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If an article has already been made but it’s demoted, will a newer article on the same topic require a merge/nfd|dup tag? And what if the newer article is way better than the old one?

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Per the merge policy, two articles may be merged or redirected if the titles mean exactly the same thing. When the merge/redirection is done, the most commonly searched title stays while the less commonly searched title ends up as a redirect.

If there is an article covering two or more separate topics, then it may be split. In this case, the title to be split is deleted, while the advice is put onto two separate article titles for each topic.

Article demotion/promotion status has no effect as to whether an article gets merged or not.

I hope I was helpful!

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Aasim has the general idea, but I have a few corrections: merging, like everything else on the wiki, is case-by-case. So how we handle duplicates where one article is demoted is really dependent on the specific situation.

When the titles mean the exact same thing and there’s no real difference in search volume, I tend to merge or NFD the article in the direction of the higher-quality/promoted one. Sometimes that might be the newer one, and sometimes that might be the older one. There’s also some instances in which it might be more appropriate to delete the old article and move the new article to the old one’s title, or vice versa, rather than merging.

It’s also worth mentioning that sometimes content is demoted for technical reasons rather than quality reasons – for instance, we’ve had some articles get demoted while we tried to figure out some SEO/readership concerns, even though the content itself was high-quality. And, of course, if you’re ever not sure, you can always check with a staff member like Jayne or Chris H – they have access to reader data that can help with deciding which direction to merge or move the content:slight_smile:

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Thanks everyone!:slight_smile:

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I was originally told, while the information is split into two or more separate topics, the original article isnt deleted but revised to meet the topic title.

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I guess that can also happen. But I am talking about if we had an article on “Install Android and iOS” the topics would be split into “Install Android” and “Install iOS”, the original title would then be deleted.

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Thats where what i was told and what you are mentioning goes in different directions. What’s current practices on splitting and the original topic @jayneg ?

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Not Jayne, but I think Aasim means moving the page without creating a redirect, so that the original title doesn’t “go” anywhere – not actually deleting anything.:slight_smile:

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There are a few different options depending on what topics already exist. As I understand it, if all topics in the original article already have articles created, then it’s possible the page would be deleted (although it may also be redirected), as per https://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Perform-a-Split-of-a-wikiHow-Article .

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