Help talk:Merging

Template:Mergenote

I have created a template, {{mergenote}}, which is similar to {{AFDWarning}} and {{AFDNote}} but is used to notify the major contributors of an article on their talk page that there is a merge discussion taking place. Two parameters can be defined: the article name and the location of the merge discussion:

• {{subst:mergenote | ARTICLE NAME }}
• {{subst:mergenote | ARTICLE NAME | TALK PAGE WHERE MERGE IS BEING DISCUSSED }}

The major contributors of an article can be found using this tool by aka. Outside input on the {{mergenote}} template would be appreciated. I hope to include a mention of {{mergenote}} in this article. --Pixelface (talk) 19:53, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Merge templates

They are clearly broken. These templates need to seriously be simplified. (I, unfortunately, am not a rocket scientist, but a Wikipedian who wishes to propose a simple merge of several articles into one.) I am tempted to AFD every single article I am willing to open to a merge in this case, since that is easier to do than go through the merge-to-multiple-with-bullshit process. MuZemike 07:22, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi. I'm not a rocket scientist, either; in fact, I'm a bit of a duffer when it comes to technology. Which means that I'll try to help, but I may fail. :D I tried {{Mergetomultiple-with |Abraham Lincoln|Barack Obama|Dolly Parton|with=Benji|date=January 2009}} on an article, and it seemed to work in preview. All of the articles showed up, and "discuss" opened Talk:Benji. It worked for me when I added a fourth article and when I reduced it to two. It didn't work when I tried it in my userspace, since it wanted all the other articles to be in userspace, too (we have no User:Dolly Parton). {{Mergefrom-multiple|Abraham Lincoln|Dolly Parton|Barack Obama|George Patton}} worked for me in preview, too. Is the problem with one of these templates or a different one? Is it technical, or do you think the instructions are too confusing? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:28, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

If AFD consensus was merge, what happens if an editor refuses to allow any new info to be merged?

The consensus was to merge the article Akane-chan Overdrive with that that of its creator. Alas, no information has been added to that page at all. An editor has stated that the only information belonging on a biography page was the name of their creation and the year it was published, stubbornly arguing against the addition of even a brief summary of the series created by that author. If people voted for a merge, then is she required to honor that, and allow some information to be merged? Dream Focus (talk) 08:14, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:34, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Also read WP:FORUMSHOP. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 18:58, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

This isn't a forum shop. This is the area to talk about the Merge guideline, I reading what the article saying, and asking a question about it. Because it seems as we have a different definition of what the word merge means. Dream Focus (talk) 00:37, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

When you've posted about the same thing on 3-4 different pages because you aren't getting the responses you want, yes it is. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 00:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I posted on the appropriate talk page before this. Stop making personal attacks against me, and distorting things. Since dispute resolution was suggested, I went and started a discussion there. Dream Focus (talk) 00:54, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

First forum, Second forum, Third forum. That's clearly WP:FORUMSHOPping --Farix (Talk) 01:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

The second is a page I went to before all of this, which has nothing to do with the issue at hand. And the wikiquette page I went to after the editor on this page suggested it was a better place to discuss that, not here. That isn't forum shopping. Dream Focus (talk) 02:27, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I skimmed the AfD, noting that while the specifics of the merge were mentioned, they were omitted from the closing statement. Since mergers are content issues implemented by ordinary editor tools, their specifics are generally overlooked, save in cases where consensus is exceptionally clear. The proper place to discuss this content dispute is the Talk page of the merge target. Flatscan (talk) 04:07, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

How long to leave a merge tag?

I have left merge tags that have generated absolutely no comment. Is there any guideline on how long we should wait before performing the actual merge. Is a week too soon to allow interested parties to spot the tag? MortimerCat (talk) 11:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Generally I used to recommend a minimum two weeks for what should be a fairly uncontentious merge, with one month generally being good for some (particularly in the fictional area). -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 17:42, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposed in October, 2009, comment against in April 2010, and my own comment against yesterday, so I am well within the time suggested to go ahead and remove the mergeto template today. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:48, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Rewriting merge instructions

I propose rewriting the merge instructions to increase clarity. I have two main changes:

• Proposing a merger: Move the discussion creation step first, so it's ready to link when placing templates.
• Performing the merger: Merge the detailed paste merge instructions together, there's a lot of redundancy.

I will start soon if there are no objections. Flatscan (talk) 23:46, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Template saying "merge was proposed and rejected"?

For AfD, there's a template you can put on the talk page that says "someone tried to AfD this article and failed". Is there a similar template that says "someone tried to merge this, and consensus was against it"? I'd like to avoid having the same argument the next time someone has the same non-bright idea. --Alvestrand (talk) 07:37, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of one. It may be possible to use {{ArticleHistory}}, but its parameter validation may prevent that. Flatscan (talk) 03:50, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

You would have to have it updated. Looks like ther is a draft version at User:Coldacid/Templates/oldmergefull. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:54, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't you just modify the template to say Do not merge rather than Merge? Jubilee♫clipman 15:07, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Update: Modify to Keep Jubilee♫clipman 15:11, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Merge imposed with no discussion

Consider the following scenario:

• 1 Article History of Widgetry in Fooland is AfDed
• 2 No-one has much to say for the retention of History of Widgetry in Fooland
• 3 Someone points out on the AfD discussion the existence of History of Widgetry, which already has an appropriately proportioned section dealing with Fooland.
• 4 The idea of merger snowballs at the AfD, and this is the closing decision.
• 5 None of this has been mentioned at Talk:History of Widgetry, until the fait accompli of a {{Afd-mergefrom}} is posted by the admin closing the AfD.
• 6 The lack of enthusiasm of the regular users of History of Widgetry for such a disproportionate section is illustrated by the fact that no-one enacts the merge for a month.
• 7 The merge is eventually made.

On what grounds does a discussion, the parties to which have never contributed to the target page, that is not mentioned on the target page, have jurisdiction to make a decision which greatly changes the balance of the target page, claim to have the authority of a consensus decision behind it. Why should that merger not just be reverted and the merger decision, which never even sought the consent of the target article's maintainers, ignored. Kevin McE (talk) 08:19, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Notifying the editors of the target article was suggested in a recent discussion, with a merge tag and/or talk page section. An AfD consensus to merge – an ordinary content decision – can be overturned by additional discussion: I recently came across an AfD merger that was reversed in this way.

I suggest reposting this at WT:Articles for deletion, where you'll probably get more replies. Flatscan (talk) 05:11, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I found the article: Talk:Christianity and Judaism#Overly speedy deletion. Flatscan (talk) 04:11, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Lane splitting, filtering forward, and Overlap

There has been a proposed merge of lane splitting and filtering forward on seemingly (at first glance anyway) solid ground:

• Overlap - There are two or more pages on related subjects that have a large overlap. Wikipedia is not a dictionary; there does not need to be a separate entry for every concept in the universe. For example, "Flammable" and "Non-flammable" can both be explained in an article on Flammability.

My objection to this particular merger is that despite the considerable overlap, there is an important distinction between these two concepts, akin to the distinction between mean and median, and that such a merger will blur the distinction.

Filtering forward means using available space to pass slow or stopped traffic, while lane splitting means riding a two wheeler between lines of traffic. While the purpose of lane splitting is often to filter forward, that is not always the case (a slow motorcyclist or bicyclist might lane split to allow faster traffic on both sides to pass him or her), and there are ways to filter forward without lane splitting (like when an emergency vehicle or bicycle uses the shoulder to pass slow or stopped traffic). So I'm unclear as to what exactly the topic and even the name of the merged article would be. But my main objection is that the distinction between the meanings of the two terms will be blurred by such a merger.

There have only been a few people who have weighed in on this, many of whom seem to have decided I'm just a disagreeable chap (see this RfC) and might not be giving my argument serious consideration because of that, so I thought some outside views from "policy wonk" folks who could take a fresh look at both articles, might be helpful. Thanks. The proposal is here. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:33, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Best practice

Edit summaries, best practice

Previous discussions: #Merge edit summaries, #Merge edit summaries (2)

I propose that detailed instructions for edit summaries be added to the help page. They would be recommendations, but hopefully they would enter wide use.

1. "merged" or some form of the keyword "merge", to aid searching
2. Direction of merger, "from" or "to"
3. Wikilink to other article
4. Relevant revision ID, for formation of permanent link: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=revisionid

Examples:

• Paste of merged content: Help:Dummy edit: content merged from Shitennou (Sailor Moon), revision 295034987
  • (diff; http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=295034987) bolding, separate line for clarity Flatscan (talk) 04:32, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
• Redirection: {{R from merge}}, merged to Dark Kingdom#Shitennou, revision 298007056
  • (diff; http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=298007056)

Adding revision ID provides these benefits:

• Helps comply with attribution required by CC-BY-SA and GFDL
• Makes the merger robust against page moves, including moves out of article space such as WP:Merge and delete#Move to subpage of talk page
• Facilitates retrieval of historical content or refs by marking a specific revision to reference

I have applied a number of these edit summaries, usually using dummy edits on existing mergers, so I am aware of the extra work involved. Is it reasonable or too onerous? Flatscan (talk) 05:31, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

A good idea. Is it already included in the merge instructions? ChildofMidnight (talk) 06:24, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Part of it is. The edit summaries are required at the destination article in the current instructions and at the source article if the merge does not result in a redirect (merges resulting from redirects should be tagged {{R from merge}}. The current recommended language is "merge content from article name" I wonder if instead of adding a diff to the edit summary, we might keep that more or less intact and in addition encourage the use of templates on the talk page? We already have Template:Merged-to and Template:Merged-from, which require full-content mergers, and Template:Split-to and Template:Splitfrom, which don't. I think that templates on the talk page stand a better chance of preventing inadvertent deletion, since I know myself that we don't always look at the entire history if an article is up for deletion for some reason. I'm not entirely happy with any of the templates being used, actually. I wonder if we could make a more "user friendly" template and call it something obvious like "wiki-copy" (or something else. Just, you know, obvious. :)) I've whipped up an example template in my user space as User:Moonriddengirl/License credit. It renders the following in action:

What do you guys think about something like that? (code: {{User:Moonriddengirl/License credit | from=2401 Penitent Tangent|to=Characters of Halo|diff=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Characters_of_Halo&oldid=84729231}}) I like the idea of one box with the same parameters at both source & destination, whether text is "split" or "merged" or copied what have you. But if we do decide to go with a single box, we want to name it carefully and choose very user friendly parameters. The problem I have with the existing templates is that they are not standardized and they are needless complex (not to mention multiple!). KISS, and all that. There's only three parameters in this template: the original article, the destination article & a permanent URL (diff would also work) when the content was pasted. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:05, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

• It has to be simple or editors will not do it. Adding a revision number and diff link to the edit summary may be beyond the ability of many editors. Then adding a template as Moonriddengirl suggests is more complex again. Could a bot check for possible merges and automatically fix or add edit summaries, add the templates? That would give much more consistent results. The bot would not have to figure out that a merge had been done, just that it might have been done. So when A has been turned into a redirect to B, the bot would add edit summaries like "some of this content may have been merged to target article ..." and "some content may have been copied from source article revision nnn ...". (The much more drastic merge-and-delete, which has been recommended for some of the bilateral relations articles, is presumably very rare and requires an experienced editor, perhaps an admin. I would not want to confuse the standard merge instructions, designed for the typical editor, with instructions on how to handle merge-and-delete.) Aymatth2 (talk) 13:47, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Note that I'm not suggesting the template in addition to a diff in the edit summary, but instead of. There are already templates, as I noted above. My hope is to simplify these templates into one, easily usable template that can go in both articles. I don't know if a bot can be programmed to do what you suggest or not. I believe Corensearchbot does look for in-Wiki duplication, but I don't know how it functions. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:13, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
• Understood - no need to do both edit summary and talk page. I prefer the talk page template because it can be previewed, but suppose it can also be deleted by accident. A bot checking articles turned into redirects could do either. A problem I see no solution to at all is when an editor working on one article copies a sentence of two from a related article without realizing that this is a partial merge. I am sure this happens all the time. I have certainly done it in the past before I learned about the attribution issue. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:30, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
  • I did, too. I wouldn't support deprecating the practice of noting in edit summaries, because this is often simplest and best, especially if there is only a brief taking. However, I also like the templates for more extensive copying. I don't necessarily agree that doing both is too difficult when extensive copying has occurred. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:32, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
• Thinking on, I see several related questions:

• Is Wikipedia liable for copyright infringement if a contribution is published without attribution as a result of being copied from another article with no record of the copying, despite the fact that Wikipedia has instructed editors on how to avoid this issue? My guess is the answer is "Yes".
• Is there a risk of significant legal costs and damages from contributors bringing suits against Wikipedia related to such copyright infringements? My guess is "No".
• What is the most effective way to minimize the risk of the issue arising?

I like the idea of establishing a simple template like the one you have created and encouraging its use in the talk page, but suspect that in the case of minor partial merges many editors will fail to add it. I also like the idea of a bot to check and automatically generate talk page template entries for full merges. Where do we go to submit the idea of getting a bot developed? Aymatth2 (talk) 15:44, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for commenting, everyone. Some thoughts:
  • I like edit summaries because they are pretty much permanent. They can be lost on an actively-edited page, but cannot be removed. A template is much more visible, so I would support using both.
  • The idea of a unified "copied content" template is appealing. I have a limited amount of experience with templates, but very little with text boxes. I'll look into it.
  • A bot is a great idea. From what I know, it should be fairly easy to write a bot to write a correct edit summary or place the template, given the other, which halves (not quite) the required manual work. I think that making a bot smart enough to fix partial descriptions would be difficult, but getting one to make reasonable guesses and dump to a list for manual review could be doable. Flatscan (talk) 04:32, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Template:Copied

FWIW, I have moved my template to template space, {{Copied}}, and am adding it to some of the instruction pages. This seems supported here and at the recent AN discussion, here. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:10, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

• I support its use. Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Copied shows a few transclusions already. I have some thoughts (maintenance category, additional parameters) that I'll raise here or at its talk page. Flatscan (talk) 05:14, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
  • I started a list at Template talk:Copied#Suggestions. Flatscan (talk) 04:08, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Bot

Features sorted by increasing difficulty:

1. Convert edit summary ↔ {{Copied}}
2. Populate list of templates requiring manual review
   • incomplete, missing parameters
   • incorrect, e.g. oldid invalid or wrong article (accounting for moves); possibly complex logic
3. Populate list of suspected copies, e.g. "merge" edit summaries

Once some ideas are fleshed out, a request can be filed at WP:Bot requests. Flatscan (talk) 03:08, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Article’s entire content deleted during merge

An administrator recently decided to merge the article Race and crime into Anthropological criminology, although it wasn’t clear that there was consensus to do this. After the merge took place, however, none of the original article’s content appeared in the article it was allegedly being merged into. Race and crime was simply made to redirect to Anthropological criminology; there are apparently no other changes that were made to the latter article as a result of the merge. This has been pointed out numerous times on the article's discussion page.

The administrator who performed this “merge” considers it actual merge, rather than a deletion, so it might not be appropriate to file a request for deletion review about this. But if this was intended to be a merge, it seems fairly clear that it was performed incorrectly, since the purpose of a merge is to combine two articles' content into one, rather than removing one article's content entirely. What is the proper way of dealing with a problem like this? --Captain Occam (talk) 20:17, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

There has been no deletion, and you have already taken this to the NPOV forum where you were answered, and on my talk. If you want to propose adding more material (new or from the old page), please do it on the Anthropological criminology talk page. Consensus was established for the merge and the page had multiple NPOV and RS issues. Much material was already in both articles and the redirect was sensible. Verbal chat 22:16, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

There's a second issue here that I think also needs to be addressed, and this noticeboard is the most appropriate place for it. Your opinion is that "consensus was established for the merge", but the discussion on the article's talk page does not appear to meet Wikipedia's standards for consensus. There were six users who weighed in on this; three (including you) were for merging and three were against it. Those who were against it raised points which weren't addressed, nor did you reply to the two users who raised objections to your own opinion about this.

If you had a problem with the objections that other users were raising to your arguments for merging, you should have discussed it with them further, rather than going ahead and enacting the merge without further discussion. Objectively speaking, as it stood when you decided to merge the articles, no consensus had been reached. And I think the other people who comment on this noticeboard will agree with me about this.

I would like to get others' opinions on whether the discussion on the linked talk page there can be considered to have reached "consensus". --Captain Occam (talk) 02:12, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

If you look into it you'll see it wasn't me that decided consensus, some users against the merge were problematic and SPAs, and I'm not an admin. Consensus and the protection was enacted by a third party, neutral admin. Please tell us on the article talk what extra material you want copied across. Verbal chat 07:03, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

At your suggestion, I've brought this up on the Anthropological criminology discussion page. I would appreciate advice from any users who can offer it about how this information could be included. --Captain Occam (talk) 14:43, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

unmerging assistance needed

I am trying to figure out how to (or if I have the ability to) unmerge the Scion xB or Toyota bB and can't find a more relevant place to ask this question. If someone could contact me an assist me with this I would appreciate it. Improbcat (talk) 15:03, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Done. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:30, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

A semi-automated process for merging

I just messed up a merger, and this has inspired me to suggest a semi-automated process for merging. I think a huggle-/twinkle-like button would be great. In my opinion, it should be something you should be able to opt in/out of. This is so you have to know at least a little bit of what you're doing to find it , and if you don't want it, you can simply not have it. --I dream of horses (T) @ 18:44, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

I definitely think we need to figure out some way to get merging instructions "out there" better and/or find a way to make the process easier (as suggested by I dream of horses). In my experience, even most experienced users don't know that there are instructions that must be followed when performing merges. I don't have any concrete ideas at the moment, but I'm all ears if anyone else does. :) --ThaddeusB (talk) 04:44, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

The distilled instructions you gave I dream of horses were good. Would you mind helping with rewriting the instructions? I think a slimmed down set would be good at WP:Merging#How to merge pages and/or a Bare essentials section here. Flatscan (talk) 05:56, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

This is a great idea. An integrated tool should be able to implement even the more detailed edit summaries and {{Copied}} placement discussed above in #Best practice. I think that it's possible to implement as a user script, but I do not currently have the knowledge to write it myself. Flatscan (talk) 05:56, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Can they force a merge against consensus?

I'm told that even though the overwhelming majority of people have stated they are against a merge, that their opinions don't matter, because two editors believe a guideline has not been met. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Ultima_characters Do the opinions of people matter at all, or can they just do what they want? AFD are not a vote, but I thought mergers were, everyone's opinions equal, so whatever most people agreed upon got done. I read the merge page, and it says to form a consensus, but that word isn't defined here. Can I have a specific definition please? Dream Focus 16:33, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I did not write the original wording, but I have watched this page for a while, and I think that "consensus" is intentionally unspecified to fall back to the site-wide Wikipedia:Consensus policy. As far as I know, there is no special definition for mergers. Flatscan (talk) 04:40, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know "consensus" is defined by the weight of arguments for or against rather that the number of people for or against. Eg, a single person might make a completely logical and irrefutable argument for merger while 5,000 people might be against the merger, but the ultimate "consensus" is with the single person. Merger then takes place. Correct? Jubilee♫clipman 15:18, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

That would in fact be the complete opposite of what the actual word consensus means. But given how often "consensus" is claimed on Wikipedia in the form of fiat, your confusion is understandable.--Father Goose (talk) 18:56, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Help text needs adjusting?

Having just looked at the documentation for {{mergeto}} and {{mergefrom}} it would appear that they can now accept up to 20 article names. This Help document still claims that the special {{mergefrom-multiple}} should be used for greater than one name. Is this a recent upgrade to the templates (presumably in a move towards further rationalisation)? Regardless, if I am not mistaken, the help text will need adjusting to match the templates.
-- EdJogg (talk) 23:37, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

(Sorry, it's late and I'm tired, and editing under these conditions is not a good idea! I'm not watching the page, but you can reach me through my talk page if needed.)

The changes are the result of a live discussion at WT:Proposed mergers#Too many templates. This page should be updated eventually, once the changes are finalized. Flatscan (talk) 04:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

How to merge articles A and B into C?

See e.g. Talk:Warcraft_II:_Tides_of_Darkness#Merger_proposal. --Philcha (talk) 21:41, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is what you're asking, but I suggest moving whichever has a greater article size or number of edits, then merging the other. Flatscan (talk) 04:57, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Refining the definition of "merger"

The first sentence of this page is:

A merger is a non-automated process by which two similar or redundant pages are united on one page.

I think that this definition fails to fully capture the circumstances in which merging takes place—for instance, when related but non-redundant pages are merged (e.g., merging an article about a minor character in a work of fiction to a List of characters...). For this reason, and because merging involves an integration of content, rather than an actual integration of pages (the page from which content is moved becomes a redirect to the page to which the content was moved), I propose a change to:

A merger is a non-automated process by which the content of two pages is united on one page.

Comments? -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 04:42, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Notification at Wikipedia talk:Merging (diff). -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 04:45, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Agree. It is a better, more encompassing definition. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 06:25, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• That seems fine. On a related note, I think that the lead should have a sentence or two about possible motivations (e.g. similar or redundant articles, individual articles to a list). Flatscan (talk) 05:10, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

  Motivations are covered at Wikipedia:Merging#Rationale, but I agree that a brief note (or a link to that section?) could be useful. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 17:38, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

  Yes, just a taste. The leads of both (WP and Help) pages are pretty thin. Flatscan (talk) 05:09, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

  This discussion has been open for quite a while, so I went ahead changed the wording of the first sentence as proposed. On the matter of motivations, how about:

  Reasons to merge a page include: unnecessary duplication of content, significant overlap with the topic of another page, and minimal content that could be covered in or requires the context of a page on a broader topic.

  The wording is imperfect, I realize, but I tried to keep it applicable to pages in all namespaces, and not just articles. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 17:45, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

  That looks fine. Flatscan (talk) 04:33, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

  Added. Thanks, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:20, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Timeframe

How much time should generally pass between the addition of merge proposal tags and the actual merging? -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 04:35, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

It is achieving a consensus rather than a timeframe that is important. There is a huge backlog of proposed mergers and on occasion I remove some of the older ones that have had no discussion and seem unneeded. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 07:28, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

My personal opinion is between one week and one month, also see #How long to leave a merge tag? above. A lengthy wait can help deal with objections, either by discussing them or by invoking WP:Silence and consensus. However, if a merger has been implemented more quickly, an objection should be based on the merits, not on procedure. Flatscan (talk) 05:09, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Dealing with out of process mergers

What is the preferred way to deal with out of process mergers? Should they be reverted, or handled by proposing a split on the destination page? -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 04:37, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Do you have any examples? I would depend on whether a consensus agrees witht the merger. Some editors may be bold and do a merger without discussion. That would be fine if it would be a clear cut case of agreement with the resulting merger. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 07:34, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I prefer discussion to reversion. A split tag could be used to attract attention, but it should be made clear that the merger occurred recently. Flatscan (talk) 05:09, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for merging

A new page, Wikipedia:Articles for merging, might interest editors at this page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:53, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Error in Selective paste merger instructions?

I believe step 5, adding the #REDIRECT tag, is an error and only applies to the Full-content paste merger (where it is the same as step 4.) Am I correct, or is the intent supposed to be to cause a redirect of a section link? JustinTime55 (talk) 20:29, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

A merger, as defined by this page, means that the source page is blanked and made a redirect. A selective paste means that some content is moved and some is removed outright. I agree that the jargon is unclear. Flatscan (talk) 04:21, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Ludolph Küster or Ludolf Küster

In Englisch literature "Ludolph Küster" is used by authors like Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman. Scrivener used even Ludolph Kuster. Ludolf Küster is in German. I had created Ludolph Küster one year ago, User:Fordmadoxfraud created article Ludolf Küster one month ago. Who can decide about merging? I think authors of the articles should not decide because of conflict of interest. Unfortunatelly User:Fordmadoxfraud merged these articles without any discussion, he also did not inform me about his very arbitrary decision.

Of course the article of User:Fordmadoxfraud is written in better English, but is it enough to merge article of other user with his own article? My article is older

There is another problem, in this edit this user used my own work with only explanation - Edit summary - "interwiki linking"! It was added to the article not according to the wikipedia standard.

What I should do in that situation? I think these problems should be solved in another way. I do not like edit wars. Leszek Jańczuk (talk) 15:07, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

New draft for WP:MERGE

New draft of WP:MERGE which I have written. Basically, I'm trying to make the procedures less vague than what we normally have as well as a little bit more clear. Comments/questions/suggestions are welcome. –MuZemike 00:08, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

It looks good enough to apply immediately, then edit in place. I especially like the consolidation of Performing the merger. Some portions seem to have been taken from Help:Merging, please remember to attribute them if this is the case. Flatscan (talk) 05:15, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

• Problem with: "Text – If a page is very short and is unlikely to be expanded within a reasonable amount of time, it often makes sense to merge it with a page on a broader topic." If its valid on its own, then no reason to merge just because its short. Also, there is no time limit for Wikipedia articles. Reasonable amount of time is rather vague as well. Dream Focus 12:00, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

That part is unchanged from what is currently in there, which I did not edit. –MuZemike 21:57, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Isn't the merge definition a bit restrictive?

Yes, I know that they are mostly guidelines than rules or definitions, yet so far I've got the idea that a merge shall be mostly cut-paste based. Is this truly the case? If a proposed to be merged page is going to disappear by say 75% because of redundant content, with the other 25% being a summary rather than a cut-paste, does this still qualify as merge?

I ask because it seems that the merge notion requires some "discrete" parts to save. As it's currently written, it seems that the statement

“

A merger is a non-automated process by which the content of two pages is united on one page.

”

Uses the word content by meaning of statements more than notions. Am I just being a bit too restricted? Would you elaborate?
MaxDZ8 talk 09:45, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

A merge can be anywhere from 0–100% of the original content. A merge that incorporates only part of the source content is sometimes called a "selective merge" or "smerge". The instructions focus on cut-paste because that makes it easier to trace the content back to its source, but the text can be rewritten and summarized during the merge or immediately thereafter. Let me know if that doesn't answer your question. Flatscan (talk) 05:06, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

A merge that has 0% isn't a merge, its just a redirect. Call it what it is. Dream Focus 21:59, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

That's an important point: when no content is copied or adapted, it should not be labeled as a merge. A redirect can result from a merge discussion. Flatscan (talk) 04:49, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, thank you, I believe my notion of merge were a bit too restrictive. WRT the instructions, I wonder if it is appropriate to replace the current cut-n-paste method with a description dealing more with the "content" rather than the text but I see this would probably make this hard to understand... Thank you again.
MaxDZ8 talk 14:36, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Since this is a Help: page, the detailed directions are most important. Something might work in WP:Merging, which was recently rewritten. Flatscan (talk) 05:08, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Deprecating merged-from and merged-to

{{merged-from}} and {{merged-to}} were removed from Help:Merging#Performing the merger. I didn't notice when {{merged-from}} was deprecated several months ago.

I think that these templates should be kept around:

1. {{Copied}} takes a few oldid parameters that can be intimidating.
2. The merged templates state that an article was merged and redirected, which is a little more information.

Flatscan (talk) 05:13, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I came here to ask EXACTLY the same thing. Why were they deprecated?? I don't see any problems with them, in fact I prefer them over the more cumbersome {tl|copied}} and have been using them quite frequently. If there was a discussion somewhere about this I'd like it if someone could point me towards it. I've invited both User:Odie5533 and User:Adrignola back here to comment. -- œ^™ 08:45, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I've no idea if a discussion took place. I don't spend much time here and am not involved in the Help WikiProject. Basically my edit was to bring the help documentation in line with the documentation on the template's documentation page (linked above), which I noticed did not match up, as I was bringing in help documentation from here to Wikibooks. That sort of points the finger at Odie5533, but there you go. Personally, I feel the copied template is a superior choice. If you're doing merges you should not be intimidated by template syntax. {{Copied}} provides additional technical information, such as the exact state of the page content was pulled from and the exact edit where content was merged, thus removing ambiguity about where and when the merge occurred or provoking a hunt through page history. With the merge-* templates, there is no guarantee the source page will remain a redirect and so the page could be recreated and then you have ambiguity arise about when the merge occurred and therefore who in the page history is to be credited for the content. This is for license compliance through attribution and so should not be done in a less thorough manner with the merged-* templates. Adrignola (talk) 17:08, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

You raise some good points. I'd also like to hear what User:Odie5533 has to say.. -- œ^™ 02:00, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, {{Copied}} > {{merged-from}} / {{merged-to}} > incorrect template > no template. I agree that mergers should be done by experienced editors using {{Copied}}, but there should be an easy template to keep editors from simply skipping that step. Flatscan (talk) 05:14, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree too. {{Copied}} will be preferred but Mergedfrom/to should not be totally deprecated and may still be used in certain situations where the target is likely to remain a redirect indefinately. -- œ^™ 13:49, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Merging two articles on Charcot-bouchard aneurysm

When I searched for "Charcot-bouchard aneurysm" two entries came up and differed only in the capitalization of one letter. One entry is longer than the other but they both basically say the same thing. There's no reason for there to be two entries for the same thing. They should be merged or one should be deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.117.82.14 (talk) 21:16, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Merger performed as requested. Isheden (talk) 18:23, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Merging "free content" from external sites

I presume that merging as described here is about merging Wiki articles only. If so, I think that the page should be explicit and say that this type of merging only applies to merging Wiki articles. It is possible to merge material (or add) text from external websites using a similar method, and a number of "free content" external website sources are being merged into Wikipedia articles in this way which bypasses WP:EL (especially WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT). In other words the sources provided in the Wiki are the original sources used to make the external website without reference in the in-line ref to the actual source viewed by the Wiki editor. It has become important to consider this in depth, because of collaborations between the Wiki and museums (and other holders of information) are adding information to some well developed articles as well as creating articles and enhancing Stubs. The ARKive project are discussing these issues at [[Wikipedia_talk:GLAM/ARKive#WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT_when_writing_in-line_citations]], and contributions to advance the discussion at welcome their. Snowman (talk) 15:04, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Have I missed something? Are there guidelines for merging free content from external source into Wiki articles somewhere else on the Wiki? Snowman (talk) 14:39, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Your first sentence is correct: this page covers mergers among Wikipedia articles only, with main page WP:Copying within Wikipedia. WP:Copy-paste is a primer on copying in general, including external sources. See also WP:FAQ/Copyright#Can I add something to Wikipedia that I got from somewhere else?. Interested readers should see the ongoing discussion at WT:GLAM/ARKive. Flatscan (talk) 04:39, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Some advice

I hope this is the right place. I placed a merge template on Formative evaluation to merge with Formative assessment. This was probably unnecessary, as on reflection, I'm now 100% sure that the former is actually the same thing as the latter. Given that the talkpages have been dead on both for a couple of years, would it be against procedure just to go ahead and boldly merge? There's been three days of no response.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 07:47, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

There is no formal duration, but I personally recommend 1-2 weeks to reduce the chance of objections and reverting after the fact. Flatscan (talk) 04:21, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Merging multiple articles into one

I had a quick question about merging. I plan to propose merging several articles into a single article, but the proposed article has not been created yet. How do I go about proposing this? Wild Wolf (talk) 15:59, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know there is no established process (apart from Wikipedia:Proposed mergers but that page doesn't look very well patrolled). Just be bold and create the new article, then redirect the other ones to it leaving a {{mergedto}} on their talk pages. Also note on the newly created article's talk page that you did all this. BTW, in the future, the Wikipedia:Help desk would be a better place to ask this kind of question, where you're much more likely to get a quick response. -- œ^™ 08:18, 30 January 2012 (UTC)