Help talk:Moving a page

Initial text adapted from en:Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page --Maveric149 03:46, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

---

Well I tried the suggested steps in swapping pages and I lost the page history. I wanted to swap the en:Piper at the Gates of Dawn which was the real article with en:The_Piper_at_the_Gates_of_Dawn which was the redirect since the redirect name is the correct name. So, following the steps:

1. moved en:The Piper at the Gates of Dawn to en:The Piper at the Gates of Dawn SWAP
2. deleted en:The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
3. moved en:Piper_at_the_Gates_of_Dawn to en:The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Well, the page history for en:The Piper at the Gates of Dawn now just contains the auto comment made when I did the first page move. RedWolf 05:17, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I see 14 edits ranging from May 2003 to February 2004. Could you try forcing a reload? We seem to have caching issues with history and recentchanges that aren't fully resolved yet. --Brion VIBBER 08:16, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I forced a page reload in Mozilla 1.6/Mac but still only had the one comment as noted above (I had tried that last night as well). I tried the page in Safari and the 14 history changes appeared. So, back to Mozilla, cleared the cache and reloaded the page and now I see the 14 history changes. Thanks for the info on the caching issue. RedWolf 01:09, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

---

Would it be worth having a seperate section of reasons for using this mechanism? It would be really great to be able to point users to a page that said "do this because of all these reasons" rather than "do this because we told you to". (OK, so it does give some reasons, but not all of them.) I'm too tired to write it all out properly right now, but it would be something along the lines of:

You should always rename a page rather than using copy and paste because:

• It's easier! The software does the actual moving for you, and even turns the old page into a redirect to the new one.
• Talk pages stay in sync Unless you tell it not to, or there's another talk page there already, the software will move the article's talk page to match its new title.
• The edit history is retained If you copy and paste text, it is no longer possible to see who edited that text when, because those edits didn't happen to the same article. If you rename a page, however, the entire history remains intact, giving previous editors the credit they deserve.
• It is easily reversible If a page is renamed in error, the software will allow it to be renamed back to the old name, even though that page will exist (as a redirect). This is very tidy, since the erroneous name will now be a redirect with no edit history, and may be deleted with no loss if that redirect will not be useful.
• People's watch lists will be updated If you turn a page that someone has on their watch list into a redirect, they may not notice, and will not then see edits on the new page. If you rename the page, however, the new page will automatically be added to their watchlist.
• It will show up as a move on "recent changes" OK, so you could put this in your edit summary if you remembered, but it's nice to have it automatically having a consistent label, right?

I think there may be more, but my brain is rapidly turning to cheese... IMSoP 02:53, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC) [NB: localtime=BST=UTC+01:00; hence cheeseheadedness]

done --Brett Wuth (talk) 20:30, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Cannot move pages, apparent login issues?

While actively logged in, I receive the following error message whenever I try to move a page:

Not logged in

You must be a registered user and logged in to move a page.

Logging in (again) doesn't help, and no matter what I do I can't get move to work. --Wclark 03:04, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

must be something with that machine, since i can move pages just fine from where i am now.--Wclark 04:44, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

odd. now it works on my original machine as well. whatever; it works.--Wclark 14:30, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Why not fix up the links?

It seems to me that there should at least be an option to fix up the links when a page is renamed, instead of the re-direct method. Was this considered? Was it rejected due to technical (performance) reasons or was the objection philosophical? -- Godfrey Lee

Images

Why does the move tab appear on images if they cannot be moved? - Omegatron 17:09, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

Minimum account age to move pages?

When I try to move a page (while logged in), it tells me that my account is too new. Shouldn't this article mention what the minimum age is? --69.81.72.209 23:08, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What is the minimum account age to move pages??? - Jamesedmo 12:23, 18 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Someone was asking about that here too. Age of the user's account is a bit of an obscure trust metric, but I think it must have been introduced (only on wikipedia?) to tackle some particularly troublesome page moving vandalism by people creating new accounts. Don't know what the actual limit is. Maybe it's deliberately not clear.

It's not a big hurdle though. If you're a new user who is interested in moving pages, you'll just have to suggest the move on the talk page or at Wikipedia:Requested_moves, so that somebody else does it. If you are not a new wikipedia user, well then what are you doing with a shiney new user account? -- Harry Wood 13:35, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

It says here that four days must have passed since the registration: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/nubio/view.php?id=13

85.217.139.218 21:44, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Admins only

Any way of setting it up just to allow admins to move pages ?

Title conflict

I ran into a problem this afternoon that I wanted to write a biographical article on one person with a certain name, when there was already an article with that name. This got me inot a mess. The correct procedure appears to be as follows: 1. Rename (move) the existing article, giving it a longer title. 2. After renaming, follow the redirect link back to the original page; if may be necesary to search for the article under the original title to get this link. 3. Edit that page and convert that page from a Redirect page into a disambiguation page by inserting the template for that. 4. Add the title of your new proposed article to the disambigation page and Save it. The new title will be a red link. 5. Click that link and write your new article.

I think the above procedure should be given on the 'moving a page' help article, and perhaps allso on one about disambiguation. May be it is there, and I have not found it. If not, I would suggest that some one who knows about such things should put it in.

There is something that prevents my logging in here. My username is Peterkingiron. 213.48.83.132 00:47, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I cannot find this button!

It might be because of the fact that this page is out of date (that should be fixed) but I cannot find the option of moving/renaming a page! The description is impossible to follow, since (to my knowledge) there is no quickbar in the current version of Wikimedia Commons. I would really like some help, and somebody might be able to explain this, but maybe it would be timesaving to directly change the pagename (yourself). Here's the file: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Anatahan.jpg This name already exists and should be changed to "Anatahan_3.jpg" (since Anatahan_2 already exists). Could somebody please take the time to fix this mistake? Maybe instead of discussing it with me, because the chances are that I don't understand your explanations either (english isn't my first language). Thanks in advance! 62.195.254.170 18:45, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

A page can not be moved if it is in the image or category namespace. To change the name of an image, one needs to upload it again, and copy the image description.--Patrick 22:44, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Mass moves

Is it possible to automate moving a series of related pages?

For example, I restructured my wiki so that one of the categories is now a namespace. I would like the articles belonging to the deprecated category to all be moved to the namespace, but currently I only know how to do this by renaming every individual page. I suppose I could use a SQL operation on the database but I don't know if there any MediaWiki pitfalls associated with this, i.e. if I select a set of records and add the prefix to their names, is that going to cause other things to break?

Cleanup?

I was thinking about translating this page into another language, but since it's tagged for cleanup, I'd rather fix the original first. Translating a supposedly substandard document seems silly to me, and a proper cleanup is usually so substantial that it makes it hard to identify all the changes for the purpose of updating a translation based on a pre-cleanup version.

I notice that the article was tagged for cleanup in September, 2004, and that Patrick, who added it, still feels it is justified as of July, 2006. I'd love to help fixing it, but I'll need to know more than "it's broken". I'll leave this message here rather than on Patrick's user talk, so that others may point out deficiencies as well.

—LX (talk, contribs) 06:31, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

In 2004 I did not tag the page for cleanup, I added a template that calls another template to which someone else later added the cleanup tag. In 2006 I removed one of the two cleanup tags, I do not claim that the remaining one is justified.--Patrick 00:05, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I see. Sorry for the misunderstanding, and thanks for clearing that up. —LX (talk, contribs) 19:32, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Move function question

Which version of MediaWiki had the move function first?? --WiganRunnerEu 18:58, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Check for double redirects

When you move a page, you are provided with a link to Whatlinkshere:Newpage or whatever to check for double redirects. Isn't this a mistake? Wouldn't a link to Whatlinkshere:Oldpage be better, because then you can see if any pages link to the old page as a redirect, thus creating a double redirect. 82.32.73.13 19:24, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The old page's Whatlinkshere data makes it clear that the redirects are double. If you look at the new page, you see only single redirects. --Smack 18:13, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that's my point. If you look at the old page's Whatlinkshere and see any redirects, you know they are double redirects (because the old page now redirects to the new page). If you look at the new page's Whatlinkshere, you have no way of telling if any redirects are double. The thing is, the move page summary box links you to the NEW page's whatlinkshere, not the old page's. 138.38.32.86 14:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC) (same author as first post)

Category updates when moving a page?

Hello, I recently moved a page in my wiki. Everything worked as expected except that the category page did not update correctly. The page I moved is NOT in the category namespace. For instance, imagine a category called Category:Namecategory. I moved a page called Oldname to a page called Newname. The text copied correctly but Category:Namecategory still listed the page Oldname and did not list the page Newname. This happens despite the fact that in the bottom of Newname it correctly copied [[Category:Namecategory]]. Any help appreciated. Kdewalt 00:19, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Subpages

Am I correct in understanding that subpages, such as the archives of a talk page, are not automatically moved along with a page move? Shouldn't there be a warning about that on Help:Moving a page? --Ytrottier of Wikipedia

Done.--Patrick (talk) 08:24, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Is this really up to date?

I see that this page is kind of "updated" from time to time, and I wonder why the info differs so much from my actual experience, for example

Even though the pages in all namespaces have a "move" link, a page cannot be moved if it is in the image…

and

The information about the first move (including user name, date and time) is lost…

∴ Alex Smotrov 04:26, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

User page

Is it possible to change a username by moving a User page? Bob the Wikipedian 21:22, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

No.--Patrick (talk) 22:47, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Where is there a "move button"???

I would like to rename a photo, but I cannot find a button named "move". What can i do? --Hdamm 12:12, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

You can't rename images or categories. The only thing you can do is re-upload it to a new name and delete the old one. --Erwin(85) 12:18, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

1. Why don't the "Help:Moving a page" instructions say images are an exception? It's very misleading.

2. And why are images an exception? Motacilla 14:20, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Images can be moved with the movefile right, which is usually found in the sysop group, as well as some other groups enabled on some wikis, such as the file mover groups on enwp or commons. Ajraddatz (Talk) 14:22, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

suppressredirect

I see at w:Special:ListGroupRights, that bots and admins can "Not create a redirect from the old name when moving a page". How is this done? Od Mishehu 08:36, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Why Create Re-Directs when Moving?

If I have a link Felines and it turns out much of the article discusses house cats, it makes sense to rename Felines to House Cats. But now, Felines is a mere re-direct. No, let's say I have a prior article on Pets. Pets linked to Felines. Not all Felines are House Cats. Some Felines are dangerous and not good pets.

Now, what happens is my article on Pets links to Felines, and Felines re-directs to House Cats. Now, let's say I want an article on Felines. So, I write all about lions and tigers, etc. This is not relevant to Pets. Sure, I could link to House Cats within the Felines article, but it does not help readers of Pets to stay on topic. They make a pit-stop to an article loaded with irrelevant information.

This problem could have been handled, I think, by making a move simply change all the links that referred to the original name. That way, when I re-named Felines to House Cats, all my other articles would be changed where they reference Felines. All instances of Felines would now be House Cats. No editing for me to do.

Why is it that it was not designed to work this way? It seems the obvious thing to do, but I am sure there is a good reason. If you were in the scenario I described above, what would be the most efficient way to handle the move under the existing scheme that MediaWiki uses?

As for your proposal, see bugzilla:15622#c5. More generally: Don't delete redirects. --Nemo 20:54, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

can't find move button on my page

i can't find this move button anywhere? i need to rename http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Wat_Pha_Sorn_Kaew to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Pha_Sorn_Kaew

can someone tell me where to find the move button? is on on a menu or somewhere on the page?

thx steve

If you look under the "More" drop-down menu, next to "View history" I think, the "Move" option should be there. --Big iron (talk) 16:20, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

need help moving a page

Hi I can't move Chippenham Park Fc to Chipenham Park F.C. as teh latter has been deleted? Everytime i try i get the following warning:

You cannot move a page to this location because the new title has been protected from creation

any help would be great.

Thanks

Moving a page from another Wiki

Is there a way to move a userspace page from another Wiki here to meta that preserves its page history? I realize I could just copypaste the thing, but I feel its origins are important. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:01, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Can't find "Move" button in mobile view.

When I swith to Mobile view, the tabs at the top of the page go away, except "Article" and "Talk". The same goes for the "Add link/Edit links" that I am used to seeing at the bottom of the list of interwiki links in the left sidebar. In fact the left sidebar goes away. I do see a few icons for "languages" (the interwiki linke), watchlist, history, and editing, and in Advanced Mode a menu with some other items (such as access to the wikidata item, which makes up for "add link/Edit links) but still no "Move" function.

This matters because some users on our wiki (iawiki) work from mobile devices and make cut-and-paste moves, which makes work for the administrators: merging histories.

Any advice? Thanks! Tortoise0308 (talk) 14:39, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 March 2024

Please move this page m:help:Moving a page to its complete equivalent on MediaWiki. Network-charles (talk) 05:51, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Done. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 18:33, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Great work, @Pppery. Network-charles (talk) 04:18, 29 March 2024 (UTC)