Wikipedia:How to copy from another Wikipedia

This page lists the needed steps to copy a page from English Wikipedia (enWP) to Simple English Wikipedia (seWP) including how to reword it for Simple English and how to stay within copyright using the GFDL license.

1. Open the page on enWP that you want to create here at seWP.
2. Type in the name of the new page you want to create in the search box and press "Go".
3. Now press the create link on the top of the page that comes next. (This will open an editing box).
4. Copy and paste the information you want to bring over (you don't have to copy the whole page if it's very complex, just copy what is relevant)
5. Don't save the new page yet, but go through the text with and change words not in Wikipedia:Basic English combined wordlist to words that are in that list.
6. Check that the new page is in keeping with both the seWP Manual of Style and How to write Simple English articles.
7. Provide either seWP [[wikilinks]] (not enWP wikilinks) or [[wikt:interwikilinks]] Simple English Wiktionary interwikilinks to words that are not in the combined wordlist.
8. Add meanings inline if needed; eg: "the engine can now be disassembled (taken apart) ..."
9. Reword complex phrases to simple phrases.
10. Remove anything that you can't rephrase as long as it doesn't alter the meaning of the article.
11. Fix any broken images, templates etc., (ie: remove them if they don't exist here)
12. It is not required to remove all the redlinks (to pages that don't exist) because it may encourage their creation later.
13. Keep using preview to check that it looks like you want it to and that it reads well.
14. Select correct categories, create them if required but make sure they make sense. We don't want more cats than articles so it might make sense to consolidate some into one (ie: Small green plants, small blue plants, small red plants into small plants) etc.
15. Save it with an edit summary that includes where on en: you got the information (eg: "started article using information at [[en:Plants]])
16. Recheck all is as you want it to be and then move on to the next one.

All this satisfies the GFDL requirements and keeps it all legal and provides a simplified version for seWP. This prevents it from being trashed as too complex or being just a direct "cut & paste" which is not allowed. You might think that as we're both Wikipedia we have the right to just copy stuff without crediting the source, but that is not the case. We also do this so that readers here can see the history of the article over at enWP.

Consider reading these; WP:How to write Simple English articles, Wikipedia:Basic English combined wordlist, WP:Manual of Style and consider using these tools Online utility for checking Basic English text and How to use Microsoft Word to check a document for Basic English

All of these instructions are important because the Manual of Style over at en: is not the same as the Manual of Style here at Simple English Wikipedia!

Hope all this helps, Happy Editing!