Wikipedia:Integrate

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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WP:INT

Wikipedia has articles and stubs that require merging, that have

duplicate references, and that are orphans

.

Integrate these three factors by organised:

Merging
Cross-referencing
Linking

Let's integrate, let's make it easier to find and maintain data: build it and they will come!

Approach

Stage 1

Search various categories for stub articles. Stub articles belonging to a specific category with minimal content should be merged into a meta-article covering that subject matter.
Rather than delete old pages, redirects should be employed to reduce the chance of users making an article for the same subject. Furthermore, if the stub does have a chance to move beyond stub status, the article can be re-developed on its own merits as a category member.
Duplicate references should be identified by human or bot as a method of detecting merge-candidates, or overlooked category members. Furthermore, duplicate references that are required should be converted to a template that would appear uniformly on all category member pages.

Stage 2

Parent categories of significant volume should be reasonably sub categorised.
Template:CatDiffuse
explains this process.
Templates should be used to eliminate redundant content within category articles.
Templates should also be used to link together disparate articles that relate to each other, but may not always be in the same category. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Succession_Box_Standardization/Templates for suitable templates.

Analogies

Integration is white matter: it links together elements for processing.
Integration is
government in the sunshine
: it keeps things in the open and not obscure.
Integration may require ion thrusters: they're slow, but effective and efficient.

Practical ways to help

Wikipedia:Proposed mergers
— help form consensus about proposed mergers
!vote
for an article to be merged at AfD, then please let the closing editor know whether you'd be willing to merge the articles yourself. Just "* Volunteer" to help!
Wikipedia:WikiProject Proposed Deletion Patrolling — help editors preserve any valuable material in the Category:All articles proposed for deletion

Example articles that were created from meta-merging

ITU V-Series
is an article created from the merging of 20+ related stubs.

Created from several articles in

Fictional military aircraft

Created from
Windows audio components; Common menus in Microsoft Windows