Help talk:Procedures

Merge procedures

I propose to add a new Help:Procedures#Merge section. Merging content is a complex operation and the only mention of Template:Merge in this help article is in Help:Procedures#Remove an entire page so far. The latter covers only one case and does not guide towards the w:Wikipedia:Merging help (linked in the template itself). Two more cases I see to cover in the new section:

1. Regular: merge of a section from article A to a merge target section in article B (or A)
2. Complex: merge of a fork B of an article A, after partly rewritten/restructured.

Obviously, the more complex the improvements/changes to a forked article, the more difficult it is to merge back, while keeping the article history intact and transparent. I will start to jot down ideas in User:Indigo/Sandbox#Draft Help Merge first, draft later.

Are there objections to create it in general, or suggestions to place it elsewhere? --Indigo (talk) 18:49, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't think we should use the same template for merging two separate parts and applying changes specifically meant for one part because these are entirely different things. Perhaps we could write a Python script to apply the edits from a user space article to a main space article automatically individually. --Larivact (talk) 18:57, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

+1 to add merge checklists.

Drafts must be merged as if the edits were completely new, i.e. in accordance with ArchWiki:Contributing#The 3 fundamental rules.

The etckeeper example in User talk:Larivact#Help procedures explains the reason, I appreciate Larivact's work, but edits like [1] and [2] shouldn't be allowed (they already aren't).

Of course a merge script would help; for simple cases where no changes to the original article have been made while the draft was being edited (and the draft started as a 1:1 copy of the source), an admin can already use Special:MergeHistory (mw:Help:Merge history).

-- Kynikos (talk) 03:58, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Frankly speaking, I don't believe that any "Merging procedure" would really help (even Wikipedia's one). Usual case (as for me): there are two blocks of text similar in general, but quite different in specific details, and I have to invent third text based on that two. I.e. it is kind of art in some sense…

Anyway, six years have passed. @Indigo, what do you think? Should this topic just be closed, or do you still have some strong opinion on that?

By the way, our Template:Merge description has link to Wikipedia:Merging which contains Wikipedia:Merging#Procedure. Maybe just create "Merging" section with "See Wikipedia:Merging#Procedure" phrase only?

— Andrei Korshikov (talk) 22:18, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

Rename a category

1. I think step 3 can be removed because the bot will update the interlanguage link regularly.
2. It should be noted in step 4 that Table of contents and its localized version should not be updated.
   Also, the !/Table of contents/ filter needs to be used in the Wiki Monkey method of step 4 to avoid updating Table of contents and its localized version.

-- Blackteahamburger (talk) 05:50, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't agree with (1)—bot doesn't do it every five minutes.

About (2)—hmm… What's wrong with editing Table of contents? I mean, I never had such idea, and I know it is updated by a bot, but in principle—why not? I.e.—should it be noted indeed? — Andrei Korshikov (talk) 20:06, 17 August 2025 (UTC)