Help:Split an item

An item split is required when an item includes sitelinks and/or statements that belong to different concepts that would be better managed by two separate items. It is the opposite of the merge operation.

A split can be performed manually, or by using the move-claim-script or the duplicate-item-script. This page provides guidelines for performing the operation.

Preliminary checks

• Verify if the item mix-up results from a recent merge. If this is the case, restore the pre-merge version, then restore the pre-merge version of the other item.

How to manually split an item into two items

In order to retain existing references on statements that are to be transferred to a new item, follow the procedure below:

1. Create a new item
2. Merge the existing one into it
3. Remove all sitelinks from the target item
4. Modify labels and/or descriptions of the target item (two items are not allowed to be exact duplicates)
5. Restore the original item from its history
6. Manually move appropriate sitelinks from the old item to the new one
7. Fix labels of "moved sitelink" languages (or at least delete them); you may reproduce these labels on the new item (but bots would do that shortly using sitelinks)
8. Delete or fix incorrect statements on both items
9. Check the incoming links of the old item (through Special:WhatLinksHere) and fix the incorrect ones, so that they link to the new item

See also

• Help:Conflation
• Help:Conflation of two persons
• Unmerge doing a split of a previously merged item