Memory Alpha talk:Merging and splitting articles

Misplaced merge suggestions
In the past few weeks, several deletion suggestions appeared on MA:Vfd that were actually misplaced. The most recent one, for example, was Vaadwaur history and it was suggested even in the initial entry that this page should not be deleted, but merged with another page. Merge suggestions, however, do not belong on a page for deletions because, if done correctly, the resulting redirect is kept and the only necessary deletion is a temporary one to do the history merge - and that temporary deletion doesn't need to have consensus. This isn't the fault of the contributors who suggested these merges, of course - it's a fault of MA because we don't have a formal way to suggest page merges yet.

With that in mind, I created a template [see Template:Merge with], similar to those used on Wikipedia (just simpler, I don't think we need the overhead of 5 or six different templates at the moment). It is used with the name of the target page as a variable and looks like:

Notice ''It has been suggested that this article should be merged with TARGET PAGE. You can discuss this suggestion on the |talk page.''

All we need in addition to that is a guideline - I will put a suggestion on Memory Alpha:Merge. I think we can keep this simple for the moment and see if it works, then make it more formal later in case it doesn't work. -- Cid Highwind 14:14, 10 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Time
I don't think that the current policy statement that "after some time" the merge will take place is very useful. We should insert an exact figure after which consensus can be assumed, like 1 week or 2 as with most other "vote"-decisions. Kennelly 22:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed. --OuroborosCobra talk 22:05, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I also agree. I typically don't do a merge unless it's been brought up for at least a week and has been agreed upon. Speaking of merges, time to do some more! --From Andoria with Love 02:51, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * So, would one week then be acceptable to all? Kennelly 13:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge Lag?
Just wanted to post this so hopefully something can get done.

I've noticed that pages are often left with merge templates for months, even after discussion seems overwhelming in favor of the merge. Prime example: USS São Paulo (See thisFull list)

On the other hand, a lot of merges seem to be dismissed (or at least not explained), yet the template remains.

Could we please improve the process of merging to get stuff done? – Cleanse 07:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Merge all merge discussions onto one page?
As I said elsewhere, I think merges aren't getting the attention they deserve; they often seem to hang unresolved for a while. In my opinion, this is partially because they can be hard to find; they often involve obscure one-off-reference articles. The only way to find merge suggestions is with what links to the template, but that's not particularly useful because a person has to open up all the pages to see how the discussions are going. There's no way of telling at a glance if new comments have been posted.

As such, I suggest that we create a central page for Pages to be Merged. It would operate exactly like Pages for Deletion, with a similar process of adding the template, creating the discussion subpage etc. This proposal would also hopefully make it easier for administrators to quickly check up on all merge discussions and resolve them when discussion is complete. To make it simple, the rules of discussion would be identical to that of PfD, including time stipulations.

Successful merge proposals would be archived on the talk page of the newly-merged page, and unsuccessful ones on the page that was going to be merged. The end result would be the same (I think), but we'd have a nice shiny hub of merge discussion! :-) – Cleanse 11:08, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmm... the erroneous assumption that an admin has to come around and completely resolve these suggestions by himself might be what leads to the suggestions piling up in the first place - in fact, an admin is only necessary in step 3, the history merge. If there's consensus for a merge, anyone else might already do the content merge as outlined in this guideline (basically a thorough copyedit of the combined content of the pages to be merged), and then just request a history merge from some random admin.
 * Regarding a central discussion page where discussions are first moved to and later split from, I feel that this would only complicate the process - and thus lead to even less incentive to actually complete a merge.
 * As for bringing more attention to suggested merges, the following DPL might help. It shows up to ten pages that currently contain merge with:



uses=Template:Merge with count=10 namespace= ordermethod=lastedit order=ascending mode=inline inlinetext= &bull;


 * -- Cid Highwind 11:33, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Wording tweaks
I've added some wording tweaks and general definitions to hopefully clarify which template should be used when a split involves moving that info to an already existing page. While not a big or pressing issue, since only admins can preform merges, having these listed as splits should reduce the likelihood of the problem describe in the section above. - 16:48, June 17, 2012 (UTC)