Apple Wiki:Wikipedia

, the free encyclopedia, is the largest and most successful wiki as well as an excellent resource. The Apple Wiki's guidelines are even based on Wikipedia's simplified ruleset.

Importing content from Wikipedia

 * Don't just copy and paste: It's tempting to just quickly copy and paste the lead paragraph(s) from an existing Wikipedia article to get rid of a red link here at the Apple Wiki. However, that would end up filling the Apple Wiki with unfinished pages that are inferior to Wikipedia. That is not our goal.
 * Quality is preferred over quantity: Many articles will begin as stub and that is a perfectly fine first step. However, don't get into the habit of just creating stubs to rack up edits or achievement points. Users who continually abuse the achievements system will be labeled as cheaters or blocked.
 * Make sure there is context with Apple: Remember to read what you're pasting. This is the Apple Wiki, not Wikipedia, so articles are expected to be about Apple, its history, or related technology. For example, we don't need articles about ice cream sodas, but an article about Steve Wozniak's home-made Cream Soda computer is fine.
 * Visual Editor is easy, but the Source Editor is better: It's easy to copy over content from Wikipedia into the Visual Editor, but take care to copy over content in controlled snippets because some formatted elements may not be imported correctly, such as outside images, the table of contents (which are auto-generated), and references (which are important). After our scheduled UCP platform migration, the upgraded Visual Editor will be able to retain more formatting and links, but it still won't be able to resolve references, the table of contents, and links to articles for which there is not an equivalent on the Apple Wiki.
 * Again, the Source Editor is still BETTER: Using the Source Editor can be intimidating at first and it does have a learning curve. However, it is a worthwhile skill to pick up if you intend to make a hobby of editing wikis. Through wikitext commands, you will have the most control over the formatting of a page. Source code imported from Wikipedia to the Apple Wiki's Source Editor will retain the most formatting. It won't be perfect at first and will require adaptation, but you can save and switch back and forth between the Source Editor and Visual Editor to use convenient tools from both.

Formatting

 * Basic formatting is intuitive to add through the Visual Editor's menus. With the Source Editor, you'll need to get accustomed to wikitext commands, but you'll also get direct access to a greater range of features.
 * Advanced formatting features, such as infobox templates, will often be more efficient to implement through the Source Editor.
 * Don't be afraid to borrow: If you find a page that's been formatted to your liking, go ahead and examine it through the Source Editor to see how it's been constructed. This is a good way to replicate such formatting on a page that you're working on.
 * Remember to use the Preview function of the Source Editor to quickly see the effect of your formatting before saving.

Credit where credit is due

 * Text from Wikipedia is freely licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA), but still requires credit. It is simple to identify Wikipedia as a source by adding Wikipedia to the bottom of the article through the Source Editor.
 * Images from Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons can either be public domain or copyrighted. Regardless, it is good practice to include a link to the source of the image, and identify the author if possible. Please see our image use policy which describes useful image wiki templates for identifying the copyright and/or trademark status of images.
 * References: Don't plagiarize, identify your information sources with references. This is how we verify the contents of articles to make sure the information is reliable. If you have trouble importing references from Wikipedia, don't strip them out! It's better to have references with formatting issues than none at all. Some references may need to be reassigned to a different reference template if the Apple Wiki does not have an equivalent to one from Wikipedia. If the references section takes too much space, you can substitute the  tag with the reflist template which offers options for columns and smaller font sizes.
 * External links are helpful: If an informational link exists outside of the Apple Wiki and is not already referenced as a source, you can create an External links section with  in the Source Editor. Use brackets in the following format:   to create an external link to the Welcome to Apple Support page at Apple Inc.

Creating and fixing links

 * Red links: When you first import an article from Wikipedia, you may notice that many of the links are red. This means the link does not lead to another article. This happens because an article that's on Wikipedia may not be in the Apple Wiki. However, don't rush into stripping out links. If the link leads to another topic something that may be helpful to learn, but not directly related to Apple, you can have the link connect back to Wikipedia. For example, use to create a link to  at Wikipedia.
 * Blue links indicate that a corresponding article exists within the Apple Wiki. In most cases, you don't have to do anything else in this situation. However, you may sometimes need to adjust the name of the link as some articles are titled differently here than at Wikipedia. For example, we use Apple's naming convention and capitalization for the iPad mini.
 * Syntax:
 * links to the iBook article at the Apple Wiki
 * links to the iBooks category at the Apple Wiki
 * links to at Wikipedia
 * links to iBook
 * links to iBook (at Wikipedia)
 * links to Mr. Steve Jobs! at the Pixar Wiki
 * will lead to the Remembering Steve. memorial page at Apple Inc.

Content is king

 * Don't just strive to create pages, improve them! Additional work to make the information in our articles more relevant in context of Apple or its history is greatly appreciated. Importantly, learn and have fun!