Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions

The following are the guidelines for administrators on Wikipedia:Requested moves

Determining consensus

Determining consensus on requested moves is somewhat of a contentious area. In general there is a consensus that there is no minimum participation. If there is no objection to a move after X days (however long the move process is), move it. This isn't AFD - there's a presumption of moving, since in most moves, there is no need for WP:RM.

If a discussion is ongoing or has not reached a reasonable conclusion, relist it.

Moving procedure for admins

It is important to check to see if the redirect has major history; major history contains information about the addition of current text. (This is sometimes caused by the accidental creation of a duplicate article, or someone doing a cut-and-paste "move", instead of using the "Move this page" button.) Never simply delete such redirect pages, (which we need to keep for copyright reasons).

Major history

There are three ways to deal with a page move with a major history:

1. The "right" way is to merge the histories, using the procedure outlined at Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves. This is a slightly fraught procedure, which on rare occasions doesn't work correctly. There are also circumstances (for example duplicate pages) where it's not the correct choice anyway. Once done, it cannot easily be undone, so don't pick this option unless it's definitely the right one. You can request history merges at Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen.
2. Alternatively, the article and the redirect can be swapped. This leaves the bifurcated history, but has less chance of causing problems. Simply move one of the pair to a temporary name, and then delete the new redirect which that move will left behind at the original location; next, move the other page of the pair across to the first one's old location, and delete that left-over new redirect; finally, move the first one from its temporary location to its new name. You will then need to delete the new redirect at the temporary location, and finally fix the old redirect to point at the article again (at this point, it will be pointing to itself).
3. Another option is for redirect pages with major history to be archived into a talk namespace, and a link to them put into the article's talk page. (An example of such a page is a Talk:Network SouthEast, which was originally created as a duplicate article at Network SouthEast and later archived, when the original article was moved from Network South East.)

Minor history

A minor history on the other hand contains no information, for example the redirect page Eric Tracy has a minor history but Eric Treacy (which incidentally is the correct spelling) could not be moved there because of a spelling mistake in the original page. Redirect pages with minor histories can simply be deleted.

Tidying up

Whichever of these various options you take, moving pages will create double redirects in any redirects that pointed to the original page location. These must be fixed; click on the "What links here" button of the new page location to check for them. It is the responsibility of the admin doing the move to fix these, though periodically a bot will fix any you miss.

When you complete an entry on this page (whether the move was accepted or rejected), don't forget to remove the {{move}} tag from the talk page and if a discussion on the move exists on the talk page please add and sign a comment to indicate whether the move was accepted or rejected. Also, remove the entry from this page (do not simply strike it through).

You should probably leave a message on the talk page too. There are a few options for this. One is to use the templates Template:Polltop and Template:Pollbottom, much like the WP:AfD debate closing templates Template:at and Template:ab. The other is just to leave a statement much like the templates Template:moved and Template:notmoved. For requests that for some reason didn't apply the {{move}} template to the talk page of the article, you can inform the user and/or article with a statement similar to the statement the Template:notmovedmalformed template leaves.

It's worth periodically checking either Category:Requested_moves or here to see if any pages missed this step. Checking either of these regularly has the side-benefit of finding pages where people added the {{Move}} tag to the page, but didn't realize they needed to edit WP:RM as well.

Admins volunteering to do tidying tasks should watch this page for new notices.

History merges

There are two ways to deal with required merges of a copy/paste move which cannot be done right away.

One is to list the pages involved at Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen.

The other is to move the history to /history and use {{pending merge}}. For example, Bicycle Thieves was moved to Bicycle Thieves/history and {{pending merge|Bicycle Thieves}} placed on the article. This also adds Category:Pending merge, all of which will be done later.