Forum:How do I move pages and categories?

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Hello everyone - how does one go about changing the name of a page (etc)? Cos:

a) at least one page has a typo in the actual title (personfication of concepts should have another i in it). b) someone has set up a redirect from hymetusite to hymetrusite, which every source I can find plus my own memory tells me is wrong - hymetusite *is* the correct spelling. c) what takes precedence when a story is named after a character or place? (for example) we have a page named 'Celestial Toymaker' and another named 'The Celestial Toymaker (TV story)' but this doesn't seem to be standard policy - elsewhere we have 'Kroton (Companion)' and plain 'Kroton' (for the crystal eggbox dudes) which seems inconsistent. Just thought I'd mention it... --Gai-jin 13:10, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

as to b), you remember the accurate spelling. --***Stardizzy*** 13:45, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

(A) To change the name you just hit the move button and that should shift it all to your new spelling (I think the administrators can actually delete the pages we don't use).

(B) No idea what the policy is, the theory I've been working under is whatever came first gets to have the unedited name, the Krotons came first and more people are likely to search for Kroton (and meaning the crystaline people) rather than Kroton (the Cyberman who kept his humanity from the novels). Hence Kroton (Companion) gets the altered name...though really Kroton (Companion) probably should be something like Kronton (Cyberman) or something, though I guess Kroton (Companion) works also.

--Tangerineduel 13:39, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

the main Wikipedia will have something on that policy in their Style Guide. honestly, though, I don't consult. I use the same rule of thumbs as Tangerineduel when it comes to this. --***Stardizzy*** 13:46, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia has pages and pages of policy on naming conventions, the precise details of which are quite readily ignored by editors if they can build a consensus to stop the use of a particular ruleset. Basically it boils down to coming up with a consensus on any particular situation. However, the general rule of thumb is "the most common thing with a similar name is the one that gets the unmodified name." Personally, I think this would make the Cyberman Kroton the thing which should be unmodified — because he's got more appearances — but I understand giving preference to the televised instance over something derived from comics. Basically, though, if you strongly disagree with the way something is named, you should call for a formal discussion, then abide by the consensus of that discussion. Sure, obvious mis-spellings don't need to go through a big discussion, but if I really wanted to switch this Kroton thing, I'd really need to call for a discussion about it. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 10:58, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

changing category names

can you do? does anyone know how to do this? --***Stardizzy*** 14:01, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

The only I know of is to replace all links to the category with the name of another category, create the other category, and delete the original, as for some reason of which I have no idea whatsoever, category pages cannot be truly moved. Crazy developers... ~ Ghelæ -talk-contribs 15:58, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Archivist's notes

I'm hesitant to call this a "policy changer", because I don't think the discussion ever really came to a conclusion on things, even with respect to the narrow question of proper disambiguation for the various Krotons. It does, however, tell readers how to change the name of an article.

As to changing the name of categories, no, there's no way to do that, even at the admin level. Changing the names of categories is, manually, laborious, as Ghelæ outlined. With a bot, the process is much easier, and so quick that it kinda feels like your just changing the name of the category. But the bot's still just automating the manual process of:

1. Create new cat
2. Remove old cat from each page
3. Add new cat to each page
4. Delete old cat. (Or, if your bot isn't an admin, recommending the old cat for deletion.)

It's probably best that it's so hard, though. Otherwise the category tree structure would be much less stable. Plus, I'm not sure it'd be a great idea for server load if you were able to keep a redirect around from the old cat name to the new cat name, like you can when you move an individual page.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 21:38:52 Tue 31 May 2011