Wookieepedia Help:Moving a page

Note that you have to be logged in to rename a page this way; regarding the set preferences:

With the correct page displayed, click on the "Move" tab near the top of the page. You will be asked for a new name for the page, and given the option to also move the page's talk page. NOTE: Unless you know what you are doing, it is safest to say yes.

From MediaWiki 1.5 the reason for the move can be given, like an edit summary.

Click the "move page" button and the page will be renamed to the new title. The old title will become a redirect page, so any links to the old title will still go to the new page. However, note that double redirects (pages that redirect to the original page), will not automatically follow to the new page, so you will have to refer them manually (as explained below)

The "move page" function keeps the entire edit history of the page, before and after the move, in one place, as if the page were always named that way. So, you should never just move a page by cutting all the text out of one page, and pasting it into a new one; old revisions, notes, and attributions are much harder to keep track of if you do that. (But you may have to if, for instance, you are splitting a page into multiple topics. If you do, be sure to include a note in the new page's edit summary and talk page stating where you took the text from.)

A page that is a redirect can be moved like any other page. This is however not advised while it has the same detrimental effect on page history as copy-pasting content to a new page, and making the old page a redirect: when moving a redirect page to a new page name, the redirect on the old page (now directing to the new redirect page) will have to be changed in order to avoid double redirects. So the content of the old page will no longer redirect to the page containing the history of that old page. The only effect is that the whereabouts of the page history of the old page (now seemingly a "recently created page") are a bit trickier to find, while on the other hand the new page has a history attached to it not clarifying why it would need to be a redirect page.

If a redirect page does not redirect to the page it would need to be redirecting to, the only viable strategy that respects page histories is to adapt the redirect on that page, without moving the page.

If the new title already exists but is just a redirect to the old title, with just one line in the page history, the creation of the redirect, then you can rename the page. The most common case in which this applies is that of re-renaming a page back to its original name. As mentioned, this works only if the redirect that was automatically created in the first renaming, has not been edited.

The result is that the history of the page is preserved (note that you may have to refresh the history page on your browser), but without any sign of the two moves. The edit history of the page with the intermediate title shows the latest move only. The information about the first move (including user name, date and time) is lost: it is no longer in any page history or on any watchlist or Related Changes page, and not even in User contributions; only if the first move has been recent enough, then it is still available in the Recent Changes; how long depends on the edit activity on the site; e.g. one may be able to retrieve the edit lines of the last 2000 edits, which may cover months or just a few hours. To avoid loss of information, copy the edit line concerned to one of the talk pages. This has to be done before the second move, using the page history of the page with the original name; if the second move is soon enough after the first move, it can also be done afterwards, using Recent Changes.

The information about the second move is more complete in the Recent Changes than in the edit history of the page with the intermediate title: it mentions "B moved to A over redirect".

More moves back and forth are possible, and always the page history of the current title does not show any moves, and that of the other title only contains the edit line of the latest move. There is no record at all of a "move war" (except again, on Recent Changes) unless documented on the talk pages.

Earlier there was a bug, which has been fixed but not retroactively, as follows:

Administrators can move a page, deleting an existing page with a name equal to the new name of the moved page, in one step.

If the new title already exists and is not just a redirect to the old title, with no history, and you are not an administrator, the wiki will tell you that you cannot rename the page. You will either have to manually merge the two pages, or if there is 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.

Administrators can protect pages from moves. If a page is protected from moves only, the "Move this page" link will not be available. In this case, you can ask that an administrator move it for you, or you can manually move the page, by copying the contents to the new page and redirecting the old page to the new page. However, this is generally not recommended, and users are asked to request the moves instead.

Pages that are protected from editing are automatically protected from moves.

Redirects to redirects are not automatically followed (this prevents infinite loops and spaghetti linking). Always check the What links here for your page, and if there are multiple levels of redirects, go fix the links to point to the new location directly. But this can be troublesome because your new moving might be reverted soon. Take some time to make sure there is no objection to your moving; always check the talk page first.

Avoid moving a page while the edit box of the corresponding Talk page is open: when you hit "Save page" you overwrite the redirect to the new talk page (you do not get the usual warning that the page has been edited while your edit box was open) and get a duplication of the contents of the talk page, with your latest addition added to the old instead of the new one.

It is useful to copy the message "Page ... moved to ..." to the new talk page, especially if there has been discussion about the name of the page.

Moving a watched page does not show up on the watchlist; after the move both the old and the new name are watched.

Normally, to undo a move from page A to page B, simply:

The software requires that, however, the redirect be pointing to the page you are moving it from. Therefore, if a vandal moved Page A to Page B to Page C, you would have to:

This does not work: .

If page A has subsequently been edited, or the move software is behaving weirdly, only an admin can sort things out:

Some large projects have a separate page (called "Requested Moves", or something like that) specifically for requesting help with these (and also for discussing potentially contentious) moves.

"Move wars" are highly unproductive, and leave vast numbers of pointless redirects littering the place, which some poor soul will have to fix.

To swap pages A and B, including history:

Again, some large projects have a separate page (called "Requested Moves", or something like that) specifically for requesting help with these (and also for discussing potentially contentious) moves.