Wikipedia:Page-move war

This is an explanatory essay about the edit warring and title changes policies. This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.

Shortcuts WP:PMW WP:PMWAR WP:MOVEWAR

A page-move war is a struggle between two or more editors (similar to an edit war, however, on the page name).

Wikipedia holds that an open system can produce quality, neutral encyclopedic content. This requires reasoned negotiation, patience,^[1] and a strong community spirit, each of which is undercut by antisocial behavior like incivility and move warring.

Besides this, page-move wars create a lot of double or even triple redirects in some cases; this is a bad thing because these redirects confuse those who are not familiar with the MediaWiki software. Following these redirects is like going around in circles. Double redirects are also bad for server performance. Although one shouldn't worry about performance, it's not an excuse to move war.

The right way to deal with page name disputes is to stop moving the page and try to get a consensus on the talk page of the article. If you think a page move might be controversial, it's best to make a move proposal on the article's talk page and list it at requested moves. In case of persistent move wars, administrators may block involved editors or move protect the subject page until the page name dispute is resolved.

• Wikipedia:Edit warring
• Wikipedia:Three-revert rule
• Wikipedia:Moving a page
• Wikipedia:Requested moves
• Wikipedia:Dispute resolution