Wikipedia:Moving a page

"WP:MOVE" redirects here. For other uses, see WP:MOVE (disambiguation). "WP:MV" redirects here; not to be confused with Wikipedia:Media Viewer. "WP:RENAME" redirects here. For information on renaming a user, see Wikipedia:Changing username.

A page can usually be renamed if the existing title is incorrect or needs to be changed; this is done by moving a page (also commonly referred to as performing a move).

Any autoconfirmed users can perform a proper page move by following the instructions at § How to move a page in almost all circumstances. If you expect the page move to be controversial, or if you encounter a technical barrier preventing you from performing it yourself, you can request that someone else move the page at Wikipedia:Requested moves.

However, do not perform a page move by creating a new page and then cutting and pasting the content over to it. Doing so will instead cause two page locations to exist side-by-side regarding the exact same subject, each with its own revision histories and content, and where any changes that are made to one location do not "synchronize" or "update" the other (or vice versa). Files can only be moved by administrators and file movers, but file moves can be requested. Category moves should be investigated and planned before they are initiated.

Reasons for moving a page

There are several good reasons to move a page:

• The title does not follow Wikipedia's naming conventions, e.g., it is not a common name of the subject or is overprecise.
• The name of the subject of the article has been changed and the new name has come into majority use.
• The title has been misspelled, does not contain standard capitalization or punctuation, or is misleading or inaccurate.
• It needs to be disambiguated in some way to avoid confusion with an existing, similarly named topic, or it exists at a disambiguated name but should not because it is the primary topic.
• It is an article at a descriptive name and the scope of the article has been reduced, extended or otherwise changed.
• It is an article that has been created as a subpage of a Wikipedian's user or user talk space for development purposes and it is ready to be moved to the mainspace or to draft space.
• It is a draft article that has been created or edited in draft space for development purposes and is ready to be moved to the mainspace.

Before moving a page

Consider listing pages that you want to move at Wikipedia:Requested moves. You can list them at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests if it appears unlikely that anyone would reasonably disagree with the move, and:

• You are unable to move the page because your account is too new (the account must be autoconfirmed);
• You are unable to move the page because the target page exists;
• The page is protected from moves or the target page is protected from creation.

For other cases, follow the instructions for controversial and potentially controversial moves:

• If you believe the move might be controversial
• If you are unsure about the best page name, despite reading Wikipedia:Article naming guidelines
• If you believe your proposed move would benefit from wider community input

Do not move or rename a page by copying and pasting its content, because doing so fragments the edit history. Wikipedia's copyright license requires acknowledgement of all contributors, and editors continue to hold copyright on their contributions unless they specifically give up this right. Hence, it is required that edit histories be preserved for all major contributions until the normal copyright expires. See also Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.

How to move a page

The move option appears below the toolbar.

A common example: performing a requested move. Note that the intended article name is entered without any prefixes.

To move a page:

1. Navigate to the page that you want to move. There is no need to click "Edit".
2. Locate the "Move" option in a drop-down menu at the top right of the screen, labelled "Tools".
   • If you are using the legacy Vector skin, the option is under the toolbar. If you have enabled the MoreMenu gadget, it may be under the "Page" menu. If you aren't using the default Vector 2022 skin in your preferences, the layout of the screen will be slightly different.
   • If there is no "move" link at the top of the page at all, the page is most likely protected from moving. If you expect it to be uncontroversial, ask for the page to be moved at the technical section of requested moves. Otherwise, request it in its section for controversial and potentially controversial moves.
3. Click the "Move" option, and fill in the details of your move.
   1. In the first text box, enter the new name of the page (and its namespace).
   2. Give a reason for the move, which is like an edit summary. Although this isn't required, it will decrease the likelihood of the move being challenged.
   3. Keep the option to also move the page's talk page enabled, except in certain circumstances. (It only appears if the page has a talk page.)
4. Click the Move page button.

You did it! If the move is successful, the page will be moved to the new title and you will see a message saying "The page has been moved to ...". The old title will become a redirect, so links to the old title will still go to the new page. Successful moves are recorded in the move log at the old title only, not the new one; if there had been a discussion about the move, it can be useful to copy the automatic move summary in a new comment in the discussion.

Moving over a redirect

If a page already exists at the target name, you can move to that target only if it simply redirects back to the present name and its page history has only one entry (i.e., the creation of the redirect). The most common case in which this applies is that of re-renaming a page back to its original name.

If a redirect has more than just one line in its page history but still a minor edit history, file a technical move request at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests.

Cleaning up after a move

After successfully moving a page, you should perform a number of resulting clean-up tasks, such as updating the article prose to use the new name and updating any navigational templates to link directly to the new title rather than via a redirect.

Whether any one of the below clean-up tasks is required will depend on the circumstances of the move. Some of the most involved clean-up tasks are limited to moves that introduce a change in "topic structure", for example when an article is moved to a title which previously referred to a disambiguation page.

• Update the article's prose: In most cases, the running text of an article will refer to the article subject by the title term, and will begin with a bolded instance of the title. Using Wikipedia's "find and replace" function may be helpful here, though it should not be applied blindly. For example, if the old name occurs in a direct quote, a name, or the title of a reference, it should not be replaced. For example, if the article Chocolate bar were moved to the title Candy bar, the opening paragraph:
  A chocolate bar (Commonwealth English) or candy bar (some dialects of