Wikipedia:Section move



A section move is the act of moving a block of content from one page to another. It's a mix of WP:MERGE and WP:SPLIT. A section move might be performed when material is off-topic on one article, but would fit the topic of another.

When to perform a section move
You should perform a section move a page has content that would be better suited on a different article in Wikipedia. If it's already on that article, you should delete the duplicate information or start a discussion. If the two pages are similar you should consider Merging the two articles.

Example
For an example see /Page A and /Page B.

Step 1: Create a discussion
Skip to step 5 if making a bold section move. Create a discussion on the talk page of the page from which the content is to be split. Include what sections are to be split and what the new page name should be. Example:

Step 2: Add notice
Use  for the page you are removing content from and add   to the page you are adding content to. You may want to contact contributors with.

Step 3: Discuss
The discussion takes place on the talk page of the page the content is being removed from. In many cases, a hybrid discussion/straw poll is used, but remember that polling is not a substitute for discussion. Example formatting:

Step 4: Close the discussion and determine the consensus
Close the discussion and determine the consensus by using the following:

Step 5: Move the content
If the consensus was to move the content, then you can do so.

It is recommended to make a draft/sandbox with the new pages to reduce server load and to make sure the pages are readable during the process.

To perform the merger you may just copy and paste from one article to another, also copying over references. If some references do not copy over, you may need to copy them from elsewhere in the article as they may have been reused.

When copying or moving content within Wikipedia, attribution is required. This is done by (at a minimum) providing an edit summary at the destination page stating where the material came from and providing a wikilink to the source article. Here is a sample edit summary:. Please see WP:Copying within Wikipedia for more information. It is also a good idea to provide a reason for the removal of the content in your edit summary at the source article.

Use Special:WhatLinksHere to detect any inline links that need to be changed in the destination article.

If the material is still useful to include in the original article, you might create a shorter version and include at the top.

Step 6: Clean up
During clean up you should check for any spelling errors. A template can be added to the talk pages of both the source and destination articles. You should also remove the notices about the discussion if they were not removed already. You may also want to include on some sections that were moved.

Templates
See Template:Section move templates for a table of relevant templates for section moving. The most prominent ones are and, which go on the source and target articles respectively.

Progress
A list of articles that have been tagged for consideration for splitting are at Category:Articles to have a section moved.