I am of the opinion that allowing the movement of articles between SCP slots is not worth the hassles that it generates, and as such, it shouldn't be allowed at all.
The aforementioned hassles include, but are not limited to, the following:
- The free movement of SCP slots has potential to alter the content of other authors' pages in that it may result in incorrect crosslinks. While this is also an issue that may be generated by our deletions rules, I still believe that there is merit in seeking to alleviate this problem, especially given that staff are responsible for an incredibly large volume of crosslinks in the SCP series via the Wikiwalk project.
- The free movement of SCP slots has the potential to confuse causal viewers and audiences, specifically those in off-site communities like Reddit, DeviantArt, and YouTube. Old posts and content may contain references to SCPs that no longer exist under their original number.
- The free movement of SCP slots has the potential to tacitly allow authors to move existing posted articles to a more preferable SCP slot after the deletion of an established work. I can think of at least one occasion where staff have told users that they are not allowed to do this (most recently being when The Mewts was deleted)
If there are explicit and tangible benefits to the free movement of SCP slots, I personally cannot think of anything more specific than the general freedom of an author over the work they have written and the number they choose to identify it with, a freedom that staff already curtail with the restrictions of the SCP series itself, such as limiting posts to extant series and not allowing two articles to have the same SCP number.
As for ownership transfer, I believe that ownership should be transferred first to respective co-authors, then to the specified curator (if any), and then to staff, in that order. Altering my opinion after having read the opinions of others. If a person entrusts the curation of their articles to a person, then said curator has absolute authority on what to do with the article. If that curator then leaves, the articles entrusted to their care should fall under staff remit, as the original author has not consented to a change in curation.