Help:Moving Pages

Moving a page, the same as renaming it, is possible for any article, category or image on Grand Theft Wiki.

Normal users cannot move the page themselves, so you should add {{move}} to the top of the page. This will make the page be listed in Category:Merge, and a staff member can come along and move it.

There are several reasons why you might wish to rename a page:

• the title has been misspelled, or does not have correct capitalization.
• the title does not follow the wiki's naming conventions
• the scope of the article has been reduced, extended or otherwise changed.

You should never copy-and-paste the content from one page to another. Always wait for staff to move the page, as this will preserve the history of who edited the page.

Do I need to fix other links that point to the renamed page?

The old title will become a redirect page, so any links to the old title will still go to the new page unless you uncheck the "leave a redirect behind" box.

Sometimes page moves can cause double redirects, where "Redirect One" -> "Redirect Two" -> "New Page Title". To avoid infinite loops, the MediaWiki software does not resolve these, so a reader clicking on "Redirect One" will end up at a dead end at "Redirect Two". You can also check the Special:DoubleRedirects page for a complete list of potential problem pages within the wiki.

After a successful move, you will be given a link to a "What links here" page to allow you to check for double redirects.

Why should I move/rename a page, instead of creating a new one?

The "move page" function keeps the page history of the article, before and after the move, in one place, so that all contributors receive credit as required by the terms of the Creative Commons license used at Wikia. Cutting text out of one page and pasting it into a new one causes these acknowledgments to be lost.

Why can't I move a certain page?

If a page already exists at a new title, an admin will need to delete that page before you can move something else there. The only exception is when the target page was created as a redirect, and has no other edits in its page history. In this case you can move the page in the normal way, overwriting the redirect. Another reason why may be that is may be a special page, or a category. In the case it is a special page, it would be best to contact Wikia Staff.

How do I undo a page move?

When a page is moved, an undo link will appear beside it in recent changes, allowing the change to be reverted by staff.

Multiple moves can be reverted, as long as you do them in reverse chronological order. For example, if "One" is moved to "Two" and then to "Three", you should click the undo link for the second move (Three->Two) before clicking the first one (Two->One). By doing the reversals in this order, the redirects are pointing to the right place, no administrator access is required since pages can be moved over redirects when they point to the page being moved. This feature is no different from moving the pages manually, but makes the process quicker since the move confirmation page will be shown with the correct page titles already filled in.

Is there a record of page moves?

Page moves are recorded at Special:Log/move, and will also be displayed in the page histories. Revert links are available from the log for admins.

See also

• MetaWikipedia:Help:Moving a page - includes information on how to swap two pages or fix a cut and paste move.

Next Steps

• Special pages
• Recent changes
• Deletion