Template talk:Wikipedia

Location on pages?

Is there a consensus on where this template should appear on pages? At the bottom, of course, but above or below navboxes? In the references section? ... Dragfyre (talk) 06:10, 8 November 2023 (PST)

My first thought is at the very bottom below everything (makes sense if the navboxes are copied from Wikipedia too) but if we want it more visible right at the end of the article makes it sense also... I don't have much of a preference. David (talk) 06:19, 8 November 2023 (PST)

At the bottom of everything else, because all things above it have been added on from the original. BTW, I ran into a problem with the format of this template at Tonga#Bibliography, where a specific date attribution unavoidably appears within brackets ([]). The problem is that specific date Wikipedia urls contain a question mark, requiring the whole to be called using {{plain link}}. A solution would be to remove brackets from the template and remove variable 2 ({{{2}}}) leaving only variable 1 ({{{1}}}). Is there a consensus on this? Ernobe (talk) 07:03, 8 November 2023 (PST)

I've arrived at a solution on the Spanish wiki (see es:Plantilla:Wikipedia) but changing it to that would break it, as in my previous solution. The advantage in this case is that we don't have to put the {{plain link}} template in, because it would automatically include the optional parameters url= and title= (url and titulo). Ernobe (talk) 08:08, 11 December 2023 (PST)

Use of material is not the same as copying

The template should continue to be used going forward, contrary to what the templates' documentation says, because it says it "uses material" from Wikipedia, not that it copies it. It is a simple link to reference material being used, as in any other encyclopedia. Ernobe (talk) 07:47, 12 December 2023 (PST)

I may be in the minority, but I am opposed to using or copying any information from Wikipedia. We have a wealth of original sources to draw on from books to websites to periodicals that we shouldn't need to look to Wikipedia. For some background, this template is intended to meet the legal requirements of proper attribution for content originally taken from Wikipedia and it must exist on articles that use or copy Wikipedia content. Wikipedia articles were for a long time used as a foundation for articles here, however that is not a practice that I want editors to continue. I would like them instead to focus on writing articles based on research within the scope of acceptable sources. Doing so naturally creates the proper point of view and satisfies the gateway principle. I am not opposed to other language projects using Wikipedia content or developing their own practices, but I think duplicating content from Wikipedia was a big hinderance to the English language version of Bahaipedia developing as an independent project. David (talk) 09:00, 12 December 2023 (PST)

If an article can be edited to meet our requirements for acceptable sources, point of view, and the gateway principle, why shouldn't it be included if its original is from Wikipedia? That's pretty much exactly what I've been doing on the Spanish wiki. I think that once the article has been edited and included with proper attribution to Wikipedia, ideally it would be further developd on the basis exclusively of Bahá’í sources. In many cases Bahá’í articles start off OK on Wikipedia and are then hijacked, even though they continue to use our sources. In such cases Bahaipedia can serve as the only bastion of hope remaining for the disillusioned Wikipedians, whenever they ultimately tire of their fruitless anachronisms. Ernobe (talk) 11:41, 12 December 2023 (PST)

Let's say you're going to put 10 hours of work into this project. You can spend it copying content and editing phrasing, removing links to pages that will never exist here, maybe adding extra references, etc. or you can spend it writing something original. I believe an original article creates far more value than all the copying that could be done in the same amount of time. After hundreds or thousands of hours one site will be wholly unique and the other simply a rehashing of what's already on Wikipedia. What real value is gained from duplicating content in that way? My experience from running this project for 16 years is that those editors you want to attract will not come, the content will cause Bahaipedia pages to be delisted in search engines if Google detects it is a copy, over time the pages become more and more outdated creating maintenance headaches down the road and the project will remain tied to Wikipedia's particular style and set of practices instead of developing something unique. As I mentioned I'm not opposed to what you are doing because I followed the same exact path myself. But I can say that if I had it all to do over again I would never have copied anything from Wikipedia. Maybe the result of that would have been worse then where we are now, or maybe better, I truly don't know. David (talk) 19:23, 12 December 2023 (PST)

The "maintenance headaches" exist anyway regardless of what is said on Wikipedia or Bahaipedia. One way to ameliorate them is to provide not only attribution to a source, but also the exact date, so that future editors can more easily access improvements on that other source. In this sense, Wikipedia offers distinct advantages compared to for example a site like (the encyclopedia) iranicaonline.org, where there is no access to previous or future edits of a given article. An encyclopedia is "original" in the sense that it is the first encyclopedia to provide a reference to a subject, the sources of which are "original" in another sense. Compared to Wikipedia, Bahaipedia is "original" in the sense that it is the first to provide a reference to the actual Bahá’í sources that are lacking on Wikipedia, and to give a clue as to their actual meaning. Since the documentation of this template says "don't use it going forward", I'm assuming it means that all articles on Wikipedia that could have been copied have been copied and we should not copy any new ones? Or maybe that if we do, it should be to an article that improves on previously copied articles? Ernobe (talk) 23:22, 15 December 2023 (PST)

Yes, you are probably correct in that, the copied from wikipedia category contains almost 250 pages. I personally don't want any more content copies here (the English version of Bahaipedia) from Wikipedia. For existing "copies" they should be rewritten to not use any content from Wikipedia and once that is done the wikipedia template can be removed. David (talk) 08:39, 16 December 2023 (PST)

On the Spanish version of Bahaipedia that is not a problem because writing articles that don't include any content from Wikipedia is outside the project scope. Ernobe (talk) 06:59, 17 December 2023 (PST)