Inclupedia

Inclupedia is a proposed Wikimedia wiki that would be a combination mirror and supplement of Wikipedia. Its purpose would be to serve as an encyclopedia taking advantage of the content already existing on Wikipedia while also including verifiable content deemed too non-notable for inclusion on Wikipedia. Two types of articles would exist on Inclupedia:

1. Articles that exist on Wikipedia, and whose complete and up-to-date revision histories are mirrored on Inclupedia using continuous data transfers via the shared backend.
2. Articles that were deleted from Wikipedia for notability reasons, or have been created from scratch on Inclupedia by Inclupedia users.

Articles of the second kind can be freely edited from Inclupedia. There are various approaches that could be used for editing articles of the first kind. For instance, it could be set up to make such articles not editable via Inclupedia; rather, clicking "Edit" on those pages will take the user to the appropriate edit screen on Wikipedia. Or, editing such articles on Inclupedia could cause the edits to be mirrored in the Wikipedia database. If this is done, it will need to be possible for Wikipedia sysops to block Inclupedia users from editing such pages. If a page is protected on Wikipedia, an Inclupedia user will not be able to edit it unless he has the appropriate access level on Wikipedia.

Inclupedia could, theoretically, be created outside the Wikimedia aegis. However, it would depend upon constant API queries to obtain the text of recent revisions, which might be deemed to put an unacceptable load on Wikimedia servers. This problem might be obviated when bug 17450 is fixed and an XML feed of the text of recent revisions is available.

Contents 1 Comparison to existing wikis 2 Article life cycle 3 Pros and cons of WMF hosting 3.1 Pros 3.2 Cons 4 FAQ 4.1 General Questions 4.2 Policy Questions 4.3 Technical Questions 5 Userbox 6 See also

[edit] Comparison to existing wikis

Inclupedia, as compared to existing wikis

Wiki	Notability requirement	Verifiability requirement	Neutral point of view requirement	Editable wiki	Integrated with Wikipedia	Encyclopedia format	WMF-affiliated
Wikipedia	Yes[1]	Yes[2]	Yes[3]	Yes	Yes	Yes[4]	Yes
Inclupedia	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Maybe
Wikibooks	No	Yes[5]	Yes[6]	Yes	Somewhat[7][8]	No[9]	Yes
Wikinfo	No	No[10]	No[11]	Yes	No	Yes	No
Wikia	No	No	No	Yes	No	Depends	No
Deletionpedia	No	No	No	No	Somewhat	Yes	No

[edit] Article life cycle

An article life-cycle that could work, for example, like this. Notice that article control passes back and forth between Wikipedia and Inclupedia as articles are created and deleted from Wikipedia.

• Article Dogs belonging to John Smith is created on Wikipedia (and therefore created on Inclupedia automatically; if existent on Inclupedia already, then on Inclupedia, the new revisions are simply dumped on top of the existing revisions. This article now comes under Wikipedia control.)
• Article Dogs belonging to John Smith is edited twice on Wikipedia, and these two revisions are mirrored in the revision history for that article on Inclupedia.
• Article Dogs belonging to John Smith is deleted from Wikipedia, but remains on Inclupedia. The deleting sysop marks it as verifiable (due to newspaper accounts of Smith's dogs rescuing a 73-year-old retiree from an apartment fire back in 2003), but non-notable per w:WP:1E. Article control now passes to Inclupedia.
• Edits are made to Inclupedia article Dogs belonging to John Smith. No changes occur at Wikipedia, because the article doesn't exist there.
• Article Dogs belonging to John Smith is recreated from scratch at Wikipedia. These edits are added to the top of the Inclupedia revision history, and article control returns to Wikipedia.
• Article Dogs belonging to John Smith is deleted from Wikipedia again, with similar deleting sysop remarks as last time; control returns to Inclupedia.
• Article Foofy (dog belonging to John Smith) is created on Wikipedia, and therefore also automatically created on Inclupedia.
• Article Foofy (dog belonging to John Smith) is moved to Dogs belonging to John Smith on Wikipedia. Now there is a page title conflict on Inclupedia, because both page titles exist there. This will need to be resolved in some way. One possibility is automatically making the following pair of moves on Inclupedia:
  • Move revision history of Foofy (dog belonging to John Smith) to dogs belonging to John Smith.
  • Move revision history of dogs belonging to John Smith to Foofy (dog belonging to John Smith), and add a redirect pointing to dogs belonging to John Smith at the top of the Foofy (dog belonging to John Smith)'s revision history.

Thus, the two Inclupedia articles will basically switch places. This is a relatively "clean" solution that should be easily reversible in the event the article move is reverted at some point.

[edit] Pros and cons of WMF hosting

[edit] Pros

• The shared backend would make some data transfers, especially of non-public data such as watchlists, a lot easier.
• Wouldn't need to worry so much about replag, since data could be propagated everywhere at once?
• Articles could use images from the Wikimedia Commons, a potentially important consideration since there is no way to bulk download the entire Commons.

[edit] Cons

• WMF can't wash their hands of Inclupedia if it's a WMF project. Not that they should want to, as long as it adheres strictly to verifiability based on reliable sources, suppresses illegal content, and otherwise behaves well. WMF will be in the driver's seat, so this shouldn't be a big deal.
• WMF can kill the project at will. Although if they're going to go that route, they'll probably kill it in the cradle. They're more likely to simply decide not to launch a project, than to kill a project that has become successful and popular.

[edit] FAQ

[edit] General Questions

• Why do you need to mirror Wikipedia?
  • Because it's necessary in order to integrate with Wikipedia reasonably seamlessly. The wikisphere is littered with wikis like Wikinfo that failed because they didn't adequately integrate with Wikipedia. Here are some areas in which mirror-based integration would be helpful:
    • Categories. If you have Category:Dogs on Inclupedia, that category is not as useful if its only members are Inclupedia articles, e.g. Foofie (dog belonging to John Smith). You want it to also include Dog grooming, history of dogs, and all the other topics in that category on Wikipedia. You want the Inclupedia categories to fit into the larger Wikipedia categorization scheme.
    • Page existence detection. Red/blue existence-detecting wikilinks are also facilitated by the Wikipedia mirror; if your article says "Foofie is a dog," you want dog to be a blue link to the Wikipedia article if such article exists, or you want it to be red if there is no such article either on Inclupedia or Wikipedia.
    • Templates. It is useful to be able to transclude templates directly from Wikipedia, without having to constantly have an authorized user import them as they are updated.
• OK, but why does the Wikipedia mirror have to be up-to-date at all times?
  • Ideally, Inclupedia editors should never need to edit Wikipedia directly again; they should be able to make all the edits they need to make through Inclupedia. And to do that, it's imperative that the Wikipedia mirror be absolutely up to date. Also, the mirror is where the revisions of articles deleted from Wikipedia are collected from; if it's not up to date, some revisions will be missing. Lastly, integrated watchlists won't be of much use unless the recent changes table is kept up to date with data about Wikipedia article revisions.
• Won't it be a pretty daunting workload for sysops to sort through those deleted articles?
  • Most deleted articles probably won't have a host of references for sysops to check the verifiability of, which is probably why they were deleted to begin with. But, there are also many tricks of the trade that can be employed. The deleting sysop may have left behind some remarks, or there may be pertinent PROD or CSD template remarks, or AFD or talk page discussions, that can provide insight into verifiability issues. Sysops may create whitelists and blacklists of contributors to help them identify articles that may be in need of heightened scrutiny. Perhaps some tools such as w:User:CorenSearchBot can also be of use in spotting copyvios.

[edit] Policy Questions

• Does Inclupedia plan on mirroring content which was deleted due to it containing non-free copyrighted content? What about articles deleted due to "attack" content?
  • Illegal content such as copyvios has to be deleted wherever it appears on Wikimedia projects, because otherwise the government is likely to impose civil and/or criminal penalties on Wikimedia and/or those the government deems responsible for the content's presence. A Wikipedia sysop should be able to cause an article or revision deleted on Wikipedia to automatically be deleted on Inclupedia. This will include some deletions that are due to copvio, attack content, etc. Of course, there will be varying levels of revision hiding, as at Wikipedia; a revision hidden by an oversighter at Wikipedia will be viewable/restorable only by another oversighter. Because oversight is not used to delete articles for non-notability, there is no reason to let Inclupedians reverse such decisions.
• What is the plan for handling non-CSD deletions like en:WP:PROD and en:WP:AFD, where the deletion reasons are not always clear?
  • Usually some sort of reason is provided in PRODs and AFDs. But Inclupedia can make its own judgments as to whether an article contains verifiable content not adequately covered elsewhere; if the article contains nothing salvageable, then it should and will remain deleted from Inclupedia too. Since PROD and AFD are not supposed to be used for getting rid of illegal content, that should not be a cause for concern in reference to articles deleted through those processes.
• Is there a plan to acknowledge Office actions in the community as non-negotiable, in order to safeguard the legal position of the Foundation?
  • The Office will have administrative privileges at Inclupedia with which to carry out its wishes there, yes.
• What is the position of Inclupedia on Biographies of Living Persons when that person is non-notable and does not want an article?
  • Information that is verifiable by cited reliable sources, and not prohibited by law from being posted, should remain.
• What if there is an article that, while verifiable by reliable sources, is about a subject about which so little is known that the article cannot grow beyond one or two sentences?
  • It should probably be merged into a larger article.
• Should the default be to delete articles and revisions from Inclupedia when they are deleted from Wikipedia, and let an Inclupedia sysop resurrect them if he sees fit? Or should the default be to not delete articles and revisions from Inclupedia unless the deleting sysop as Wikipedia has specifically checked the box to do so?
  • If we want to satisfy people's concerns about potential backlogs of harmful/illegal content waiting to be deleted from Inclupedia, we should probably set it to delete it from Inclupedia by default, and let the deleting sysop at Wikipedia check a box to not delete it from Inclupedia, if he deems it to be deletable only by reason of non-notability.
• Who will be sysops at Inclupedia?
  • Existing Wikipedia sysops at the time of Inclupedia's founding should automatically be granted sysop rights on Inclupedia, and others can be added through whatever process Inclupedia comes up with.
• Will Inclupedians have power to view and undelete articles that were deleted from Wikipedia?
  • Wikipedia sysops will have sole power to view and undelete articles that were deleted from Wikipedia; Inclupedians, even Inclupedia sysops, will not have that power unless they are sysops on Wikipedia.

[edit] Technical Questions

• What changes, exactly, are needed in order to create this project
  • We need a means of:
    • Mirroring changes to Wikipedia on Inclupedia;
    • Handling page title collisions gracefully, by merging page histories, moving pages around, etc. as may be warranted by the situation
    • Either locking down mirrored Wikipedia pages from editing on Inclupedia, or causing edits to those pages to be replicated on Wikipedia;
    • Adding capability by which deleting sysops on Wikipedia can recommend or cause page deletion on Inclupedia.
    • Possibly a means by which Wikipedia sysops, operating on Inclupedia, can patrol articles and revisions deleted from Wikipedia, and mark them as confirmed as either:
      • Having nothing salvageable. (If they are salvageable, presumably they'll be undeleted to Inclupedia namespace by said Wikipedia sysop.)
      • Being OK for Inclupedia. (If they're not, presumably they'll be tagged for deletion.)
• Is there a similar project like this already, and if so, why would we want to duplicate its efforts?
  • There does not seem to be. A few sites, such as Answers.com, share a few commonalities in that they are mirror/supplements of Wikipedia, but they are not editable wikis.
• How does Inclupedia manage oversight actions, and will these be automatically mirrored to Inclupedia?
  • Yes, they should automatically be mirrored, just like edits, page moves, etc.
• What happens if the deleted content is recreated on Wikipedia or alternative pages are created for that content? How do you plan for the software to recognize deleted cut-and-paste-move fixes?
  • Although it's not strictly kosher, it is fairly common on Wikipedia for content from two pages to be merged, and one redirected to the other, without merging the page histories. Thus, suppose that John Smith is created on Wikipedia and deleted, but remains on Inclupedia. Then John Q. Smith is created on Wikipedia with cut-and-pasted content from Inclupedia's John Smith. If John Q. Smith remains at Wikipedia, Inclupedia's John Smith will be redirected there. If John Q. Smith is deleted from Wikipedia, then it will probably end up being either deleted from Inclupedia or, if a redirect would be useful, redirected to John Smith. In some cases, it might be appropriate to transwiki revisions from Inclupedia to Wikipedia, when copy and pastes have been done, or perhaps some other way can be found of noting in the revision history or in the article itself that some content was taken from the Inclupedia article on John Smith.
• Who is responsible for maintenance of the software fork for the changes required for this project? Have they agreed to manage another large project like this?
  • Nobody has agreed to anything yet, but any devs who wish to volunteer for this project are certainly welcome to. When we get consensus to establish this wiki, we can submit a Bugzilla report and those who are interested can add themselves to the cc list.
• Do you plan on giving Wikipedia administrators a "do not include in Inclupedia" checkbox for the deletion page?
  • Yes, or it could work in the opposite way; Wikipedia sysops could have a "do not delete from Inclupedia" checkbox that they would use if the article is being deleted solely for lack of notability. Inclupedians who have sysop rights on Wikipedia could review such deletions and reverse them on Inclupedia. And perhaps deleting sysops at Wikipedia could even have three options: Yes, the article is acceptable for Inclupedia; No, it isn't; or Unsure/Questionable/Maybe/You guys will have figure it out because I'm too busy to sort this stuff for you.

[edit] Userbox

{{User:UBX/Inclupedia}}

[edit] See also

• Inclupedia/Supporters — Sign up as an interested person
• Inclupedia/Proposal — The same plan, with different phraseology
• Inclupedia/Types of hosted articles