Wikipedia:Page mover

For users that may move media files, see Wikipedia:File mover.

The page mover user right ('extendedmover' user group) allows users to move pages without leaving behind a redirect and to quickly move subpages when moving parent pages.

At their discretion, any administrator can grant this right to experienced and trusted users who regularly move pages and demonstrate familiarity with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines regarding page moving and naming. Users are expected to have at least 6 months of editing history and at least 3,000 edits. Users should also have experience with the requested moves venue and know how page moving works.

If you wish to request page mover rights for yourself or another user, please see Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Page mover. Administrators are automatically granted this user right, so they do not need to request it.

There are currently 154 users with page mover, which makes the total number of users with this permission 1,413 (the rest are administrators).

Flags granted

The page mover group includes the following user rights:

1. suppressredirect (move a page without creating a redirect)
2. move-subpages (move a page and all its subpages in a single action)

The page mover right also allows users to move pages at a faster rate than normal editors.

Suppressredirect

By default, a redirect is created with each page move. This is undesirable in some cases, such as when reverting pagemove vandalism, or when the page name needs to be made available for a different page. With the suppressredirect right, page movers can move pages without leaving a redirect by unchecking the checkbox "Leave a redirect behind" in the move interface.

Page moves that do not leave a redirect will still be logged, but with a note ("without leaving a redirect"). These moves are not recorded in the deletion log. However, if the source page remains without content, it will be displayed like any other deleted page: logged-in users will still see the "A page with this title has previously been deleted" message, listing the deletion and move logs for that page; and anonymous IPs will still see the "Wikipedia does not have a page with this exact name" error message.

Move-subpages

With move-subpages, a page mover can move a page and all of its subpages in a single action. For example, a user could rename Talk:Foo to Talk:Bar, and also move Talk:Foo/Archive 1 to Talk:Bar/Archive 1 in a single action. This becomes useful when moving a page with a lot of archives. In the move interface, this is done by checking the checkbox "Move subpages (up to 100)".

On some occasions, one might inadvertently move a talk page incorrectly assumed by the MediaWiki software to be a talk subpage of a different article. For example, Talk:A/B testing is the talk page for A/B testing, but not technically a subpage for Talk:A. If a mover uses move-subpages on Talk:A, the move operation would incorrectly move Talk:A/B testing. (This is not an issue for the article mainspace, as it does not have subpages enabled.)

Increased page move throttle

The MediaWiki software limits the number of page moves that can be performed in a period of time to eight per minute, for confirmed users. The extendedmovers right raises this throttle to allow 16 moves per minute, enabling page movers to handle larger jobs more efficiently.

Redirect suppression criteria

Page movers can suppress a redirect during a page move if the redirect would be eligible for one of the criteria for speedy deletion. G3, G6, R2, R3, and U1 are the most commonly applicable criteria of the lot for redirects that would result from a page move. There are seven widely undisputed uses for suppressredirect which are codified here:

No.	Criteria	Shortcut
1	Reverting page move vandalism (WP:CSD#G3)	WP:PM/C#1
2	Moving pages within a requester's own userspace to another location if a desire for deletion is expressed (WP:CSD#U1)	WP:PM/C#2
3	Moving pages from a title unambiguously created in error or in the incorrect namespace (WP:CSD#G6)	WP:PM/C#3
4	"Round-robin" page moves (see below) when moving is blocked by a redirect with non-trivial page history (WP:CSD#G6)	WP:PM/C#4
5	For non-admin page movers with the file mover user right only: Moving files per WP:FNC#9 (WP:CSD#G6) Note: Currently, such moves can be undone only by administrators.	WP:PM/C#5
6	Moving a page from the mainspace to another namespace when appropriate (WP:CSD#R2)	WP:PM/C#6
7	Moving pages from a title that is an implausible typo or misnomer, only when the page is a recent creation (WP:CSD#R3)	WP:PM/C#7

Suppressing a redirect that would not be eligible for speedy deletion is not appropriate, and doing so may resulting in page mover rights being revoked (see below).

Round-robin page moves

See also: Wikipedia:Moving a page § Swapping two pages

With suppressredirect, page movers are able to perform non-trivial swaps of two or more pages. Suppose an article A is deemed to have a more appropriate title, occupied by its redirect B, but B has non-trivial revision history. A round-robin move to swap A and B proceeds as follows:

1. Move B → C (a new page) without leaving a redirect behind (uncheck "Leave a redirect behind")
2. Move A → B (possible, since B is vacated) without leaving a redirect behind
3. Move C → A (possible, since A is vacated) without leaving a redirect behind
4. Perform redirect cleanup and updates:
   • The original redirect B, now at A, should be retargeted to point to B. (similarly for existing talk and subpage redirects)
   • If B_talk currently exists and A_talk does not (i.e. if the article has a talk page and the redirect does not), and there are incoming links to the newly red-linked page, create a new talk page redirect from A_talk to B_talk.
   • Along the same lines, for any (all) article talk archives, GA nomination pages that have been moved and have incoming links, equivalent subpages should be made at the redirect and targeted appropriately.

Note: Redirects are suppressed during all moves in the round-robin page move process.

There is a redirect to this page, Draft:Move, that can be used as a holding pen for a subpage used as C above. The subpage name that appears after the slash (/) can be any name as long as it is a red-linked, non-existing page when the round-robin procedure begins. When the round robin is finished, the C page will once again be a red link.

A hypothetical move scenario involving 3 pages to be swapped would involve a temporary fourth page, which one of the pages occupies while the others are moved accordingly, all involving suppressredirect.

Examples

Suppose you want to move The Adventures of Gromit the Hobbit to Gromit the Hobbit, but the latter title already exists as a redirect, and has multiple intermediate edits which prevent a one-step move-over-redirect. Also suppose that The Adventures of Gromit the Hobbit has a talk page, and Gromit the Hobbit does not. (Reasonable, since many article-namespace redirects do not have accompanying talk-space redirects.) Using the tools provided by this right, performing the move would be accomplished as follows:

• Move Gromit the Hobbit to Draft:Move/Gromit the Hobbit without leaving a redirect; this essentially deletes the page with the new title for the move
• Move The Adventures of Gromit the Hobbit and its talk page (if created) to Gromit the Hobbit without leaving a redirect
• Move Draft:Move/Gromit the Hobbit to The Adventures of Gromit the Hobbit without leaving a redirect
• Retarget the redirect (at The Adventures of Gromit the Hobbit) to Gromit the Hobbit
• Create a talk page redirect Talk:The Adventures of Gromit the Hobbit and target to Talk:Gromit the Hobbit to preserve incoming links to the original talk title. (necessary, since the redirect in this example did not have a talk page, and links would be broken)

(edit summaries suggestion: linking WP:PM/C#4 within the move summaries is a good practice)

Watchlists

In the above example, the first round moved an article page to a draft page (holding page) that used the article's new title as a subpage. This is a good practice rather than to use the same page title, such as Draft:Move/my pet move page all the time. The reason for this is a side effect that involves user watchlists. If a user has a page on their watchlist that is renamed, then the page title to which the watched page is moved is automatically added to that user's watchlist. If the same holding page is used all the time, then all future uses of that holding page will add more pages to the user's watchlist. This results in an undesirable padding of user watchlists. To minimize this, use a different page name for the holding page each time a new page is renamed using the round-robin method.

Conduct expectations

Page move disputes

This right should never be used to gain an upper hand in page move disputes. You have a privilege that most editors do not have. Editors without the right are sometimes unable to revert your moves (e.g. "round-robin" moves). Therefore, avoid making unilateral decisions, and revert upon request if a page move of yours proves to be reasonably controversial. Lastly, never wheel war with admins or other page movers.

Have a strong password

See also: Wikipedia:User account security

Page movers must have a strong password and follow appropriate personal security practices. Because a page-move vandal with the increased page move throttle would be able to quickly move many pages, a compromised account will be blocked and its privileges will be removed for site security. In the unlikely event that your account is compromised, notify an administrator immediately so they can block your account and remove any sensitive privileges to prevent damage.

Guidelines for granting

1. The editor should be a registered Wikipedia user for at least 6 months.

2. The editor should have made at least 3,000 edits.

3. The editor should have experience with moving pages in accordance with guidelines. Participation in and closing requested moves and move reviews is a good way to gauge this, but not required.

4. The editor should have no behavioral blocks or 3RR violations for a span of 6 months prior to applying.

The above items are guidelines. An administrator may grant page mover rights to users they otherwise deem competent.

Criteria for revocation

The user right can be revoked for violating any of the above conduct standards and for other misconduct. Additionally, it can be revoked at any time by an administrator without any process or prior notice in any of the following circumstances:

1. The editor demonstrated a pattern of performing obviously controversial moves without first determining consensus.
2. The editor demonstrated a pattern of failing to exercise sufficient care when moving pages, resulting in serious errors appearing on pages, or when using suppress redirect.
3. The editor demonstrated a pattern of using the permission to suppress redirects that would not have been eligible for one of the criteria for speedy deletion.
4. The editor used the permission to gain the upper hand in disputes.
5. The editor performed any blatant vandalism (not limited to page move vandalism).
6. The editor failed to report to an administrator after noticing unauthorized use of their account or otherwise neglected account security practices.
7. The editor has been inactive for 12 months.

Additionally, the right may be removed immediately at the request of the editor.

If your page mover right was revoked and you would like to appeal the decision, first discuss with the revoking administrator. If after such an exchange you still feel the matter is unresolved and requires outside input, you may post at WP:AN to appeal the decision. Request for the right after a revocation for inactivity or self-requested removal may be made at WP:PERM.

Scripts

Automatically check subpages

To automatically check "move subpages" you can add the following to your common.js:¹

/*
 * Automatically tick the "Move subpages" option when moving pages.
 */
var moveSubpagesBox = document.getElementsByName("wpMovesubpages")[0];
if (moveSubpagesBox !== undefined) {
  moveSubpagesBox.checked = true;
}

Page swapping

User:Andy M. Wang/pageswap script adds a "Swap" option next to the "Move" option, allowing a page mover or administrator to swap titles of two pages along with their histories ("round-robin move") through a short sequence of prompts.

See also

• Wikipedia:Requested moves
• Wikipedia:Moving a page § Post-move cleanup
• Category:Articles to be moved, for article renaming requests awaiting action.
• May 2016 RfC for creation of this group.
  • June 2016 RfC to increase the move throttle for this group.
• {{Page mover topicon}} a top icon template to indicate you have page mover permission.
• {{User wikipedia/Page mover}} a userbox template to indicate you have page mover permission.