillom to ask for it at the same time), but managed to drop off irc before he mentioned that buzilla would want a show of support for this too. -- SB_Johnny | talk 19:55, 16 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Support --darklama 20:15, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support --Derbeth talk 21:07, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support --Swift 21:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support --Panic 21:21, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support --Kempm 21:29, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support I hope this becomes a standard feature of MediaWiki. --JWSurf 02:31, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, the import feature itself is not a standard feature of MediaWiki because the single login is not enabled yet, thus making accounts conflicts possible. guillom 11:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support, obviously. GarrettTalk 06:11, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support Dude. Kellen T 08:05, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Support I think this is an outstanding idea. Of course, the "Transwiki" namespace does need some current cleanup for a couple of fools that have nothing better to do with their time.  I would also agree that this ought to be a standard feature of MediaWiki.  --Rob Horning 20:53, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Requested in 7613. guillom 11:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)