L5r:Merging

Merging is a fundamental aspect of how articles are developed and reformed in the L5R Wiki. A "merger" is a manual (non-automated) process by which two existing but similar (or redundant) pages are united under the same name.

Reasons to Merge
There are several good reasons to merge a page:
 * There are two or more pages on exactly the same subject.
 * There are two or more pages on related subjects that have a large overlap. The L5R Wiki is not a dictionary; there doesn't need to be a separate entry for every concept in the universe.  For example, "Ancestors' Shrine" and "Reincarnation" can both be explained in an article on Ancestor worship.
 * If a page is very short and cannot or should not be expanded terribly much, it often makes sense to merge it with a page on a broader topic (sometimes, however, it makes more sense to leave a short page as it is, especially in the case of people about whom not much is known).
 * If a short article requires the background material or context from a broader article in order for readers to understand it.

You may find that some or all of the information to be merged is already in the destination page. That's fine; you can feel free to delete the redundant information and only add the new stuff. If there's no information to be added to the destination page, you can note in your edit summary on the source page (as you are turning it into a redirect) that there was nothing to be merged (or that the source page was entirely redundant with the destination).

Redirects
Merging should always leave a redirect in place. Even if it seems rather pointless or obscure, leave it in place. Superfluous redirects don't harm anything, and are sometimes helpful. Other websites may have made links to the old page title, so we'll want to redirect incoming visitors to the merged page. We don't want people accidentally creating a new page under the old title, not knowing that the merged page exists. Redirects also show up in search results, helping people who might be looking under the "wrong" title to find the page that they are looking for.

How to merge pages
If you are uncertain of the merger's appropriateness, you should propose it on the affected pages. After sufficient time has elapsed to generate consensus or silence, you may perform the merger or request that someone else do so.

Proposing a merger
To propose a merger of two or more pages, place the tag   at the top of each page. It should appear like this:

If you know which page should remain, use   on that page (including one instance for each of the pages that should be merged into the destination page), and   on each of the pages that should be merged into and redirected to the destination page. Applying these templates relieves the merging editor from having to decide which way to merge, and causes both/all "Discuss" links to lead to the talk page of the destination page (instead of each page linking to its own talk page). These templates will appear as:

and

Performing the merger

 * 1) Open the source and destination pages in two separate windows.
 * 2) Cut/paste the source page into the destination page.
 * 3) Add  "#REDIRECT PAGENAME"  to the source page.
 * 4) Preview and edit the destination page until it looks good and consistent.
 * 5) Save both, and note the merger (including the page names) in the edit summaries.

Alternative version
Simply dumping the text from one page onto another is progress, because it puts all of the information on the same topic on the same page. This, however, seldom results in a smooth-flowing article. Fixing that may require a great deal of time and rewriting. If you can do that, terrific! Future readers will greatly benefit from your contribution. If you don't have the time or expertise to do so, please tag the article for attention with a cleanup tag.