Help:Moving a page
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General Overview
There are several reasons why you might wish to rename a page (one that you have found or created):
- The title has been misspelled.
- The title does not follow WikiCPA's naming conventions
- The scope of the article has been reduced, extended or otherwise changed.
The terms "rename" and "move" mean the same in this context. They just refer to different models for picturing the operation:
- rename: keep the page but give it another name; the page history is now attached to the new name; a new page with the old name is created which redirects to the new name and whose page history records the renaming.
- move: move the contents and the page history to a new page; change the old page into a redirect; change the page history into one that only records the renaming.
Since the system marks the page with the old name as new page, it applies the first of the two models.
Even though the pages in all namespaces have a "move" link, 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. To change the name of a category, one needs to change all category tags, and copy the editable part.
How to
Note that you have to be logged in to rename a page.
With the correct page displayed, click on the "Move" tab near the bottom of the page. You'll 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're doing, it's safest to say yes.
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)
Page histories
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're splitting a page into multiple topics. If you do, please include a note in the new pages's edit summary and talk page stating where you took the text from.)
The move itself is shown in the edit history of the page with the old title.
Moving redirect pages
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.
