WikiIndex:Merge policy

WikiIndex: Merge policy — this meta page here on  describes the policy of 'merging' articles (or categories, templates, etc). Its purpose is not to explain the mechanism, as that is built-in function (found at Special:MergeHistory) of the MediaWiki software we use to power this wiki website. The process of actually merging can only be carried out by administrators and higher. However, anybody is free to nominate or request articles to be merged, with the inclusion of our template: Merge on its respective page (ideally, both pages should have the merge template added).

Why merge?
Quite simply, it will have been discovered that there are two (or more!) article pages which refer to the seemingly identical wiki site (or other wiki-related subject). Fundamentally, this could simply be an innocent duplicate article page, created in good faith, by the same or different authors.

How to request a merge
Edit the proposed article by adding template: Merge, at the top of its edit box. The merge template requires a qualifier to indicate the intended 'target' article (or category), and this is included after a 'pipe' within the double-curly brackets which are used to transclude templates.

The following example demonstrates how to use the merge template:

When NOT to merge
As touched on above, sometimes innocent but good faith mistakes can be made (on any wiki site, not just here on WikiIndex). The most common reason for mistakenly tagging for a merge is when a wiki site split from its original incarnation, and has changed host by way of forking (and instead of creating a new article for the new host, the editor may simply have updated the original wiki site article to the URLs of the new host!). The original wiki site, at its original host (even if now dead) should be preserved as its own article here (annotating its status if necessary as abandoned or dead), and using a hat-note template to point to any new host. Accordingly, this scenario would not require articles to be merged.

The correct procedure would be to ensure that each article page is appropriately named, using any 'identifier' (such as domain, host, etc) within brackets. If appropriate, a disambiguation page can be created to list the relevant wiki site articles.

Examples of how to name and identify two separate articles about the same wiki site which has moved to different hosting:
 * Your Wiki Site (Wikia) – for say a wiki site originally created on the commercial wiki farm known as Wikia
 * Your Wiki Site (Miraheze) – for say the same wiki site subsequently moved (forked) to the non-profit Miraheze wiki farm