Wikipedia:Merging on arvau

Wikipedia / Wikipedia:Merging

</noinclude>A merge<noinclude> or merger</noinclude> is the process of uniting two or more articles into a single article. It is done by copying some or all content from the source article(s) into the destination article and then replacing the source article with a redirect to the destination article.

Nominating articles for merging

While young or short articles and stubs that only differ in wording should be boldly merged immediately, long and well-developed articles that concern controversial topics are often discussed first. If you want to first gauge whether there is opposition to a potential merge or want to hear other editors' opinions before nominating the article, you can seek input through standard consensus-building venues, such as the destination article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion.

Reasons to merge articles

There are several good reasons to merge articles:

The resulting article would be too long or "clunky";
The separate topics could be expanded into longer standalone (but cross-linked) articles.

Procedure

To avoid manually making many repetitive and time-consuming edits, it is recommended to install the easy-merge script before proceeding; the instructions below will also explain when and how to use it. When performing a merge, remember to attribute copied content as required by copyright; at minimum, this means including a wikilink to the source article in your edit summaries, as described below. To merge two articles, follow these steps:

Copy all or some of the content from the source article and paste it in an appropriate location at the destination article. (If you think the merge is especially complex and will take you a long time to fully clean up, you can let other editors know by placing or atop the destination article or section.) Then, immediately publish your edit, even if it duplicates some parts or it looks messy. In your edit summary, include a link to the source article and to the AfD discussion (unless this is a bold merge):
Do any necessary rearranging and copy editing ideally in a second edit, to simplify attribution. In this edit, also remove any leftover , , or templates from the destination article.

Blank the source article whose content was just merged and replace it with a redirect

To do this more quickly, install the easy-merge script and reload the source article. Then, click the "easy-merge" link in the "Tools" section of your sidebar, enter the name of the destination article or section, and keep this option enabled:If you want to enable other options, read the optional step 5 below before clicking .
To do it manually instead, replace everything in the source article with: or, if you merged the content to a section: Then publish your changes using an edit summary such as:

And that's it! You've successfully merged two articles!

Optional steps

These additional steps are not necessary nor required:

 If the source article has a talk page, reconcile the talk page banners. Move any previously added Merged-from and Copied templates to the destination's talk page and copy the various WikiProject templates to the destination. If the merge was discussed at AfD but you are merging it to a different destination than the one selected by the closer, remove the Afd-merge from template from the talk page of the destination selected by the closer.
 Tag the talk pages with the relevant notices for posterity.
   
     If the merge was not discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletionArticles for deletion (for example if it's a WP:BOLDMERGEbold merge or if it was discussed elsewhere), you can optionally note that the merge has taken place by adding a tag to the articles' talk pages:
       
         This action is performed automatically when using the User:SD0001/easy-mergeeasy-merge script; simply enable these two options and click Submit:checkedblue{{merged-from}} to talk page of target pagecheckedblue{{merged-to}} to talk page of this page
         To do it manually, place Merged-fromSOURCE ARTICLE  atop the destination's talk page and Merged-toDESTINATION ARTICLE  atop the source's talk page.To collapse many similar merge banners into one, experienced users may alternatively place the Copied template atop one or both talk pages: {{Copied |merge=yes |from= |from_oldid= |to= |to_oldid= |to_diff= |date= }}
       
     
     However, if the merge was discussed at AfD and the Afd-merge from template is already on the destination's talk page, do not add another banner to the destination's talk page. However, you can optionally add a tag to the source articles talk page:
       
         If you are using the User:SD0001/easy-mergeeasy-merge script, simply keep this option disabled:uncheckedblue{{merged-from}} to talk page of target pageYou can optionally enable the other one, and then click Submit.
         To do it manually, place Merged-toDESTINATION ARTICLE  atop the source's talk page.

Check whether you have moved any non-free files to the destination article. In the rare cases where there are any, the article mentioned in the rationale should be updated to the destination article's per the non-free content criteria. You can recognise non-free files from their file descriptions, as they have a red copyright icon and a non-free use rationale (a summary box with Non-free use rationale in the title, or a Fair use section: see examples).

 Fix any Wikipedia:Double redirectsdouble redirects found at Special:WhatLinksHereSpecial:WhatLinksHere. A bot does this automatically, but it may take a day or two.

If you've performed these optional steps, there's nothing else you can possibly do, besides improving the article further or merging another article! , editors should not add a new banner to the destination's talk page or change the existing one (see the optional step 5b above). These notices are usually added automatically by the closer and are updated automatically by AnomieBOT several hours after the merge is complete (example diff). These templates inform users involved in those pages that content is to be merged as a result of an AfD discussion. Note that it is any editors' job, not necessarily the closing editors' job, to perform the merge. If these templates have been changed, removed, or if they are not already on the talk pages, you can optionally place this atop the source article's talk page:

Similarly, you can place this template atop the destination's talk page:

Merging pages in non-article namespaces

Pages in certain other namespaces can also be merged, usually also on a bold basis, but merging on a consensus basis relies on different venues. For most non-article namespaces, the counterpart to AfD is MfD; unlike the former, it does not accept merge nominations, though a deletion discussion can yield "merge" as an alternative to deletion. Templates can be explicitly nominated for merging at TfD. The CfD process governs ; these fall entirely outside the scope of this page because "merging" categories is not merging in the usual sense (and is not done boldly either).<noinclude>

Notes

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