Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Merging WikiProjects

The English Wikipedia has a couple thousand WikiProjects, many of which are inactive, defunct, test pages, or too small to be viable. This page outlines a simple process for merging WikiProjects.

Establish consensus for a merger

• Post notices on the talk pages of the parent project and the project you are proposing to convert. Please don't surprise another group of editors by moving their pages without any notice. Keep the discussion in one of the two talk pages, with one of the notices being a link to the discussion on the other. Allow ample time for participants in a less-active group to object.

Things to consider are:

• Is the project being still active?
• How many participants are there?
• What overlap is there in article scope? (This can be determined using the category intersection tool)

Generally speaking, if the merge seems appropriate, then you can proceed if either of the following is true:

• There is active agreement from the affected groups.
• There has been no response from the affected group(s), and it has been more than a month since you proposed the merge.

For example, if you want to merge WikiProject Tulips and WikiProject Lilies into WikiProject Plants, then you can proceed if:

• Everyone agrees, or
• Nobody objects after a month.

If one group supports (or doesn't object) to the merger but another does not, then proceed only with those groups that have not objected. If the 'target' (the intended bigger group) objects, then the proposed merge cannot happen.

Find and redirect all the project pages

If you want to preserve separate pages, then see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task forces#Converting existing projects to task forces.

1. Redirect the project page (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Tulips) to the larger group (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants).
2. Archive everything on the smaller group's talk page (e.g., Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tulips).
3. Redirect the now-empty talk page (e.g., Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tulips) to the larger group (e.g., Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants).
4. Wikipedia:Move talk page archives.
5. Check for subpages and archive/move/redirect them as needed. Use Special:PrefixIndex to check for pages. Use Special:WhatLinksHere on each subpage to find any links that need to be updated. Most subpages can simply be redirected (e.g., WikiProject Tulips/Assessment can be redirected to Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Assessment). Some, such as lists of participants, may need to be merged.

Banner template and categories

The following assumes that the task forces of the moved project are not being preserved and that the moved project is not being converted to a task force itself. If either of these are not the case, follow the instructions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task forces#Converting existing projects to task forces instead.

1. Remove the smaller project's banner template (usually {{WikiProject NAME}}) from any talk pages that already have the larger project's banner
   • Unless the number of pages is very small, you will probably want to request a bot to carry this out
   • Or if you are comfortable with these tools, you can use Petscan to build a list of talk pages in both WikiProject categories and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Javascript Wiki Browser to remove the extra one
2. Redirect the smaller project's banner to the larger project's banner.
   • Remember to link to the discussion that shows consensus for merging WikiProjects in the edit summary
   • Remember to fix any double redirects created as a result.

Categories

Merge/redirect the banner templates before you try to deal with the categories.

1. Find all the categories that the merged-away groups have used. Generally, these are named something like Category:WikiProject Tulips or Category:WikiProject Tulips articles.
2. Any categories from the converted project which are empty should now be eligible for speedy deletion under either the empty category (C1) criteria for speedy deletion. Edit the category pages and add {{db-catempty}} to the top.

To do: Verifying that all the categories are working
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Check the categories on all the pages you moved or redirected, to make sure that they are not using a now-obsolete category (e.g., Category:WikiProject Tulips pages. Make sure that automated quality assessment statistics are being generated correctly. If |TF_n_ASSESSMENT_CAT = Tulips articles is set for the task force, then categories of the type Category:FA-Class Tulips articles will be generated. Bring all these categories into a parent category Category:Tulips articles by quality, and categorise it under Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments. Assessments will be logged at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Tulips articles by quality log and overall statistics at User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Tulips, which is transcluded on Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Tulips articles by quality statistics. See Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot for more information.

Links and directories

1. Remove the old Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory entry.
2. Removed the old Article Alerts entry (if one exists).
3. Remove the old Hot Articles entry (if one exists).
4. Remove the old Popular pages config (if one exists).
5. Update other project templates. Redirect, merge, or update existing userboxes, welcome and invitation message templates, and other project related templates.
6. A bot should handle double redirects, but after a day or so, you may want to make sure that obvious links, such as WP:WPTULIPS, are pointing at the correct page.