User:Mini-mitch/Sandbox Three/Material from Wikipedia

Use of material from articles on Wikipedia — up to and including wholesale copying of them (known as "forking") — is allowed, if highly discouraged. In some situations, it is completely forbidden.

When allowed
Wikipedia articles may be copied to this wiki provided that the article is:
 * ultimately within the real world super-category
 * wikipedia is placed at the bottom of the page that uses such material. This gives proper credit to the original authors of the article and maintains compliance with Wikipedia's terms for use of material on the Wikipedia site.

In other words, if the article is about a story, a person associated with the making of the Doctor Who franchise, reference books, filmmaking terminology, companies that provide something to do with the Doctor Who franchise, or the like, properly-credited forking is allowed.

That said, '''on this wiki we are attempting to create a unique encyclopaedia. It is preferable that content for this wiki does not rely heavily on Wikipedia.' Use of Wikipedia material should best be though of as a temporary'' measure.

When not allowed
Wikipedia articles about in-universe material should never be copied wholesale from Wikipedia. Wikipedia articles on fictional persons, places, things, or events are written from an "Out-of-universe" perspective. They in no way comply with this Manual of Style. They also wouldn't have sufficient wikification for our purposes, because we have far more articles about in-universe topics than Wikipedia does.

To exemplify the difficulty, let's examine just the lead of the article Liz Shaw:


 * Dr. Elizabeth "Liz" Shaw is a fictional character played by Caroline John in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its spin-offs. A civilian member of UNIT - United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (later retitled: UNified Intelligence Taskforce for the new series), an international organisation that defends the Earth from alien threats, she was the  companion of the Third Doctor for the 1970 season.

Really, none of this is usable to us.
 * It's in present tense; we need past.
 * We don't mention actors in the main body of articles. This gives Caroline John in the first sentence.
 * In-universe articles should generally make no reference to the programme name in the main body. Here we have "long -running British science fiction series Doctor Who" right out of the gate.
 * This makes a distinction between old and new series, which our in-universe articles don't.
 * This takes a mile and a half to explain what UNIT is; we would just leave it at a link to UNIT.
 * Wikipedia often has different titles than we do. Hence their links to companion and alien and science fiction don't work here.

As you can see, just the lead of this article would have to be so heavily rewritten to comply with our Manual of Style that we might as well just write a new article.

Thus, the importation of articles about in-universe subjects is forbidden.

Historical use of wikipedia on this wiki
In the first couple of years of this wiki's life, rules on Wikipedia forking were initially non-existent. They then became at best lax. You will therefore still find some character articles, particularly of characters from lesser-known spin-off media, that were taken from Wikipedia. This should not be seen as reason to continue such practices. Our goal is the complete rewriting of such articles. Also, many articles are actually now so different from their Wikipedia origins that the wikipedia template is no longer required.