The page says "After a pair has been merged leave it on the list with a remark DONE." Why is that? What is the argument against just removing pairs from the list after they have been done? Andre Engels 10:14 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)

None that I can see! I'm all for changing that guideline -- Tarquin

I would be in favor of making a list of fixed issues at the bottom of the article. Good for follow-up purposes. If the list grows too long, it can be moved to an archives page. olivier 12:23 Nov 9, 2002 (UTC)

For merged articles, I prefer the most international and general name possible. I.e. Islands of the North Atlantic better British Isles. Perhaps a redirection from Islands of the North Atlantic to British Isles Mac 12:02 Mar 9, 2003 (UTC)

For pacifism and Non-violent resistance and Non-violence, I prefer Non-violence because it´s the most general. From there links to pacifism and Non-violent resistance, if the articles have enough content, specially, indicating the differences between they both. More than duplicated (in this case, triplicated) articles, we can talk about non-jerarquiced articles or structured article sequence Mac 12:06 Mar 9, 2003 (UTC) Mac 12:06 Mar 9, 2003 (UTC)

Taku added:

• Gaia Theory and Gaia theory - I think both are talking about the same thing.

Gaia Theory says in the first line "Gaia Theory of Lynn Margulis and others is one among other Gaia theories" ("Gaia theories" links to Gaia theory). Likewise, the capitalised article is linked to in the lower case article. Possibly there is a better way to distinguish between these two articles, but they clearly are not talking about the same thing. --Camembert

Sorry my comment was not good enough. I meant I don't think many people distinguish them well. We really shouldn't differenciate articles by upper or lower cases. Yes, they are not identical theories but they are apparently closely related. I think it is a better idea to merge them to one article and discuss the difference between Gaia Theory and Gaia theory. -- Taku 02:44 Apr 27, 2003 (UTC)

OK, it's been added back - I won't remove it again right away, though I don't think it belongs on this page. This page is to alert people to articles which need to be merged into one, and it looks to me that that would be inappropriate in this case. The "theory" and the "Theory" are not the same thing - one is a subset of the other (just as the Gaia hypothesis is a subset of Gaia theory, and pop music is a subset of music). As I say, I won't remove them again immediately, but it seems to me that they shouldn't be merged into one page. --Camembert

I am sorry. I don't mean Gaia theory, Gaia Theory and Gaia hypothesis are some stuff. But I really don't think we need a separate article for each closely related topic. Maybe it is my preference but I think one article should discuss Gaia theory like Gaia hypothesis. See for example, call-by-something. Yes, there is not thing called "call by something but it seems appreciate that one article discusses call by name, call by reference and call by name. Remeber we need an article that makes sense not make an article for each topic. Articles that are not talking about the same thing but closely related should be placed in one place for the sake of contributers and readers. -- Taku 02:50 Apr 27, 2003 (UTC)

You may have a point, but looking at the length of those articles, it seems that enough can be written on each to warrant separate articles. But in any case, this is a matter for the talk pages of the relevant articles, rather than here. --Camembert

True. I think we can agree with the current comment. -- Taku 03:04 Apr 27, 2003 (UTC)

Yep - looks good to me. --Camembert

• diabetic coma, diabetic ketoacidosis, and hyperglycemic osmotic coma (!)

These are three different things, not duplicates. Diabetic coma is ususally taken to mean hypoglycemic coma, ketoacidosis need not involve coma at all, and the last need not be connected to DKA either. DKA can cause coma in diabetics, but they are not synonyms. -- Someone else 04:12, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC) added comments here by ww 23:36, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Discussion on merging South Jutland and Northern Schleswig deleted.
Can be found in the history, if someone is curious. :-)

See: Talk:World, which maybe is the appropriate place to discuss New World, Old World, First World, Second World, Third World,

• criminal law and penal law

Criminal law is about the law of crime and punishment. Penal law may have at one time been no more than that, but is now mostly about English and Irish history and the laws that were enacted to punish Roman Catholics and non-conformists. -- IHCOYC 19:14, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be nice to have a new duplicates section ? --User:Docu

Actually I liked the previous order, time-based order. What happened?? -- Taku

• Wayne, New Jersey and Wayne Township, New Jersey apparently the same content. (also other places in Passaic County, New Jersey are duplicated, and also Salem County, New Jersey and who knows how many other counties?)
  • I'll be looking into these in the future since I am the one who made them! One will probably just need to be redirected. If someone from New Jersey knows how these work, that would be helpful. -- RM
    • In NJ many townships have the name of the town that is at the center of the township structure; Princeton/Princeton Township, Freehold/Freehold Township, Jackson/Jackson Township. In some places there are small villages inside the township that are not the same as the township, but still part of it; an example in Jackson NJ. If you use this web site: [1] and put in Jackson as the municipality (Ocean County) you get the following results (the State Forest is repeated in the original list, which is why only 29 names are listed here): Archers Corner, Bennetts Mills, Burksville, Butterfly Bridge, Cassville, Colliers Mills, DeBow Corner, Francis Mills, Grayville, Harmony, Holmansville, Hyson, Jackson Mills, Jackson Township, Jackson Twp. State Forest, Kapps Corner, Leesville, Legler, Maryland, Midwood, New Prospect, Pleasant Grove, Ridgeway, Success, The Alligator, Vanhiseville, Webbsville, Whitesbridge, Whitesville. In Princeton Township' there is the town proper of Princeton (borough), and also Cedar Grove. In some places there have been divisions, Freehold Township was one of the original three townships in Monmonth County, one town that I know was granted its own township was Manalapan in the 1848. There are actually 23 place names within Upper Freehold Township: Cooleys Corner, Coxs Corner, Cream Ridge, Davis, Ellisdale, Fillmore, Hayti, Holmes Mills, Hornerstown, Imlaystown, Kirbys Mills, Nelsonville, New Canton, New Sharon, Polhemustown, Prospertown, Pullentown, Red Valley, Robinsville, Sharon, Shrewsbury, Walnford, Wrightsville. For Wayne Township you get the following names: beside (Wayne and Wayne Township): Barbours Mills, Barbours Pond, Camp Christmas Seal, Hope Dell, Lower Preakness, Mountain View, Packanack Lake, Pines Lake, Point View, Pompton Falls, Preakness, Preakness Valley Park, Two Bridges. I think before merges are done someone needs to confirm if a place name is different than a township, borough or other type of municipality in New Jersey. The history of municipal government in New Jersey is very complicated [2]. Alex756 07:38, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

In general, what's the etiquette for changing policy pages?

More specifically, in the opening couple of paragraphs, I think we should distinguish another valid fix for duplicate pages: leaving the two pages as distinct, but rewriting the pages so they no longer duplicate information.

-- Walt Pohl 16:33, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I took a leap, since I couldn't find any info on the etiquette of changing policy headings/pages, and went ahead and did a rewrite. I hope this doesn't ruffle any feathers. Basically, I just felt that a new wording would be clearer for newbies -- and since there seems to be some evidence that the Wikipedia community likes having newbies test out their skills on these kinds of tasks, it's only logical that these types of pages be as user-friendly as possible.

I also wanted to make clear the agreed-upon policy of having folks remove their "Fixed!" taglines. As previously stated, this is superfluous, so it should be clear in the introduction to Duplicates that we want people to remove the information once the task has been accomplished.

Finally, I incorporated the suggestion of the user above that Duplicates can be edited so that both reflect appropriate content.

--Wolf530 02:03, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There may be two "Jehovah's witnesses" pages. If I do a google search for "Wikipedia Jehovah" the first link is an older version of the JW page. When I search wikipedia for JW's I get the most recent page.

Google keeps its own copy of Wikipedia (and all other webpages it finds). It gets out of date as Google only updates its copy every so often. Nothing to worry about. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:25, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wolf530 added a table for special pages, which I removed today. While I can understand his intention, I don't think it is such a good idea. If you frequence those pages, then you should use the bookmarks or just create some shortcut at your user page as many people do. Since people would prefer a different list of shortcut links, it is impossible to have a table everyone likes. -- Taku 08:59, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)

I really see no justification for removing it, to be honest. It doesn't "harm" the page at all. And, in turn, it allows new folks to see what other pages need help. I know when I first started helping with problem articles the table was useful as it allowed me to see all of the pages of the same type that needed to be worked on. In short: there's no reason NOT to have it. --Wolf530 17:00, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)

It, in my view, clutters the page. I understand that such sortcuts are useful and helpful to some people. But my point is that it is irrelevant. Only those who are interested in information about where are duplicate articles and how to clean up them. There is already enough page that navigates newbies. And again you can always have a list of shortcuts customized in the way you like. -- Taku 02:55, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure how I see how it "cluttering" the page matters? It's not one of the encyclopedia articles -- it's a maintenance page! --Wolf530 04:11, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

The same reasons still hold. It is better to have a short compact maintenance page than long one. -- Taku 15:31, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I just don't think your argument holds any water. The Specialpagelist neither clutters the page nor makes it any longer. It also makes little difference whether or not a maintenance page is "pretty" or not -- its purpose is utilitarian, and not aesthetic. It is better to have the pagelist there, so that new folks can easily find maintenence areas, than to not have it there and have those areas not get attention. We should all be concerned with ensuring that these pages find people to work on them. I am returning the table to the page. --Wolf530 18:23, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)

I think this is the same argument you seen in software engineering. Having more functionalities doesn't hurt anything. I don't doubt those links might help someone as some obscure functionalities in software might be helpful someday to somebody. But we are talking about the user interface--the consistency, cleanness. The clean interface is preferrable for utilitarianist reasons. A mouse for macs has only one button because having one more does hurt the user experience.

Anyway, you might guess we cannot go anywhere in discussing user interfaces. The preference varies. So I've just added a post at request for comments and possiblily we can go to votes. I am not reverting the table again though I still disagree. No need for wars. -- Taku 18:46, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)

I guess it's time for voting.

Support Wolf530's table

Oppose

1. Taku 00:42, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)