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The term "transwiki" refers to moving pages between two wikis (two Wikimedia Sister Projects' wikis). The term was coined by Eclecticology in late 2003 and introduced to the MediaWiki codebase by Brion VIBBER in mid-2005 as part of the Import.
Transwiki is a pseudo-Wikipedia:namespace in each Wikimedia project, where it is a temporary store for articles which have been moved from another wiki. The temporary name for the article is obtained by prefixing "Transwiki:". For a log of pages transwiki'd between meta and other projects, please see transwiki log.
Aims
The transwiki scheme is a constructive approach to avoid needless deletions of articles that simply belong elsewhere. Often an article will have valuable information, but the contributor has submitted it to the wrong place. That group has a number of possible sub-classes:
- dictionary type entries: they belong in Wiktionary
- foreign language entries: they belong in the Wiktionary or Wikipedia for the relevant language
- pages which form or tend to form a cohesive textbook: they belong in Wikibooks
- memorials: they belong in what is now the 9/11 Memorial, which could be expanded to cover victims of other disasters
- lists of quotes: they belong in Wikiquote
- source texts: they belong at Wikisource, unless the project has chosen to use a sources namespace within Wikipedia instead.
Please note that news articles belong in Wikinews, but since content there must be licensed under Creative Commons, it is not possible to transwiki GFDL content from other projects there.
The transwiki namespace replaces pages such as Wikipedia:Things to be moved to Wiktionary and Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/foreign language. These pages have been limited in their use because they were located at the English Wikipedia. In the case of dictionary definitions, Wiktionarians were largely unaware the Wikipedia:Things to be moved to Wiktionary page existed, and Wikipedians seemed reluctant to use it as they didn't know how to format the pages in proper Wiktionary style.
Articles can now be left in the transwiki namespace without worrying about formatting, and means that dictionary-related articles would reside in the transwiki namespace at Wiktionary, so there is more chance of Wiktionarians knowing about it and working on it.
The name transwiki
The word transwiki is a coined word designed to avoid ambiguities, compared to using an English word like transfer. For this system to work well the same namespace name should be used in all projects, so that people unfamiliar with a language can still place an article awaiting translation there. Each project should decide on a name for its log of moved articles, but each one must have a redirect from the name "transwiki" so that people moving articles in from other projects can find the log, even when they have no knowledge of the language. For example, at the English Wikipedia, transwiki redirects to Wikipedia:Transwiki log.
How the transwiki process works
Transfer from main to transwiki
As there is currently no way of moving pages across wikis, the transfer must be done using cut and paste. If there is anything valuable on the talk page, this may be moved in the same way, though in many cases the talk may not be relevant to the wiki you are moving the article to. The original page may be deleted as soon as it has been moved to the transwiki area. You must enter in the log that the article has moved. The log can be found by going to transwiki which will be a redirect to the log page. The deletion log will also provide a record, and any transwiki article can be undeleted if the move was considered "out-of-process" or if someone requests undeletion (via Wikipedia:Deletion review at en for example).Page history
In order to adhere to the requirements of the GFDL, a record must be made of the original authors. If the original article had only one author, this can be done in the edit summary when the article is pasted into the new transwiki article. If a number of authors were involved, it may be preferable to copy the list of authors from the page history onto the new transwiki article's talk page. For an example of this, see Wikistress. A record of the original address of the article should also be made (again, in the edit summary or on the talk page) so that, if the history is required at any point, the page may be found and undeleted.Transfer from transwiki to main
When moving a transwiki article to the main namespace, the "move this page" feature should be used so as to preserve any page history that occurred since the transfer. The transwiki version will then be just a redirect. This redirect must not be deleted. It is likely that the transwiki version was linked to from the wiki that the article came from originally. You risk breaking many links if you delete this redirect.Keeping a log of transfers
It is useful to have a log for two reasons. Firstly, so that the process is transparent and others can see exactly where articles have gone. Secondly, so that people know where to look if they want to help in converting the transwiki article prior to its move to the main namespace. The log should have two sections:- Article moved from main namespace to another wiki
- Article moved from another wiki to this one (a record of when the article is moved to the main namespace) can also be kept here
Boilerplate text
Between moving the article and deleting it, you may want to add the following boilerplate text:Example
- Looxix writes an article called Lorraine in French and accidentally submits it to the English Wikipedia.
- Angela finds it and decides it looks like it might be suitable for the French Wikipedia.
- As she can't read French, she doesn't know if it is actually suitable for the French Wikipedia, so she copies and pastes it into a new article called Lorraine at the French Wikipedia.
- She records this in the log at the English Wikipedia.
- She then goes to fr:Transwiki which redirects to fr:Wikipédia:log de transwiki and makes a record in the log as shown below.
- Then the Lorraine article at the English Wikipedia is Deletion policy by her.
- Anthere then goes to the fr:Wikipédia:log de transwiki and sees there is an article to work on. She decides if it is suitable for keeping in the French Wikipedia.
- If it is, she works on it if it is still in need of work, and then moves it to fr:Lorraine, leaving a redirect at fr:Transwiki:Lorraine, and makes a record in the log, as shown below.
- If it isn't, she lists it on fr:Wikipédia:Pages à supprimer for it to be deleted.
- If fr:Lorraine already exists, Anthère would need to do a cut and paste move to merge the content of the transwiki article with the existing French article. In this case, the page history should be recorded on the talk page before the transwiki article is deleted.
Log example
- At en:
- At fr:
- If Anthère had decided to delete the article, the log might show
"Transwiki"