CZ Talk:How to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles

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What about encouraging writing from scratch in this article? Being WP-inspired, WP-suggested, but independent and not WP-tied-to? I think that this may have some far reaching consequences. I put a longer post about it on the forum. --Alex Halicz (hello) 08:32, 15 February 2007 (CST) Ps. WP stands for Wikipedia

You're right! What do you think of the first section now? --Larry Sanger 09:04, 15 February 2007 (CST)

Exciting. That's it.--Alex Halicz (hello) 09:08, 15 February 2007 (CST)

Infoboxes

I brought a couple infobox templates over from WP, now that I've read this article I think I made them in error, especially considering the number of dead branches they contain. What can be done about this?

They may be useful if you tweek them and remove the need for dead branches. We will need info-like templates for the future and some have been brought over. Chris Day (Talk) 18:10, 15 February 2007 (CST)

On importing

There are a few articles on Wikipedia I wrote from scratch. Should these be treated the same as other imported Wikipedia articles if I import them? Marielle Fields Newsome 21:54, 27 March 2007 (CDT)

Here's what I'd do: either simply mark the articles as being from Wikipedia, or (if you don't) then make quite sure that the versions you import were developed by you and you alone. So, omit any changes/additions made by others. But in any case, we would still ask you to improve the article, please, over what is on Wikipedia, because we do not simply want to be a mirror of WP. Thanks, and welcome! --Larry Sanger 22:43, 27 March 2007 (CDT)

Wikipedia article links

I'm planning to import a couple of articles that I've worked on and resume working on them here, having given up on it at Wikipedia some time ago. These articles, of course, are full of Wikipeida cross-links. Are there any general guidelines for handling these; and should they be included in this article?

The three obvious choices are to delete them, preserve them (which I presume means editing each one into an external link to Wikipedia), or make them CZ links (which will be mostly to nonexistent articles.)I can see advantages to all three. The last is a bit sticky, though, because a whole lot of unimplemented links make an article that simply is worse than one with links to something half-decent or better, like a WP article. Perhaps one should encouraged to go around finding WP links in articles an creating the proper CZ article?

[signed, belatedly, Daniel Drake 00:55, 30 March 2007 (CDT)]

Please do not make links to WP articles. See CZ:How_to_convert_Wikipedia_articles_to_Citizendium_articles#Interwiki_links. Afterward, you might discriminatingly add some. Stephen Ewen 01:07, 30 March 2007 (CDT)

I'm in the same boat. I've contributed many articles to Wikipedia, and (in my own humble opinion, of course) they were well written compared to what could generally be found on that project. I plan to import a few of the most complete articles wholesale (I've done all the tweaking I would be inclined to do on the Wikipedia version). Cheers! Brian 22:43, 30 March 2007 (CDT)

There isn't any point to our hosting copies of Wikipedia articles that you aren't planning on improving further. CZ isn't a mere mirror of Wikipedia articles. Since CZ hasn't been set up to be an approval service for Wikipedia articles, and since approval in any case requires that we have many more active editors than we have now, it does not make sense (right now, anyway) to upload articles here for purposes of getting them approved. All this said, I have considerable skepticism about anyone who says he cannot substantially improve any piece of prose he's written, particularly something as free-form and expandable as an encyclopedia article. Can't you virtually endlessly improve your text? I find I can mine, particularly longer texts. --Larry Sanger 23:21, 30 March 2007 (CDT)

I've found I can endlessly tweak any piece of prose I've written, but that does not necessarily add up to "improving" it. Some of the articles I've done on Wikipedia were stubs (and some remain stubs). Others were labors of love for subjects dear to my heart, into which I've already invested substantial sums of time. There are only a handful (maybe a half dozen) for which I would claim the subject is covered completely and no further work need be done, but I see no logic in avoiding the importation of that handful simply because they are already as complete as I feel I am capable of making them. Cheers! Brian 00:56, 31 March 2007 (CDT)

Brain - and do see the important email I sent you earlier - see CZ:Introduction_to_CZ_for_Wikipedians#Citizendium_is_NOT_a_mirror_of_Wikipedia for a solution to your situation over the "maybe a half dozen". Make sure you at least follow all of the mechanical stipulates mentioned at CZ:How_to_convert_Wikipedia_articles_to_Citizendium_articles. Still, to the matter of improvability, see Get ready to rethink how to write encyclopedia articles. You might consider importing one at a time and rethinking like that describes, and see what kind of improvements you then feel free to make. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you can do given how CZ differs from WP. --- Regards, Stephen Ewen 03:26, 31 March 2007 (CDT)

Wikipedia credit checkbox

Of course when we import an article from WP, we check the box with the submission. Then we start the major improvements that we (for certain values of we) never made on WP because it looked to be not worth the trouble in that environment.

And we insert the Wikipedia template at the end, giving proper credit in a standard, clean form. Or do we? I see that in Tycho Brahe it was inserted and then reverted on grounds that it didn't seem to work; but it looks good enough to me, perhaps because I don't know what it ought to do.

At that point, as we make further massive changes, is everyone expected to check the Wikipedia box when submitting? Or is that to be done only when importing more from WP? My instincts say the latter; is the box checked by default just as a matter of excess of caution, or is there some other reason?

(Oh, and is this the place to pester with newbie questions about the details, or is there a better one, like Forums?) Daniel Drake 11:16, 1 April 2007 (CDT)

If you check the box once it should stay checked until unchecked by soemone. If the final article retains one sentence from the WP article, the box needs to stay checked. Stephen Ewen 12:23, 1 April 2007 (CDT)

Actually, (IP Lawyer hat on) I'd say it would have to stay checked unless all semblence of the Wikipedia article has been erased, including cadence and structure. Unless such a complete change is made, at least some part of the new article may still be considered a derivative work of the old, which would still require attribution under Wikipedia's GFDL. (IP Lawyer hat off) Cheers! Brian Dean Abramson 19:50, 1 April 2007 (CDT)

Right, the permanent need for attribution is clear enough. What's not clear to a newbie is exactly what constitutes attribution for the purpose. For instance, in borrowing some GFDL text for my own use, I think (not having read the gfdl in a couple of years) that I'd be content, and feel safe, to put a highly visible notice in the product -- including the requisite link to the original. My notice would probably look much like what's produced by the existing Wikipedia template. My question was essentially, "Is that notice adequate for CZ's purposes?" and the answer appears to be "No; the checkbox is also required on every submission forever." I'm mildly interested in why not: what extra purpose the checkbox serves. I'm mildly concerned if CZ would find itself in legal jeopardy because some author, adding something of his own to an article, carelessly or ignorantly or accidentally or maliciously happened to turn off the checkbox when submitting.