Template talk:Wikipedia

Shorter template name
One doesn't need it so lengthy. On LOTR we have lotr:Template:enWP, with much the same wording but a shorter template name - and actually more meaningful because it specifies the "en" WP. Robin Patterson 01:21, 2 Aug 2005 (UTC)


 * enWP seems a bit too jargon-y. At least people will more easily know what "wikipedia" means. Angela (talk)


 * Yes, Angela, it is a bit jargony. Jargon is a time-saving device, which is what this template is for. People "in the know" understand it and may welcome the timesaving of five characters per time. I've now used it on about six wikicities. Robin Patterson 12:03, 15 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Copying a template
I may be wrong but it seems we can't add an acknowledgment to a template. Or is that where the "noinclude" thing fits in??

Anyway, I've been acknowledging Wikipedia templates on the Talk pages. Doing it so often that I've devised a template for it, to save time. It works. I call it (the very jargony) "wptem". See it in action at http://engineering.wikicities.com/wiki/User:Robin_Patterson and copy it if you like.

Robin Patterson 12:03, 15 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * Answering myself - yes! It goes into a pair of "noinclude" tags. Robin Patterson 13:35, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Basic recommendation for copying
Material should be copied from Wikipedia wherever appropriate but must be acknowledged.

See above for an easy way to acknowledge it.

Value of copying
If the material is mostly just the sort of thing your wikicity would want, copying will save you a lot of time. It's much quicker to delete the bits you don't want and reword some of the rest, than it is to write it all out by yourself. Of special value may be the templates and other clever things that improve the display and usability; much thought went into most of them, and they can be used on other pages of your Wikia once copied.

Having the article in your Wikia is better than sending people off to read the Wikipedia article (and risk not being able to find their way back and/or not having internal links from it to other pages of your Wikia).

Basic process

 * 1) Open the edit box of the Wikia page that is to be created or enlarged. Copy the page title (unless you already have the Wikipedia article in another window).
 * 2) In a new window, go to Wikipedia and find the article (pasting the Wikia article name into the search box). Open the Wikipedia edit box as if you were going to edit the article.
 * 3) Highlight the whole box (eg with [Ctrl] + A), then "copy" (eg [Ctrl] + C).
 * 4) Go back to the Wikia page and paste; preview.
 * 5) Delete interwiki links (usually right at the bottom; form is like "Moteur" ) if any.
 * 6) (If the WP article was all your own work, there's no need to do this next thing.) Above the category listings, add the "enWP" template, with the exact name of the Wikipedia page (preferably pasted for accuracy) after the pipe.
 * 7) Preview again and save.

What happens next
Look for a broken link "Template:  " - that means the page uses a Wikipedia template which does not have a Wikia version. Go and find the WP version (which is probably in a list near the bottom of the page if you still have the WP article edit box open) and copy it too. In that case, the "enWP" acknowledgment should go on the new template's talk page so as not to upset the working of the template.

Go through the article, removing anything you are sure will not interest readers of your Wikia. If in doubt, leave in.

Check the categories; usually the Wikipedia categories will be useful on your Wikia (probably already existing) but you can add others and delete some if you see a compelling reason. If in doubt, leave in.

Look at each internal link. They point to WP pages in the original but to existing or potential pages in the Wikia.
 * 1) Create new articles from the links that deserve articles.
 * 2) Delete the square brackets of any link where you are quite sure no user of your Wikia would want to follow that link either to a Wikia page or to the original Wikipedia page.
 * 3) Direct the other links to the original Wikipedia targets, by adding "wikipedia:" straight after the opening pair of brackets. If there's a pipe in the link, that's all you need to do; but if there isn't you can add one just before the closing brackets, so that the link will appear just as the word or phrase without "wikipedia:" in front.

Update Template
I am having trouble using the Wikipedia template on The West Wing Wiki. Apparently they have changed the link of the history page, so in the template, everything looks okay, but when you click for the Wikipedia page history, it does not find the page. Would anyone be able to provide any insight?--Scully6x03 15:42, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Interwiki
I've changed the article link to an interwiki of Wikipedia, so the link doesn't have the arrow. I've also defaulted to in case anyone forgets to put a title (or just wishes to ignore it out of laziness). I looked at a page with two words in the title and it seems to work fine. Is this ok, or would external link formatting be better? Scottch 03:55, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I replaced it with PAGENAMEE, because urlencode + PAGENAME = PAGENAME with plusses. There is an anchorencode magic word that render spaces as underscores. " " would look like "But_it_isn.27t_installed_yet". Smiddle 12:51, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

PAGENAME v FULLPAGENAME
"PAGENAME" strips namespace prefixes, does it not? It certainly did a few minutes ago on India Wiki. The link that should have gone to Category:Sanskrit went instead to Sanskrit. When I changed all three to FULLPAGENAME it worked properly. Puzzling thing is that I didn't pick this up months ago!!

If I'm wrong, would someone please explain, before I change it on too many other Wikia.

Robin Patterson 06:56, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


 * You're correct. The automatic fail-safe mechanism wasn't expecting ppl to be copying and attributing stuff outside of the WP main namespace.  I personally always fill in  with the article name anyways, so I never noticed.  I think relying on FULLPAGENAME / PAGENAME should be discouraged anyways.  What happens if it's decided to move articles on your end, but no one paid thought about how that affects the WP template whose text ppl stopped paying attention to?  Thus I might go as far as to advocate removing the default value all-together and require it to be manually filled in everytime. -PanSola 07:11, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I think I've fixed this. -- 21:24, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you both. (Leon, maybe you should check w:c:starter:template:Wikipedia too, please?) Most of what I copy is templates and categories; but I almost invariably paste in the full WP pagename even for main namespace. Robin Patterson 11:44, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Languages other than English
I think there used to be several translations of the template here, each linking to the matching Wikipedia. I want the Spanish one (preferably a Central approved version rather than the one I think is on Genealogy:) so that the new Spanish Civilization Wikia can make proper attribution. That Wikia has not a single template at present! (The "Other languages" panel for this template takes me to a blank page on the Spanish Central Wikia. I hope the real page hasn't been lost in transit.) — Robin Patterson (Talk) 13:25, 11 February 2009 (UTC)