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Merging and moving are two fundamental aspects of how articles are developed and reformed on Misplaced Pages. A "merger" is a manual (non-automated) process by which two existing but similar (or redundant) pages are united under the same name. A "move" is equivalent to "renaming" a page — i.e. giving it a new title.


Renaming / Moving

See policy related to article naming conventions and how to move a page.

On Misplaced Pages, usually anyone logged in can rename a page from its current name to a new one. This is also called "moving" because the effect is as if the page has been moved. A redirect is automatically created at its old name so that links still work. After a move to correct a spelling mistake, you may want to list the resultant redirect for deletion at Misplaced Pages:Redirects for deletion. This, however, isn't necessary, and ideally should be done only for redirects which meet the deletion criteria as outlined at Redirects for deletion. If a redirect is a plausible or common misspelling, it is very likely to be kept.

  • Misspelled – The most common reason is that a page name is misspelled or incorrectly capitalized. Please fix any and all of these as you see them.
  • NPOV – Terms used in a title express a bias or POV. NPOV policy requires that titles be given "neutral" titles — using the most general and objective terms.

Sometimes, you may feel that a page is wrongly named for another reason. For example, "Napoleon" is more properly known as "Napoleon I of France." However, this is a situation in which a redirect would be appropriate. Most people would not search for Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné, but rather for Mme de Sevigne.

Cross-namespace moves

The move feature is capable of moving pages in any namespace, and even of moving pages from one namespace to another. Cross-namespace moving is useful when a page is accidentally created in the wrong namespace; for instance, moving Talk/Abraham Lincoln to Talk:Abraham Lincoln, or moving Articles for deletion/Some article to Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Some article. In some cases, new users may create articles on themselves that they intend to serve as their user page, in which case such an article may be userfied.

Generally speaking, other types of cross-namespace moves will be controversial and worth discussing with other editors. Misplaced Pages:Requested moves is the proper place for this. However, when proposing to move what appears to be an article out of the main namespace, it is strongly recommended that some form of Misplaced Pages:Deletion process should be used, preferably Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion, as Misplaced Pages:Proposed deletion and Misplaced Pages:Speedy deletion don't build consensus. This is because the redirect that is created by such a move is subject to speedy deletion, which would effectively cause the article to be deleted from the main encyclopedia.

How to rename a page

Note, you must be logged in to do this

  1. Go to the page that you wish to rename.
  2. Click the tab labeled "move."
  3. Type the new desired title, add a reason, and click "Move page."
    • The old title will redirect to the new title.
    • The old edit history will be moved to the new title.
  4. Check for redirects.
    • Double-redirects will fail to link, and must be renamed to redirect to the current page name.
  • Do not move or rename a page by copying/pasting its content, because doing so destroys the edit history. (The GFDL requires acknowledgement of all contributors, and editors continue to hold copyright on their contributions unless they specifically give up this right. Hence it is required that edit histories be preserved for all major contributions until the normal copyright expires.) If you come across a cut-and-paste move that should be fixed by merging the page histories, please follow the instructions here to have an administrator repair it.

If you cannot rename a page, or you think that the renaming may be controversial, please go to Misplaced Pages:Requested moves and list it there.

The most common reason for failure is that there is already an article at the location to which you're trying to move the article. This is especially likely to happen if there is a history of moves from one name to another. This can be dealt with by an administrator after discussion at WP:RM.

If the destination does exist, but it only contains a redirect without any history, the move will still work — the designers of the MediaWiki software recognised this as a special case in which no information will be lost if a move is performed.

See also

Categories: