This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Moving a page. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Straw poll on allowing users to mark page moves as major edits
This proposal will allow users to mark page moves as minor or major. Currently, all page moves are marked as minor. Most of them are, however, not all page moves are minor edits. Such an instance would be if a page was subject to a page-name dispute. I would kindly ask the Oversight (or whatever body oversees these functions) to make this straw poll visible in people's watchlists to get the word out about this poll. Thank you. Jonathan321(talk)19:05, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
This is a vote. It is just to see how much support for this there is and whether or not I should take it to the next level. I would 'love for people to explain why they support or oppose (especially oppose) this, but it will not make your vote count any more. Thank you. Jonathan321(talk)19:45, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
This poll opened at 19:05, 15 January 2009 (UTC) and will end at 19:05, 20 February 2009 (UTC).
I'm not sure having a poll really makes sense. And shouldn't all moves be classified as major? A move isn't something that should ever be hidden by history filter options. If you read below, you'll see there's a pending patch to MediaWiki to make all moves major. That would be my preference. --Cyde Weys15:40, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
As further explanation: I disagree that any page move can be considered minor. In the history of an article, any sort of page move is a major event compared to the rather insignificant effect that some edits can have. It doesn't matter how much in the page title was changed; even a single character changing (e.g. from upper-case to lower-case) is enough to give the page a whole new URL, thus making the old URL into a redirect. That is a major event no matter how you look at it, and should never be hidden in the page history by a minor filter. --Cyde Weys00:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
I wasn't aware the reality is different from what is proposed. Page moves should be default marked as major edits with a user option to mark as minor, just like for any other edit. Crystal whacker (talk) 00:36, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Support. While having the option to mark moves as minor in the case of non-controversial clean up and such (miscapitalization, spelling errors, etc), making all moves minor by default was a bad choice. Some moves are major and marking them as minor will make the edit slip past an editor's attention when it shouldn't happen. - Mgm|(talk)09:44, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Well I've never seen them marked as minor, but if they are then they shouldn't. Obviously, there is nothing minor about moving a page. --.:Alex:.19:22, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
If technically feasible, yes. Moves/protections have been automatically marked as minor in the past, because especially in the case of protections, the actual action changes nothing on the page itself. In the case of moves, it's obviously the title that gets affected, so of course it does have an effect on the page. Therefore support. PeterSymonds (talk)21:08, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
Personally I feel that it should be impossible to mark page moves as minor, so this is a step in the right direction. Icewedge (talk) 07:34, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
Page moves can be minor or major, depending on the topic, and whether or not it is controversial. As with any edit, the "minor" classification should only be used when it is clearly uncontroversial and highly unlikely to be disputed. The option of choosing minor or not-minor is needed so editors can present the move at the appropriate level of importance. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 05:56, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
They are often major in their significance, and even corrections of typos if in the title should be considered as major. Many of us with extensive watchlists do not display minor changes, but I know I do want to see all moves for pages on my watchlist, and this seems the first step to bring this about.DGG (talk) 20:20, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Moves always show up in watchlists, because the watchlists also show log entries related to the articles you're watching, which always show up, even if you're hiding minor edits. This includes the move log, deletion log, user rights log, etc. So it's not clear what this proposal will change about that.--Aervanath (talk) 03:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
There is definitely no reason not to give users an option, unless it's either complicated (which I don't think this is), or could be abused (which this can't be - there is no abuse from marking a minor edit as major). עוד מישהוOd Mishehu16:48, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
There isn't a problem for watchlists, since the move log pops up on them, but it's useful to have a record in the article history. I'd argue that moves can be either major or minor (e.g. obvious spelling, capitalization, or naming conventions corrections). Dcoetzee08:34, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Page moves can be either minor or major - depending on the reason for the move - and the editor should therefore be given that option. That said, as the move shows up in the move log anyway, I'm not going to lose any sleep if this change is not made. Rje (talk) 09:59, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Support - I hadn't realised before that page moves are always marked as minor. That seems clearly wrong to me: most, if not all, page moves are arguably major. It would obviously be best if this was something users could specify when moving pages. Robofish (talk) 13:24, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
Support - I have always thought it quite bizarre that something as substantial as a page move would be considered to fall within the definition of a "minor edit". This is long overdue. Cgingold (talk) 14:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Support. As others have said before me, I was unaware that this default setting existed. (And I'm embarassed that I never noticed it before.) How can something that is so often controversial be labeled as "minor"? Unschool08:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
Support, I recently found a place name moved to a non official colloquial name by an incompetent registered editor, and it was more than a minor nuisance repairing the damage. I think moves should be major by default, then casual vandals are not likely to notice this.--Charles (talk) 15:09, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
Oppose
Isn't it taken for granted that an edit not marked as minor will be a major edit? Furthermore, there's already enough ways to tell if an edit is major or not. One can get a good estimate of how large an edit is by the amount of text added or removed from the article, and any user responsible enough to click the "major edit" button will also be responsible enough to use an accurate edit summary. Adding this feature will just be piling on the wikibloat and drama, as people will be blamed for misusing the label. A few seconds in the edit history will be all the proof one needs to tell if major edits have been made, without having to guess and check the users who have claimed to have made them. If it's not broke, don't fix it. Themfromspace (talk) 05:45, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
The problem with that is that some people use the option on their watch lists to exclude minor edits, so they won't even see the edits to be able make the judgement as to whether they consider the move to be major or minor. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:41, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
Almost all of the editors who do much nomination for deletion or deletion usually has a very long watchlist to check whether articles are restored, and generally for this to be practical it requires not listing the minor edits, and we need the capability to se the moves also. DGG (talk) 20:20, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Kinda orthogonal to this proposal, but I oppose because IMHO all page moves ought to be considered major edits. They don't happen that often and should be heavily scrutinized, so making them minor is inappropriate. --Cybercobra (talk) 08:24, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Neutral
Huh? They don't seem to be marked as minor from what I can tell... Page moves don't disappear from my watchlist when I click "hide minor edits". You could propose allowing people to mark page moves as minor, but I think moving a page is a pretty major change regardless of circumstances. --Tango (talk) 20:20, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
@Tango: I think that the reason they don't disappear from your watchlist when "hide minor edits" is clicked is that in watchlists, it shows the log entry from the move log, rather than the edit in the history.--Maddie(formerly Ashbey)22:28, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
That's assuming my commit sticks - it hasn't be reviewed yet as far as I know. There may be a reason for it being the way it was that I just can't think of (if there is, then there is still a bug since it isn't treated consistently between diff/history pages and watchlists (and presumably recent changes, although I haven't checked)). --Tango (talk) 16:20, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Oh, and that change isn't retroactive, that would require someone with access to the database to go in and change them all, which probably won't happen. --Tango (talk) 16:21, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
I can't see the point in this poll, because A) there doesn't seem to have been any discussion on this at all prior to the poll, B) the problem would seem to be fixed soon anyway, per Gurch's comment above, and C) even if they continue to be minor edits, they still show up on watchlists through the move log, and still show up on the edit history, so there is no way in which being minor "hides" page moves. So I see no advantage to this poll. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.--Aervanathtalkslike a mover, but not a shaker 07:04, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
Aervanath sums it up pretty well. Moves don't need to be marked major or minor, because they show up in the move log. If you're watching the page (which seems to be the issue here—we don't want people who hide minor edits in their watchlist to miss a page move), you're going to see the move log pop up. I see no problems with the current system. Parsecboy (talk) 02:40, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
Asked at that page about the policy and best practice regarding moving a page when the page in question is in Articles for Deletion. Discuss over there so the discussion doesn't get split over two pages. Thanks! Шизомби (talk) 19:01, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
IBS Software -> IBS Software Services
I think, the title is wrong. There you can read IBS Software. I did a careful research, the proper name is like that: IBS Software Services.
One can read IBS Software Services above of the Infobox also.
The "Moving over an existing page" currently says the following:
“
If the new title already exists and isn't just a redirect to the old title, with no history, and you are not an administrator, the wiki will tell you that you can't rename the page. You'll either have to manually merge the two pages, or if there's no real content in the page ask an Administrator to have it deleted or list it on your project's "votes for deletion" page in order to make room for moving the page.
”
Considering that we haven't had "votes for deletion" is quite some time, isn't this info outdated - shouldn't it refer to WP:requested moves instead?
The reason I didn't just make the change is that this is a help page and I wasn't sure it was being vague (i.e. not Wikipedia specific) for a reason. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
Well, technically speaking, the Meta page was probably originally moved from here, but, yes, it's been manually synchronized in the past, since the Help: namespace is meant to be sort of a user manual for the software, as opposed to actual guidelines. However, as it looks like there hasn't been an update from Meta in awhile, I have no objections to customizing it to be more en.wiki-specific. Cheers, --Aervanath (talk) 18:57, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
There should be a tab labeled "move" at the top of every page you see. Also, you should read Help:Moving a page. (Although I'm curious as to how you found this talk page without reading that page first.)--Aervanath (talk) 04:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
User page
How do I move my User page to a public page? I put all the info there first to get a feel for how this works. Now I can't figure out how to change the page name to be public so it will come up when searched. I looked and there is not a "move" button at the top of the page. I have read all the info about moving pages but it doesn't tell you how to actually do it.--Bal matrix (talk) 22:24, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Your user page can be moved like any other page; however, you need to be autoconfirmed, which requires your account to be 4 days old and have made at least 10 edits. I will caution you that the current contents of your userpage constitutes unambiguous advertising for your company (and your username implies a conflict of interest. Both of these issues are serious, and will impact your participation in Wikipedia unless they're fixed. If you would like to rename your account, you can do so here. If you would like to publish the article about the company with which you appear to be affiliated, you'll have to remove anything that could be viewed as advertising (such as "BWI offers same day shipping on orders received by 2:30 PM Pacific Time") and more importantly, provide a reason why it meets Wikipedia's notability requirements. If you have questions, feel free to ask me on my talk page. Parsecboy (talk) 00:43, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
On Wikipedia, usually anyone logged in can rename a page from its current name to a new one. This is also called "moving" because the effect is as if the page has been moved. A redirect is automatically created at its old name so that links still work.
Common reason for moving pages are:
Misspelled – The most common reason is that a page name is misspelled or incorrectly capitalized. Please fix any and all of these as you see them.
NPOV – Terms used in a title express a bias or POV. NPOV policy requires that articles be given "neutral" titles — using the most general and objective terms.
After a page is moved to a more correct title, the redirect should generally be kept and categorized accordingly, unless the redirect is demonstrably harmful, and especially if it is a plausible or common misspelling (or not a misspelling at all). If a page was erroneously created once at the wrong title, there is a good chance it will happen again (as a duplicate article). However, if the redirect is truly an implausible search parameter and it was recently created, it may be tagged for speedy deletion by posting at its top {{db-redirtypo}}.
Sometimes, you may feel that a page is wrongly named for another reason. For example, "Napoleon" may be more properly known as "Napoleon I of France," but many people refer to him as "Napoleon."
This is a situation in which a redirect would be appropriate. Most people would not search for Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné, but rather for Mme de Sevigne. To some degree the choice of which title to use is debatable, depending on the relevant conventions in the English language or on Wikipedia's encyclopedic standards.
Generally speaking, other types of cross-namespace moves will be controversial and worth discussing with other editors. Wikipedia:Requested moves is the proper place for this. However, when proposing to move what appears to be an article out of the main namespace, it is strongly recommended that some form of Wikipedia:Deletion process should be used, preferably Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, as Wikipedia:Proposed deletion and Wikipedia:Speedy deletion do not build consensus. This is because the redirect that is created by such a move is subject to speedy deletion, which would effectively cause the article to be deleted from the main encyclopedia.
Type the new desired title, add a reason, and click "Move page."
The old title will redirect to the new title.
The old edit history will be moved to the new title.
Check for redirects.
Double-redirects will fail to link, and must be renamed to redirect to the current page name.
Do not move or rename a page by copying/pasting its content, because doing so destroys the edit history. (The GFDL requires acknowledgement of all contributors, and editors continue to hold copyright on their contributions unless they specifically give up this right. Hence it is required that edit histories be preserved for all major contributions until the normal copyright expires.) If you come across a cut-and-paste move that should be fixed by merging the page histories, please follow the instructions here to have an administrator repair it.
If you cannot rename a page, or you think that the renaming may be controversial, please go to Wikipedia:Requested moves and list it there.
The most common reason for failure is that there is already an article at the location to which you're trying to move the article. This is especially likely to happen if there is a history of moves from one name to another. This can be dealt with by an administrator after discussion at WP:RM.
If the destination does exist, but it only contains a redirect without any history, the move will still work — the designers of the MediaWiki software recognised this as a special case in which no information will be lost if a move is performed.
The swapping pages section includes the section "Tag A for deletion (the method of doing this depends on the wiki)," but no further information is provided on how to tag A on Wikipedia or any other Wiki. Also, no links are provided for more information. The page Olga Bay Larch needs to be changed to Olga Bay larch, and the redirect page Olga Bay larch needs to become Olga Bay Larch. Wakablogger2 (talk) 19:37, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
Maybe this should be posted at Wikipedia talk:Protection policy, but I thought it would suit better being here. I have noticed that so many pages are move protected due to page-move vandalism, being highly visible, or for no need to move the page. The amount of pages being move-protected has increased since 2008 due to the rather immature Grawp (JarlaxleArtemis). I sometimes worry if the move option will sooner or later be only available to administrators. It's like the administrators get to move the most high profile pages and little autoconfirmed users don't. Most articles on geographical territories are move-protected, so only administrators get to handle that however they want. I'm posting this because I recently discovered the move protections on Russia, Morocco, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malta and Cyprus. It's like the world is coming to an end where there will be absolutely no more country articles for non-sysops to move. Could someone please help calm me down and bring up any ideas? Thanks, Schfifty300:08, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
I very much doubt it will ever be totally limited to admins. For one thing, have you seen the backlog at the WP:Requested moves page? If we can't even keep up with that, we're certainly not going to want to take responsibility for more than 3 million articles! In fact, I wish we could responsibly open all of those pages to all users. Unfortunately, doing that would open us up to the immature vandals out there who will take advantage of a high-visibility, unprotected page. So we are limited to our current system: if a protected page needs to be moved, tell us at WP:RM.
I wish I could dispel the air of unfairness that pertains around things like this, but it's probably not possible. Until the community comes up with a less-onerous way to ascertain trustworthiness than WP:RFA, the current system is probably what we're stuck with.--Aervanath (talk) 18:46, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
I don't really think you have much to legitimately complain about here. Why would anyone - admin or otherwise - need to move Russia, Morocco, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malta and Cyprus, or 99% of the other protected pages? If there is no reason to ever move a page and it has experienced problems in the past, protection is perfectly reasonable. --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:30, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
organisation for the prohibition of chemical weapons
Still no tool to move a category (by finding and fixing all tags for that Category)?
This page says that the only way to re-name a Category is to visit every article within the category and manually fix the category tag. Is that still true? I figured with all the master tool-builders out there, someone must have built a tool to do just that: All such a tool has to do is find articles containing [[Category:AAA]] and change that to [[Category:BBB]] --Noleander (talk) 19:47, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
If you hover your mouse over the down-arrow tab to the right of the watchlist tab a pop-down menu will appear. "Move" should be the first option in that menu. —RP8819:47, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply, but it doesn't work for me: there's nothing between "My watchlist" and "My contributions". Am I looking in the right place? --Old Moonraker (talk) 19:56, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
It depends whether the redirect has a history. If any modifications have been made to the redirect page (apart from its original creation), then we ordinary editors can't move the target page on top of it. Unfortunately this is a lot more common now than it used to be, because of the bots that have been going round adding categories to redirect pages (and thus ensuring, in the process, that every redirect they touch has a history).--Kotniski (talk) 16:35, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Moving a file page
The section Moving a file page currently says "In non-controversial cases you can request a file to be moved by adding the template {{rename media}} to the description page of the file." But it doesn't say what to do in controversial cases. You can't do a normal movereq because it puts the image instead of just the file name on WP:RM. So what do you do, and should that be added to the section? Station1 (talk) 07:39, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
Again: where & how to put the moverequest
Since this is not been addressed, I might add this: the section does mention "the template {{rename media}} to the description page of the file.". The file I want moved does not have a "Description page", nor a tab "Edit". (This existing file does have a "Create" tab, how interesting). I hope someone can improve this Help-page with how & where (twice, clearly). -DePiep (talk) 11:46, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
The first two steps are both listed as #1, and the next steps are listed sequentially after that. It looks like the numbers are generated automatically, so maybe it's a bug?
Eastkansas (talk) 18:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
I wish to move the draft of an article from my userspace to mainspace. My screen shows none of the skins described in this article -- i.e. there is no MOVE button or MOVE tab visib le. How should I proceed? Any advice greatly appreciated. Terry Belanger 03:15, 2 December 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Baldwinn (talk • contribs)
Is there a "Move" command on the drop-down menu you get by clicking on the triangle just to the left of the search box? If not, leave a note here and someone will do it for you (unless they think the article is controversial for some reason). --Kotniski (talk) 08:48, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Where ask for Admin to move back article name after policy violation
This doesn't seem appropriate for a tag on top of article page. As detailed in this subsection an editor came along and changed the article's name back to a previously rejected one, despite discussions on WP:NPOVN and two long discussions in the talk page of what to name it. He is trying to force us to bring up all the old arguments and dismisses policy concerns as "process wonkery" (in edit summary). Is this a WP:ANI issue or where else can I find an Admin to change it back til after the holidays when other editors can weigh in. I just don't like to see this kind of rank abuse of process and policy. Thanks. CarolMooreDC (talk) 04:43, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
Well, I just found out this guy IS an administrator, even as he mocks policy and defends another editor insulting most of the editors to the page. So I guess this has to go to another forum! CarolMooreDC (talk) 05:29, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
This (general) question is under discussion at WT:RM (the thread's called "Reverting unilateral moves" or something like that). But has the specific situation been resolved now? The page seems to be back at "Allegations of....", which is where you think it should be, right?--Kotniski (talk) 08:34, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. Someone else did do that. And I'll file it in the part of my brain marked "important" (and maybe write it down too). Anyway, a reminder on how to do that in this article would help. CarolMooreDC (talk) 16:12, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
Page moves during disambiguation or wikipedia:Summary style implementation
I remember I've seen somewhere the following episode.
There was a page which mixed several close topics in one. An editor cut-and-pasted different subjects into new pages leaving the original one as a disambig or summary (I don't remember exactly). However his edit was reverted and redone differently. The rationale was that the original page was 90% on single subject, so the other editor first moved the original page to new title for the 90%-piece, then hid the rest of disambiguation. The explanation for this process was better tracking of edit history.
I am wondering whether there is a common wikipedia:guideline for the procedure I described.
I recently ran into a problem where after moving the page currently at a spot to it's correct location, I was unable to move another page over the redirect created by the first move. The redirect I was moving over was automatically generated by the first move, and so as outlined on the page, I should have been able to move over the redirect. However it refused to allow the move, and I had to get an admin to delete the redirect I needed to move over. it was suggested to me that a user can only move over a redirect if they are reverting a previous move. If that is the case the documentation here should reflect as much. I'm not sure if it is the same issue discussed above. I want to make sure my understanding of the problem is correct before making any changes. Monty84506:59, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
I think the sentence being referring to is: "Moreover the move will fail if a page already exists at the target name, unless it is simply a redirect to the present name that has never been modified". How might this be clarified? Station1 (talk) 16:55, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
What I mean is that it is factually inaccurate, you cannot perform that move without administrator intervention. Recently ran into someone trying to revert a page move over the redirect created who was likewise unable to do so without an admin stepping in. Maybe admins can move it over a redirect without deleting, but users cannot, and it reads to me like the section is saying that moving over a redirect is an exception to the need for an admin. See the topic 3 above this one someone else with the issue. Monty84507:41, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
You were trying "to move another page over the redirect created by the first move". This isn't the same as moving a page back to where it was before, so falls outside the conditions listed at WP:MOR "If the new title already exists but is just a redirect to the old title". I read of another case recently (at WP:AN, I think) where a move could not be reversed easily because someone had added categories to the redirect page. This also needs an admin, because then the redirect has more than one line in its history. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:59, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Possible solution for the attribution problem with category renames?
How to handle interwiki links from other language versions in a page move
The help page does not give any information in regard to how to deal with interwiki links from other language versions after a page move in the English WP. While the links continue to work via redirect (unless double redirected), it is obviously a good idea to clean them up as well. However, such links are not displayed by "What links here", so it is easy to miss them. Also, some users may have problems to navigate foreign language WPs in order to update the interwiki links there. The question, if this is handled by bots already or if manual interaction is required, is not addressed in the help page so far. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 07:26, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
When not to move a page
I think it would be good to add a section, "When not to move a page", explaining:
An article should not be moved for the purpose of changing what the article is about. While a good name can help define what is relevant to an article, a move should not lead to the deletion of large portions of the article, nor should it reduce an otherwise notable article to a mere subsection. In such cases a new article should be created, making use of some relevant portions of the text in summary style (preferably with an attribution to the source article in the edit summary) to cover its topic at the desired level of detail.
Feature Request for "Moving over a redirect" WP:MOR
Since redirect categorization has become popular, we frequently see redirect pages with edit histories that consists only of the first redirect creation edit, followed by a redirect categorization edit. This disables the ability to move over redirect without approval. Could Wikipedia add a feature that allows editors to the redirect page to pre-approve any future move over a redirects? This could be a checkbox below the edit textarea for redirect pages that's labeled "Allow this page to be overridden by a move." If any editor to the page does not check this, then it can no longer be overridden by a move without administrative action. --Bxj (talk) 03:32, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
This would also be useful for when bots have fixed double redirects, or when the redirect target has been changed. As an alternative implementation, could move over redirect apply to any page that is currently a redirect and has never been larger then a certain number of bytes? Note, this page may not get enough traffic to get a good discussion, you may want to add an {{RFC}} tag or move it to one of the Village Pumps. Monty84515:48, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
I agree that the double-redirect fix would be useful. I've run into a couple of situations recently where the bot "fix" prevented appropriate moves. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:54, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm not certain, but I believe this would have to be implemented by the developers, which would mean you'd have to file a request on bugzilla. Best to ask on the technical village pump first.--68.247.168.81 (talk) 21:43, 16 December 2011 (UTC) (User:Aervanath while logged out)
Moving and talk pages
The software routine for moving pages moves both the article and the talk page. But it then makes the old talk page a redirect to the new one. Why does it do that? After all, if someone wants to comment about a redirect, they should have a talk page to put their comments on. In my view, redirecting a talk page should nearly never be done, and should only be done in very rare circumstances. Even worse, I've seen a user who say the move routine do this and conclude that no redirect should have its own talk page, and then proceed to redirect hundreds of talk pages - including ones with things like merge notices on them.
When you move an article that already has a talk page, there is a line "Move associated talk page" with a checkbox. If you uncheck it, the talk page will not move with the article. You can also write over a redirect's talk page even after it's been moved. I do think talk pages should be moved with their articles in most cases, but I agree there may be some exceptions. Station1 (talk) 08:11, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
You misunderstand. Of course I want to move the talk page. I don't want it to create a talk page redirect. There is nearly never a good reason for a talk page to be a redirect. D O N D E groovilyTalk to me02:35, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
I did misunderstand. The talk page redirect is desirable in cases where there are incoming wikilinks to the talk page. In other cases I agree it's not necessary but I don't see too much harm. It can always be overwritten if needed. Station1 (talk) 06:45, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
The said article is wrongly being moved to Oblivion (2013 film), despite multiple sources showing that the film is currently untitled and that Oblivion had been a considered title alone. I suggest a move protection for the article, and of course a move back to the original title. ~*~AnkitBhatt~*~ 12:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Is this a bug affecting only me, or do the instructions need to be updated from "leave a reason" to "ignore that broken box"? Kilopi (talk) 13:56, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Best thing to do is make a dummy edit. Hit the edit button on the pages new title and add <!--dummy edit--> anywhere on the page, and for the edit summary, enter "Dummy edit - reason for previous move was xxxx" and don't mark the edit as minor. After than, edit the page again, remove your dummy edit text, enter edit summary "remove dummy edit" and mark as minor. D O N D E groovilyTalk to me15:39, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
Still not sure what causes it, but looks to be browser related. Works as expected on my other browser, also works as expected in other language wikis. Kilopi (talk) 18:28, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
Fails with Opera v10.63 in enwiki. Works with Firefox v3.5.2 and with both browsers in dewiki. Not affected by changing skins or disabling gadgets. Kilopi (talk) 19:28, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I did not find a clarification about the applicability of WP:CSD#G6 to an article's move, neither in the db-template page nor in WP:MOVE (but such gibberish as "simple pagemove situation"). Has the sysop to proceed with {{db-move}} only on the grounds that some legitimate user requested the article to be moved? Or the sysop should apply the own discretion and bears the responsibility for the result? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:57, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
Sysops can only move pages when consensus exists, just like all their special tools. And they take responsibility for using that tool. G6 is about the physical way that pages are moved, say from Luis Suárez to Luis Suárez (disambiguation). Nothing about G6 changes how an admin can use hir tools. Achowat (talk) 19:32, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
Usually the move speedy delete would be used for boring ho-hum types of moves, things like misspellings and capitalizations. Anything more complex requires a post at Wikipedia:Requested moves. A db-move can be done to complete a move approved at requested moves, of course. Ego White Tray (talk) 00:58, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
What do you mean as "capitalizations"? Was the request [2] valid, because nothing but a capitalization was about to change? Or, since there exists no such guideline to which LF implicitly referred, it was invalid? Was deletion a valid sysop action, or a mistake? If a mistake, then in which form the request would be declined, were the sysop acting correctly? Note that {{db-move}} is universally destructive on the edit history, independently of its goals, and cannot be completely reverted without sysop's privilege. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 05:01, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
The use of db-move is generally acceptable when the change made is minor and uncontroversial. Misspellings and miscapitalizations are common examples of these minor problems. It looks like in this case the issue was later decided through the WP:RM process, which is the most accepted method if something is even slightly controversial.
In this case, there was nothing technically malformed about the db-move request. I don't think I would have completed the deletion and move, though, because the reasoning given sounds odd to me even without checking the relevant guidelines. So I would have declined the speedy delete, because sysops are personally responsible for all of their actions; we don't (or aren't supposed to) use our tools by request without injecting our own judgment. In this case the question didn't arise, because you removed the db-move tag before anyone deleted it.
Thanks for a so large reply. It is really polite, but… “much to learn, you still have, Dooku”. Let us examine not only action=history, but the log too.
00:06, 27 July 2012 Amatulic (talk | contribs) deleted page Haute tension (G6: Housekeeping and routine (non-controversial) cleanup)
And only after that,
06:34, 27 July 2012 Incnis Mrsi (talk | contribs) . . (27 bytes) (+27) . . (Incnis Mrsi moved page Haute tension to Haute Tension over redirect: Sentence case is not applicable to artworks' titles)
So, really it was me who removed the db-move? Was it actually "removed" via editing interface? Note that both the edit summary and figures "(27 bytes) (+27)", if to read action=history with really good attention, clearly indicate the contrary. Quite dangerous misconception for an administrator. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 21:17, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
Double redirects
I've removed the "{{clarify}}" tag here. I hope my new wording "will normally be fixed" reflects the reality that a bot is sometimes stopped for maintenance. I've also removed the "{{specify}}" tag. There are several bots that fix double redirects; some (all?) can be found by searching within Wikipedia:Bots/Status. I think this information is too technical for a general help page, so I've merely added a hidden comment. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:00, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the link to the list of bots. Just don't underestimate your fellow human. If you can grasp a technical matter, someone else can too. :-) If you've acquired knowledge about something, someone else might want to do the same. I have long wanted to know more about this process and I see no reason not to let others read about it. The more people who know how something works the more suggestions for improvement will be put forth. Everybody wins! I added the section "Double redirects and bots" and I hope other users will expand and improve it with what they know. --Bensin (talk) 22:29, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
Where's the template?
I type WP:move and I do not get a single link to the template I know that must exist and I am looking for. Where is the link? -DePiep (talk) 18:16, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
WP:move has a hatnote directing you to "see Wikipedia:Requested moves" which gives more-or-less complete instructions on the methods and templates used to request moves, whether controversial or not, whether moving multiple pages or not, and whether you want the template to create a section title and comment sections or not. But the primary template you're likely looking for is {{Requested move}} (shortcuts {{Move}} and {{Rename}}). Would it be helpful to link that template in the hatnote? Wbm1058 (talk) 02:08, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Section "Undoing a move" lacking instructions for technical request.
This relates to Christ (yes seriously, not exactly a low profile page). The wasteful example of a needless RM there now illustrates a weakness in "Undoing a move" section here - it doesn't address specifically what to do if (inadvertently in the case of the Christ move) the mover has "locked" the redirect by editing it. I suggest we add in something better than "Move page B to page A" i.e. directions and link as to how/where to submit a technical restore here. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:33, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
Does this page have any bearing as a policy or guideline? Does not seem to. So where is the actual policy/guideline about page moves? Thanks. History2007 (talk) 12:42, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
In my opinion, this move (which I understand can be upsetting to some people) should be something that can be speedily undone with a technical move request, under the criteria, "reverting a controversial speedy move". – Wbm1058 (talk) 03:31, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
You do need to be an admin to move a page without leaving a redir; but I did nothing about these because the request is vague. It just gives two page names, and no target is specified; there was certainly no mention that the redir should be suppressed.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems obvious to me that there is no reason for the null parenthetical disambiguation in the title Ayapa Zoque (). None of the other languages in Category:Mixe-Zoque languages use parenthetical disambiguation, and in any event, it doesn't appear to me that disambiguation is required. Perhaps you are unclear on whether the title should be Ayapa Zoque or Ayapa Zoque language (I'm speculating because you were vague about what was unclear to you). I don't believe that natural disambiguation is required either, and as kwami didn't specify any additional text for the title, assume wants it moved to Ayapa Zoque. That is the title on the infobox, after all. Now, I see a problem in that Tabasco Zoque and other titles redirect to Ayapa Zoque (), so if I fix Tabasco Zoque to redirect to Ayapa Zoque before moving Ayapa Zoque (), some bot may come along and "fix" my double redirect, but if I first move Ayapa Zoque () without leaving a redirect, then that will cause Tabasco Zoque to redirect to a red link. Of course, those can be fixed afterwards. What the heck, I'll just try moving it with the redirect, if that's the path of least resistance.
The page could not be moved: a page of that name already exists, or the name you have chosen is not valid.
Please choose another name, or use Requested moves to ask an administrator to help you with the move.
Do not manually move the article by copying and pasting it; the page history must be moved along with the article text.
Oh, well, apparently a robot's double-redirect fix means that moving by low-privileged editors is no longer possible. For the benefit of kwami, on the off chance that they're still monitoring this page, the proper place to request this technical move is WP:RM/TR. Post this over there:
I recently decided to take on the task of moving Technology in the Mughal Empire to Science and technology in the Mughal Empire. Unfortunately, I encountered a lot more trouble than I needed to because pressing enter equates to saving the move (see here). First I would delete the capital "T" and then prepare to enter "Science and" (while reinstating the capital "T" with a lower-case one). However, when I tried to press ⇧ Shift to capitalize the new title, I would accidentally press ↵ Enter, thus moving the page to a truncated title. I think the only real way to move a page should be to press the "Move page" button. FallingGravity (talk) 17:02, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Generally, Wikipedia pages are meant to explain Wikipedia policies and content, while Help policies are meant to explain how to actually do stuff (what keys to type, what buttons to push). So, Wikipedia moving should explain when and why to move while Help should explain how to do it. I don't think a merge is the answer here, but some editing to make the differing purposes clear maybe is. D O N D E groovilyTalk to me05:23, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Moving a page describes itself as a 'how-to' guide, and its third section is "How to move a page", so yeah, there is a great deal of overlap. I understand that WP: and Help: pages are meant to serve different functions, but I support the merge in the absence of a major edit to sort out the overlap. ~ Kimelea(talk)21:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
From a technical standpoint, this article has 26,291 bytes, the help page only 3,030 bytes, so it might be easier to cut and paste that into this and rename this article to that and create a new article here with what is left when you strip it down. In any case it is a pretty big job to separate the two functions. Apteva (talk) 05:16, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Apteva in that the help page has just over 3,000 bytes compared to this articles 26,000 it wpuld be a lot easier to just cut and paste the help page into the help section of this article and thus eliminate the need for the help page! Ecallow (talk) 12:26, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
I'd like to see this page lose its how-to portions. As Dondegroovily says, when there's a help page on the same topic as a WP:space page, the WP:space page should explain community consensus on what should be done, while the Help:space page should merely be about the technical side of actually doing it. Nyttend (talk) 20:02, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
I've boldly implemented a creative solution, which I believe answers the concerns raised in the above discussion. I'm hoping that there is consensus for it, but feel free to post issues which you might have with my solution here. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 16:21, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
Move button not appearing
Anyone else notice some pages not showing a move button, you know next to the watchlist button? It seems to be random for me; not showing up at Dragon Ball or Maximum the Hormone, but it does show at Ranma ½ and X Japan. None are move protected and I'm def not a new user, I've logged out and back in and nothing, so I'm kind of at a loss. Xfansd (talk) 00:29, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
Note that edit protection may be applied independently of move protection, and each may be set to different protection levels.
Also note that the protection templates do not have any protective effect, and should only be used on pages after they have been protected by an administrator. Not all protected pages have protection templates documenting their protection.
Oh thanks for taking the time to explain that to me. I should of read up on page protection instead of just assuming all pages that are move protected show it with protection templates. Although I do think they should have to show it. Xfansd (talk) 01:50, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
@Schwede66: It's not as simple as having a single line of history. That single line of history must be the creation of a redirect from a page move; and the page that it was moved to must also be the page that you're trying to move back. So, if Tom Weston had been moved to Thomas Crowley Weston, you would be able to move Thomas Crowley Weston back to Tom Weston. However, the redirect that you wanted to overwrite consisted of
#REDIRECT [[Tom Weston (disambiguation)]]
{{R from move}}
Hi, all. Is there any rule, when to leave the redirect after the move, or when to set it for deletion? Do the redirects from rename have any harm? Thanks. --Okino (talk) 19:45, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
It mainly depends upon how long the page was at the previous name. If it's been at the old name for some time - weeks or more - there may be established incoming links which will be broken by deleting the redir. But if it's just a few hours, and especially if an error was made in moving a page, resulting in the page being moved again, it's probably OK to del the redir. Remember that redirects are cheap, and the rules given at WP:CSD#Redirects should be considered; also those at WP:RFD. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:59, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
Incorrect information in information section
The information section that displays on the Special:Move page seems to have incorrect information. It says that talk pages will not be moved if the page is being moved to a different namespace. I just copied a page along with its talk page from my userspace draft to the mainspace just fine. Should this be changed? -24Talk21:31, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
@RGloucester:Working I'll be happy to help. Can you point me at any documentation or changelogs that can help show this change in the MediaWiki software. I want to see if more documentation (like the MediaWiki interfaces) need to be changed as well. Thanks, -24Talk13:44, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
Besides AN, there have been discussions (of varying length and participation) at WP:VPT, WT:CAT, WT:CATP and elsewhere. One thing that certainly needs to be explained/described is that simply moving the category page will not be enough - every page that is a member of that category will also need to be amended because unless that is done, they will still be members of the old category. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:10, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
@RGloucester and Redrose64: So what exactly happens when a category is moved? I'm guessing that only its description is moved and then an empty category is left but is a redirect made from the old category to the new one and do the pages get updated with the new category because of the redirect? Kind of hard to explain. I'll be doing some research and testing in the meantime. -24Talk04:08, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
A soft redirect is created (unless you're an admin and deselect "Leave a redirect behind"), which uses this message, see for example Category:Actors from Punjab. This page continues to list the pages categorised in the old category: the cat box at the bottom of the member pages is not updated. Clicking the cat link on one of the member pages takes you to the old cat page, where the page that you clicked from will still be listed; if you follow the link in the purple box to the new cat page, you may be puzzled to find that the page that you first clicked from is not listed. A manual cleanup is necessary: for example, some cat moves were recently performed by Graeme Bartlett (talk·contribs), see these twelve contribs, of which the first two were actual moves of two different categories, and nine of the other ten (that of 08:22, 3 June 2014 to Category:Geological tools excepted) were post-move cleanup. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:16, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
For these two moves I could have just as easily deleted and recreated the categories, but since I saw there was a move tab on the categories I though I would try it out. I still have one more category to change after the discussion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:15, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
So when using the move tab in a category is used the software takes these steps:
Moves the old category's description to the new category
Creates a soft redirect at the old category
At this point in time there is a soft redirect on the old category with the pages still in that old category (which makes the statement on the template false), the user then should make the category empty by changing all the categories to the new one. The new one then has the old category's description and the new pages. To summarize: the move tab only moves the description and places a redirect notice. Sorry to bother you all with this, it's necessary to get everything right before documentation is create. Thanks, -24Talk14:49, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Generally speaking, that's correct. It gets more complicated when moving a cat that is produced by a template, for example, one of the many stub templates.
Consider Category:Mountain Lakes geography stubs - this is currently under discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 June 2#Category:Mountain Lakes geography stubs. If you are the closing admin, and close it as "move to Category:Mountain Lakes, West Virginia geography stubs" (as suggested by the nom), you would use the "Move" tab on the cat page, and then you would look at the members of what has become the "old" category: there are about 250 articles, seven templates, plus a subcategory (Category:Upshur County, West Virginia geography stubs). Fixing the subcat is easy: you just edit it and change [[Category:Mountain Lakes geography stubs]] to [[Category:Mountain Lakes, West Virginia geography stubs]]. Then you might want to move the articles that are still in Category:Mountain Lakes geography stubs - but that cat doesn't appear in the wikitext for the pages, because it's built into each of the seven templates. You would edit those, changing |category=Mountain Lakes geography stubs to |category=Mountain Lakes, West Virginia geography stubs in each case, and in theory that would be all that is required. The template edits would put all their transcluding pages into the job queue, and within a few hours, all the categories would be sorted out.
Unfortunately, there was a change to the job queue software about a year ago, and although the transcluding pages will correctly show the "new" category at the bottom, they will not be listed on the "new" cat page but on the "old". A WP:NULLEDIT to each and every article in the cat will fix it, but that is not ideal. It might be necessary to rope in Joe's Null Bot (talk·contribs). --Redrose64 (talk) 15:25, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for clearing that up. I think we can start writing documentation starting with the categories section on this page and then going to some other Wikipedia pages (any ideas?) I'm going to go check the MediaWiki wiki and see if there is any other concerns or 'gotchas' that need to be addressed and any outdated documentation that needs to be corrected because the documentation should start as 'upstream' as possible. Thanks for your work Red. -24Talk17:19, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
I have updated the page with the new info. The category lead is updated and I moved the section about categories and updated it. Has any information been left out or is this page updated (and can I remove the tag at the top)? -24Talk18:58, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
@Makyen: I like your changes that you made with the lead section. To answer your question, does this belong in the lead, I think it doesn't. It was in the lead before I made my edits so I just updated the content but I did also ask the same question. To be honest, the lead is merely just a repeat of what is said in the individual sections. I think that it should be taken out. Any other thoughts? -24Talk19:48, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I had assumed that you left it in the lead because it was already there. The question becomes how much detail should be dealt with in the lead. The lead currently gives some details for normal page-moves, moving files, and moving categories. It is not clear to me how much detail we actually want in the lead for each, or even if it should break the different types out beyond a sentence. Usually, the lead is a brief summary of article content. As it currently stands, it provides more detail than is minimally needed in the lead for each type, but most of the information is useful.
I confess that before having been called here I didn't look at the page. Now I did and have a few questions to the Technical restrictions:
I don't understand what "which may be used as workarounds" is supposed to mean, perhaps "which show the title differently from the stored title"?
Why is there so much bolding?
Why is an example pictured for {{DISPLAYTITLE}} which would be the same for {{italic title}}, while the other could be used to achieve Ave Maria, WAB 6.
In a recent RM discussion, Gerda Arendt argued that moving the page would cause problems for external websites that link to it. With no hard redirect in place (the proposal is to have a disambiguation page there instead), this could be perceived as an error. My view is that this is just WP:LINKROT but the other way round from normal, and is simply part of the usual dynamics of the ever-changing Internet. I can see Gerda's point, but I don't think that we can really take this into account or else nothing would ever get moved. I don't think it should be our responsibility to manage non-Wikimedia websites. However, I can't find any Wikipedia policy or similar that even mentions this situation. Should something be written? What should our policy be? Bazonka (talk) 08:24, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
I am not against page moves at all, I move a lot and even initiated some requests. I try to be very careful when there will not be a redirect, and don't see any advantage for the readers by going through the effort of renaming and fixing, to end up disambiguating two (!) people - which could be done in a hatnote. All this effort (move discussion, now coming here): for whom? I mean people, not some rules such as (debatable and debated) Primary topic. "Primary" will depend on what time and who's looking. One user told me not to have heard the name of the composer before. Wikipedia is there to change that ;) - I made three more comments in the matter than I usually do (two that is). Stop. Let me edit articles. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:36, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
A dab page is a redirect though, albeit a soft one. Anyway, this is not the place to discuss the specifics of the Humperdinck case. I do partly sympathise with your general point but I don't think it's a big problem. What I want to discuss here is whether we should mention it in any Wikipedia policies. Bazonka (talk) 08:56, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Nope, it is not possible to move a page using just a URL. It is however possible using the API, but you'd have to write your own program to do that. I'm not aware of a tool for speeding up page moves. Graham8715:04, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
Change in Editing User.
Hello,
Please change the Wikipedia heading from Chetansynergos/sandbox to Borderless Access as it was wrong entered and the whole page belongs to Borderless Access. Please do the needful ASAP. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Borderless Access (talk • contribs) 09:31, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
If a woman gets married and has a page on Wikipedia, her page should be moved to the title containing her maiden name. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 16:25, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
Hello I started a page Ancient river and released I did not put a capital. I could not work out how to change it through all the guides, so I requested a deletion and then started a new page Ancient River. Is there a way to redirect this? As the new page is not showing up just the deleted page. Learning sorry. July 22 SeniahCSeniahC (talk) 08:16, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
It happens enough: a Help page is at an introductory level and a Wikipedia page with the same pagename is an advanced version. (We have two of these situations right now: Help:Searching and Help:Template need advanced versions WP:Searching and WP:Template. Compare Help:Pagename and WP:Pagename, amongst others.)
It's like moving a page, but it copies instead. (This might be called cloning a page?)
It's like forking/mirroring, but only for one page.
Export it, then import it back in?
Cut and paste with edit summary telling the source page?
Requests for moves seems like the wrong place to argue the merits of such requests. — CpiralCpiral23:59, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
That's a move, but I need a copy of the history, so that one and the same history is in two pages at once. Is that just wrong? If so the other option seems just as lame: cut and paste, but mention "forked from Help:X" in the initial edit summary. But if that's OK with you, it's OK with me. Thanks. — CpiralCpiral22:07, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
Not possible. Page history is a series of revisions; each revision happens to exactly one page and no more. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:58, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
That sounds like simultaneous revisions. I want what you say is possible, which is for "each revision to happen on exactly one page" at a time. So let me rephrase please: Is duplicating a history impossible? (And from there it would be separate.) Thanks. — CpiralCpiral01:32, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
Duplicating a history is *possible* through exporting and importing, but I can't think of any situation where it would be a good idea. It would cause people's edit counts to be inflated, for a start. Cutting and pasting is fine in this situation. Graham8701:58, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
Moving over redirect
An error is displayed when viewing a diff for a revision that has been deleted, or was the creation of a redirect that has been overridden by a page move, or has the id for a future revision that is yet to be made. The error no longer appears when the revision has been restored, or when a revision having the id has finally been made. When moving over a redirect, the overridden redirect is permanently removed from the database and cannot be restored. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 22:34, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
Order
When moving a page, the four edits (old page, new page, old talk page, and new talk page) can appear in any order in the user contributions. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 14:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
It's not specific to page moves. Edits and moves are listed in chronological order, except that with page moves, their timestamps are often the same to the resolution that MediaWiki uses (I don't know if it's the nearest second, the nearest tenth, or the nearest hundredth). When two edits (not just page moves) have identical timestamps (to that resolution), they are listed in random order on all lists - contribs, watchlist, page history, etc. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:06, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
