Author: aaron.adrignola

Description:
Many recent wikis that were proposed for closure were made entirely inaccessible, while in the past the wikis were simply locked. Simple English Wikibooks was recently closed and made inaccessible. However, this blocks the process that was underway at English Wikibooks regarding a merge or adoption of useful content (see http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Simple_English_merger).

An XML export of the content was made available (http://toolserver.org/~catrope/closedwikis/), however that is not of use to administrators at English Wikibooks, who do not have the importupload right and who would need to selectively import pages such that existing pages are not overwritten and to select only the content that is appropriate to bring in. That can only be accomplished through the traditional transwiki import via Special:Import and can only be done if the wiki is accessible.

As discussed on Meta (http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Forum&oldid=1875222#Simple_English_Wikibooks_Deletion) the recently closed Simple English Wikiquote remains available but locked (http://simple.wikiquote.org). This wasn't done for Simple English Wikibooks.

While other closed projects could return to the Incubator via import of their XML file, Simple English wikis would not be permitted to return to the Incubator due to the fact that they are not their own language. Effectively this project is deleted rather than closed. I request Simple English Wikibooks to be made available, but locked, allowing transwiki import of content while still maintaining the community consensus for closure.

Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
URL: http://simple.wikibooks.org