Import from Wikipedia

Question

How can I effectively import articles from Wikipedia?

Answer (SuperMemo 2006 or later, Internet Explorer, English Wikipedia)

Press Ctrl+Shift+W and all articles from English Wikipedia opened in Internet Explorer will get imported automatically.

To illustrate the article with pictures that propagage (i.e. get copied from element to element with extracts), use Ctrl+F8.

The procedure is more complex if:

• you use an earlier version of SuperMemo (e.g. SuperMemo 2004)
• if you use another browser, e.g. Firefox
• if you use non-English Wikipedia

See below for a workaround procedure for other browsers, other SuperMemos and other languages.

Answer (SuperMemo 2004 and earlier, Other browsers, Other languages)

The trick is to:

• not import the junk on the left
• filter the tables to workaround bugs in IE
• illustrate articles with pictures and references

See an exemplary procedure to import material on Martin Luther. All the procedure may seem complex but with practice you will be able to repeat it all in 30-45 seconds, which is a tiny fraction of work needed to process the entire article.

Example:

1. Open the article from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
2. Select the article: (1) click on the point just before the title "Martin Luther", (2) click on the point before the last section that you care to import (e.g. External links, Bibliography, or See also)
3. Copy the article to the clipboard (Ctrl+C)
4. In SuperMemo, paste the article with Ctrl+Alt+N (or click the paste button on the element window toolbar)
5. Optionally, to illustrate all extracts with a picture of Martin Luther, press Ctrl+F8 (Download Images), select "Martin Luther" picture, click Download, click Import 
6. Optionally, to prevent "flattening" table data, check for valuable data in the form of tables and extract them into separate articles (with select and Ctrl+X)
7. Filter HTML junk: press F6 (Edit : Filter), check Flat tables, press Enter
8. To edit the article, click it or press E, Q, or Ctrl+E
9. Optionally rename the title "Martin Luther" to "Martin Luther (1483-1546)" for better time-frame reference
10. Optionally, mark the title as the reference title: select the title text (e.g. "Martin Luther (1483-1546)"), and press Alt+T. This mark the title as reference and makes it propagate to all extracts
11. Optionally, select "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", Alt+Q, Source, OK (to point to Wikipedia as the source of the article). Note that all Wikipedia articles are easily identifiable by their hyperlinks (move the mouse over the link and check the status bar)
12. Optionally, type in the date, Alt+Q, Date, to mark the date reference of the article (the date can always be inspected with Repetition History, Ctrl+Shift+H)