 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: If you want to propose a merge, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion is not the correct process. |
Six reasons why you should not send an article to AfD if all you want to do is propose a merge:
- It's articles for deletion, not articles for merging.
- When you send an article to AfD, a big ugly red box goes on the article saying "This article is being considered for deletion". That box is the first thing our readers see. It is not a good idea to have that box on articles which are not in fact being considered for deletion.
- Merging is not a type of deletion. In fact, "merge" at AfD is a type of "keep" vote, that is, it's a vote to keep the information and its sources on Wikipedia, just not as a standalone article.
- When you merge content, you should preserve the page history under the new redirect for licensing reasons (so "merge and delete" is not an option - "delete and redirect" is fine, when no content is merged.)
- If your merge proposal at AfD attracts no discussion and the article gets soft deleted, how are you going to merge anything?
- Merging doesn't necessarily require discussion. If you think an article should be merged, you can just do it. If you think it might be controversial, the correct venue to start the discussion is an article talk page, not AfD. You can notify some WikiProjects for input if the talk page gets little attention.
I encourage other admins (and non-admin closers) to:
- Stop relisting AfD debates which are split between "keep" and "merge". Just close them as keep, with no prejudice against the merge proposal being discussed further on talk (there is no 7-day deadline for such discussions).
- Apply WP:SK criterion 1 to AfDs where the nominator is plainly just proposing a merge.
- Refrain from soft deleting in cases where the nominator is proposing a merge.