Wikispooks:Importing From Wikipedia

Wikispooks would not be where it is today without Wikipedia. For one thing, it would lack the software which runs it. For another, quite a lot of the content would be missing. Wikipedia articles are sometimes a good starting point for Wikispooks articles, although care needs to be taken, and the potential #Problems problems should be carefully borne in mind.

How To Import

All wikipedia/wikispooks articles consist of source text, so one might think that cutting and pasting source between the two would be sufficient to copy an article. In fact, it is not so simple since this source can refer to other articles (e.g. templates) which also need to be copied across.

Cut and Paste

When importing short subsections of articles, it is usually fine to simply "view source"/"edit" and then cut-and-paste this source text into a Wikispooks article. This will work correctly for simple formatting such as references and manually drawn tables. Images will not be copied, so you will need to upload images manually.

More seriously still, if the source includes templates then cut-and-paste may not be good enough; pasted source will not display correctly unless all the particular template(s) used already happen to be on WikiSpooks as well. If you are in any doubt, do a "preview" and see whether there are any red "template:..." - indications that one or more templates are missing. If you meet this problem, see below for a better method of importing articles.

Special:Import

Where the cut-and-paste method fails due to use of templates, Wikipedia offers a more efficient and reliable alternative method, the Special:Export page. This packages up the page text and all the templates which it needs into a single XML file. Once you have this file, you can import it into Wikispooks from the Special:Import page, to recreate not only that one page, but also all the templates on which it depends to render correctly. Note that you will still have to import images manually.

When To Import

Importing a Wikipedia page should not be done without careful thought. Wikispooks does not aim to replace Wikipedia but to supplement it, and large swathes of overlapping content is generally not a good way to achieve this. A better approach may be smaller, hand written articles which highlight the problems with the Wikipedia article, or which include material that has been censored from Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is generally accurate and well referenced for basic, indisputable facts, and many articles are well structured. Both of these points mean that article imports can be a good way to get started. Be prepared, however, to remove large chunks of material to help focus firmly on the deep political angles which are the core mission of Wikispooks. Most serious researchers into a topic will probably have already read the Wikipedia article, so repeating an outdated version of this gains nothing.

Problems

Full article: WikiSpooks:Problems with Wikipedia

Wikipedia is not a neutral forum for the presentation and evaluation of evidence. Most large organisations with a Wikipedia presence most likely pay money (directly or indirectly) in an effort to censor and spin it for their own purposes. Importing articles, particularly large ones, is therefore problematic since this also imports into Wikipedia the opinions and biases which are often subtly encoded therein. As an absolute minimum, do not import material into Wikispooks you have not personally read and thought about.