Wikipedia talk:Merging encyclopedias

Preserving the sources, external references

I'm adding a sectin to your essay. I hop you don't mind. Please remove it if you prefer this to be a single-author essay.

Expansion

There is a looming issue with expandable articles. What do we do with an article that is a stub (for example a person with a date of birth, death, short assertion of importance and a link to an article)? One option would be to simply forget about them and delist them immediately. A second option is to somehow keep them in the list (which is what is done at present). The third option is to could create a totally new project, either as a list or a category.

I'd prefer the latter option, although (probably due to my tactlessness) this got a very negative reaction when I last tried. I'd foresee this as a maintenance project such as the dated/biased text projects that we had.

The projects should go on when all the articles are created, as there is still a lot of maintenance work to do.

JASpencer (talk) 07:37, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the problem: please clarify. are you concerned about an article in Wikipedia that is not complete with respect to information in the particular source we are merging? In that case,the Wikipedia article is in a state of "in progress" with respect to that particualr source. "Red link" is the usual initial state, and "final" (i.e., reviewed and marked) is the final state at which the article can no longer benefit from new material from the source.A blue link starts in the "unassessed" state. In my view, the article title should be moved into a seperate "in progress" list within the particular merge project when it is in the "in progress" state. The project should agree on a marking system (perhaps an invisible template in the article or a template on the article's user page.) The article should be removed from the project's "in progress" list (and perhaps added to a "final" list in the project) only after the article reaches "final" state with respect to the source. If you are concerned about article's in WP that are so weak that they are subject to deletion, then we may need to move these to a "rescue" state within the project (i.e., somebody please merge tis quick!) If yo are concerned with an article that is so minimal in the Source that An equivalent WP article would be subject to deletion, then move the redlink into the "never" state list within the project. -Arch dude (talk) 18:08, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

To try to clarify - there is no particular reason to get rid of the "expandable article" lists (such as the Catholic Encyclopedia uses), but there is some reason to use a category rather than a listing at that point. Basically, categories can take over when there is no great need to annotate the list; they can be placed on the Talk pages of articles; and a plain categorisation can be upgraded to a template that adds a category and also does some sort of rating. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:12, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

OK. We are then discussing an article in Wikipedia that does not yet have all of the information from the source project's article. You propose to use a category as the way to record it's current state. that's fine with me, but another editor states on the essay page that there is a class of editors who object to "soliciting input from old sources." The category will be visible at the bottom ofth page. If we must be discreet, perhaps an invisible template without a category is better? The "what links here" page of the template becomes the automatic list you are looking for. I still think we need to keep a list of articles are are so stubby that tyen may be deleted, because a deleted article disappears from a category. -Arch dude (talk) 19:08, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Such a list of stubs can of course be kept (why not?) as a kind of watchlist, a rump of the merge listing.

The "soliciting input" matter is another aspect, to do with people's objections to "text dumps" of old material into articles. I intend to add more to the essay about the "brief". Typically (say at the Jewish Encyclopedia project, which is a big one just getting under way) the objective is stated as making sure that WP has a corresponding article for every JE article, where that is appropriate. That is a "minimal" brief, you could say. Well, minimal would really accept redirections, for example to article sections, and would worry about notability at the margins, POV forking and such issues. A "maximal" brief tries to expand WP as much as possible with the material in (say) JE. "Tactless maximal" is maximal plus disregard of content policies, style guidelines and so on. Obviously the precise brief matters and has to be hammered out per project. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:23, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

My preference for a project's goal: Add all material from the source that is useful in Wikipedia.This is the "content" goal. the "form" goal should of course be that the additions to Wikipedia adhere to WP:MOS. Your "maximal" brief is slightly too maximal, since not all of the source content is necessarily "useful to Wikipedia." The "Tactless maximal" of course violates WP:MOS. -Arch dude (talk) 13:41, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree, of course: one should add everything useful and then ... stop. I was trying to formulate matters in such a way as to point out where the "issue" lies. We're not going to agree 100% on this. I wasn't thinking so much about the MoS, which is after all just a bunch of guidelines, which aren't uniformly applied across the site, and can be considered post hoc anyway. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:37, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Source Solicitation

If adding anything to an existing article, or it's talk page are we at risk of falling foul of the source solicitation guidelines here: Wikipedia:SPAM#Source_soliciting ? JASpencer (talk) 19:36, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

If we use a template that does not result in any visible change to the article, then we are not soliciting input from anyone except the participants in the project. Editors who participate in the project have already been "solicited" and will discuss the relevance of their additions to Wikipedia on the project talk pages. The project should address all of the issues raised at Wikipedia:SPAM#Source_soliciting on a generic basis (where appropriate) for the project's source. In addition, the project should develop guidelines on how to recognize situations where a particular article might run afoul of the "solicitation" guideline. Here is an example of what we might put in the article:

• {{fooproject|needmore}}<!--The article in the Foo source has material that may be useful here. Please discuss at [[WP:Fooproject]] -->

where "needmore" is the current state of the article with respect to the Foo prioject. Indicentally, I have not been around these projects enough to encounter the "solicitation" objectors, so I'm just guessing. -Arch dude (talk) 20:24, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

A question...

...as it relates to the Catholic Encyclopedia specifically, and other projects more generally.

What to do with a specific-interest article, such as "Christian Use of the Alphabet"? Rather than create a new article (or even a redirect, for that matter), should any content of interest be merged into the "Alphabet" article? And who makes decisions on things like that?

Apologies for not getting into this sooner, but I've just started a new job. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 20:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not so long since I did one like that: Numerology and the Church Fathers, which came from Use of Numbers in the Church. I'll comment that the choice of title is quite important, really. It bears some thinking about, if the topic is to be acceptable. And then there was Historical Christian hairstyles, which survived at AfD, coming from Hair (in Christian Antiquity) (which is hilariously bad from our perspective). I don't recall the alphabet article, though I've certainly looked it over at some point. I would generally approve of linking it from a section in some other article (alphabet or Greek alphabet or whatever) that dealt with symbolism in alphabets and letters: so that it would appear as the "details here" target for a section of something bigger. In any case these issues can be quite demanding. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:47, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Tracking systems

It sounds like what is needed here is a good robust tracking system that is easy to use, easy to analyse and where the current state of progress can be easily assessed. The two that I know of are the ones used at Wikisource and at Wikipedia:Translation. Maybe something similar, but designed for synchronisation with other encyclopedia, could be set up for a "merging encyclopedias" system. Carcharoth (talk) 12:25, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but really the major topic is to get a spec: what is it that we should track? The "current state of progress" usually comes out at a percentage, and that is normally too high. In other words it isn't so easy to "rate" a merge, and in practical terms a 10000 article encyclopedic merge is never finished, because of diminishing returns/painstaking work to get the last few percent of information. It's an interesting issue. Anyway, let me not discourage the idea that some automation could apply and help. It all looks like "flagged versions" with lots of flags, which I find an interesting observation. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:52, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

When it comes down to it, projects need a way of tracking via edit summary, first. So, how about working out what all the standard moves should be, and creating stock abbreviations for them? Someone said on wikien "turn the essay into a guideline". As a guideline, it could be clarifying to do just that: choreograph everything by template additions to master lists, not by moving links, and explain how to summarise standard "plays". I'm getting more interested now!Charles Matthews (talk) 09:02, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Oho, it looks like a good formal scheme can be had, by switching templates, but you'd need 15 of them! Anyone good at creating flowcharts? Charles Matthews (talk) 09:50, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Four years on ...

@Arch dude:, @JASpencer:, @Carcharoth:, @PBS:. Well, since I last edited the essay there have been about four years, in which I have been merging the DNB while simultaneously posting it on Wikisource. What has changed? Actually, tools based on Wikisource have changed my outlook on all this. At s:Wikisource:WikiProject DNB/Tools, the "DNB match" and "DNB ratios" tools are particularly useful for "merging" issues. I'm thinking the business should be reconsidered. So maybe a fresh start? Charles Matthews (talk) 21:55, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

...and now almost five years on, we have Mix-n-Match that helps to match any encyclopedic list to items on WikiData, thus enabling merging and collaboration across projects. This is a "red links list on steroids". All red link lists for the English Wikipedia should be accessible here where Mix-n-Match workers can pick them up. Jane (talk) 09:05, 21 June 2014 (UTC)