Wikipedia talk:Merging

Hoping a bot or gnome might fix language links

I just merged into REDD and REDD+ but there are no drop down language links yet. Only Spanish and Norwegian have 2 articles. I cannot find anything in these instructions so hoping I don’t have to do anything Chidgk1 (talk) 13:56, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Multiple options to resolve multiple overlapping WP:REDUNDANTFORKs

For context: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Royal descendants of John William Friso (3rd nomination) just closed as merge into John William Friso, more specifically John William Friso#Tree of royal descendants. (I proceeded to put the tree into a template which I also put on his wife's page, since they obviously.... procreated together).

Now I find a very similar situation, which has all the same issues as the one above, plus a lot more, namely WP:REDUNDANTFORKs everywhere, and no obvious single target for the merger.

Source pages that probably should be merged per WP:REDUNDANTFORK, WP:NOTDIRECTORY, WP:LISTCRUFT, WP:OR, WP:SYNTH, WP:UNSOURCED, WP:V, WP:RS

• Royal descendants of Queen Victoria and of King Christian IX
• Descendants of Queen Victoria

Possible target pages

• Queen Victoria#Family
• Albert, Prince Consort#Issue
• Christian IX of Denmark#Issue
• Louise of Hesse-Kassel#Children

I'm not sure where to even start nominating, so I was hoping someone could give me advice on how to proceed. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 19:27, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

"Merge" instead of "Merger"

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Support to prefer use of "merge" instead of "merger" to describe the process of merging pages. No objections to the proposal in over 1 month. Mdewman6 (talk) 21:05, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

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It seems like the noun typically used to describe the topic is a "merge" and not a "merger". As such, I propose to update the page here to use the term "merge" instead of "merger". If there are any objections, let me know. Mdewman6 (talk) 21:34, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Merger is used as a noun in a business context (Mergers and acquisitions). Elsewhere, merge sounds better. No objection, just background. ~Kvng (talk) 13:02, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Support the change to "merge". Klbrain (talk) 11:59, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

I am going to formally close the discussion and make the appropriate changes. Mdewman6 (talk) 21:05, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Merging clusters of articles in different languages

I have encountered problems while trying to merge'' Q3326454 with Q264251. Both clusters of languages deal with the same topic (''anatomical terms of motion'') and I am neither able to add languge links in the old vector legacy (2010) skin (probably due to the fact, that both object are already clusters of more than one language) nor edit language links in the new Vector (2022) skin. Merging the articles with the MergeItems tool and the MergeLexemes tool resultet only in error messages. What am I doing wrong and how to solve this problem in the future? (I have already encountered this problem very often, so I hope that I will be able to contribute better to wikipedia in the future if someone explained me how address that issue ;) ) Mikulicz (talk) 14:29, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

It sounds like you have a question about Wikidata items. You should ask those at d:Wikidata:Project chat. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:16, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 October 2023

Replace the redlink in step #6 of "How to Move" ("a logo") with File:Stade Lavallois logo.png, or any of the other 163724 files in Category:All non-free logos. 2603:8001:4542:28FB:4487:B54E:7615:4938 (talk) 00:38, 13 October 2023 (UTC) (Please place talk page messages here instead)

 Note: Not sure if this suggested logo - for a football club - is an acceptable replacement, given that the last one was deleted with the comment, "Unused non-free media file", and the proposed one has a non-free license as well. But the link really should be pointed at some logo. -- Pinchme123 (talk) 04:16, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

The whole point of that link is to illustrate a non-free logo (the rest of the sentence is 6. Check for non-free images (or other files). Examples: .... But at any rate, I just picked a random one as an example; if you'd rather you could try this one instead. 2603:8001:4542:28FB:5D4C:58E2:FE57:26F7 (talk) 06:09, 13 October 2023 (UTC) (Please place talk page messages here instead)

See? I'm just a dense moron. Disregard me here! --Pinchme123 (talk) 14:53, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

 Done. I replaced it with a different space agency logo. Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 14:37, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Talk page archives

Is there any consensus on the best way to handle merging talk pages? After making the talk page of a long-merged article redirect to the new location,[1] I've added the pre-merge talk page as an archive with a decimal number. This is now searchable from an archive template, but won't show a hyperlink (positive integers only). If I had done this at the time of merging (instead of seven years later) I could have just moved the pre-merge talk page to Talk: <new article>/Archive <n + 1> and incremented the arching counter to "n + 2". I used a generic {{ombox}} to explain that the talk page had come from elsewhere because I don't see any kind of standard template for this. This all seems like the kind of thing a script could do, but after searching I don't think such a script exists. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 20:06, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Rjjiii: From step five of the Merging Procedure:

The Destination (target) Talk-Page is tagged with (optional): {{merged-from|~source page~|date= }}'' –or– {{Copied|~source page~|date=}}

The Source Talk-Page that has discussion content, should have the following template placed: {{merged-to|~destination page~|date= }}'' (without removing the old discussions, but replacing all other templates; including most project assessment templates (some projects want to keep these—they will correct if necessary); the exception is the archive index).

PS. To clarify: TalkPages with discussion content should not use the normal #REDIRECT [[<talk:target article>]] template at all, but must still have an attribution link to the target TalkPage in the edit summary. ~GQ

Most mergers do not involve articles with well-used TalkPages featuring archives. For the few that do, I like the idea of preserving the archived comments of the Source Article TalkPages where they would be more accessible to the readers. Perhaps by merging them to the archives of the target article: Talk:{target article}/Archive_0 maybe? Just throwing that out there. Ideas anyone? GenQuest ^"scribble" 14:20, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Optionality of tag indicating a merge

On 20:23, 9 January 2024, I made an edit with the rationale "this should not be emphasized as being optional, as a tag of merge is certainly necessary for example to know the reason of any discrepancies or other situations about the pages". But on 16:12, 10 January 2024, User:Klbrain made a revert, with the rationale, "Take it to talk if you want a policy change like this; the Edit summary should already provide the information this template includes, so this step is duplication of work".

I have to point out that an edit summary is provided sometimes with an edit, whose diff is among often many other diffs found in the page history. Therefore, certainly an edit summary of a merge is in no way a useful substitution of a prominent indefinite tag indicating there was a merge. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 22:12, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

To clarify: the proposal from Thinker78 relates to the currently-optional use of template:merged from on the talk page of the merge target, to make this an essential part of the process. Its something I'm against making compulsory, even though its use is helpful (I regularly use it). The edit summary mentioning the merge is an essential part of the merge process step 1; the talk-page template duplicates this information. My view is that the small proportion of readers who actually know to use talk pages will also be quite confident with page histories. I'd like to not discourage editors from competing merges by adding another required step; keep the merge process simple! Klbrain (talk) 23:39, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

the small proportion of readers who actually know to use talk pages will also be quite confident with page histories. Last time I spent a significant amount of time looking for the diff of a merge/move of a page from a link provided by an editor. If the merge or move template had been in the header of the talk page, it would have saved me a lot of work. Regardless, given that Wikipedia:Merging is only an information page, removing the wording "optional" doesn't make compulsory the guidance, only removes the emphasis on optional. Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 23:47, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Last time I spent a significant amount of time looking for the diff of a merge/move of a page from [Wikipedia:Categorization of people#By place] provided by an editor. This is easily solved by doing a search of "merg" on the TP. Note: If an old merge hasn't been noted or attributed in a past edit summary, you should do so at that time and refer back to the actual merge date in the edit summary; that keeps things legal. Regards, GenQuest ^"scribble" 12:57, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

• I agree with Kilbain; the operative guideline here is WP:Copying within Wikipedia, which states that when copying content between pages, the minimum requirement is to state where the content originated with a link in the edit summary. The directions for merging here (a how-to page) should reflect the operative guideline. If there is desire to make notices on talk pages mandatory, then the guideline should be changed first. Mdewman6 (talk) 23:47, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
• That's the right call. The placing of a notice on TPs is redundant, cluttering, and unneeded. Making it mandatory only furthers the complexity of an already complex process. The attribution rules/laws (copyright requirements) are already covered by the edit summary entry. Why then would a notice on the Talk Pages (that are already suffering from loads of growing bloat that have shown no signs of abatement through the years) even be helpful? GenQuest ^"scribble" 12:57, 12 January 2024 (UTC)