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Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 |
Is it appropriate to merge the text of article A into article B, as a result of an AfD, if the text in article A is not referenced? Thanks.-- Epeefleche ( talk) 06:02, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
I don't know if this is the venue for such a thing, so my apologies if that is so. Thomas Dörflein has been tagged for merger since December 2011; the article it has been suggested that it be merged into, Knut (polar bear), is a Featured Article. After Knut was initially tagged, with no discussion introduced, I removed it. The original user then re-added the tag and began a discussion here. Although the user has no familiarity with the subject matter, I took the initiative to add more info to Dörflein's article. I then pointed out various reasons as to why the two articles should remain split. It's now been more than a month since they've return to the discussion, and no one else has weighed in. Could this discussion be closed, please? I know that there is an immense backlog, but I believe it's a shame that an FA should be tagged as such. Thanks for any input, María ( yllo submarine) 19:43, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
Please note that Wikipedia:WikiProject Merge has been created. You are invited to participate in the project, thanks. extra999 ( talk) 03:39, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I'm asking this question in order to solve a dispute on a local wiki edition. Is merger process intended only for articles (or what else can be merged other than encyclopedia articles)? Can user articles be merged with community consensus? Regards-- Alperen ( talk) 21:24, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Yesterday I proposed merging Azaouad with Azawad, but the issue was solved when the former article was moved to a new title ( Azawagh), a redirect was created, and both articles were substantially rewritten to define their subjects. This has left the merge proposal !votes out of date (and also unnecessary). Is it possible to have my move closed early to avoid any further confusion? Khazar2 ( talk) 20:34, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Please can someone clarify step 4 in "Proposing a merger", particulalry this line: After closing the merger proposal discussion, place the following template on the source article's talk page and on top of the source article's main page:. Presumably this would interfere with a redirect, so it can't be correct, or am I missing something? Betty Logan ( talk) 20:40, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
Fixed This was a good old-fashioned mistake. This is only needed on talk pages.
D O N D E groovily
Talk to me
03:28, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
I propose an extra step in Wikipedia:Merging#How to merge and Help:Merging#Performing the merger to go at the end.:
I assume most people would do this anyway, but there's no harm in making it explicit for people who might not be aware of this requirement. I noticed this was missing after working through a merge with a non-free image. A similar step is in Wikipedia:Moving a page#How to move a page, and the issues involved are identical between the two processes. Are there any objections to such a step? Regards, Quasihuman ( talk • contribs) 18:38, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
The process does not explain who should remove the "merge_from" and the "merge_to" tags after the consultation process. I suggest that there be a "Step V" which which contains the following:
(I assume that such removals are not done automatically). Martinvl ( talk) 06:53, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
Could someone please revise the nutshell description? The part that says "For uncontroversial mergers, no permission is needed to merge; just do it. " is evidently out of date; every merge must be bureaucratically labelled and debated for at least a month, or so I'm being repeatedly told. -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 19:39, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
A question concerning best practice. I am not sure if this is the right place to post, but I note that User:Wtshymanski has been deleting a very large number of merge tags from talk pages, and I see some discussion of his merge edits above. In some cases these have been reverted by people such as myself who wanted to point out that a merge discussion was still open, but these reverts are simply being re-reverted. In my case, I posted a question on the editor talkpage, but there was a quick sarcastic response and then the whole discussion was deleted within a few hours. I see evidence from the talk page and contributions that this may be happening more. I take it that the original merge tags must have been in the wrong place, but if an editor has clear evidence that a discussion is open, shouldn't they WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM and move the tag to whatever the right place is, instead of deleting it a second time, or even a first time?-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 10:26, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
Andrew, if there is no comment no something for a long period of time, the discussion is stale, and be bold applies. If a participant said it was open 9 months ago, it's not really open. We're not a bureaucracy and there is no need to wait for a discussion that will likely never be resolved before taking action, whether simply removing merge tags or doing the merge. Wt, when your actions are reverted, you shouldn't re-revert except for obvious vandalism. Instead, relaunch the discussion with properly placed merge tags and notify the appropriate wikiprojects so people knowledgeable can discuss it. Ego White Tray ( talk) 02:34, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I've seen several merge tags on articles as old as 2009 that were added with a single edit comment of "propose merger" and with no discussion being initiated on the talk page of either article being proposed for merger. I think it's safe to automatically delete these tags. WTF? ( talk) 16:20, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
The "information page" header for this page reads weird: "Please defer to the relevant policy or guideline in case of inconsistency between that page and this one." Isn't it true that we don't have any "relevant policy or guideline"? (If we have one about merging, then WP:MERGE should point there, not here.) Further, it "describes communal consensus on some aspect of Wikipedia norms and practices". If it is a consensus, then it is a guideline, isn't it? Staszek Lem ( talk) 23:10, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
A keep outcome at a deletion discussion reflects a rough consensus to retain a page. See Deletion process. Deletion discussions generally reach a broader spectrum of editors than a particular talk page. As such, talk page discussions are not on the same footing as deletion discussions. If a deletion discussion that raises merge as an option is closed as keep and an editor then heads off to the article talk page to propose merge, that raises an issue of gaming the system by forum shopping for a venue where only a handful of editors are likely to come across the discussion and alter the retain a page formal consensus. To address this, I added Merger proposed after a deletion discussion. -- Jreferee ( talk) 15:01, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I tried to follow the procedure on this page, but I am unsure to what extend it is properly covers situations where multiple articles are proposed to merge into a new article (because I propose a different name than the earlier names), or did I misunderstand something? See this merger proposal talk which was speedy deleted and I had to quickly (temporary?) recreate in my sand box: User:LazyStarryNights/sandbox#Merger proposal. See my discussion on the deletion as well: Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion#Canary (dance). any ideas? I am investigating a potential other similar merge as well ( Angloise, Anglais, and Engelska into Anglaise) and I would like to do it according to "the book". LazyStarryNights ( talk) 21:15, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
In Wikipedia:Merging#How to merge, point 2, we instruct editors emphatically to replace everything in the source page with one line.
That instruction should be limited to redirects without possibilities. Those pages may properly close with redirect template(s) such as {{ R from alternate name}}, {{ R from misspelling}}, {{ R from move}}, etc. Those pages don't belong in article categories --and thus, if i understand correctly, don't need or benefit from {{ DEFAULTSORT}}.
For Redirects with possibilities, on the other hand, the instruction should be to replace everything except template {{ DEFAULTSORT}} and categories. Many or most redirects that result from merges are redirects with possibilities. Those are tagged with redirect templates such as {{ R to section}}, {{ R from book}}, {{ redirect to joint biography}}, etc; or placed in hard redirect categories such as Category:Redirects from writers.
This has been discussed some at Wikipedia talk:Categorizing redirects, at least in current sections 11 "Most redirects should not ..." and 16 When not to categorize a redirect. See also section 14 DEFAULTSORT, which contains my comment without response.
-- P64 ( talk) 17:30, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
P.S. The archive of
WP:CATREDIRECT talk (cited immediately above) ends with 2010 discussion whether all
Redirects from songs should be in article categories.
I haven't looked at the 35 sections of older talk.
Wikipedia talk:Categorizing redirects#Archive 1
--
P64 (
talk)
17:48, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
#REDIRECT [[...]]
instruction and the categories would actually be displayed), hence the instructions on various pages to place the {{
R from merge}}
and similar templates on the top line after the redirect instruction - that way, their categories would be processed for display. That restriction was relaxed in about 2009 or 2010, after which you could put each {{R ...}}
template on a separate line, and also put categories on separate lines as well; but the only displayed items were still the redirect instruction and the categories. Since
mw:MediaWiki 1.23/wmf10 (about a month ago), all text on the page is processed and displayed, so that you get a display like the one shown at
FUBAR. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
23:03, 20 February 2014 (UTC)There is a merge tag for Father Rale's War. It has been there since September 2012, and I have an opinion it is 50/50 for the merge. Adamdaley ( talk) 02:33, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
Any thoughts or suggestions out there about some wording to crystalize the best Wiki practice with regard to cover criminals–crimes in distinct articles and when to combine them?
Currently the question seems to turn on guideline questions of
For example, I believe it appropriately that at present there is a single WP article for Roeder–Tiller, a topic that is essentially intermingled. Yet, as wp:BLP1E mentions, in the case of the pair of Hinckley– Reagan WP articles, separate treatments seem to work better than a combined one--after all, there was but a few seconds of confluence between Hinckley's and Reagan's life, with the psychotic wooing of Jodie Foster having zero to do with how the crime affected the Reagan presidency or the life of W.H. Press Sec'y Brady.
Whereas in Mitchell– Smart various threads Mitchell's psychosis and pathology has everything to do with the quasi-Stockholm syndrome experienced by Smart for 9 months as well as all the trials and media coverage (the only thing that doesn't fit in with these threads is Smart's subsequent activism, which is actualy found within her own separate blp.) Likewise, in the Army-of-God militant Scott Roeder – George Tiller, M.D. case, there is nothing yet compiled by Wikipedians about this assassination separate from Roeder's crime and its psychopathology and thus no need for separate articles.
Yet in the case of the alleged so-called "Craigslist Killer" ( Markoff–Brisman), Philip Markoff's biography and the murder of Julissa Brisman that he was accused of before his suicide are covered in a single article, fwiw. ......?-- Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden ( talk) 18:00, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
IMO that covers most situations in the appropriate way, but please feel free to say if you think I've missed the point anywhere. There is a policy thread running through it (hopefully you can see it), but that took me a long time to type, so maybe I will come back and elaborate some other time. --
FormerIP (
talk)
02:52, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
IMO I generally agree with what's written above however:
With all that in mind it may be better to have a separate bio article about the criminal first and then secondly an article about the crime. But there should be more discussion about all this. Also the Josef Fritzl case is a good example of how the public's response changes over time from firstly the victim (Josef's daughter) and how she is today, how'd she survive; then to the case (Fritzl case) and its details; to today the criminal himself with several books and documentaries made covering Josef himself and what motivated him and made him become the monster he is. Today I'd say that a separate bio page should exist for Fritzl alone with a second smaller page for the case (also note that the wiki page about the case is very user UNFriendly and difficult to follow. Wombat24 ( talk) 09:04, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
I have recently been on a talk page for Talk:Comparison of orbital launch systems where a merger of about 4 different pages was proposed and closed on 7 days. I am neutral on the merger itself, but do feel that the merger time frame is too short. The proposer (and subsequently also the closer) of the proposal insists it was unanimous and 7 days is all he needed, though other editors feel it was rushed. Basically (and not just for the page in question) is the '1 week' sufficient ? For a fairly larger merger involving a number of pages, why is there a rush ? Surely we should allow a reasonably length of time, and acknowledge that not everyone who may be interested in the pages may, even know of, or even could, visit them within the 7 day time frame, and so a decision can be made ultimately excluding their input. I request that this page (WP:Merging) be amended to reflect this, and this actual length of time be discussed. The Yeti ( talk) 15:45, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
WP:MERGE redirects here currently. I propose we simply redirect this page to Help:Merging which is already a how to guide. The general info on when socially to merge can be moved there. It's better than having two parallel instructions. Protonk ( talk) 18:15, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Is there a way? The backlog is around 10k and maybe this is because it's such a pain to do manually. Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 00:35, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
{{
merge move to|new article|section number}}
and {{
merge move here|old article|section number}}
, but there are usually so many things that need to be checked. —
Arthur Rubin
(talk)
00:54, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
Special:MergeHistory, a special page that can automate history merges, has
recently been enabled on the English Wikipedia. It's currently being
discussed on the admin's noticeboard.
Graham
87 02:48, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
– copied from
Wikipedia talk:Moving a page.
Wbm1058 (
talk)
15:00, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
I've just closed the merger discussion as consensus to Merge this page with Help:Merging. Would someone like to enact the consensus to merge?-- — Keithbob • Talk • 21:11, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
I titled the now-longer intro of "Proposing a merger" as "Is discussion necessary?" to make it clear that the answer to this question is "No" (but depending on the circumstances you should do so anyway to avoid some headache). User:Dsimic reverted with the edit summary "Sorry, but to me this title addition looks like twisting the rules". The point of putting it there is to make it clear that there is no "rule" that requires discussion. Is there a disagreement on that point? -- Beland ( talk) 21:56, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
I think we should excercise common sense in deciding whether a merge is so evidently needed that it doesn't require discussion to be done. Yesterday I merged Android Cloud to Device Messaging (a single paragraph article) into Google Cloud Messaging (another single paragraph article about a technology that was the evolution of the previous, which in turn was rendered obsolete), and I honestly didn't think it was necessary to ask anyone whether it should be done. -- uKER ( talk) 20:02, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
Hi. Please take note about this Merge-Discussion please. Thank you & Regards. Gary Dee 10:29, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
I've just done a merge, having rarely done so before, so was trying to follow the instructions. But it's very confusing!
At "How to merge" there are a set of instructions ... followed by two separate sets of instructions, for "Full content paste merger" and "Selective paste merger". Are these three parallel sets of instructions, or are (as it seems to me) all merges either "Full content paste merger" or "Selective paste merger"? I worked through the instructions in the first set, then realised that "Full content paste merger" applied so had to check to see whether there were any differences. Not very user-friendly.
Incidentally, I was merging two articles on one man which have co-existed since February 2006. Are there any records kept for the longest-standing undiscovered duplication in the encyclopedia? ( Peter McDonald (critic) and Peter McDonald (poet) - see Talk:Peter McDonald (critic)#History of a merger. Pam D 21:34, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
|class=
parameters in all the banners should be reset to |class=Redirect
. Thank you for pinging me,
P64, if you want to make any needed changes to clarify or to reorganize (
PamD's comment about user-friendliness above), that would help a great deal!
Paine Ellsworth
(talk
-contribs)
01:12, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
|class=
of that WikiProject instead of deleting its template. |class=Redirect
default to "NA class", but a seemingly growing number of banners support the Redirect class. Another important reason to set the class equal to "Redirect" in all banners on talk pages of redirects is because of the automatic nature of some WikiProject templates. If they're placed on the talk page of a template redirect, then they'll auto-sort to "Template class" unless "class=Redirect" is set. Project pages and the like will do the same thing. So it's important to use "class=Redirect" even if the sort is to "NA class". One never knows when someone might upgrade the project banner to support redirect class.
Paine
(talk –
contribs)
02:22, 5 October 2015 (UTC)Hi. Shouldn't there be some advice on sorting things out at Wikidata after performing a merger? Sander1453 ( talk) 04:53, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm concerned about the way Heineken Cup was merged into European Rugby Champions Cup. Since the ERCC is effectively a continuation of the Heineken Cup (despite the two competitions being run by legally distinct entities), the latter article has largely been copied and pasted from the former. Because of this, the history of the former article has been lost. Should the histories of the two articles be merged? – Pee Jay 21:07, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
In my experience to date, mergto templates rarely have a reason offered on the talk page. Did I say "rarely", I meant pretty much never ever. As such why don't we add a reason = parameter to the template? Maury Markowitz ( talk) 13:33, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Hi, what's the best way to proceed with the merge mentioned on this page? I'm not sure if I should go ahead with a copy and paste or if there is a better way to do this that preserves the history of both pages. All this talk of cut&paste merges vs. history merges has me confused. Thanks.-- Cpt.a.haddock ( talk) (please ping when replying) 12:50, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Template:Merge says that it "is used in the standard installation of Twinkle." but I can't figure out how to get Twinkle to use it. So I did this which I'm thinking of self-reverting. Is Template:Merge wrong? If so, how should this be corrected? In other words, how do I merge via Twinkle, and can we better document that here? -- Elvey( t• c) 14:46, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
We have a serious problem with MERGE. There are currently 11,172 articles in Category:All articles to be merged. That number is going to keep going with the trend to merge at AfD. According to Category:Articles to be merged, there are articles from May 2012 that need to be merged. I am aware that there are pages where discussion is ongoing/recently started, but five years is a totally different matter.
With a smaller active userbase, and a lot more articles, consensus for processes is a lot harder to come by in a reasonable amount of time in general. For example, I AFDed Supercute!. I got no consensus (and actually, no participation) after a month, and the NAC suggested either renom or merge, so I figured I'd set up a merge discussion and see what would happen. I have had no comments on it in a few weeks, and no one has edited either article in years. AFAIK, I can't simply close out the discussion and do it myself, because there's no consensus to do so. I have also been AfDing other material, and a lot of what is happening is malformed merge requests - somebody dropped the template on the source, but never set up the discussion on the target. I'm not sure how widespread it is, but clearly you can't merge a page if no one knows about it.
This "stagnation of merge" is a problem at AfD, because people are voting merge on articles just because there's one piece of potentially useful information. However, when the merge isn't executed, it's effectively a default keep. I know exactly what the problem is, and that's that the needs of the licensing make the merge process complicated, and it's easier to do it wrong than do it right. I've read it over several times, and I'm still not sure how to do it, or in what manner to do it. However, by not doing it, we're effectively violating community consensus and somewhat breaking the encyclopedia. Is there some way we can make merging easier, either with an automated tool to do it, or a different process to get to a position to merge? MSJapan ( talk) 21:03, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
This seems to be coming up in AfDs, where fully unsourced articles are being merge-voted, but AFAIK, the "removal of unsourced content" idea should preclude that. IMO, one cannot dump unsourced material into another article, because one is not improving the article that way. However, there is no statement either way in the merge guidelines. What's the usual practice? MSJapan ( talk) 18:22, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
Do you support this entry? Pwolit iets ( talk) 10:20, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
2602:306:CC81:E0B0:2C81:AE57:AFCD:C2B4 ( talk) 18:23, 21 December 2016 (UTC)CrissyCarter
![]() | This
edit request to
Wikipedia:Merging has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
2602:306:CC81:E0B0:2C81:AE57:AFCD:C2B4 ( talk) 18:23, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
Hi! I'm confused about something in this sentence:
|class=redirect
parameter-value pair.Which WikiProject templates is it talking about: the ones on the source page, the ones on the destination page, or both?
Note: I have just done a merge, merging Hangwa (yugwa) into Yugwa, and this step has not been done yet due to uncertainty about this step.
Thanks! Noah Kastin ( talk) 09:13, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
{{WikiProject Food and drink|class=start|importance=low}}
would become:{{WikiProject Food and drink|class=redirect|importance=low}}
.|class=redirect
parameter-value pair.turns out to not actually exist, apart from hours and canonical hours. The non-hoax aspects of the page will be merged to the proper page at Canonical sundials.
Is it worth merging its edit history there as well or should the page's redirect to Hour just store the edit history about the non-existent unit? — LlywelynII 09:21, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
The current instructions (step 9 of WP:FMERGE) say that a WP:HISTMERGE should not be requested in any situation, with the explanation given (via a link) at Wikipedia:How to fix cut-and-paste moves#Parallel versions. However, this rationale only applies to the cases when the two pages have parallel editing histories. Is there any reason to avoid a history merge when there is no such overlap in editing histories? Just noting that this part of the instructions dates all the way back to 2009 [1] – Uanfala (talk) 17:19, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
Two articles are to be merged. Topic 1 is the correct name, but has less content and less discussion on the talk page than Topic 2, which has far more good content and more discussion on the talk page, but a less suitable name.
How best should these be merged?
Advice requested. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 12:40, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
This looks like it might be a similar problem to that described in the previous section, but as I have no understanding of what happens in a histmerge, the previous discussion just leaves me confused. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 12:51, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
There is a relevant discussion pending on Template talk:Merge#Adding criteria to template itself. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 16:58, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
The first bullet point under
"How to merge" step 3 says Move all {{Merge-from}} and {{Copied}} templates to the destination page's talk page
. {{Merge-from}} is the template used for proposing a merger, and it wouldn't make sense to move that to the talk page. We'd wanna remove that once the merger's been done. And no {{Copied}} templates have been used till this point, so there aren't any to move.
Is this supposed to say to create (not "move") either a {{Merged-from}} (not "{{Merge-from}}") or {{Copied}} template? (And on that note, could it include a discussion of the differences between the two?) Languorrises ( talk) 00:31, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Paradisus Judaeorum, renamed per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Heaven for the nobles, Purgatory for the townspeople, Hell for the peasants, and Paradise for the Jews is currently in discussion at Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2018 December, and may interest watchers here. Icewhiz ( talk) 07:16, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 |
Is it appropriate to merge the text of article A into article B, as a result of an AfD, if the text in article A is not referenced? Thanks.-- Epeefleche ( talk) 06:02, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
I don't know if this is the venue for such a thing, so my apologies if that is so. Thomas Dörflein has been tagged for merger since December 2011; the article it has been suggested that it be merged into, Knut (polar bear), is a Featured Article. After Knut was initially tagged, with no discussion introduced, I removed it. The original user then re-added the tag and began a discussion here. Although the user has no familiarity with the subject matter, I took the initiative to add more info to Dörflein's article. I then pointed out various reasons as to why the two articles should remain split. It's now been more than a month since they've return to the discussion, and no one else has weighed in. Could this discussion be closed, please? I know that there is an immense backlog, but I believe it's a shame that an FA should be tagged as such. Thanks for any input, María ( yllo submarine) 19:43, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
Please note that Wikipedia:WikiProject Merge has been created. You are invited to participate in the project, thanks. extra999 ( talk) 03:39, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I'm asking this question in order to solve a dispute on a local wiki edition. Is merger process intended only for articles (or what else can be merged other than encyclopedia articles)? Can user articles be merged with community consensus? Regards-- Alperen ( talk) 21:24, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Yesterday I proposed merging Azaouad with Azawad, but the issue was solved when the former article was moved to a new title ( Azawagh), a redirect was created, and both articles were substantially rewritten to define their subjects. This has left the merge proposal !votes out of date (and also unnecessary). Is it possible to have my move closed early to avoid any further confusion? Khazar2 ( talk) 20:34, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Please can someone clarify step 4 in "Proposing a merger", particulalry this line: After closing the merger proposal discussion, place the following template on the source article's talk page and on top of the source article's main page:. Presumably this would interfere with a redirect, so it can't be correct, or am I missing something? Betty Logan ( talk) 20:40, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
Fixed This was a good old-fashioned mistake. This is only needed on talk pages.
D O N D E groovily
Talk to me
03:28, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
I propose an extra step in Wikipedia:Merging#How to merge and Help:Merging#Performing the merger to go at the end.:
I assume most people would do this anyway, but there's no harm in making it explicit for people who might not be aware of this requirement. I noticed this was missing after working through a merge with a non-free image. A similar step is in Wikipedia:Moving a page#How to move a page, and the issues involved are identical between the two processes. Are there any objections to such a step? Regards, Quasihuman ( talk • contribs) 18:38, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
The process does not explain who should remove the "merge_from" and the "merge_to" tags after the consultation process. I suggest that there be a "Step V" which which contains the following:
(I assume that such removals are not done automatically). Martinvl ( talk) 06:53, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
Could someone please revise the nutshell description? The part that says "For uncontroversial mergers, no permission is needed to merge; just do it. " is evidently out of date; every merge must be bureaucratically labelled and debated for at least a month, or so I'm being repeatedly told. -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 19:39, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
A question concerning best practice. I am not sure if this is the right place to post, but I note that User:Wtshymanski has been deleting a very large number of merge tags from talk pages, and I see some discussion of his merge edits above. In some cases these have been reverted by people such as myself who wanted to point out that a merge discussion was still open, but these reverts are simply being re-reverted. In my case, I posted a question on the editor talkpage, but there was a quick sarcastic response and then the whole discussion was deleted within a few hours. I see evidence from the talk page and contributions that this may be happening more. I take it that the original merge tags must have been in the wrong place, but if an editor has clear evidence that a discussion is open, shouldn't they WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM and move the tag to whatever the right place is, instead of deleting it a second time, or even a first time?-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 10:26, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
Andrew, if there is no comment no something for a long period of time, the discussion is stale, and be bold applies. If a participant said it was open 9 months ago, it's not really open. We're not a bureaucracy and there is no need to wait for a discussion that will likely never be resolved before taking action, whether simply removing merge tags or doing the merge. Wt, when your actions are reverted, you shouldn't re-revert except for obvious vandalism. Instead, relaunch the discussion with properly placed merge tags and notify the appropriate wikiprojects so people knowledgeable can discuss it. Ego White Tray ( talk) 02:34, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I've seen several merge tags on articles as old as 2009 that were added with a single edit comment of "propose merger" and with no discussion being initiated on the talk page of either article being proposed for merger. I think it's safe to automatically delete these tags. WTF? ( talk) 16:20, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
The "information page" header for this page reads weird: "Please defer to the relevant policy or guideline in case of inconsistency between that page and this one." Isn't it true that we don't have any "relevant policy or guideline"? (If we have one about merging, then WP:MERGE should point there, not here.) Further, it "describes communal consensus on some aspect of Wikipedia norms and practices". If it is a consensus, then it is a guideline, isn't it? Staszek Lem ( talk) 23:10, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
A keep outcome at a deletion discussion reflects a rough consensus to retain a page. See Deletion process. Deletion discussions generally reach a broader spectrum of editors than a particular talk page. As such, talk page discussions are not on the same footing as deletion discussions. If a deletion discussion that raises merge as an option is closed as keep and an editor then heads off to the article talk page to propose merge, that raises an issue of gaming the system by forum shopping for a venue where only a handful of editors are likely to come across the discussion and alter the retain a page formal consensus. To address this, I added Merger proposed after a deletion discussion. -- Jreferee ( talk) 15:01, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I tried to follow the procedure on this page, but I am unsure to what extend it is properly covers situations where multiple articles are proposed to merge into a new article (because I propose a different name than the earlier names), or did I misunderstand something? See this merger proposal talk which was speedy deleted and I had to quickly (temporary?) recreate in my sand box: User:LazyStarryNights/sandbox#Merger proposal. See my discussion on the deletion as well: Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion#Canary (dance). any ideas? I am investigating a potential other similar merge as well ( Angloise, Anglais, and Engelska into Anglaise) and I would like to do it according to "the book". LazyStarryNights ( talk) 21:15, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
In Wikipedia:Merging#How to merge, point 2, we instruct editors emphatically to replace everything in the source page with one line.
That instruction should be limited to redirects without possibilities. Those pages may properly close with redirect template(s) such as {{ R from alternate name}}, {{ R from misspelling}}, {{ R from move}}, etc. Those pages don't belong in article categories --and thus, if i understand correctly, don't need or benefit from {{ DEFAULTSORT}}.
For Redirects with possibilities, on the other hand, the instruction should be to replace everything except template {{ DEFAULTSORT}} and categories. Many or most redirects that result from merges are redirects with possibilities. Those are tagged with redirect templates such as {{ R to section}}, {{ R from book}}, {{ redirect to joint biography}}, etc; or placed in hard redirect categories such as Category:Redirects from writers.
This has been discussed some at Wikipedia talk:Categorizing redirects, at least in current sections 11 "Most redirects should not ..." and 16 When not to categorize a redirect. See also section 14 DEFAULTSORT, which contains my comment without response.
-- P64 ( talk) 17:30, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
P.S. The archive of
WP:CATREDIRECT talk (cited immediately above) ends with 2010 discussion whether all
Redirects from songs should be in article categories.
I haven't looked at the 35 sections of older talk.
Wikipedia talk:Categorizing redirects#Archive 1
--
P64 (
talk)
17:48, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
#REDIRECT [[...]]
instruction and the categories would actually be displayed), hence the instructions on various pages to place the {{
R from merge}}
and similar templates on the top line after the redirect instruction - that way, their categories would be processed for display. That restriction was relaxed in about 2009 or 2010, after which you could put each {{R ...}}
template on a separate line, and also put categories on separate lines as well; but the only displayed items were still the redirect instruction and the categories. Since
mw:MediaWiki 1.23/wmf10 (about a month ago), all text on the page is processed and displayed, so that you get a display like the one shown at
FUBAR. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
23:03, 20 February 2014 (UTC)There is a merge tag for Father Rale's War. It has been there since September 2012, and I have an opinion it is 50/50 for the merge. Adamdaley ( talk) 02:33, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
Any thoughts or suggestions out there about some wording to crystalize the best Wiki practice with regard to cover criminals–crimes in distinct articles and when to combine them?
Currently the question seems to turn on guideline questions of
For example, I believe it appropriately that at present there is a single WP article for Roeder–Tiller, a topic that is essentially intermingled. Yet, as wp:BLP1E mentions, in the case of the pair of Hinckley– Reagan WP articles, separate treatments seem to work better than a combined one--after all, there was but a few seconds of confluence between Hinckley's and Reagan's life, with the psychotic wooing of Jodie Foster having zero to do with how the crime affected the Reagan presidency or the life of W.H. Press Sec'y Brady.
Whereas in Mitchell– Smart various threads Mitchell's psychosis and pathology has everything to do with the quasi-Stockholm syndrome experienced by Smart for 9 months as well as all the trials and media coverage (the only thing that doesn't fit in with these threads is Smart's subsequent activism, which is actualy found within her own separate blp.) Likewise, in the Army-of-God militant Scott Roeder – George Tiller, M.D. case, there is nothing yet compiled by Wikipedians about this assassination separate from Roeder's crime and its psychopathology and thus no need for separate articles.
Yet in the case of the alleged so-called "Craigslist Killer" ( Markoff–Brisman), Philip Markoff's biography and the murder of Julissa Brisman that he was accused of before his suicide are covered in a single article, fwiw. ......?-- Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden ( talk) 18:00, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
IMO that covers most situations in the appropriate way, but please feel free to say if you think I've missed the point anywhere. There is a policy thread running through it (hopefully you can see it), but that took me a long time to type, so maybe I will come back and elaborate some other time. --
FormerIP (
talk)
02:52, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
IMO I generally agree with what's written above however:
With all that in mind it may be better to have a separate bio article about the criminal first and then secondly an article about the crime. But there should be more discussion about all this. Also the Josef Fritzl case is a good example of how the public's response changes over time from firstly the victim (Josef's daughter) and how she is today, how'd she survive; then to the case (Fritzl case) and its details; to today the criminal himself with several books and documentaries made covering Josef himself and what motivated him and made him become the monster he is. Today I'd say that a separate bio page should exist for Fritzl alone with a second smaller page for the case (also note that the wiki page about the case is very user UNFriendly and difficult to follow. Wombat24 ( talk) 09:04, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
I have recently been on a talk page for Talk:Comparison of orbital launch systems where a merger of about 4 different pages was proposed and closed on 7 days. I am neutral on the merger itself, but do feel that the merger time frame is too short. The proposer (and subsequently also the closer) of the proposal insists it was unanimous and 7 days is all he needed, though other editors feel it was rushed. Basically (and not just for the page in question) is the '1 week' sufficient ? For a fairly larger merger involving a number of pages, why is there a rush ? Surely we should allow a reasonably length of time, and acknowledge that not everyone who may be interested in the pages may, even know of, or even could, visit them within the 7 day time frame, and so a decision can be made ultimately excluding their input. I request that this page (WP:Merging) be amended to reflect this, and this actual length of time be discussed. The Yeti ( talk) 15:45, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
WP:MERGE redirects here currently. I propose we simply redirect this page to Help:Merging which is already a how to guide. The general info on when socially to merge can be moved there. It's better than having two parallel instructions. Protonk ( talk) 18:15, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Is there a way? The backlog is around 10k and maybe this is because it's such a pain to do manually. Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 00:35, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
{{
merge move to|new article|section number}}
and {{
merge move here|old article|section number}}
, but there are usually so many things that need to be checked. —
Arthur Rubin
(talk)
00:54, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
Special:MergeHistory, a special page that can automate history merges, has
recently been enabled on the English Wikipedia. It's currently being
discussed on the admin's noticeboard.
Graham
87 02:48, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
– copied from
Wikipedia talk:Moving a page.
Wbm1058 (
talk)
15:00, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
I've just closed the merger discussion as consensus to Merge this page with Help:Merging. Would someone like to enact the consensus to merge?-- — Keithbob • Talk • 21:11, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
I titled the now-longer intro of "Proposing a merger" as "Is discussion necessary?" to make it clear that the answer to this question is "No" (but depending on the circumstances you should do so anyway to avoid some headache). User:Dsimic reverted with the edit summary "Sorry, but to me this title addition looks like twisting the rules". The point of putting it there is to make it clear that there is no "rule" that requires discussion. Is there a disagreement on that point? -- Beland ( talk) 21:56, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
I think we should excercise common sense in deciding whether a merge is so evidently needed that it doesn't require discussion to be done. Yesterday I merged Android Cloud to Device Messaging (a single paragraph article) into Google Cloud Messaging (another single paragraph article about a technology that was the evolution of the previous, which in turn was rendered obsolete), and I honestly didn't think it was necessary to ask anyone whether it should be done. -- uKER ( talk) 20:02, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
Hi. Please take note about this Merge-Discussion please. Thank you & Regards. Gary Dee 10:29, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
I've just done a merge, having rarely done so before, so was trying to follow the instructions. But it's very confusing!
At "How to merge" there are a set of instructions ... followed by two separate sets of instructions, for "Full content paste merger" and "Selective paste merger". Are these three parallel sets of instructions, or are (as it seems to me) all merges either "Full content paste merger" or "Selective paste merger"? I worked through the instructions in the first set, then realised that "Full content paste merger" applied so had to check to see whether there were any differences. Not very user-friendly.
Incidentally, I was merging two articles on one man which have co-existed since February 2006. Are there any records kept for the longest-standing undiscovered duplication in the encyclopedia? ( Peter McDonald (critic) and Peter McDonald (poet) - see Talk:Peter McDonald (critic)#History of a merger. Pam D 21:34, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
|class=
parameters in all the banners should be reset to |class=Redirect
. Thank you for pinging me,
P64, if you want to make any needed changes to clarify or to reorganize (
PamD's comment about user-friendliness above), that would help a great deal!
Paine Ellsworth
(talk
-contribs)
01:12, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
|class=
of that WikiProject instead of deleting its template. |class=Redirect
default to "NA class", but a seemingly growing number of banners support the Redirect class. Another important reason to set the class equal to "Redirect" in all banners on talk pages of redirects is because of the automatic nature of some WikiProject templates. If they're placed on the talk page of a template redirect, then they'll auto-sort to "Template class" unless "class=Redirect" is set. Project pages and the like will do the same thing. So it's important to use "class=Redirect" even if the sort is to "NA class". One never knows when someone might upgrade the project banner to support redirect class.
Paine
(talk –
contribs)
02:22, 5 October 2015 (UTC)Hi. Shouldn't there be some advice on sorting things out at Wikidata after performing a merger? Sander1453 ( talk) 04:53, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm concerned about the way Heineken Cup was merged into European Rugby Champions Cup. Since the ERCC is effectively a continuation of the Heineken Cup (despite the two competitions being run by legally distinct entities), the latter article has largely been copied and pasted from the former. Because of this, the history of the former article has been lost. Should the histories of the two articles be merged? – Pee Jay 21:07, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
In my experience to date, mergto templates rarely have a reason offered on the talk page. Did I say "rarely", I meant pretty much never ever. As such why don't we add a reason = parameter to the template? Maury Markowitz ( talk) 13:33, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Hi, what's the best way to proceed with the merge mentioned on this page? I'm not sure if I should go ahead with a copy and paste or if there is a better way to do this that preserves the history of both pages. All this talk of cut&paste merges vs. history merges has me confused. Thanks.-- Cpt.a.haddock ( talk) (please ping when replying) 12:50, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Template:Merge says that it "is used in the standard installation of Twinkle." but I can't figure out how to get Twinkle to use it. So I did this which I'm thinking of self-reverting. Is Template:Merge wrong? If so, how should this be corrected? In other words, how do I merge via Twinkle, and can we better document that here? -- Elvey( t• c) 14:46, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
We have a serious problem with MERGE. There are currently 11,172 articles in Category:All articles to be merged. That number is going to keep going with the trend to merge at AfD. According to Category:Articles to be merged, there are articles from May 2012 that need to be merged. I am aware that there are pages where discussion is ongoing/recently started, but five years is a totally different matter.
With a smaller active userbase, and a lot more articles, consensus for processes is a lot harder to come by in a reasonable amount of time in general. For example, I AFDed Supercute!. I got no consensus (and actually, no participation) after a month, and the NAC suggested either renom or merge, so I figured I'd set up a merge discussion and see what would happen. I have had no comments on it in a few weeks, and no one has edited either article in years. AFAIK, I can't simply close out the discussion and do it myself, because there's no consensus to do so. I have also been AfDing other material, and a lot of what is happening is malformed merge requests - somebody dropped the template on the source, but never set up the discussion on the target. I'm not sure how widespread it is, but clearly you can't merge a page if no one knows about it.
This "stagnation of merge" is a problem at AfD, because people are voting merge on articles just because there's one piece of potentially useful information. However, when the merge isn't executed, it's effectively a default keep. I know exactly what the problem is, and that's that the needs of the licensing make the merge process complicated, and it's easier to do it wrong than do it right. I've read it over several times, and I'm still not sure how to do it, or in what manner to do it. However, by not doing it, we're effectively violating community consensus and somewhat breaking the encyclopedia. Is there some way we can make merging easier, either with an automated tool to do it, or a different process to get to a position to merge? MSJapan ( talk) 21:03, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
This seems to be coming up in AfDs, where fully unsourced articles are being merge-voted, but AFAIK, the "removal of unsourced content" idea should preclude that. IMO, one cannot dump unsourced material into another article, because one is not improving the article that way. However, there is no statement either way in the merge guidelines. What's the usual practice? MSJapan ( talk) 18:22, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
Do you support this entry? Pwolit iets ( talk) 10:20, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
2602:306:CC81:E0B0:2C81:AE57:AFCD:C2B4 ( talk) 18:23, 21 December 2016 (UTC)CrissyCarter
![]() | This
edit request to
Wikipedia:Merging has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
2602:306:CC81:E0B0:2C81:AE57:AFCD:C2B4 ( talk) 18:23, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
Hi! I'm confused about something in this sentence:
|class=redirect
parameter-value pair.Which WikiProject templates is it talking about: the ones on the source page, the ones on the destination page, or both?
Note: I have just done a merge, merging Hangwa (yugwa) into Yugwa, and this step has not been done yet due to uncertainty about this step.
Thanks! Noah Kastin ( talk) 09:13, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
{{WikiProject Food and drink|class=start|importance=low}}
would become:{{WikiProject Food and drink|class=redirect|importance=low}}
.|class=redirect
parameter-value pair.turns out to not actually exist, apart from hours and canonical hours. The non-hoax aspects of the page will be merged to the proper page at Canonical sundials.
Is it worth merging its edit history there as well or should the page's redirect to Hour just store the edit history about the non-existent unit? — LlywelynII 09:21, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
The current instructions (step 9 of WP:FMERGE) say that a WP:HISTMERGE should not be requested in any situation, with the explanation given (via a link) at Wikipedia:How to fix cut-and-paste moves#Parallel versions. However, this rationale only applies to the cases when the two pages have parallel editing histories. Is there any reason to avoid a history merge when there is no such overlap in editing histories? Just noting that this part of the instructions dates all the way back to 2009 [1] – Uanfala (talk) 17:19, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
Two articles are to be merged. Topic 1 is the correct name, but has less content and less discussion on the talk page than Topic 2, which has far more good content and more discussion on the talk page, but a less suitable name.
How best should these be merged?
Advice requested. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 12:40, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
This looks like it might be a similar problem to that described in the previous section, but as I have no understanding of what happens in a histmerge, the previous discussion just leaves me confused. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 12:51, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
There is a relevant discussion pending on Template talk:Merge#Adding criteria to template itself. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo ( talk · contribs · count) 16:58, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
The first bullet point under
"How to merge" step 3 says Move all {{Merge-from}} and {{Copied}} templates to the destination page's talk page
. {{Merge-from}} is the template used for proposing a merger, and it wouldn't make sense to move that to the talk page. We'd wanna remove that once the merger's been done. And no {{Copied}} templates have been used till this point, so there aren't any to move.
Is this supposed to say to create (not "move") either a {{Merged-from}} (not "{{Merge-from}}") or {{Copied}} template? (And on that note, could it include a discussion of the differences between the two?) Languorrises ( talk) 00:31, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Paradisus Judaeorum, renamed per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Heaven for the nobles, Purgatory for the townspeople, Hell for the peasants, and Paradise for the Jews is currently in discussion at Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2018 December, and may interest watchers here. Icewhiz ( talk) 07:16, 11 December 2018 (UTC)