Is it possible to join/merge topics?

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For the benefit of other users of Wikipedia and the MediaWiki software, it is worth explaining that there is no real correspondence between a Wikipedia topic and a Discourse topic. So the joining/merging topics means something very different:

  • Wikipedia never explicitly defines a topic within all its policy and procedures, but it sure has a lot of rules about them. Wikipedia uses the concept of a topic in at least three ways:

    • a name for an area of knowledge or subject
    • a synonym for a Wikipedia article
    • a user search term

    :arrow_right: Whereas a Discourse topic is a collection of posts of which the first has a topic title.
    However, a Discourse topic can have a wiki post and be closed to reply posts so it looks more like a unitary Wikipedia article.

  • The Wikipedia data structure operates under a namespace for naming all its webpages in its MediaWiki software. NB Wikipedia actually refers to subsets of the overall namespace as namespaces e.g. 0 = Main/Article, 2 = User, etc.
    :arrow_right: Discourse does not use such namespaces to structure webpage names.

  • Wikipedia article titles have to have unique names and must use Topic-specific naming conventions.
    :arrow_right: Discourse does prevent duplicate topic names by default but this setting can be disabled.
    Discourse has no topic-specific naming convention.

Wikipedia handles ambiguous user search terms by two main mechanisms:

  • Redirects = links from ambiguous terms to the correct article title i.e. essentially where a primary topic can be determined.
    :arrow_right: Discourse can have manual links but not a redirect from a deleted topic.

  • Disambiguation pages = lists various meanings of a term and links to the articles i.e. essentially where the primary topic does not exist or is difficult to determine.
    :arrow_right: Discourse has no mechanism for disambiguation of terms in user searches.

Wikipedia is also far more concerned about permanent links to provide a record of article development and to avoid breaking external links to their topics. So Wikipedia automatically leaves a redirect when a page is deleted. The MediaWiki software does this automatically to maintain a history.
:arrow_right: Discourse does not have any requirement to keep such a record of deleted topics.

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