Halopedia:Merging guide

This page is a guide to merging wikis, created for 2019's merger between Halopedia and Halo Nation. It explains how users should go about merging Halo Nation into Halopedia. If you ever need more specific help than what this guide can offer, please feel free to contact a staff member for assistance.

Selecting what to merge
Before the temporary wiki is made public, the staff of Halopedia and former staff of Halo Nation will already have merged the policy and help pages. This leaves only mainspace articles, images, templates and categories to be merged. Talk pages will not be subject to merging, unless the talk page is of some historical significance that makes it worth archiving.

To help merge stuff we have created "tasks" to help focus efforts on areas before we move onto new ones.

While we would like to keep focus on areas, you may pick what article to merge in any manner you like. You could use Special:AllPages to find an article, or simply pick one at random using Special:Random. Once all of the articles have been merged, then all that's left to do is clear out the remaining templates, categories and images that were not merged during the merging of the articles, and decide what to do with them.

Merging articles
The process for merging two articles is different depending on whether Halopedia already has an existing article on the same topic:

Halopedia already has an article on the topic
If Halopedia does already have an article on the topic, you should first begin by reading both articles, and identify any areas in Halopedia's article where Halo Nation provides more information, better wording or is otherwise an improvement over the respective section of the Halopedia article. You will need to incorporate these sections of Halo Nation's article into Halopedia's one. How you do this is highly situational; in some instances, it might be alright to simply copy and paste sections into the Halopedia articles, while in others, you may need to entirely rewrite the corresponding sections on the Halopedia page in order to maintain the flow of the article, or preserve some parts of the section that were better on Halopedia.

Ultimately, you can merge the content in any way you like, but it's imperative that:


 * Absolutely no useful content or information from either article is lost.
 * The merged article is still organised logically, and doesn't feel disjointed in any way.
 * Information is not repeated multiple times in the article, except in rare instances where it would be considered appropriate.
 * The final, merged article is still adherent to Halopedia's policies and Manual of Style.

Make sure to check that all links, template transclusions, image transclusions and categories still point to the correct pages in the merged articles, as some might not have been merged yet, and some might have had their names changed.

Once the actual content of the article has been merged and the article's been marked for deletion (to indicate that it has been merged), then you can move on to merging the templates, categories and images that the article used, as descried later.

Halopedia doesn't have an article on the topic
If Halopedia doesn't have a corresponding article, then the merging process is simple. Simply compare the article against Halopedia's policies and Manual of Style to make sure that it meets Halopedia's standards. If necessary, manually improve any parts of the article that don't meet the standards. Then, simply copy the page over from the temporary wiki to the main wiki wholesale (changing the name if necessary, in order to fit with Halopedia's naming conventions), and mark the article on the temporary wiki for deletion so that everyone knows it's been merged.

Bear in mind that you will need to check if the templates, categories and images on the page have been merged. For those that haven't been, you'll need to merge those yourself, and for those that have, they might have been renamed in the process, and so you'll need to double-check their names on the main wiki. The same applies to links - the articles might have different names on Halopedia, and so you'll need to ensure they all lead to the right places.

Merging images
Merging an image is simple. First, you need to do some preliminary checks. If the image is a user image which is not useful to the main wiki itself, then it doesn't need to be merged, and instead can just be deleted from the temporary wiki. Additionally, you'll need to verify that the image abides by Halopedia's Media Policy - if it doesn't, then it should not be merged at all. Finally, check Halopedia's equivalents to the articles the image is used by (and any other pages on Halopedia where such an image might be used), to see if an identical or similar* image already exists on Halopedia - if one does, there is no need to bring this one over to the main wiki at all.

If the image meets all these requirements, then simply upload it on Halopedia using the URL upload functionality. Make sure to give it a name that abides by Halopedia's naming conventions, even if it's not the same as its previous name! You should add it to any relevant image categories and to all relevant articles, including Halopedia's equivalents to the articles it was featured on in the temporary wiki. Once this is done, you should mark the image for deletion on the temporary wiki, so that everyone knows it's been merged.

''* In this case, an image would be considered similar if they're from the same source (game, comic, book cover, etc) and depict the same objects or scenes in similar conditions. For example, imagine an image of a pair of idle Hunters on the mission Silent Cartographer from Halo: CE. This would be considered similar to another image of two idle Hunters from the same mission, but not an image of Hunters from another game or level, Hunters firing at an enemy or interacting with the environment, etcetera.''

Merging categories
Typically, merging categories will not be necessary in this merger, as articles will be added to the relevant Halopedia categories as needed during the merger process. However, if you come across a category on the temporary wiki that Halopedia does not have but which you think would be useful, feel free to create a corresponding category on Halopedia, add it to the relevant parent categories and add the relevant pages to it.

Merging templates
Halopedia already has a working template infrastructure in place, and for the most part, there should not be much need to modify it. However, if you come across a template on the temporary wiki that Halopedia does not have but which would be useful, you are welcome to add that template to Halopedia and make use of it where necessary. In the more common case where a Halopedia template does not feature a certain functionality that Halo Nation's did, you should add this functionality to Halopedia's template manually, but only if it is useful! Also note that when merging infoboxes, Fandom/Wikia used their own proprietary syntax for infoboxes, called "Portable Infoboxes".This syntax will function correctly on Halo Alpha but not on Halopedia, so infoboxes must be entirely rewritten by hand in order to work as intended.

It is advised that you do not attempt to merge templates yourself unless you're confident with the syntax and semantics of wikitext.