Wikipedia talk:How to break up a page

Proposal to consolidate advice on writing better articles

At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 19:46, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article should list specific steps about HOW to break up a page

Article mainly focuses on WHY, and mentions breaking out sections. Of course you break it up by putting sections in another article. That's obvious.

In keeping with article title, it needs to enumerate the SPECIFIC steps, including potential problems, e.g, handling images, name of new page where content is placed, suggested location of links to new page in original article, how much to summerize in original article, etc. Joema 15:10, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and my main concern is the edit history. When it comes to moving an entire page, the article on moving a page warns against simply copying and pasting from the original, as this will not preseve the article's history. I want to know if there's some way to preserve the edit history of the sections that get moved to a new article. I don't want to get the credit (or blame) for the initial text moved to the new article.

I'm interested in this, because there's an article right now that someone has suggested should be broken up, and I concur. I wouldn't act unilaterally anyway, but this history issue is another thing stopping me. I checked the examples given in the article, and creating a new entry does seem to create a new history. If I knew for sure that there was no way to save the previous edit history to the new page, it would reassure me about taking this step. --WacoKid 20:46, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree as well. When I found this page, I thought it was the answer to my questions about a page I am proposing to break up, and an answer to the concerns I had about preserving the edit history. I raised a question about this at the Help Desk, but if there is any consensus on this, then it really should be written down here as well. Carcharoth 11:07, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Speaking for myself, in the new article, I make the first edit summary "move content from [Old article]". That preserves a kind of history, even if a user has to manually make one of the links. I would also make the edit summary in the old article "move section Stuff and things to [Stuff and things]" Stevage 16:04, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Based on my observations, and the already existing policies and guidelines, the primary things that should be mentioned when breaking up an article are:

1. Note the split (including the page names) in the edit summaries.
2. Ensure that all new articles have a sufficient lead section that provides context.
3. Add {{dab}}, {{details}}, {{main}}, etc. to the source article that is being split up.

Zzyzx11 (Talk) 00:23, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I would like to reiterate this concern; a split mutilates edit history just as much (if not more than) a copy-and-paste move. Here's my idea: perhaps an admin could copy the whole edit history into the new articles, so they all contain all of the history? ~ Booyabazooka 00:42, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Edit histories when breaking up a page

Why doesn't this guideline cover the issue of preserving edit histories when breaking up a page? Carcharoth 11:19, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I presume this is the point of the line at the top, that starts Important:. Adding the parent article in the edit summary is basically saying edit history continues at <parent>. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:44, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Which was added after my comment above... :-) Carcharoth 13:43, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Why do I have to add several comments before a contents list appears?

I wanted to link to a section of this talk page, but I had to add two new sections before the contents list appeared. There must be a better way to do this! Carcharoth 11:25, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Because the table of contents doesn't display until there are more than three section headings. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 13:13, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I suspect it is actually when the "+" button has been used twice to add sections. I think adding sections manually is slightly different in terms of when a TOC appears. But I really don't know. Is this documented anywhere? Carcharoth 17:03, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

The "+" is just a shortcut for adding a new section—the page doesn't behave differently if the "+" is used or the section is added manually. The only place I know to point you for documentation is the "Misc." tab in the user preferences page. There is a checkbox for indicating if you want the TOC to appear at all, and there it states that it is displayed "for pages with more than 3 headings".

Great. Thanks. Carcharoth 15:08, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Removing and moving

I made what really should have been marked a minor edit. [1]

But since I'm involved in another policy page, and people are accusing me of trying to "change policy" there, I thought it better to avoid cliking the "This is a minor edit" box, in case it slips under someone's radar. --Uncle Ed 15:36, 18 May 2006 (UTC)