Help:Moving, Deleting, Merging Pages

Moving Or Renaming A Page

The way that a page is renamed is by moving the page to the correctly named page. There are several reasons why you might wish to rename a page (one that you have found or created):

• The title has been misspelled.
• The title does not follow the wiki's naming conventions (see Help:Style Manual).
• The scope of the article has been reduced, extended or otherwise changed.

The terms "rename" and "move" mean the same in this context. The page is the same, but it is given another name; the page history is now attached to the new name; the renaming with the specified reason is recorded as an entry in the page history.

A new page with the old name is created which redirects to the new name; the edit summary of the page creation records the renaming with the specified reason.

A page cannot be moved if it is in the image or category namespace. To change the name of an image, one needs to upload it again, and copy the image description. To change the name of a category, one needs to change all category tags, and copy the editable part.

How to

Usually you do not want to move or rename a page by copying/pasting its content, because doing so destroys the edit history. If you are unsure how to or whether to rename a page, please leave a note on the discussion page for the article, on an administrator's discussion page, or on RomanceWiki:Community Discussion.

• You have to be logged in to rename a page this way
• With the correct page displayed, click on the "Move" tab near the top of the page. You will be asked for a new name for the page, and given the option to also move the page's talk page. NOTE: Unless you know what you are doing, it is safest to say yes.
• The reason for the move can be given, like an edit summary.
• Click the "move page" button and the page will be renamed to the new title. The old title will become a redirect page, so any links to the old title will still go to the new page.
• It is best to fix links to the old page title manually (as explained below).

Page histories

The "move page" function keeps the entire edit history of the page, before and after the move, in one place, as if the page were always named that way. So, you should never just move a page by cutting all the text out of one page, and pasting it into a new one; old revisions, notes, and attributions are much harder to keep track of if you do that. (But you may have to if, for instance, you are splitting a page into multiple topics. If you do, be sure to include a note in the new page's edit summary and talk page stating where you took the text from.)

Requesting A Move

• If you are unsure whether to rename a page, leave a note on the discussion page for that article, leave a note for an administrator on their talk page, or on RomanceWiki:Community Discussion asking for feedback before the move.

• If you are unsure how or whether to accomplish this move or rename, leave a note on the discussion page for that article, leave a note for an administrator on their talk page, or on RomanceWiki:Community Discussion asking for help.

Do not move or rename a page by copying/pasting its content, because doing so destroys the edit history.

More Help

• For more information about moving a page see Moving A Page on Wikipedia.

Deleting Pages

Deleting a page is sometimes necessary because there have been duplicate pages created, the name of the article just doesn't make sense or for some other housekeeping reason. In that case:

• Add the category Category:Pages To Be Deleted
• On the discussion page for the article you can make a note about why the article should be deleted.
• An administrator will delete the page (eventually), unless there is a good reason to keep it.

So far at Romance Wiki we have not had any controversial requests to delete pages, pages of inappropriate content, etc. Thank you!

Undeleting Pages

When an administrator deletes a page, the page never really goes away. The history of the page always stays here at RomanceWiki. If you follow a link to a deleted page (for example, from the Special:Recentchanges page) you will find a page showing Editing [Whatever was the deleted title] and then the message

You've followed a link to a page that doesn't exist yet. To create the page, start typing in the box below (see the help page for more info). If you are here by mistake, just click your browser's back button.

The article tab at the top of the page is red. The only way you know it is a deleted page is that in very small font near the top of the page it may say:

View or restore 4 deleted edits?

The page is as deleted as it will ever get. If you add anything to that edit box (category, notes, messages, etc.) the page will come back to life.

Merging Pages

Despite the name, there is no automatic way of merging two pages. There are several good reasons to merge a page:

• Duplicate - There are two or more pages on exactly the same subject and having the same scope.
• Overlap - There are two or more pages on related subjects that have a large overlap.
• Context - If a short article requires the background material or context from a broader article in order for readers to understand it.

Usually the way this is accomplished is by cutting the content of one page and pasting it into the other page. Merging — regardless of the amount of information kept — should always leave a redirect or, in some cases, a disambiguation page in place. This is needed to allow proper attribution through the edit history for the page the merged text came from.

You may find that some or all of the information to be merged is already in the destination page. That is fine; you can feel free to delete the redundant information and only add the new stuff. If there is no information to be added to the destination page, you can simply redirect the other page there, but please make this clear in the edit summary.

Redirect

When a page has been moved, a redirect is automatically created so that when someone clicks on a link to the old page name they are automatically taken to the new page.

When a page is merged, you probably want the reader who clicks on that old page link to be taken to the new page. To do this, on the old page remove all of the content and type in

#REDIRECT [[newpagetitle]]

See Redirect on Wikipedia for more help on this topic.

Fixing Links Manually

When you move a page a redirect is automatically created to the new page, but links to that old page still exist. It is best to fix the links so that they point to the correct page.

1. Click the on the old page's link (e.g., from the books page), which will automatically take you to the new page. At the top you will see a (Redirected from old page) note. Click that blue link to be taken back to the original page. There you will see

Old Title

with the link to New Title.

• Following the redirect link is the only way to go back to the original Old Title page.

2. Once you are back to the original page, check for out of date links via the What Links Here tool on the left side of the wiki. There may be several or no links to other pages. On each of those pages, find the link to the '''[[Old Page]]''' and correct to the new page link.