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This is the official thread for the Merge Team. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please post here. Thanks!

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Hi! I’m interested in helping out. Is there a specific way I join a “Merge Team”, or do I simply start merging articles right away? To start out, I’ve found two pages that might need merging: http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-Black-Friday and http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-Your-First-Black-Friday They are not exactly the same thing, but I can’t think of any suggestion about surviving your first black friday that could not fit into a more general “Survive Black Friday” article. If you think merging is appropriate in this case, I’ll be happy to take care of it. Thank you!

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@Vivere I don’t know if those articles need merging. Your first Black Friday and just a regular “Black Friday” are two different things. You might want to get to opinion of some others on that one. As far as merging articles, you are not required to join the merge team, but it’s nice, since we can keep track of the people who are merging. If you’re interested, read more here . Thank you, and feel free to ask any more questions!

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There are a lot of articles concerning spanking minors. I think we need to merge some of these. A lot of these articles have the same information. I can understand there are some differences when it comes to spanking younger children and adolescents/teenagers, so maybe we can have two articles, one for younger and one for older. I will handle these edits/merges.

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@Mc.mbjones Thank you for volunteering. Could you please post a list of the articles that need to be merged so we can look over them?

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@WritingEnthusiast14 Thank you - I’ll get to merging right away, and I’ll ask someone else about the two black friday articles.

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OK, when i search ‘how to give a spanking’, i come up with the following results: How to Give a Spanking: 14 Steps How to Give a Spanking to a Preteen: 8 Steps How to Give a Birthday Spanking: 6 Steps (that doesn’t need anything done to it. Birthday spankings are administered differently than disciplinary spankings) How to Include Spanking in Child Discipline: 12 Steps How to Spank a Child over the Knee: 5 Steps How to Spank a Teenager: 8 Steps How to Spank a Adolescent Boy: 31 Steps (Maybe we need to shorten that a little! 31 Steps?!) How to Spank Your Teenager: 6 Steps

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Hi WE14, Thanks so much for helping to make wikiHow a better place! I’m not sure that I will be able to join the team, or help out with the newsletter, though. I have done several merges in the last week and week before, and I will continue to help out with merging when I can (without being part of the team). If you wonder why, here’s my explanation: I will need time on my hands for other volunteer tasks around the site, and I am also in the process of setup and promotion for my wiki. Thanks for starting the team, though! I hope it goes well! Adelaide

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@Adelaide I understand. That’s why I’m not completely sure that I’ll join (because of my responsibilities here), so I’m sure you understand and know what it’s like to be busy! I sincerely hope others will join your project. I hope all goes well! Best Regards, WE14

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Thanks! That’s very nice of you to say:slight_smile:If you’d like to talk more, please email me ( adelaidewh@gmail.com ) or contact me in the wikiHow IRC Room if I’m there (my username is Adelaide_wikiHow). Thank you!

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@Mc.mbjones Actually, I’m not sure if all of those qualify for merging. Per the Merge Policy (which judges by titles), I can see only one set that would obviously need merging (Spank a Teenager into Spank Your Teenager). In my best judgement, all the others are mostly unique. However, “Spank an Adolescent Boy” and “Spank a Preteen” might qualify for merging, but that’s probably unlikely. I’ll review that case further. Otherwise, you can merge the articles about teenagers, and choose the oldest, most developed article as the merge target. Feel free to ask any more questions about this.

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Could How to Spank a Child over the Knee: 5 Steps and How to Give a Spanking: 14 Steps be merged? The method in the How to Give a Spanking: 14 Steps is to spank the child over the knee, and I might assume that the information in the How to Spank a Child Over the Knee article might have repetitive information.

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An adolescent is a teenager. Couldn’t that be merged into How to Spank a Teenager? The How to Spank a Preteen is a good one to keep, because it addresses a specific age group.

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Can merge tags be removed by anyone? I found an article that has different information, but a similar title to another article. [[Remove Acne Scars|How to Remove Acne Scars]] talks about using home remedies to remove scars, while [[Make Acne Scars Go Away|How to Make Acne Scars Go Away]] talks about preventing them in the future and using surgery to get rid of scarring.

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@Souphead You can change the title to match the content. On your example about “Remove Acne Scars”, you can change it to something like “Remove Acne Scars Naturally”, or “Remove Acne Scars (Home Remedy)”.

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@Mc.mbjones The one about adolescents is specifically aimed at boys, so I don’t think that would qualify. On the “Spank a Child over the Knee” article, they are different titles, but I’ll look into the matter more. I do agree that there are too many on that topic, but I’m just abiding by the merge policy.

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@Souphead Anyone can remove a merge tag, if he or she sees a tag that calls for merging to a more distinct article.

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I think anyone can remove the merge tags, @Souphead . As far as I know, there is no community policy against doing so. You have six months of boostership under your belt and should know what can and should be done with these articles better than I. With acne and many popular topics, there seems to be a lot of shifting of the titles off of the content in order to publish under a certain contributor name. From time-to-time these will articles will need to be untangled, then they will probably drift, get jumbled, and probably need to be untangled again. With acne, there are at least four sets of allied articles:

  1. Preventing & minimizing break-outs through diet, hygiene, natural skin balance
  2. Getting rid of spots (quickly) by covering up, healing
  3. Minimizing skin damage & pock marks and promoting the natural healing process
  4. Healing existing pock marks naturally, with abrasives, and surgically
    Then there is the associated issue of what will show up in Internet searches. @Flickety , @Ttrimm , @Krystle , @Maluniu , @Confusionist , and others have experience with these issues and can probably provide some clarity on how best to proceed. For my money, How to Remove Acne Scars is in set 2 and How to Make Acne Scars Go Away is in set 4. Once How to Remove Acne Scars is properly titled, the content can probably put on one or several merge targets, thus the retitling is likely unneeded.
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It sometimes helps to identify ‘merge targets’. Find a good article title and then merge the articles to them. It can help you focus on what you are doing.

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Everyone that’s involved in doing these merges, needs to be aware of our policy on merging articles: http://www.wikihow.com/Merge-Policy