Talk:Devastation-class ironclad

Merger proposal

Devastation Turret Class Ship was incorrectly created as a new article by the WP:AFC process. It is a rewrite of this existing treatment of the subject, and now needs to be merged into the existing article. Benea (talk) 16:16, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

• I disagree with most of that statement. It was not incorrectly created, it is more comprehensive than the old article and as such, if there is anything different in the old article, it should be merged into the new more comprehensive one. Histmerge is likely appropriate here. The new name also seems more proper, as the old one seems like a specific ship that falls in the class and not the class itself. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 17:24, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:NCSHIPS suggests that the most appropriate title is the one at the existing article title (the current one is a capitalisation and grammar mess, there are two ships discussed in this class - if there was one ship, well there was one already existing at HMS Devastation (1871) and a merge of some information may be appropriate there), the proper task is a merge of the information into the existing class article. It's too bad that in this case the user was not asked to add his information into a rewrite of the existing page, the criteria at WP:AFC clearly has in the quick-fail criteria the clause that if the subject is covered elsewhere. The appropriate act is a rewrite of the existing article, not a creation of a duplicate one with different information. Insufficient work was carried out to determine if an article on the same subject already existed, despite there being ample links to the existing class article elsewhere, and the original submitter's comment on the talk page that "Have rewritten the original artical blending the original text in with the added material." Self-righteousness aside, is it too much to ask those at AFC to do the checks properly before making more work for other users to do histmerges and so on. Benea (talk) 22:55, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

• Obviously there should not be two articles about the same subject. The only issue is which article title to use, and naming standards and precedent says that the obvious choice is Devastation-class ironclad (not HMS Devastation (1871)...why was this article brought up, did I miss some context?). Which article is merged into which is ultimately not an issue at all. When an ultimate decision is made and a clean, integrated article is ready (because the contents of Devastation Turret Class Ship may be more expansive, but formatting is most certainly not up to snuff), I'll be happy to do a histmerge of the two articles. — Huntster (t @ c) 17:52, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
• I see a consensus but no action - Huntster, is it now time to go ahead and do this? Shem (talk) 17:37, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
  • There has been no effort to integrate the lesser article into the more expansive one, that I can tell. That must be done before a histmerge is performed. I would have liked additional discussion and opinions to be presented here, as well. — Huntster (t @ c) 19:37, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I've now done this, as the conclusion was an obvious one. I could not find much material to merge in from the old Devastation-class ironclad article. However, if anyone wishes to refer to the previous article at this name I have kept the latest revision visible in the history log. This should only be temporary as it confuses the article history. I will be back in a few months to re-delete that revision. Regards, The Land (talk) 10:51, 4 December 2016 (UTC)