CZ:Import

Material that did not originate on Citizendium and which was created by someone other than the person who wishes to upload it may be imported to Citizendium under certain conditions. These were established by community referendum in June 2012 and appear below:

Imports (referendum text)

The Citizendium community affirms:

• the principles stated at CZ:About, namely that Citizendium "is an open wiki project dedicated to creating a free, comprehensive, and reliable repository of structured knowledge." and
• the open nature of the project, as indicated by our use of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 licence.

The community therefore:

• rescinds Editorial Council Resolution R-2010-013 of 12th December, 2010;
• affirms that material that complies with our inclusion criteria may be imported into Citizendium, provided it is imported from a source either in the public domain or otherwise compatible with Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 licence;
• encourages citizens who import such material to:
  • convert it to Citizendium standards and style, and
  • work to improve it without undue delay; and
• affirms that where such imported material has not been worked on within 30 days of import, it may be removed, moved to userspace, moved to Cold Storage, or otherwise archived, at the request of any citizen.

For discussion, see 'Referendum 2'.

Archive of previous import rules (no longer applicable)

Regulation PR-2010-013 by the Editorial Council (December 2010)

Importation of articles

The importation of articles copied from other sources, in particular from other Internet encylopedias such as Wikipedia, is not allowed.

The only exceptions to this general rule are

• articles written originally almost entirely by the Citizen who imports them and who, in addition, is also an active contributor, and
• specific articles that are explicitly accepted by the Editorial Council.

Remark:
Of course, any available source—including Wikipedia—may be used in a professional manner to find information and inspiration.

Original imports page

The Citizendium is its own project, and we have a set of goals and an ethos which set us apart from our rivals. Among these is that Citizendium is striving to create the best, most reliable free encyclopedia on the internet.

However, Citizens are also pragmatic, and we realize that there are cases where it makes sense to use other open (free or public domain) resources to make Citizendium better. Biographical information, for example, will tend to be fairly similar in general reference works. This page is designed to give you some brief guidelines about whether you are really helping the Citizendium out by importing that article; and to give contributors a place to temporarily upload articles.

The Procedure:

1. Notice an article you think might be a good fit for Citizendium.
2. Upload the article as a subpage of this page, so that the URL reads CZ:Import/NEW IMPORT (or whatever). See example at CZ:Import/Gesenius. Make sure that you provide information about the source of the article and the license or terms under which we may use it.
3. Add a link to the article, and, at the first asterisk, explain briefly why you think it makes sense to import it. Sign it with ~~~~.
4. Wait a week for feedback from other contributors. In many cases, it will be preferable to actively solicit opinions (with email, on User talk: pages, etc.) than to wait passively for feedback. While you are waiting, it is always a good idea to do your own research. Does the article seem to be consistent with scholarly research on the subject? Are there recent developments the article ignores? And so on.
5. If you receive feedback, try to work with the other contributor to fix whatever problems the external article might have. If other contributors feel strongly that this article will be more trouble than it's worth, you should strongly consider not importing it.
6. If you have waited a week and received no feedback, you have a choice. If, having mulled it over for a week, you still feel that the external article will be a valuable addition to Citizendium, do it. (It's not as though Citizendium articles are carved in stone or anything.) However, if you're still not sure, it never hurts to wait, and articles can stay on the Import page indefinitely.

If an editor decides that a particular article is not up to Citizendium standards or if any contributor finds that the original work has been released under a license that is incompatible with the Creative Commons license that Citizendium uses, a comment should be made on this page and then the listing should be moved to the archive page after a short delay (so that everyone may have time to notice the comment about incompatibility). If an article is incorporated into Citizendium, the listing on this page should likewise be moved to the archive.

It's important to emphasize that this is an optional, voluntary method to allow contributors to solicit feedback on external articles. Contributors are free to import articles from Wikipedia so long as they follow our guidelines on the matter.

Other helpful resources

• CZ:How to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles

This is our actual policy on external articles. It's worth emphasizing that few articles from open sources are up to Citizendium standards. Also note that your external article may be deleted if you do not expand or substantially modify it.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:1911_Encyclopaedia_Britannica

Wikipedia's guidelines for importing 1911 Britannica articles. Helpful, particularly as concerns the many biases and factual problems of the 1911 Britannica.

Nominated External Articles: Add your article here

CZ:Import/Gesenius - from 1911 Britannica

• As far as I can tell, this is a pretty solid article from the 1911 Britannica on an important early Semitic linguist. Brian P. Long 01:14, 11 August 2008 (CDT)

CZ:Import/Böhtlingk - from 1911 Britannica

• An article about another important early orientalist. Brian P. Long 02:19, 11 August 2008 (CDT)

CZ:Import/Bopp - from 1911 Britannica

• Yet another orientalist... Brian P. Long 02:19, 11 August 2008 (CDT)

CZ:Import/Stanford-Binet IQ test - from Wikipedia

• This article looks pretty good to admitted-layperson me. Is this worth bringing in? Brian P. Long 18:16, 15 September 2008 (CDT)

CZ:Import/Apuleius - from Wikipedia

• I can actually vouch for this, and will import it shortly, but I want to check out a few claims. Brian P. Long 01:28, 16 September 2008 (CDT)

CZ:Import/Hospital - from Wikipedia

• This article seems reasonably good to me, at least on the historical side of things. I could use some opinions about the descriptions of modern practice... Brian P. Long 23:27, 22 September 2008 (CDT)