MisesWiki talk:Call to Action/Mises Made Easier

Status

• Experimental version done! I've started creating some pages and it's easy enough. The real hurdle would be stopping on each page and looking up more resources. Could use an improvement that takes care of language or date at the beginning of an entry. Pestergaines (talk) 20:12, 18 June 2014 (EDT)
• Ran through the letter A. See analysis on the main page. Pestergaines (talk) 19:49, 19 June 2014 (EDT)
• Letter A is done, will target the letter B next. Pestergaines (talk) 03:01, 20 June 2014 (EDT)
• B and C are done, C was quite a big one! Added progress bar. Pestergaines (talk) 14:44, 30 June 2014 (EDT)
• ...
• Done. There are some minor topics that could be finished some time later, typically Cleanup topics. Too little priority, not enough interest. Of course, somebody else can always pick it up. :) Pestergaines (talk) 03:16, 1 September 2014 (EDT)

Thoughts on how to do it

Mass conversion with a bot (suggested by Nathan Larson here):

1. convert the Mises Made Easy page into a format that can be used by the bot. Ultimately, it's going to be turned into an array of glossary entries. It'll be necessary to convert the HTML into wikitext and make a few other changes (e.g. making the page titles bold); that shouldn't be too hard, because it'll be only a few kinds of things such as italics and hypertext that need to be converted. It might be good to go through that list and decide what categories you want those pages to be in; we can then include those from the beginning rather than later going through page by page and making edits one by one.
2. Create a clone of Mises Wiki as it exists right now and do a test import of the articles to it. Wait, say, a week for everyone to have a chance to review the new pages for problems before we do the import here.
3. Create a new namespace on this wiki, e.g. MME:, to which we will import all this content. This will allow us to easily undo the changes if needed; e.g. if we discover problems at this point that we missed earlier, we can do a mass deletion of everything in that namespace, if needed, without disturbing our existing mainspace. I've generally found it's easier and cleaner to delete a bunch of robotically-implemented mistakes than to revert them.
4. Move everything from MME: to mainspace, unless there are already articles there with those names.
5. See what remains in MME:; either incorporate it into existing articles or delete it.
6. Get rid of the MME: namespace, once there is nothing left in it that's of further use.

Advantages:

• Comprehensive, will do the whole editing at once.
• Possible reusability for other imports

Disadvantages:

• Extensive preparations are necessary

Sequential processing with a script (by Pestergaines)

1. Create a script that will pull the dictionary entry out of a page based on the link (e.g. this). (I'd use Greasemonkey for this, but then that's what I have used quite a few times before.)
2. The user(s) would visit each dictionary link in turn. The script will open a new window or tab with a Mises Wiki editing page for the dictionary item in question. It will also pre-format the page (title, reference, stub link, part of the category).
3. Things to do: add category and links. If necessary, rename page on the spot. (The page can be easily redirected by moving after it is created.) Add other formatting if needed. If the page already exists, the script will add the content at the end and the user can move it where desired, or just close the window if there's already enough content or the entry wouldn't bring anything new to the page.
4. Save.

Advantages:

• Contributors can easily divide the work (e.g. by letter) and proceed as fast or as slow as they want.
• Easier preparation.
• Don't have to go through every page twice.

Disadvantages:

• Results can be uneven due to multiple contributors.