Help:Renaming Pages

Introduction
Renaming or moving a page is the process of changing the title (and url) of a page using the MediaWiki functionality, rather than manually copy-pasting its content. It may be done for different reasons:


 * The page is not properly named.
 * The page is involved in a name conflict.

Instructions
Renaming a page is a user right reserved for trusted users, because of the destructive consequences it can have when not done properly.

Request a new name
If you don't have the page moving user right, add rename at the top of the page. You can add additional explanation on the corresponding talk page.

Choose a new name
When choosing a new name, also try to avoid possible future name conflicts by thinking of what other definitions and theorems with a similar name exist.

Fix links
Take care to update any links to the old page (which can be viewed using the "What links here" option in the menu) to the new page. If this is an involved and long-winded task, an appropriate invocation of IncomingLinks or Disambiguate, as appropriate, may be added to the page to signify the task is still unfinished.

Decide whether to keep the redirect
When all links have been redirected, one should decide whether or not to keep the old page as a redirect. If the old page name was not specific enough and is simply unclear, it is probably not a good idea to keep it. if the old page name was in fact incorrect, that is, it did not match the contents of the page, or it had grammatical errors or spelloes, then it should definitely be deleted.

However, if the renaming was in favor of a disambiguation, the old page may be a good candidate for the disambiguation page. If not, it may be used as a redirect to it.

Also see

 * Help:Page Naming
 * Help:Name Conflict