Help talk:Transwiki

There are two problems with the logging proposals

1. It depends on people being disciplined. Unfortunately people's habits are not usually guided by what they should do.
2. A more easily solved problem is what to call the log. For French there is the suggestion to name the log fr:Wikipédia:log de transwiki. This defeats the reason for using the same term for all languages. French is a little more accessible to English speakers, but what will the corresponding term be for Lithuanian, or Turkish. After all these are English speakers who are trying to transfer the articles. Eclecticology 03:00, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

1. That's true, but it's what we rely on for things like the reasons for protecting pages as well, and up until this week, the manual log of protected pages was the only log of this, and seemed to work reasonably well. I think it's better to attempt it than not have a log at all.
2. That's why I suggested there always be a redirect from transwiki. You can't have it in the main namespace anyway, so even if everyone called the log the same thing, you would still need to know what that project called it's[sic] "wikipedia:" namespace. Angela 07:15, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Uh, ps.wikipedia is the Pashto Wikipedia. We do not have a source wiki (although Wikibooks does use source texts I'm not sure they would welcome much of the source text deleted from Wikipedia). --Maveric149 09:44, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Now that sources.wikipedia exists, I changed the reference to that instead. Angela 00:59, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

All this proposition makes real sense to me. It should also work for meta stuff. In the long run, we should really develop a way to keep history when moving from one wiki to another btw. I suspect it could also work one day for those images we wish to share (maps and such). I like the idea really :-) Anthere 23:41, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Issues from votes for undeletion

en:Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion

en:German Instrument of Surrender, 1945 was deleted without going via VfD, not an immediate deletion candidate. Jamesday 15:48, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It was moved via the transwiki system developed by Eclecticology and myself. Issues with the system should probably be brought up at talk:transwiki rather than here. Angela 23:10, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

That's still an out of process deletion. Deletion from the English Wikipedia via transwiki is not in accord with Wikipedia:Deletion policy or Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators. This one is problematic because it's an excellent basis for an article on the circumstances of the surrender, why the document was signed by the people who signed it and which forces they were representing at the time. Unfortunately, the deletion without VfD short-circuited the process of getting that done. If you'd like to see it deleted from the English Wikipedia, please restore it, wait a month to see if you still think that it merits deletion at the end of the month, then list it on VfD if you think that it does. Jamesday 11:00, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It's not deleted. It is just moved to the correct place: Wikisource. It is still there. It is still editable. If you want to write about the German Instrument of Surrender, you can still do that. You don't need the source text in the page history of the Wikipedia article to do that any more than you need Wikibook's guide to learning French in Wikipedia to write an article about the French language.

It is important that if articles are submitted to the wrong site then they are moved. Moving to another page within Wikimedia shouldn't be counted as a deletion any more than a page move within Wikipedia. The growing number of projects within Wikimedia will lead to more confusion, and more pages submitted to the wrong place. The transwiki system provides a means of dealing with that. We don't want to waste time on VfD every time someone gets lost and puts a great Wikiquote article on the Arabic Wikipedia or a dictionary definition on the Spanish Wikisource. People need to be able to easily make a move between projects, and for those unfamiliar with Wikitonary's templates or those who don't speak Vietnamese, the transwiki system offers them a way of easily moving an article without having to worry about damaging a Wikimedia project with which they are unfamiliar. We need to think about the project as a whole, rather than focusing purely on the English Wikipedia. If something belongs elsewhere, then the transwiki system allows it to be moved there, whereas in the past, it would imply[sic] have been deleted with no thought as to whether Wikisource might want it. Angela 21:07, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It wasn't uploaded to the wrong place; it was uploaded as a work in progress which hadn't yet been converted to an article which includes it. Removing it from the English Wikipedia without notice short-circuited the processes which would have caused that to happen—the passage of time or a VfD listing. The page was in the English Wikipedia. It no longer is in the English Wikipedia. Therefore it was deleted from the English Wikipedia. Transwiki is not a way of circumventing VfD for source text or anything else. If you want to delete from any Wikiproject, do it in accord with the process of the Wikiproject you're deleting from, then complete the move via TransWiki if the deletion was agreed to, or as a copy if it wasn't. Or try to get consensus for zero notice deletion. Transwiki is an excellent tool for completely uncontroversial things like articles in a foreign language which were clearly uploaded to the wrong place. It's a lousy tool for cases where the decision isn't clear-cut and there's a record of routine rewriting into useful articles, which is what regularly happens for dictionary definitions and modest amounts of source text. Upload a copy of War and Peace to the English Wikipedia and I'd suggest copying it to WiiSource but I wouldn't suggest deleting it from the English Wikipedia until someone had been given a reasonable in-process chance to make it into an article. That's part of why we have that due process and why I'm objecting to you doing what I believe is circumventing it. Jamesday 22:34, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I understand this is an old discussion, but I've got a new reason for recomending[sic] that items that are transwikied out to be candidates for speedy deletion. Yesterday I transwikied en:Grilled cheese sandwich to wikibooks:Transwiki:Grilled cheese sandwich, and then listed it on VfD at en: after adding the {{msg:vfd}} tag. An anon. user then saw the page in recent changes and added a usefull[sic] variation to the page at en:, which I then had to re-transwiki over to wikibooks. Speedy deletion would eliminate such forks from happening again. Just my $0.02. Gentgeen 22:50, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Maybe blanking the page and replacing it with a link to the place it's moved to would solve that problem without needing speedy deletion? Angela 00:16, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Someone working on it is a good result. If that means that the encyclopedia process finds that it is worth keeping in the encyclopedia, that's fine. Doing the copy only if the delete is approved is one way of avoiding copying twice. That would also let you avoid making a copy if you're of the view that there can be only one copy of something in the whole set of wiki projects. Jamesday 13:46, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"Entire quoted books"

Quote: "3. entire quoted books: they belong in Wikibooks"

Er, do they? Don't they belong at Project Sourceberg? (And isn't it Wikisource? What's with the name of that project? I'm a latecomer to it.) Or perhaps I'm interpreting this item incorrectly. --Spikey 22:20, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Quite where things belong is not fully decided on yet. The what Wikisource is not will hopefully address this at some point. Regarding the name, it was previously referred to as Project Sourceberg before it was actually a project, but since it started as a real project, there was a vote on the name, and Wikisource won. Angela 00:30, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

To be safe, I've commented out the line altogether. I really don't think Wikibooks wants to attract Public Domain book dumps—actually, I'm fairly certain of it. I'v[sic] replaced the item with "pages which form a cohesive book: they belong in Wikibooks". --Spikey 18:36, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Redirect?

Just to be consistent, shouldn't Transwiki be a redirect to meta's Transwiki log? This might be a bit problematic as we've got interwiki links all over en: pointing here for the policy, but it might be better to take care of this now rather than 6 months from now when something needs to be transwikied from the Russian Wikibooks to meta and the poor user can't find the log. Perhaps the policy should be at Transwiki system or something. Gentgeen 18:27, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

New proposal

Are there any objections to these changes:

1. The transwiki log will exist only on Meta. This saves having to duplicate everything in two logs and makes maintaining them easier as you know where they all are.
2. Rather than move a page to the transwiki namespace, and have it left ignored if the people on the project it was moved to who don't want it, leave it on the original Wikipedia, with a link from one central page on Meta. If the other project want it, they go and fetch it. If they don't, the normal processes of VfD will take care of it on the original project.
3. Pages should only be moved along with their full page history, not just by cut and paste. (This will [sic]possible when 1.3 goes live.)

Angela 02:27, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I fully support this. The current process is messed up.--Eloquence 03:26, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea of a single log to store the information in, but I don't like the idea of moving directly into the main namespace of the target location. At least for what I'm using this for, moving recipes out of Wikipedia and into Wikibooks, we've established a standard "look and feel" for the recipes in the Wikibooks cookbook, and most Wikipedia recipes don't fit it. Storing the recipes in the transwiki namespace gives them a place to stay until they've been brought up to the cookbook's standard. Being able to move the entire history would be very nice, as the talk page can really fill up on a page with a full history. Gentgeen 19:53, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"If the other project want it, they go and fetch it. If they don't, the normal processes of VfD will take care of it on the original project." I don't understand this. Are you saying the other project will have to take the original within the time limit of the VfD process on the deleting site? That doesn't seem long enough for English, which is the only VfD process I'm aware of, and what about projects without VfD, or if a project's VfD process is even shorter? If I'm reading this right, then I object to this part.

However, copying full page histories is a good idea, and should really be started immediately, for use once import is done. In fact, I came to this page to suggest that.

Anthony DiPierro 11:45, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Transwiki - Not simple.

I've been looking at the page currently at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_Quotes and http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Transwiki:Winston_Churchill (which I have made a minor edit to (aware of the implications)).

I have noticed a number of problems (I'm sure there are others)

1. This page clashes with http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Transwiki:Winston_Churchill, into which it will need to be merged.
2. Useful wiki links on this page have been lost (and will need to be edited out or modified to point back to Wikipedia).
3. Anyone looking at this page on Wikipedia will (probably) soon not find it.
4. If a redirect to Wikiquote is put in place, a user can change namespace without realising.
5. The page may well be recreated later by another user.
6. Forks could occur due to a number of reasons.
7. Useful content may find itself isolated in the transwiki namespace of some project, or deleted completely.

A possible solution to some of these would be to allow pages from one wiki project to be used in another. Technical details would be simpler if the proposed merger of databases applied.

The page would understand what project and namespace it belonged to,[sic] therefore if it was moved or indeed copied, for personal templates) would know how to re-write its internal links. If the merged database applied then editing would be no problem.

This would make interwiki links more likely to form.

The transwiki process from the user POV would involve clicking the Move tab and inserting the new wiki location. Once complete the page would reside in the new project, but still be visible and editable from the old. A normal VfD could be used if the old page was inappropriate.

Clearly wiki communities may want a process for abandoning or accepting pages.

I am aware that this would raise new problems, any improvements or alternatives would be interesting. Rich Farmbrough 14:17, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Transwiki vs. VfD

Netoholic is trying to claim on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Preignition that a user is not allowed to list an article on VfD until they[sic] have[sic] completed the process here. Is this policy? If so, when did it become policy, and why has it not been advertised? RickK 19:24, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• I don't think that's policy, it's just a nice thing to do. If a user thinks a work belongs on another project, they should be willing to spend the three or four minutes it takes to transwiki it to where they think it belongs. If instead they suggest transwikiing it but don't do it, the list of things to transwiki gets long, and whomever ends up doing it can spend several hours moving pages. Besides, shouldn't each project and language establish their own deletion policy? Gentgeen 10:29, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

---

"on it if it is" hehehe, that's trippy. lysdexia 01:53, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

transwiki category

I think it would be a good idea if we asked everyone who transwikied an article to include it in a transwiki category, which can then be removed from the article when it is moved into the main namespace of the new project. A category of articles in the transwiki namespace would be easier to use than the current transwiki logs (although these should be kept, to record what has gone where and when). Gentgeen 19:36, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm fairly new to the transwiki process, so please forgive me if I've missed something. I've just established a Wikimedia category system on Wikiquote that may be what Gentgeen is asking about. (I'll abbreviate and not add links to the following to avoid eye and link fatigue.) Incoming articles are in "C:Move into Wikiquote", and outgoing ones are in "C:Move to Wikipedia" and the like (modelled after Wikipedia's "C:Move to Wiktionary"). Each category has a matching template that provides a message and adds the article to the category. The template for "C:Move into Wikiquote" is called "Move to Wikiquote", so if any other project adds a {{move to Wikiquote}} template to the article before moving it into the Wikiquote Transwiki: namespace, the articles are automatically placed in the appropriate transwiki category, with an appropriate message displayed in the article. (I've created similar templates, like {{move to Wikipedia}}, to return the favor.) Wikiquote's "C:Move to..." categories are grouped under "C:Transwiki", which itself is under "C:Wikiquote cleanup".

Any Wikiquotian wanting to import an article need only look under "C:Move into Wikiquote", instead of pulling up "Special:Allpages" and searching for "Transwiki:" pages, or finding their way to the Transwiki log, which only shows what people remember to log. (Wikiquote still has the log, though. This system is only an hour old — nobody else has given it a spin yet. I hope I haven't taken the "be bold" philosophy too far. ☺) Does this all make sense? Gentgeen, is it what you're talking about? — Jeff Q (talk) 07:22, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Legal (not) status of some transwiki operations

Please review the description of the legal (not) status of transwiki copy and delete operations summarised at m:Transwiki. Briefly: transwiki copy and delete operations appear contrary to both US and international law. Copies alone appear fine if links are changed so that they continue to point to the original places and article versions/differences. The delete part seems to require some copy article tool, which preserves the correct difference, version and author links by copying a somewhat modified (interwiki linked for author) history. Not really a surprise, though - we already know we need a copy article tool within a wiki (for article splits, which have some of the same problems). Jamesday 23:14, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Legal status

The transwiki copy and delete process as it exists at present appears contrary to both United States and international law.

17 USC 1202 prohibits the removal or alteration of copyright managment information. It includes in that:

• (1) The title and other information identifying the work, including the information set forth on a notice of copyright.
• (2) The name of, and other identifying information about, the author of a work.
• (3) The name of, and other identifying information about, the copyright owner of the work, including the information set forth in a notice of copyright.
• (6) Terms and conditions for use of the work.
• (7) Identifying numbers or symbols referring to such information or links to such information.

As it has been practiced, the transwiki process appears contrary to part (7) because it is removing links to the protected information in the other parts. Specifically, it removes: links to the author's user page, with more details of the user and licenses; and links to the differences showing who is the author of each part of the work.

This US law is implementing US obligations under international treaty, so it's likely to also be contrary to law in much of the rest of the world.

The user page links are doable (could be made live interwiki links in a copy of history to a talk page). The removal of the information about the author of each part of the work, and the links to their licenses, seems something which can only be achieved at present for a transwiki copy, not a transwiki copy and delete. The copy can use interwiki links to the still existing article in the original work, retaining working links.

The delete part will require the technical development of a "copy article" capability which can also link the metadata (user page links) back to the originating wiki. Even that has some problems, if any templates used in the two projects differ, for that will present an inaccurate history of what was added or changed when the template is involved. Human notes at the time of the copy may be the best way to deal with that problem, or, perhaps, inserting the literal template value at the time of each edit (because template versions change and the change history will be lost with the copy).

An interesting opinion. You inspired me to read the statute itself and to re-read the text of GFDL. I come to softer conclusions than those you express. Two points in particular jumped out at me.

First, I could not find an absolute requirement in the statute to track the precise contribution during the creation of the derivative work. The section on derivative work requires that we keep track of all authors contributing but does not attempt to define at what level of granularity subsequent authors must maintain that tracking. We've gotten used to tracking every edit no matter how minor because the mediawiki software makes it easy. However, I think it is a very reasonable interpretation to define the "work" as the article and not as the section, sentence or word. This is consistent with the shared copyrights of, for example, co-authored texts. Pulling one at random from the shelf next to me, it clearly notes that both authors retain joint copyright. There is no attribution of which author wrote which section even at the chapter-level. Re-reading the text of GFDL (specifically section 4. MODIFICATIONS), there also I find only an obligation to track the author, not the exact contribution made by the author. Under the interpretation of "the work" as the entire article, I believe that the transwiki process is probably compliant.

Second, the limits of liability section of 17 USC 1202 appears to apply to our situation. Specifically, the section that says you can not be held liable if "the activity that constitutes such violation is not intended to induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal infringement of a right under this title" would appear to absolve the transwiki process since the transwiki process is clearly not intended to infringe on anyone's rights. The transwiki process is clearly intended as an administrative clean-up process.

Now, there are some confusing caveats in that section of the law and I could argue both sides of the case about whether or not the limitation on liability should apply. Unfortunately, we are trying to apply a section of law that was written for an entirely different situation - broadcast or cable station distributing audio and/or video content. On the whole, I consider the second to be a weaker argument but that the first is sufficient. Rossami 02:55, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the DMCA or this part of it is limited to broadcast and cable systems, although there are two specified exemptions related to those fields (yes, this is from that wonderful DMCA:)). Using those exemptions would be tough - there is a standard for tracking the copyright information here, in the history, and there is in addition the GFDL license requirement to retain the history, so I wouldn't care to try to argue that there's not a standard already in place which is not being followed when a copy and paste of only part of the history (the summary) is carried out. The statue doesn't create any requirements for tracking systems - it simply says that the information, once present, must be retained. The GFDL doesn't say what is in the history, just that the history must be there, whatever it is - and here, the history is all of that revision information, down to the individual author and edit level.

I agree that the copyright is joint, though I have a feeling that some people would very strongly object to it because of the implications. I don't agree that joint authors dispense with their rights to have their copyright management information preserved, in part because some of the rights of authors of a joint work acrue based on the extent of their contribution to the work as a whole and it's important to authors to have those records kept, lest their ability to prove and retain their rights be discarded... which is what that part of the law is about preserving. Consider the example of my recent use of part of an article which I wrote in a posting on Slashdot. As author, in that case of the whole of the paragraph of text I used, my right to do so is clear, yet the interwiki copy and delete process as it has been practiced would have removed my ability to prove it and retain my rights. Alternatively, consider someone who corrected a typo or inserted spam and is making the same claim as I could make... but we can't disprove that claim without those records.

wikipedia.org and any other projects an interwiki copy and delete is involving appear not to be analog or digital cable systems, so the exceptions for those systems when there is a lack of intent appears not to apply. Assuming for the moment that it did, I wonder whether choosing a method which discards the information when a method which doesn't discard the information exists would be acceptable - I have significant doubt that it would be.

It seems that the ability to get the whole history in a single page (we do have that capability, subject to query time limits in place to prevent it being used as a denial of service attack) might be sufficient to comply and that capability does exist, though it's not practical at present if there are hundreds of thosuands of revisions.

All things considered, it's quite frustrating in ome ways, yet I can't see anything but good coming from preserving the records (though obviously I want it to be as easy as possible!). This seems like a case where trying to preserve the records and do the right thing is good for us anyway. Just a pain at present. Time to poonder this though - in particular I'll be vanishing for about three weeks on trips so I just won't be around to reply for that long. Jamesday 00:27, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it would be good to preserve the records if feasible. I still can't make the jump to the interpretation that "it's required". Rossami 07:23, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• There are plenty of GFDL documents with contributions from multiple authors on the web that don't track individual contributions down to the level of individual characters. (My most recent encounter was this one, for example.) Given that such detailed attribution has not been given in such a wide range of other GFDL documents for quite a number of years now, if it had been a requirement of the GFDL, the FSF would have said something already, which it has not. Indeed, since the GFDL is explicitly intended to apply to sitiations where the MediaWiki mechanisms do not and cannot exist, such as the documentation in a text file accompanying a software package, it should be clear that the GFDL does not require the existence of those mechanisms and their rigid application. The new "legal status" section of this article, and the further increase in the already cumbersome nature of the transwiki process that it implies, is bogus. If you believe otherwise, then you should conclude that you've found a fundamental legal error in a vast host of non-wiki GFDL documents, and should contact the FSF about this major flaw in its whole document licencing scheme forthwith. Uncle G 09:51, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

• Yes, there are some of wikis around which don't retain authorship details but this isn't one of them. If we didn't have the records I might well agree with you (and be reluctant to participate in such a project - I can do without someone sending me a GFDL infringement notice for publising elsewhere something I wrote and then licensed here!:)) but we do have them. The GFDL isn't particularly relevant - it doesn't get to change the law, but rather is subject to it and it's not the GFDL which is the key bit requiring the retention of the copyright management information. The other forms you mention undoubtedly have something in their GFDL history section which differs from what we have. Ours does have that detailed level of copyright management information. Yes, it's more cumbersome until we have a copy function. So? Is that a reason for not respecting and preserving our rights as authors, even if we ignore the legal aspects? Sure, I'd like a neater way and I expect we'll get one... but I still try to describe all of the issues, so we know why we need the tools to do it more easily and better. I doubt anyone is really happy with even the copy and paste approach compared to a simple and complete click to copy capability. Jamesday 00:27, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Keeping Transwiki: articles forever?

There are two contradicting policies about keeping transwiki'd articles in the new project's Transwiki: namespace.

• Under Transfer from transwiki to main, it says that a Transwiki: article that has been Moved into the main namespace must retain its redirect from the Transwiki: namespace, in order to keep a redirect chain from its original project.
• Under Example, two examples suggest that if the article is either merged or VfD'd on the new project, we don't care about the link chain. That's understandable for VfD'd articles, but there should be just as much reason to keep a link chain to an existing article in the new project's articlespace as there is to keep it for Moved articles.

As I see it, there are two reasons given not to delete articles in the Transwiki: namespace after they've been moved into the main namespace: page history for GFDL purposes, and the link chain from the original project. The first seems irrelevant if we follow the same procedures as in the merge process to record the page history. The only reason valid reason, therefore, would be to preserve the link chain between projects. Since that only happens some of the time anyway, shouldn't we have a procedure that encourages transwikiers to make a note of the chain so original-project links can be fixed, too? Otherwise, the Transwiki: namespace, which is an administrative area, is going to get cluttered up with article titles that have long been dealt with, making it harder and harder for editors to sift the to-dos from the already-dones. It would also be cleaner to have old links go directly to the correct new articles, and it would resolve the broken link chain for articles that were merged, then deleted. Comments? — Jeff Q (talk) 06:50, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Some points:
  • Page history is moved along with the article when an article is moved out of the Transwiki: pseudo-namespace. The article left by the original name is a new (redirect) article, with a trivial page history (which is supposed to be duplicated in the Transwiki log itself, anyway).
  • en:Wiktionary (for one) routinely deletes redirects in the Transwiki: pseudo-namespace after it has dealt with the actual articles. The en:Wiktionary administrators who do this assert that the requirement to keep the redirects, expressed here, is a new one, created after Wiktionary policy on this was settled, and that they would like to see a good reason to change their practice before doing so. (Please feel free to argue with them directly if you disagree with them. The discussion is here.)
  • A deletion of a redirect is, of course, an increase in the size of the database.
  • A redirect preserves a "chain", but from my experience the only real occurrences of that chain appear to be the Transwiki logs themselves, making it easy (by following a single hyperlink) to go directly from the outgoing Transwiki log entry on a source project to the final article on a destination project, wherever it has finally ended up. Interwiki hyperlinks outside of the Transwiki logs are usually constructed to point to the final main namespace articles, and Interwiki redirects are (of course) disabled.
  • Leaving redirects around helps to reduce the instances of things being transwikied twice.
  • en:Wiktionary separates the "to-dos" from the "dones" by subdividing its Transwiki log.
• Uncle G 10:14, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC)

copied from [[en:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Transwiki speedy deletions

Did we ever decide what to do with these? I looked up en:ASAP today and found it was pending deletion. Checking the history, it looks like it was nominated early for transwikiing to Wiktionary, then improved a bit, transwikied, and marked for speedy deletion. As I understand it, transwikiing is not a criterion for speedy deletion; they are supposed to go through VfD like other articles. Am I mistaken? — Knowledge Seeker দ 03:14, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I believe you're right. Since I had been active in deleting the transwikied articles I've started going through Category:Pending deletions looking for others like en:ASAP that were marked Pending but haven't yet been through VfD. I'll be away for the next couple of days but the partial list I've compiled is at en:User:SWAdair/Pending Transwikied. It looks like these will have to be sent through VfD. SWAdair | Talk 06:57, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• The last step at meta:transwiki is to delete the left-behind version of the article. Unlike regular deletion, transwiki does not destroy history - the article can always be recovered in the same form from the alternate wikiproject. Therefore, it is considered a reversible decision. If I transwiki an article to Wiktionary and it turns out to be controversial, the next editor (whether he/she is an admin or not) can bring the article back. Since anyone can reverse the decision, I believe that neither VfD nor the speedy deletion criteria need to apply. The article has not been deleted from MediaWiki. It has merely been moved within MediaWiki. Now like any other pagemove, if you suspect that it might be controversial, it is simple courtesy to discuss it first. That might involve a VfD nomination for discussion by the community but it's not required. The decision to nominate or not is one we've traditionally left to the discretion of the admin cleaning up that last step in the transwiki process. Rossami (talk) 07:32, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • That is what I thought, and indeed what I was acting upon until the discussions at en:Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#Deletion_at_the_end_of_transwiki made me pause. The continued discussion at m:Talk:transwiki still seems unsure, with some good points on both sides of the issue. Has that discussion been carried on elsewhere and settled definitively? IANAL, and I've not read the statutes, so I will defer to the judgement of those who have the time and knowledge to sift through the fine print. With the issue apparently not yet determined to a large degree one way or the other, I'm unsure of exactly what the requirements are. I understand your viewpoint (above) and was acting on that belief in the past. Now... I dunno. SWAdair | Talk 09:54, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • I started the discussion at en:Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion#Deletion_at_the_end_of_transwiki to try to gain "official" recognition of the process as I understood it. No one took the opportunity to dispute that interpretation so I believe that it now has a little bit more precedent. Other than that, the discussion just sort of petered out. I am continuing to act on that interpretation. The discussion at m:Talk:transwiki has been focusing more on whether the mechanics of the transwiki process are sufficient - do we have a legal obligation to preserve the tracability of every edit or is it sufficient to preserve the simple fact that Author A contributed something to the article. That remains an open question. Short of getting sued and having a judge render an actual decision, I don't know that we will ever definitively answer it. We all agree that it would be better if the MediaWiki capabilities were expanded a bit so we wouldn't have to worry about the question. Rossami (talk)
  • Thanks, Rossami. I'm still confused, though; I don't really understand the whole transwiki process well. I looked at meta:transwiki, and it looks to me that step 6 of the example (transwikiing from English to French) is to list the original on VfD. That aside, I am not certain I understand how one would bring the article back. One, because if the original is deleted, later editors would not know that the article had been transwikied. But two, can you show me how, if en:ASAP were deleted, one would recover the article/history from wiktionary:ASAP? Thanks! — Knowledge Seeker দ 17:50, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • You have several good questions. The problem with the last step of the process described at meta:transwiki is that none of the other MediaWiki projects make the distinctions we do between VfD, CSD, IfD, TfD, etc. They haven't become large enough or busy enough to need them. I don't spend a huge amount of time on the other projects but my understanding is that most of them quickly delete transwiki'd articles without a lot of formal discussion - more like our CSD process than VfD. But you could certainly interpret it either way. You also asked how to bring an article back. If you want to reverse a transwiki decision, you simply transwiki the article in reverse. That means copy-paste the article (and its Talk page) back from Wiktionary to Wikipedia. Since the Wiktionary article's talk page holds the old Wikipedia article's contributor log, when you move it back to Wikipedia, you will have re-established the contribution history (as a pasted list on the new Wikipedia article's talk page). Admittedly, you won't have the tracability of every edit (see comment above) but you will know everyone who contributed to the article. Lastly, you are correct that future reader/editors may not realize that their article was transwiki'd out of Wikipedia. That's a known failing of the process and has led to at least one call that we should instead leave behind a cross-wiki redirect. The objection to the cross-wiki redirect boils down to the fact that it won't show up on "what links here" and therefore is hard to keep current if/when someone moves the page in the receiving project. For example, if someone moved Wiktionary:ASAP to Wiktionary:A.S.A.P., there are no triggers or ticklers to help the Wiktionary team go back to update the links that are in Wikipedia. There are several proposals to fix that weakness but none have been implemented yet (that I know of). Rossami (talk) 14:50, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your patience, Rossami. I still am unclear though; I am not sure if I am misunderstanding matters. Are we looking at the same part of Meta:Transwiki? I'm looking at the example, which concerns a French article written on en:, to be transwikied to fr:. I'm not sure I understand how it could be interpreted either way—Step 6 clearly states: "Then the Lorraine article at the English Wikipedia can be listed on Votes for deletion", with "Votes for deletion" linking to en:WP:VFD. The last step, step 10, applies to the article in the "Transwiki:" space on the receiving wiki, and only applies if the receiving wiki already had an article with the title and so that article in the transwiki space has to be cut-and-pasted into the already-existing article. If not, the "transwiki" article is simply moved into the article namespace, and no deletion is necessary. Am I misunderstanding this? And I apologize for my lack of comprehension, but can you actually point me to the page where the list of contributors on Wiktionary? You mentioned it would be on the talk page, but wiktionary:Talk:ASAP does not seem to exist. — Knowledge Seeker দ 04:19, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's a confusing topic, made worse because some of the relevant pages have not been kept current. In meta:transwiki, I have always relied on the plain wording in the paragraph Transfer from main to transwiki which reads "The original page may be deleted as soon as it has been moved to the transwiki area." Step 6 in the example does mention Wikipedia's VfD but that example has been around since before the split between VfD and CSD. Back then, we listed everything on the VfD page and could speedily unlist the CSD-equivalents.

The requirement to preserve history is in the paragraph headed Page history. An example of where it was done correctly is at m:Talk:Wikistress. en:ASAP is a difficult example. Looking at the history of the two articles ([1] and [2]), the Wiktionary article pre-dated the Wikipedia article and at the time of the "transwiki" included most (arguably all) of the relevant content. PoccilScript added the tag that he/she believed it had already been moved to Wiktionary's inbound transwiki queue. It's up to the Wiktionary team to decide if and when to integrate the article from the transwiki queue into their article space. Since the Wiktionary article already has most (arguably all) the relevant content, they may well decide to leave their article as is and to allow the Wikipedia version to languish at wikt:transwiki:ASAP. To complicate it further, I'm not actually sure that this particular article really was transwiki'd. That may have been an assumption based on looking at the current state of the two articles. Or someone could have followed the process incorrectly. I wish I had a better answer for this example. Rossami (talk) 13:47, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Rossami, I appreciate you explaining this all to me. I understand now, and I think I will leave it up to others to figure out how to handle this transwiki business in general. In this specific case, I think I will remove the {{pendingdeletion}} notice and place it on VfD. Thank you. — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:25, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

end copied text

Avoiding extra work

Before starting the transwiki process, one should see if such an article already exists in the target wiki. If it does, and the new article adds nothing to it, then it should not be transwikied. It could just be deleted. 62.252.64.16 14:50, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

This might be true in general but there is sometimes value to performing a transwiki anyway in order to merge contribution histories. Too often, users short-cut the transwiki process by cut-and-pasting a current version and forget to bring over the attribution history. Doing so is a violation of the attribution requirement of GFDL. Rossami 12:43, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki & VfD on EN

I added the following text to the line "The original page may be deleted as soon as it has been moved to the transwiki area." on 9 August 2005:

(Note: This is no longer the case on some projects; for example, on EN, all transferred pages must be listed on VfD before deletion.)

Rossami reverted, requesting confirmation. I'm not sure exactly what constitutes confirmation, but let me offer what led me to post it.

I was in the midst of closing VfD's on EN, and came upon an entry that had been transwikied. I checked this page looking for instructions about what to do with the page, (i.e., whether I could delete it straight away), and was all set to delete it, when I decided to get the CSD number from en:WP:CSD for the deletion summary. That's when I noticed the CSD criteria didn't agree with this page:

CSD A5 says: Any article that has been discussed at Votes for Deletion, where the outcome was to transwiki, and where the transwikification has been properly performed and the author information recorded.

That suggested to me that all transwikied articles must be discussed on VfD before being deleted, whether it was before the transwiki move or after. This was backed up by the number of "This page has been transwikied and should now be deleted" nominations on VfD (including the one I wanted to speedy). Since I was confused, I asked the obvious question on the en Help desk. (The post is included as spport in my original addition; it is the "EN" link.) The discussion from the Help Desk was:

Quick transwiki policy question: When an article is transwikied, then listed on VfD, may it be automatically speedily deleted?

• CSD A5 says: Any article that has been discussed at Votes for Deletion, where the outcome was to transwiki, and where the transwikification has been properly performed and the author information recorded.
• Meta's page on Transwiki says: The original page may be deleted as soon as it has been moved to the transwiki area.

My question is: Which trumps which? CSD is official policy here, but Meta is the repository for Wikimedia-wide policy; should transwikied articles be listed on VfD to comply with the "discussed on VfD" provision, or may they be deleted outright under the policy on Meta? -- Essjay · Talk 06:52, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

The meta page is outdated in the extreme. We used to speedy all the transwikied articles, especially the massiveamountmoved to Wiktionary in the early days of transwiki in an effort to get all that stuff off Wikipedia. That was discontinued because of the uproarit caused, and now all of those need to be sent to VfD first. That CSD was created so that articles that were closed in VfD for transwiki, and the subsequently transwikied, can be deleted without another VfD. See for example, the template, {{deletetranswikied}}, which has since been TFD'd and deleted. It looked like this [3]. Now, they mustall go to VfD. Dmcdevit·t 07:26, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! It's good to know which set of rules to follow. Since I have a meta account, I'm going to clarify on the meta page, so there won't be further confusion. -- Essjay · Talk 07:57, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

And that's exactly what I did. What I want to know now is, what evidence do I need to offer here in order for the statement to qualify for re-insertion? I know I was confused when I read the policy here, and if I hadn't been aware of the CSD and noticed the difference, I would likely have deleted the transwikied pages in violation of policy. I don't want other admins to be similarly confused. Could someone advise as to what constitutes sufficient evidence that this is the policy so that I can go find it? -- Essjay · Talk 11:48, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

from Talk pages in :en

I've been looking into this for days and only find myself deeper in confusion. I have always in the past considered the text which you quoted from Meta to take precedence. The only people opposing that interpretation in en: were generally either self-described "rabid inclusionist"s or very new Wikipedians. The consensus among the "old hands" was that any article could be speedy-deleted after transwiki because it wasn't really a deletion. (True deletion destroys article history and requires admin powers to reverse. Any controversial transwiki move can be reversed by any editor by simply running the tranwiki process back again. Time consuming, I admit, but achievable.) We often spent quite a bit of time explaining that to people but it never got to what I would have called an "uproar" against the practice.

I'll also note that the Speedy Deletion case is a very new addition to the list. During the debate which added it, several of the "old hands" argued that it was redundant since the meta language took precedence but that it probably couldn't hurt either. That was certainly my own interpretation of the debate.

The response you got from Dmcdevit, however, causes me a great deal of hesitation. His/her judgment is usually quite good. If Dmcdevit says the consensus has shifted, then I need to continue to check my facts. I saw no sign of an uproar but no person can watch every page. Perhaps there was more controversy than I saw. On the other hand, the meta language has been stable for quite some time. I do not think that means it has been neglected. I think it was stable because it works.

If you want to add your caveat back, I will not revert it. Could we, however, both spend some time asking for other opinions? I prefer the old process. Requiring every transwiki to go through a VfD seems unnecessarily bureaucratic. Rossami 02:04, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I agree that VfD post-transwiki is overkill; I'll leave the Meta page alone for now and bring it up on AN to see if I can get some kind of response. -- Essjay · Talk 03:38, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

I've been doing some more reading and have been re-reading some of the recent discussions. If I am interpreting the discussion correctly, the tone of the debate changed when Angela endorsed the use of cross-wiki redirects in place of straight deletion. For example, Template:Wi. The redirect preserves history in place (solving several technical concerns with the way that history is ... not lost, but the level of tracability is lowered since transwiki requires a cut-and-paste move). The wording of the redirect also makes it very clear that any replacement of the text must be more than a mere dictionary definition, source document, etc. At that point in the debate, most of the "old hands" seconded her recommendation and dropped out of the debate. I am at the point of considering that to be the consensus recommendation.

I am interpreting that argument for a cross-wiki redirect to only apply to sister projects within the same language. For example, Wikipedia to Wiktionary, etc. For a transwiki from one language project to another, I think the old standard should still apply. If someone drops a French article into the en: Wikipedia, we should still transwiki and delete. That interpretation appears to contradict the wording of the CSD case. But I have to admit the CSD case still confuses me. If a VfD vote specifically endorses deletion (rather than cross-wiki redirect), it can be speedy-deleted. But since the decision to delete was the result of a VfD decision, then it does not seem necessary to have a speedy-delete case.

Still thinking. Rossami 13:43, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh my, I think I've bitten off more than I should have! I'm quite confused, so I'm going to bow out at this point and leave it in your obviously capable hands. I have full faith that you will get it sorted out, and if there is anything more I can do, please let me know. -- Essjay · Talk 01:58, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Transwiki as a software feature

I think this should be implemented in software to avoid extra work and errors in the (rather complicated) process. E.g. we have a list of free images on sk:wikipedia which need to be moved to Commons. This is a lot of work and moreover I don't want to take the legal responsibility as the uploader on Commons, when, in fact, I'm just moving it between projects. ~~helix84 17:10, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

How does one comply with the GFDL licence when the source article has been deleted?

Wikipedia (among other projects) allows content-reusers to fulfill the attribution requirements of the GFDL by linking back to the original article. What happens if the original article has been, or gets, deleted? Where does that leave the legality of the reuse, since the letter of the GFDL can no longer be complied with?

I am thinking about two situations in particular: 1. A user discovers useful content via a mirror, but on checking the source wiki finds the article has been deleted, thus the page history cannot be copied (this is my Transwiki-ing concern) 2. A user mirrors an article relying on the link back to fulfill their GFDL obligations. Then at some point in the future the article is deleted. Now, suddenly and without their knowledge, they are no longer in compliance. 81.174.210.98 03:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Similar concerns are currently being discussed at w:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Transwiki needed. -- Avenue 11:07, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Tech update

Please note this message from Brion Vibber on Wikitech-l, which I am quoting below in full.

I think this answers also the latest query above. --Lp 10:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

---

From: Brion Vibber
To: Wikimedia developers (Wikitech-l)
Date: Tue Jun 27 22:51:31 UTC 2006
Subject: Interwiki/transwiki imports mostly working now

I've patched up some old problems with Special:Import and Special:Export:

• Import updates categories etc
• Imports are logged and reviewable in Special:Log/import
• Imported pages also get a null edit in the history indicating the import and its source
• Export is fixed up to allow fetching history for shorter pages, while still aborting to avoid bogging down the servers on longer pages (currently set to a cutoff of 100 edits)
• Transwiki import allows selecting the import-with-history

Wikis wishing transwiki import capability should let us know which wikis they want to be able to import directly from (for instance, from a wikipedia -> wiktionary) and we can enable it.

Please pass this notice on to wikis where it will be of interest.

-- brion vibber

---

Request for a "mentor" or "tutor"

I'm interested in moving some things from (english) WP to (english) WB. These are articles or parts of articles that contain a lot of "how-to" information that are generally against the MoS for WP, but have great potential to become chapters in WB.

All of the articles are garden, plant, and landscape related, which I'd like to see incorporated into b:A Wikimanual of Gardening.

In particular at the moment, I'd like to get a handle on what happens when an article needs to be moved in it's entirety, as in this article on WP.

Also would like some comment on how I did an earlier one: see b:Talk:A_Wikimanual_of_Gardening_Volume_4/Tomato for the transwiki technique I employed. After organizing the chapter a bit, I removed the how-to info from the WP article, leaving a link to the chapter in its place.

Please respond on either of my talks: w:User_talk:SB_Johnny or b:User_talk:SBJohnny. I'd really like to get a better handle on this! 71.224.81.82 16:30, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

A proposal

Here's a proposal for how transwikifying could be done without losing the page history and without cut-and-pasting:

(Note: This is only the actual transwikifyng part. For simplicity I left out deciding if it's suitable.)

1. An administrator on the English Wikipedia does a "push" operation to put it on a queue at the French Wikipedia using something like "Special:Push article/fr.wikipedia.org/Lorraine".
2. The software on the English Wikipedia does something similar to a HTTP POST containing page contents, history, talk, etc. to something like "http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lorraine&action=push".
3. The software on the French Wikipedia recives the POST and places "Lorraine" on a queue.
4. An administrator on the French Wikipedia checks the queue using something like "Special:Article queue" and notices the article. He/she posts it on the administrator's noticeboard.

(And then, assuming consensus develops:)

1. The administrator on the French Wikipedia does a "pull" operation with something like "Special:Pull article/Lorraine".
2. The software then adds it to the database and removes it from the queue.
3. The "Lorraine" article on the English Wikipedia is VfDed.

Page out of date

Can somebody make the page up to date again. I already did for the Dutch page using following content

1. Aims
2. The name: transwiki
3. Import
   1. Automatically
   2. Log import
   3. User request page for transwiki
   4. Wikify
4. Export
   1. Export page
   2. Transfer to transwiki
   3. Boilerplate text for export pages

About import:
you have to ask the developers to activate the import function. You need to specify wich projects you want to import from. You also need to ask to register the "transwiki" namespace. It than becomes a special sort of pages. Articles in this namespace won't be counted into the total of articles.

Moderators now can import automatically with Special:Import. The article name remains unchanged but moderators can choose the namespace where they want the new article to go. It is preferred to place it into the special transwiki namespace.
Moderators can choose to import an article with or without the history. Nevertheless they need a good reason not to import the history to ensure the GFDL-rights.

About logging:
The imported articles are automatically registered in the Special:Log/import. There is no need to do this manually anymore.

Page for users for import requests:
On this page, users can suggest articles from sister projects to be imported. They need to post the correct link on that list.

Divide the page into 2 (or 3) sections:

• the requested links
• requests that have been rejected
• imported articles that have been taken care of

(this last (2) part(s) can be cleaned up for instance every week)

Wikify:
Wikify means to make an article usable for your own project. You need to correct links, correct images, correct the templates, etc...

After wikifying the imported article (in transwiki namespace) you can easily change the title to a chosen article name.

Transwiki clean up:
I don't know if it is preferred to keep the transwiki redirects (after wikifying and changing the title) or not. It seems to me preferred not to loose those redirects, so the log will be usable to track the transwiki articles. The namespace isn't taken into account anyways and the chance of needing the same transwiki namespace twice is very rare.

Export: I myself am not up to date concerning the export-possibilities though. So please review also the export-suggestions i made.

Inge Habex 09:12, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Translation featured articles

We started that project at pl wiki: pl:Wikipedia:Tłumaczenie miesiąca. Look down at table with number of featured articles in several language versions. We have only 170 featured articles, less than es, pt or it. That babel project will be helpful. I think, that it will be good to promote that project in other wikis. Przykuta 21:17, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Rewrite?

Given the Special:Import capability, as well as the current efforts to automate it, could a Wikipedian please rewrite this page?

There should never be a reason for someone to manually copy an entry over, if the target site has Special:Import enabled. (A quick glance at that site's Special:log/import should indicate the status.)

Some guidelines on how to automate these imports should be somewhere too. I'm using a shell script currently, but it really should be done via a proper pywikipedia bot, using the query.php API to generate the list. Also, I'm unclear on what should be done to entries here once they've been transwiki'ed. Should I be changing {{Move to Wiktionary}} to {{Moved to Wiktionary}} or something? Wouldn't I need an account and a bot account here, to do so?

Thanks in advance.

--Connel MacKenzie 17:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I've added a note to import if possible, but the import feature is much too restricted to replace the transwiki procedure. The feature is disabled by default, occasionally enabled for users in a special import group, and in the case of the English Wikisource enabled only for administrators. Where it is enabled, it usually only supports a small number of wikis. Further, transwikis are very rarely done by a user on the remote wiki; that's the whole point of the transwiki process, to allow remote users to complete a move initiated by a user on another wiki. Having all transwikis be imported isn't feasible. // [admin] Pathoschild (^talk/_map) 17:34, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Added important step to Begin Transwiki section

I added the important step of also listing the fact that the transwiki has been done on the originating wiki's transwiki log. This is important when transwikiing out of wikipedia to elsewhere, and should not be skipped (except in certain specific situations). I'm not sure why this step wasn't listed already... perhaps because originally transwikiing was meant to always end in the deletion of the originating page. It doesn't anymore, and hasn't for a long time. --24.16.16.16 22:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Import vs. transwiki from en.wikipedia → en.wikibooks

Due to a long history of troubles with transwikis from wikipedia, en.wikibooks has requested (and now have) use of Special:Import. To avoid more messes, we'd really prefer move requests be made through b:WB:RFI (there is currently some discussion about banning copy/paste transwikis altogether).

The reasons are (1) we feel that import is in better compliance with the copyrights, and (2) the naming conventions, MOS, and appropriateness of materials on wikibooks is sufficiently different from they way they are on wikipedia that it's just more comfortable to have someone "in house" doing the move, so we can take care of any problems. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 11:37, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Changed definition of transwiki

I have changed the definition of "Transwiki", replacing all instances of "move" with "copy". When transwikiing was originally conceived of, the idea was of a person finding an article which didn't belong on their wiki but might belong on another, and copying it to the new wiki and deleting it from theirs. This would all be done by one person.

Now, at least on Wikipedia, many articles every day get transwiki tags put on them (Copy to Wiktionary, etc.), and eventually, days, weeks, or months later, someone comes along and copies a big batch of 20 or 50 or 500 articles to the new wiki. This person generally doesn't bother checking the individual articles being copied to see if they even belong on the new wiki or the old one, and he or she uses a bot to do the transwikiing. Frequently now, due to the new Import function, the person doing the transwikiing is on the receiving end, not on the sending end, and knows absolutely nothing about the policies of the wiki where the articles came from, including whether the original articles should be deleted, kept, merged, whatever.

Many of the articles which get transwikied end up being KEPT, not deleted, for various reasons, including transwiki tags being inappropriately placed on the article, the article being improved to the point where it no longer needs deletion, and at times articles are transwikied because both the sending and receiving wiki want them.

Since deletion is no longer an integral part of the process, the term "move" no longer is the right one, and so I've replaced it and redefined the term Transwiki to match how it is actually being used.

(I'm doing this from a wikipedia perspective, if my changes don't fit with how things are being done on other wikis, I assume someone will speak up or change what I've done back) --Xyzzyplugh 08:46, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

The example is now broken

The example given at the bottom of the article no longer works. This is because the french wikipedia, and from what I can tell all of the other non-english wikipedias, are no longer using a Transwiki log, at least not the type used on en.wikipedia and en.wiktionary. It is impossible to enter anything into the french transwiki log, as the example suggests, since it's just part of the "special" search feature. It's possible that these non-english wikipedias do have a transwiki log where entries can be made, but I couldn't find them using google translation feature. Perhaps someone who speaks french, german, etc. can figure out how to fix this page, because at the moment it's broken. --Xyzzyplugh 07:01, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

The procedure does not seem operational there, the example should be changed to one with a target wiki where the procedure is operational.--Patrick 07:55, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

These instructions are very bad (incomprehensible).

The instructions at Help:Transwiki are very bad (incomprehensible). They need a rewrite as soon as convenient for usability. -- 201.53.4.206 01:09, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Attribution error with common usernames

Transwiki appears to cause an attribution error with common usernames. Look at de:Spezial:Beiträge/Chaser. That account was registered before the implementation of Single-user login and does not belong to me. The edits with edit summaries in German are from the rightful owner of the account, not me. The edits with edit summaries in English are transwikied edits from the English Wikipedia, and those are edits that I made. Same username, but two different people. I don't mind not getting credit for those edits, but this is obviously a serious error that needs to be fixed.--chaser - t 04:29, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Merging

It is reasonably common to want to merge a transwiki’ed page with an existing page. The ways to do this, as I understand, are to:

• cut-and-paste – easy but incorrect,
• merge edit histories – tricky, hard to reverse, but correct – see MediaWiki Administrator's Handbook: Edit History.

I’ve added a note to this effect and a caution, but other suggestions welcome!

—Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 20:08, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Transwiki to Wiktionary

Hi,

I placed the w:Template:Copy to Wiktionary on the English Wikipedia page en:Dwell time on 30 October but nothing has happened. Does this process need to be done manually? Jezhotwells 12:33, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

This page does not give clear directions. Its not clear what it means by Create the structure. then the transwiki link does not anywhere show what is said in the supporting text, perhaps it should link directly where it needs to. Then once the origin page is moved to the remote transwiki project, does it have to be manually moved to the desired page, or is that done automatically or by an administrator. It seems easier to do this manually and not create the structure Sidelight12 (talk) 20:43, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Overdue transwikification

Six years ago, consensus was to transwiki Letter To The Falashas to Wikisource. This has still not been done. I'm not sure how to do it, so any help would be appreciated. FiredanceThroughTheNight (talk) 03:12, 13 November 2015 (UTC)