Working with and cleaning up individual articles includes determining if each article covers an appropriate scope and does not duplicate other articles. If two articles are very similar, you may need to merge them. On the other hand, if an article grows too long and unwieldy (or covers several topics), you may need to split it into more than one article. And if an article should appear under a more appropriate title, you need to move it. Moves and merges both create redirects from former page titles and copy content and revision history to a new page title.
Wikipedia has no special process for ensuring that new articles don't duplicate old ones (this is why, in Chapter 6, we suggest checking for other articles on the same topic before starting a new one). Editors who write new articles are responsible for making sure no duplicate articles (perhaps using a slightly different title) exist. If an editor doesn't check, however, and creates a duplicate article, other editors may eventually catch the duplication. In this case, they will most likely flag the two articles as candidates for a merge.
The goal of a merge is to end up with one good, coherent article that incorporates all facts, concepts, and references from both articles without duplicating material. The ideal merge results in a better article. No content should be lost in a merge; instead, all of the relevant facts should end up in one article, and the other, alternate title redirects readers to the new combined article.
Another, more complex case is when several small articles need to be consolidated into one more satisfactory and broader article. For instance, an article about a band member may be merged into the article about the band if little independent information about the musician in question is available. Sometimes a noun and antonym, or two similar terms, make more sense in a single article (e.g., [[Supralapsarianism]] and [[Infralapsarianism]]). These cases generally require more discussion and may be controversial.
A good merge is an unhurried, multipass procedure requiring many edits. Because merges require skill, a single editor often performs the merge once all the interested editors have agreed to it. This can vary from article to article; for articles where one title is misspelled or when the two articles are nearly identical, objections are unlikely. ([[William M. Ramsey]] and [[William Mitchell Ramsay]] is an example of this kind of duplication, where two articles were accidentally created about the same person.) Problems may arise, however, if you want to combine two similar concepts and another editor wants to maintain a distinction between the concepts. For instance, in mathematics, fractions and rational numbers are covered in separate articles—[[Fraction (mathematics)]] and [[Rational number]]—even though fractions are, in fact, rational numbers.
Merging is a manual process that can be quite involved for longer articles. Assuming you want to perform the merge yourself, here are the steps to follow:
Identify the articles you want to merge. Make sure they are, in fact, duplicate articles or otherwise need to be combined.
Tag each of the articles to be merged with a special merge template. Insert the template at the beginning of the article:
{{merge|otherarticlename|date=January 2008}}where
otherarticlenameis the title of the article that you want to merge with the article you're currently tagging, and the current month and year appears afterdate=.Tag the other article to be merged, replacing
otherarticlenamewith the title of the first article. These templates alert readers and editors to the possible merge. (Figure 8-4 shows this message at the top of the Bulgarian Education article.)Figure 8-4. The merge message template on the Bulgarian Education article, suggesting a merge to the article called Education in Bulgaria
In any merge, one article will become the destination article (mergeto page), where all the content will be combined, and the other will become the redirected article (mergefrom page), which will become a redirect to the other article. If you already know which article should be which, you can use more specific templates:
{{mergeto|otherarticlename|date=January 2008}}on the redirected article{{mergefrom|otherarticlename|date=January 2008}}on the destination article
The merge templates will place the articles into [[Category:Articles to be merged]]; adding the date means they will be sorted into a month-by-month category as well.
Add a note to each article's talk page, describing why you think the articles should be merged if the reason is not apparent.
After tagging the articles, wait a week (perhaps longer for obscure articles) for editors who have watchlisted the articles to comment on the merge. The idea is to leave sufficient time in case anyone disagrees with the merge. (If you get impatient in the meantime, you can find plenty of other merging work to do on older articles!)
Review any comments left regarding the merge; if strong objections have been raised, don't merge the articles.
If you have not yet decided, choose the destination article and the redirected article. If you aren't sure, discuss it with other editors on the relevant talk pages to resolve the matter.
Edit both articles at once (use two browser windows or two browser tabs). First, copy the text from the mergefrom page to the mergeto page. Make sure to include all references, footnotes, external links, and see alsos (as for editing, you can draft the merged article first and save it later, or you can use subsequent edits to clean up your work). Add an appropriate edit summary when you save the article indicating where the content came from, such as "merging content," and include the title of the article you're merging from.
Use several edits to work on the logical order of the new, combined page. Determine the extent of duplication, which sections need to be cut or moved, and if any new sections need to be started. Reducing the duplication in stages is best; sort the material by combining duplicate sections. It is best to determine duplication section by section rather than when you first combine the articles.
Polish the text of the new article and work on readability. Try not to delete content, but focus on creating a quality article. Don't lose references and footnotes, and cite any questionable statements.
Replace the text on the mergefrom article with a redirect to the new destination (mergeto) article. Save the page, indicating which pages are being merged in the edit summaries.
If the two articles disagreed about a fact, include this information in a note on the talk page of the destination article. Also indicate any other changes, such as text cuts or deleted images.
Check What Links Here from the redirected article to find double redirects that may have been created by the merge; fix these redirects by editing them to point to the destination article.
When you're finished, remove the merge tag from the destination article, and add a note indicating that the merge is complete to your original threads on the talk pages.
Congratulate yourself on completing the merge!
For major consolidations with more than one article, you can use the {{multiplemergefrom|}} template. Proceed with the merge one article at a time; you will still need to determine a destination article.
An article should be split into multiple articles when it has become unwieldy to read and edit. An article should also split into multiple articles if it deals with several diverse topics better suited to individual articles. An article should not be split, however, if the resulting articles would be small stubs. For example, an article about an author should not be split into small articles about each of his or her books; in this case, one long article about the author and his or her work with redirects from the book titles is usually best.
Very long articles are undesirable for a variety of reasons: They are difficult to navigate and read, and in some older browsers and mobile browsers, you can't edit pages with more than 32KB of text. Long articles can also take a long time to load on slow Internet connections. The Manual of Style deals with these points at [[Wikipedia:Article size]] (shortcut WP:SIZE).
When a long article includes too much detail on a narrow subtopic, you might want to split it. Splitting is an important aspect of [[Wikipedia:Summary style]], which was mentioned in Chapter 6. Long articles should generally follow summary style. Each section of the article should summarize the major topic points with links to specialized articles that fill in detail. For example, an article about a sports team should not be dominated by material on a famous coach: The coach should be discussed in a separate article and the material sensibly divided between the team's article (which would cover the coach's work with the team) and the coach's article (which would cover mostly biographical information).
Procedurally, a split is similar to a merge. First, post the {{split}} template on the page, perhaps at the beginning of the section you propose splitting into its own article. Add a note to the article's talk page before doing anything drastic. You should normally wait for any comments and discussion among editors.
If a section of text needs to be split into its own article:
Give the new article an appropriate title.
Edit the old article to obtain the wikitext for cutting and pasting, so any formatting is preserved.
Add an appropriate edit summary, indicating that you're splitting the old article and giving the names of the two articles using wikilinks, for instance, Split [[History of Alaska]] out from [[Alaska]].
Add a summary to the old article where you cut the text rather than leaving a gap, and add a wikilink to the new article.
Using the History of Alaska example, in the main Alaska article just add one or two short paragraphs summarizing the high points of Alaskan history. At the top of the section called ==History of Alaska==, include a link to the new, more specialized article, along with a message such as Main article: [[History of Alaska]]. This message tells readers to click the link to go to that article if they want more information on Alaskan history. Use the template {{main|title}} to produce a neat message.
If an article is located at the wrong title, you can move it to a new title as long as another article isn't already located at that title. Moving is the only way to rename a page.
Moving a page is simple but has several implications. To move a page, you must be logged in and have an account that is more than four days old (as of early 2008). Click the Move tab at the top of the page you want to rename. In the form that appears, type the new title that you want the article to have and the reason you are moving the article to the new title. Keep the Move associated talk page box checked. Check the Watch this page box to add it to your personal watchlist.
A typical move may be as minor as moving [[PT Barnum]] to [[P. T. Barnum]], (adding periods and a space between the initials). Page moves are routinely used to fix title style (correcting punctuation, including the type of apostrophe, or using a hyphen for an en dash are common fixes).
Page moves accomplish three important things:
Change the article title
Move the page history to the new page title
Create a redirect from the old title to the new title
They may also result in three other things:
Turn redirects to the old title into double redirects
Fill in redlinks, if the new title has been linked to on other pages
Prevent future duplication
Creating double redirects is negative, but the other two are positive. If, for example, you move an orphan article with a poorly chosen title to a more reasonable title, you may be rewarded with a stack of new backlinks to the page if others have already linked to that new page title elsewhere. Broken links have suddenly become bluelinks thanks to your observant work.
If you're trying to move an article and another article already has the title you've chosen, you won't be able to move your article there. Examine both articles: Should they be merged instead? See "When a Page Move Is Blocked" on Housekeeping for what to do in that more complicated scenario.
The only time you can move an article on top of an existing page is when that page is a redirect with minimal history.
The move function is the only acceptable way to retitle an article, as moving transfers the version history along with the article itself. Although you can easily copy and paste article content into a new page and then redirect the old page to the new one, doing so is wrong. This results in an article with no history of previous versions, creating a confusing record. These so-called cut-and-paste moves can be fixed by an administrator through the history merge process; see [[Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves]]. When merging or splitting an article, always provide a good edit summary detailing where the content came from.
Page moves can be undone. Immediately after moving an article, you will have the option to revert back if you realize you've made a mistake. Undoing is possible only if the article from which the original move was made has not subsequently been edited. If it has, you can reverse the move function by going back to the original title. If that is not possible, you will need an administrator's help. See [[Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page#Undoing a move]].
After you've worked on Wikipedia for a while, you'll get a feel for what is considered contentious and what is not. For article titles, the basic rule is to use the most common expression. Titles should not be changed to make a point—political or otherwise. Obviously, if the new title fails to describe the article's text in a neutral way, problems may arise. In case of doubt, discuss the new title on the article's talk page before moving the article.
For example, consider what type of article might justify including the word massacre in its title: Frequent discussions about this type of issue have occurred, and nationalist opinions become involved. For example, the use of the word massacre has been contentious in relation to [[Deir Yassin massacre]], which some have wanted renamed [[Battle of Deir Yassin]]. In this instance, Wikipedia engages with contentious history, and sharp debates cannot be avoided.
Wikipedia prefers to be correct rather than populist regarding some exceptions to using the common name or title, such as articles about aristocrats. But take, for example, the article [[J. D. Salinger]]. Moving it to [[Jerome David Salinger]] would cause annoyance because J.D. Salinger is never referred to by his full name. Although full names are often better than initials, in this instance, they aren't; Salinger's initials serve as a sort of pen name. (More examples of this can be found at [[List of people known by initials]].)