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Edited by Chris, Lutherus, Teresa, Maluniu and 2 others

Sometimes, when an article is especially long or contains several different topics in the same article, it can and must be split. However, how do you perform the split itself? This article will explain this process to you.

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Edit Steps

  1. WH title policy.jpg
    1
    Review the Title Policy, Merge Policy and read How to Know When to Split up a wikiHow Article before beginning.
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  2. Articles to be split.jpg
    2
    Visit the page containing all articles to be split. Find an article that you'd like to split.
  3. Article with split template.jpg
    3
    Click on the link to the article. Scroll up to the very top until you find the {{split}} template.
  4. 4
    Come up with your new titles for each article. The template may have requested titles inside it. If it doesn't, update the template temporarily to show the chosen titles, if you want to.
    • Sometimes, you can even judge what an article should be split into, by reading the subsections in the article, and split accordingly. However, this isn't always the case, and it will depend on the wikiHow Title Policy.
  5. Writing new article.jpg
    5
    Write the new articles. For each article, you will want to move over the steps from each method in the article that needs to be split. You will also need to move over the tips, warnings, and sources/citations.
    • You will need to come up with an introduction for each article you write, since the article that you are splitting only has one introduction.
    • If one new article awaiting creation is a duplicate, see if there is any information that can be added to the existing page. If so, merge the appropriate information into that page.
  6. Write edit summary.jpg
    6
    Write a note in the edit summary box, such as "split articles", to clarify your edit. .
  7. 7
    Adjust the original article. Make sure it has more than just a summary of articles that were spawned off by the split. wikiHow does not generally have disambiguation pages, so the original article should still have at least a few basic steps in it.
    • Within the first "parent" article, you can weave links to help the reader find their way to the split articles as well. That way, they'll get all the information they need, one way or another.
  8. 8
    Use the same edit summary of "split articles" for that edit summary box.
  9. 9
    Publish this version of the page.
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Edit Tips

  • On rare occasions, it might be enough, introductions-wise, to move the introduction that was in the original article over to all the other split-off articles.
  • A complete listing of what to do in each case, whether the article has links inside the split template or not, can be found on an earlier history of this article dating back to before November 6, 2013. For simplification purposes, this article had been redone after that date into what you see now. (However, please be forewarned that in places where it refers to blue links, these links will now appear in blue-this was a result of the wikiHow redesign in late October 2013).
  • One split tag can only handle no more than 3 articles. Therefore, if more must be created, check to see if you can find additional split templates in the intro section relating back to the other data points.
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Edit Warnings

  • Do not split articles and only leave links to the new articles behind. Defining splitting articles is never the same thing as disambiguation pages. Please leave some information on the article, so readers have something "there" instead of following a link, just to see more links to click.
  • Be forewarned that some articles requiring a split tag, may end up triggering the CopyvioBot. Because you are copying and pasting information from an existing article (which others may have noticed and spawned it off to their own sites), it may come up as a surprise. Check to verify if the focused information is plagiarism (word for word) from the article. You'll need to take credit for the article. However, someone will be by and try and determine if this article came after or before the split. Write a note on the Discussion page warning them about the reason why this article was created and that it was done because of a split. If it is, be creative and rewrite the copied information in its entirety. If it is found not to be a copy, simply remove the bot's template.

Edit Related wikiHows

How to
Merge a wikiHow Article

Article Info

Categories: WikiHow User's Manual

Recent edits by: Adelaide, Maluniu, Teresa

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Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 953 times.

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