Wikipedia talk:Redirect/Archive 2

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Can/Should Links to Redirects be cleaned up?

Please note: Wikipedia:WikiProject Redirect has now been created and is now available to join! Auroranorth 13:14, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm still a bit new, and I have tried to research this subject, but can't seem to find a definitive answer. I'm probably looking in the wrong place, but maybe there isn't one. Or with my luck, I found it, and simply didn't realize that's what it was talking about.

In any case, I was recently looking at the "What Links Here" page of a topic that I like. I noticed that many of the links were through redirects from pages with less than optimal spellings of the topic. Should/May I fix these links so that they point directly to the topic rather than to a redirect topic? Is there a policy about this?

Yes, you can/should avoid redirects. But in general, since they (theoritcally) still get the user to the right article, it's not a big deal. →Raul654 01:52, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)
Thank you. I'll start cleaning those up then.
Its not a bad idea, but it is a waste of one's time that could be used more valuably. If you like fixing redirects see Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links for many hundreds of links that do need to be changed. - SimonP 05:06, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)
There's nothing theoretical about it - a redirect always gets you to the right article. "Fixing redirects" is more or less a complete waste of time (but then again so is contributing to Wikipedia, one could argue :-), as the only use is if the target page is moved, creating double redirects, which do need to be fixed. However that can be done at the time of the move. All else is wasted effort. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 07:14, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I second that, but with one caveat - some redirects are created for common spelling errors, so links to these redirects should be fixed simply because spelling errors should be fixed (n.b. not to be confused with redirects for other other valid spellings - British v. American English). fabiform | talk 07:30, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
As PCB says. There is nothing wrong with redirects. Tannin
I can think of a more general caveat (which includes fabiform's): if a page was moved (one of the most common reasons for the existence of redirects) because the old title was deemed in some way "inappropriate" or "wrong", then there's a possibility that using that title as the text of a link is also inappropriate/wrong. - IMSoP 12:39, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
BTW Links that lead through Redirects with possibilities should not be "fixed" to point directly to the target page. -- User:Docu

I've now gotten myself entirely confused on this issue. I thought there was a :Policy statement to the effect that short-cutting redirects was preferred, in the context of the creation of 'orphan redirects', but I'm buffered if I can find it on a trawl for same. Furthermore, what about systematic 'breaking' of links from a canonical page to a redirect? (Passive-aggressive page-renaming, in effect.) Is that contra-policy, or just an equal and opposite waste of time, as it were? (Specifically, as regards Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints/The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Alai 05:01, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the term "clean up" should be used as a generic term for making links avoid redirects. I've observed several times that people go out of their way to flatten out redirects, while the page title may not actually be the optimal one. In other words, people "fixing" redirects without considering the possibility that it's actually the article that should be renamed instead. I think we should make it policy to require discussion at the Talk page prior to doing mass-flattening of redirects. --Joy [shallot] 13:40, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps this is an alternative view, but in some cases (certainly not all) I would think that “fixing” links (so they point to articles rather than just depending on redirects) would be beneficial in that other meanings sometimes crop up. As an example, when the anime article SDF-1 was moved to SDF-1 Macross a redirect was left behind pointing to the new, correct article. However some time after that, the redirect was replaced with an article discussing SDF-1 as it pertains to biochemistry. While this is a clear-cut case of a new person being over eager (they should have named their article something different {such as “SDF-1 (chemistry)”} and changed the SDF-1 redirect into a disambiguation page), now we are in a situation where almost two dozen anime articles are pointing to a biochemistry page. Had those links been “fixed” to begin with (something that would take only a couple of minutes using something like the Popups tool), this issue could have been completely avoided. As always, YMMV --Kralizec! 14:07, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

YMMV indeed—I just created a link to Iranian Revolution, in the sentence, "He moved to the United States in during the 1979 Iranian Revolution." Then I noticed that 1979 Iranian Revolution is a redirect to Iranian Revolution. So I fixed it (since I hadn't saved yet)—but then I had a thought. What if there's another revolution in Iran in 2006? One would assume that shortly, Iranian Revolution will become a disambiguation page, and so my sentence will need to be fixed. But 1979 Iranian Revolution would, one would assume, stay stable. Couldn't one argue that I should link to the correct title for my usage, rather than whatever title Wikipedia has ended up using for the main article? --TreyHarris 23:26, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
That is absolutely correct. Example: Winter-een-mas is a made up holiday that originated in the webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del. At several points in time (usually around the end of January when the holiday is) somebody made an article for it, and it gets moved into a section in the CAD article and changed to a redirect to CAD because it's non-notable. But some pages about made up holidays still link directly to it. Now, if we fixed all those redirects, nobody would notice any real difference, but then what if Bush declared Winter-een-mas a national holiday? Or what if all video game stores decided to celebrate it? Or what if it just became a part of mainstream geek culture, that every gamer worth his D-pad celebrates? Well then you have a good reason for an article there. But if you 'cleaned up' all those links that point to it, suddenly they make no sense at all, and you have to go through and look at every article that links to Ctrl+Alt+Del and see if it meant Ctrl+Alt+Del or Winter-een-mas. That is why 'fixing' redirects is frowned upon, because they have the potential to become articles themselves. Note that the exception to this is redirects that are common misspellings, which sould be fixed simply because there is a misspelled word in the linking article. --TexasDex 12:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Links to redirects in a different colour?

At the moment I run into a lot of redirects because pages with incorrect names (typos, incorrect capitalization, etc.) were renamed to something accurate, or pages on something tiny were merged with and redirected to a more general article. I only realise the link isn't up-to-date after I open the new page and read the little notice at the top. Because I tend to open multiple new pages in new tabs and close old tabs rightaway sometimes, even if I do remember where I came from, it's a bit of work to go back and fix things, if necesary.

So, would it be possible to program the Wikipedia software to show links to redirects in a different colour. Maybe purple, between blue (existing link) and red (not). I realise this might complicate things for casual/unregistered Wikipedia users, but it could be added as a new skin (another style sheet), or preferably an option in a user's Preferences. (That way users without accounts can't even accidently set it.) I suspect more people would be willing to correct unnecesay redirects if they can spot them rightaway.

The only "problem" is that of course some redirects are useful, but will still show in the different colour. However it seems like it's best to update those links anyway, in order not to get too many unnecessary redirects. Retodon8 18:15, 11 September 2005 (UTC), revised 13:50, 19 September 2005

Purple conflicts with the conventional color for links that have been viewed. --Smack (talk) 03:57, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
Oops! You're right; I wasn't paying attention. Minor detail. :) Another colour then, orange for instance. Random pick, but similar-ish to red which indicates broken links. Redirects are of course technically not broken, but still usually unwanted and in need of fixing. Retodon8 23:38, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Problem is that the color would likely be different on every skin (which is not a problem) but must also be visible. Orange on eggshell would be rather hard to read, as it's such a warm, light color. Green, maybe? We're contemplating using that on A Wheel of Time Wiki, for links that go to Wikipedia. nae'blis (talk) 17:12, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Green is the opposite of a warning colour, which I think would be better suited. Again, it doesn't matter a whole lot, especially if it's only available to logged in Wikipedians. Picking a different skin can just as easily (or at least it should be really easy) change link colours, to fit every skin. Retodon8 00:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
This sounds like a really good idea, what does one do to get something like this implemented? --Qirex 03:09, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree. I just read the entire talk page and found this at the bottom (I was going to add it if I did not find it, and it is important to keep up to date on all the issues on the talk page before proposing something, espcially since it might have been discussed untitled in another discussion)... I am surprised it has not been proposed before! This needs to be implemented. Many users link to redirects unknowingly - you see the blue link and not the red and think it's okay. Hazelorb 16:10, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Feature requests are made using the bug tracking tool, see Wikipedia:MediaZilla. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:11, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. I registered at BugZilla and submitted the request, hopefully correctly. It is Bug 4709. Retodon8 00:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
And it's been resolved, because links to redirects are not a problem. It might be nice to have a different color for "R..." templates that are there for misspellings or other cases where they're just present for the "Go" box, but other uses of redirect links are perfectly valid and do not need to get fixed. See Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups/About fixing redirects. A different color for those types of links will just lead to unnecessary editing and churn on the database. --TreyHarris 01:14, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I found that page linked in the section below here right after I submitted the request. I understand the logic, but if Wikipedians would notice rightaway (using "Show preview") they were linking to redirects from now on, more pages would link straight to the intended target, although I understand that doesn't help reduce server load much. I suppose I simply fail to see how linking to an actual article isn't preferable to linking to a redirect. Perhaps I'm a misguided perfectionist in this case. :) (I also responded at Bug 4709.) Anyway, thanks for the help everyone. Retodon8 16:27, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Have to agree that properly linked articles would be prefered over redirects. See my comments under #34 above, Can/Should Links to Redirects be cleaned up?. --Kralizec! | talk 16:50, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Trouble with &redirect=no

When i try to edit a redirect by going back to the page with &redirect=no tagged onto the end of the URL, I get presented with this:

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.
*Start the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989&redirect=no article or put up a request for it.

...etc etc. Obviously that's not what i wanted to happen. Run! 17:14, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 is the article, not a redirect. If you get there from one of the redirects, say, Tiananmen Square protest of 1989, there's some text below the title that says "(Redirected from ..,)" with a redirect=no link to the redirect. If you click this link you'll be at the redirect page and should be able to edit it. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:31, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
There are two styles of URLs used to get to wikipedia pages. The thing to remember is that if there's not already a question mark in the url, you have to use a question mark instead of an ampersand, so I suspect that you should be appending ?redirect=no instead of &redirect=no. Lupin|talk|popups 23:55, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Fixed it with an example in the article. In a URL ? is used as a delimiter for the first variable=value pair, then & is used for all subsequent delimiters, e.g. http://wikipedia.org/ice_cream?temperature=cold&flavour=vanilla&colour=white --Bob 22:11, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Redirect from plurals

A comment to my recetnt edit. I observed a new development: some websites started adding links to wikipedia, see e.g., here. This is a good thing. the bad thing is that classification schemes use plurals for topics: "Banks", "Doctors", etc., and without a redirect from plural, this link from outside may land into an empty wikipedia page, as it was in the example above (I fixed it 15 minutes ago). mikka (t) 01:41, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

redirects broken?

when i click on links now - they're taking me to the redirect page as opposed to redirecting. what's up with that?

  • I've noticed the same thing, so it's not just you. Dave6 00:58, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Like you needed more reassurance, I was just noticing that as well.-Platypus Man | Talk 17:45, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
They're working for me now, if anyone was wondering.-Platypus Man | Talk 15:17, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

On "fixing" redirects

I was noticing with some dismay that folks are starting to use Popups to "fix" redirects with one click, so I wrote a short little piece at Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups/About fixing redirects explaining why it's unnecessary to go on cleanup expeditions. (I did some benchmarking on a private MediaWiki instance to get the 10K factor number.)

I wonder if some of this rationale might not belong on this page instead? What would folks think about adding a section on "Why redirect cleanup is unnecessary"? --TreyHarris 23:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I've added a section explaining this. --TreyHarris 09:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Latin for rhetorical terms an alternate language, or alternate name?

I just created the redirect Argumentum ad ignorantiam, to redirect to Argument from ignorance. I marked it {{R from alternate language}}, but I can just as well see marking it {{R from alternate name}}, since it is referred to as argumentum ad ignorantiam in English rhetoric texts. (In fact, we seem rather scattershot on Wikipedia as to when we use the Latin name for rhetorical terms as the title, cf. Argumentum ad populum, and when we use the English name like here.) What do folks think? How about marking it as both? Should this be clarified on the project page? --TreyHarris 22:23, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Why have two lists of redirect templates.

I notice that there are two lists of redirect templates — The one on Wikipedia:Redirect#What do we use redirects for? and the one at Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages. The first one has more detailed explanations of the redirects, an the second one is more complete. Is there a reason why there are two, as this leads to the two lists becoming out of synch? The following redirects are missing from the first one (the second one appears to be complete). {{R from song}}, {{R from title without diacritics}}, {{R from UN/LOCODE}}, {{R to list entry}}, {{R to sort name}}, {{R to Wiktionary}}, {{Redir from US postal ab}}. Ae-a 16:23, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Shortage of capitalization redirects

I think that every article with more than one word in the title should have redirects from all possible capitalizations of the title. For instance, for Hetch Hetchy Valley, we should have "Hetch Hetchy valley", "Hetch hetchy Valley", and "Hetch hetchy valley". This may just be my own peculiarity, but I often look for articles by typing a likely title into my address bar, and I tend to get the capitalization wrong. --Smack (talk) 05:48, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Should creation of redirects be allowed for unregistered?

I think that anyone should be allowed to make redirects and make the "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name"-message appear something like this:

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.

-- drange 14:29, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

They can. All it takes to make a redirect is to type "#REDIRECT Article4321." (How else do you make a redirect?) Granted, casual users usually won't know the syntax, but there are many things that casual users don't know. --Smack (talk) 01:16, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
No, they can't because it is considered a 'new' article, and IP editors can't currently create new articles. 24.18.215.132 01:03, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

REDIRECT to ...

I can't find anywhere that explains why

#REDIRECT to [[...]]

works. Is the to, as well as anything else on the first line that is not a wikilink, just ignored, or is it a backward compatibility, and/or some historical artifact? I noticed it because Popups don't understand it. -- Mark Hurd 01:19, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

It seems that Mediawiki just looks for #redirect at the start of an article, and uses the first link as the redirect target. This means it accepts some strange things... for example, see the source of [1]. I'll change my script - thanks for pointing this out, Mark. Lupin|talk|popups 01:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Exception

I have reverted the addition:

The exception to this rule is if the article name is needed for something else. If [[Author]] redirects to [[Main Published Work of Author]] and you want to write an article for Author, change the pages to redirect to [[Main Published Work of Author]] and then edit the Author article as necessary. Explain this in your edit summary to aid Recent Changes patrollers.

I don't know what point this edit was trying to get across. Maybe we can reword it so that it's clearer. What I think it's saying is that, if you're about to change a redirect into a separate article, that you should first change all links to that redirect to go to the redirect target before editing the redirect itself. Is that right?

If so, I don't think the advice above is correct. If, for example, Homer redirected to The Illiad (it doesn't, but since we're of necessity talking about a transient situation, I can't refer to an actual case existing right now), it would surely be incorrect to make every current link to Homer instead go to The Illiad. In fact, doing so would be quite odd—one would assume links to Homer would be referring to the poet and not to the poem.

This is an example of why blindly fixing redirects is a bad idea, and why linking "directly" to a redirect target should not necessarily always be preferred. My example above of the 1979 Iranian revolution is another example—if there's another revolution in the future, Iranian revolution will become a redirect disambiguation page, but any links to 1979 Iranian revolution will continue to work. --TreyHarris 06:48, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Redirecting with categories?

How can you redirect a page to a category without making the page itself become part of the category? --Jumpeplowski 01:02, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Just throw a colon in there before the word Category, like what you'd do if you're linking to a category inline and didn't want the article to become a part of it, i.e., #REDIRECT [[:Category:Living people]]. --Kinu t/c 08:00, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Redirect error

I noticed an error with redirects. Example: the correct name for an article is TrueType. An redirect page exists by the name True type. When making a link by the name True Type (which does not exist yet), you will get an red link, yet when searching for True Type, you will be redirected to TrueType, as MediaWiki automatically lower-cases the "Type" in "True Type". I hope you understand what I mean - in my eyes this is an error. --Abdull 00:47, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

hm, let's see: bugzilla:5094. --Abdull 01:02, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Other languages

I recently saw some redirects in other languages, such as an arabic-character redirect to the page's english title. This isn't covered on the page. Shouldn't it be? --InShaneee 21:38, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

It is covered (look for "Other languages" in the table); the template to use is {{R from alternate language}}. Kusma (討論) 21:48, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
That I do understand, but I was wondering if that covered things such as जैन धर्म. --InShaneee 22:11, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Redirect dispute

Another user and I disagree on a redirect. I tried to set the redirect to go to a disambiguation(as it is a common acronym and name with multiple definitions), and he reverted it back to the specific article, stating it was the most common usage. I've tried talking to him on his talk page and the redirect's talk page, but he seems to be ignoring me.--Vercalos 00:02, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I am that other user and discussion is taking place at Talk:ISO. Kusma (討論) 07:28, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

#SPELLING_REDIRECT?

I am of two minds about using redirects for spelling errors; I think a software change to MediaWiki might be the solution. On the one hand, as one not blessed with the gift of good spelling, I love that redirects can correct me when I am confused about a spelling. On the other hand, the “(redirected from x)” is subtle, and so it is easy to not notice that you misspelled something when you wind up getting the page you expected. While the usual redirect seems appropriate for multiple valid spellings of the same word, I propose MediaWiki get a #SPELLING_REDIRECT directive which redirects to the the correct page but also corrects the URL and adds something like this to the top of the page:

Note: smrt is actually spelled smart.

Alternately, the spelling redirect could just be done as a template and not automatically redirect the user, instead making them click to ensure they are aware of the correct spelling. Comments? —BenFrantzDale 00:44, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Query: "Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken"

JA: Re:

Some editors are under the mistaken impression that fixing such links improves the capacity of the Wikipedia servers. But because editing a page is thousands of times more expensive for the servers than following a redirect, the opposite is actually true.

JA: I am a little bit puzzled about the relationship between this advice and the policy of fixing double redirects when a page is moved. Why bother then in the case of double redirects? I also understand that it is common practice to create temporary redirect pages for nodes that might eventually be developed into a full article, so I do not bother bypasing anything but trivial redirects and those that seem like they would be too disconcerting to the link-follower. As to the matter of server load, the question is not whether editing a page is 10^3 times more load than following a single redirect, the question is whether editing a page is 10^3 more load than following a persistent redirect 10^k times, where k approaches infinity steadily with time. Jon Awbrey 02:14, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Double redirects don't strain the server much. The problem is that they just don't work. Try this: User:Smack/double-redirect. --Smack (talk) 03:48, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
The above statement may be true in most cases, but it is not true for some high use templates, etc. For example, thousands of people may click on the disambiguation link on the {{disambig}} template, so fixing the redirect may actually save server load. Polonium 20:23, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Why doesn't it work?

I want to redirect the page of Foochow dialect to the page of Fuzhou dialect. I followed the steps but I don't know why it still doesn't work. Can someone help me?GnuDoyng 00:49, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

How to associate alterate name redirects to an R with Possibilites?

Is there anyway to tag or associate various alternate name redirects with an "R with possibilities"?

Here is my issue, using a hypothetical example: Let's say I am interested in "West Dakota Pears", and a very popular variety is the "Nowhere County Pear". That variety is also sometimes called the "Middle of Nowhere Pear" and the "Almost Somewhere Pear". Now, I don't have enough infomation on the "Nowhere County Pear" for a separate article, and don't think a stub is appropriate, so I make a section in my "West Dakota Pear" page about that variety. Because I think that someone will probably want to expand my short section into a proper article later, I create an "R with possibilities" named "Nowhere County Pear" that redirects to "West Dakota Pears". Now the big question is, What do I do with the terms "Middle of Nowhere Pear" and the "Almost Somewhere Pear"? If I have them redirect to "West Dakota Pear", and someone later develops a "Nowhere County Pear" article, the editor may not realize that these redirects are going to the master article, rather than to the variety to which they really should refer. I know I should not "double redirect" them, as that does not work. — Eoghanacht talk 17:51, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I would deal with this situation by pointing all redirects to "West Dakota pears", putting the articles on my watchlist, and updating the "Middle of Nowhere Pear" and "Almost Somewhere Pear" redirects if someone creates a "Nowhere County Pear" article. You could also add a {{Splitsection}} template to the "Nowhere County Pear" section of the "West Dakota pears" article with a note explaining the situation on relevant talk page, and an invisible comment after the template, e.g., <!-- Note to editors: if you split this section to a new article, please update the "Middle of Nowhere Pear" and "Almost Somewhere Pear" redirects to point to the new article -->. --Muchness 18:39, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I think I have settled on a note on the "R from alternate name"`s talk page. For an example, see: Talk:Sergeant Floyd Monument. My thought is that an editor is likely to check what pages link to a new article -- hopefully he will notice the link from a talk page of a similarly-named article and follow through with changing the redirect. — Eoghanacht talk 14:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Another idea, and I'm not sure if it's really acceptable but it does seem to work, is to put a note in the {{R with possibilities}} tag as an unused parameter e.g. {{R with possibilities|if you redirect this please fixup [[Middle of Nowhere Pear]] and [[Almost Somewhere Pear]]}}. Of course, if this template is ever changed to use that parameter it could cause problems. Ewlyahoocom 15:56, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia-specific help

(copied here from my Talk)

I've reverted your reversion of Wikipedia:Redirect: The {{Wikipedia-specific help}} template is for kludges, where Help:xyz pages include Wikipedia:xyz pages indirectly. That turned out to be too messy to handle, e.g. resulting in a huge list of categories for the help page because Wikipedia:Redirect lists many examples of templates adding pages to various categories. Plus oddities like multiple "See also" sections popping up in the ToC.

If you think that "how-to" isn't okay as category pick something else, but not "Wikipedia-specific help", that's now a list of cruft waiting for cleanup, in the case of WP:R already done. -- Omniplex 19:06, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Where exactly has this major change been discussed?
--William Allen Simpson 09:00, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Template talk:Wikipedia-specific help#No_consensus has some details about this kind of triple indirection clobbering help pages. Redirecting the specific Template:Ph:xyz for a Help:xyz page to another page resulting in the inclusion of this other page into the help page can cause havoc. Whatever a specific Ph:xyz does, it shouldn't include section headers.
Or are you asking who invented the specific Ph:xyz trick? It comes from Meta, allowing each project to add specific info to help pages derived from the master pages. Meta also has Ph:xyz for details only relevant there. Most simply redirect to m:Template:Ph:CheckUser (backlinks, edit) with an edit link for the list of other help pages at the bottom of each help page.
Here we have a slightly different style, the list of other help pages (of course a template) has its own edit link, and the specific help is a hardwired section with its own edit link for the relevant Ph:xyz. So unlike Meta simply blanking it won't work, and inserting multiple sections (= complete stand-alone pages) is confusing like hell.
Check out Category:Wikipedia-specific help for other cases where it clobbers help pages (look also at the affected help page section Wikipedia specific help and below). -- Omniplex 09:54, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I have moved most Wikipedia namespace pages directly to their ph/phh templates (removing duplicate text and integrating them into the help article). Others have been merged or renamed (inc this page) so the part after the namespace is different - an added advantage being the page title is more descriptive. The category now only contains 2 affected pages so the template and the category are nearly redundant. Gareth Aus 08:07, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

redirects to user space

I'm helping out a bit on Dead End pages and came across Sabbath Truth which is a redirect to a user page. I was wondering what the policy was for this. Should the Sabbath truth just be deleted as I can't immediately think where else to redirect it to. RicDod 14:42, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, redirects from the article space to user space can be speedily deleted (see item number 2 under "Redirects"). I have tagged that particular redirect with {{db-rediruser}}. — TKD::Talk 22:00, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Transwiki Redirects?

Is it possible to do Transwiki Redirects? If so, I'm going to spend the next week or so cleaning out the "Move to Wiktionary" entries. GofG ||| Contribs 00:16, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Section "Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken" suggested change

As I understand it, if one is editing a page already, than the server load is minimal to also "fix" the redirects. Therefore such fixing of functional redirects should not be discouraged if one already has a reason to edit a page, as long as one does them both in one edits. Two questions: 1) Is my impression correct? 2) If so, should we note it in that section? JoshuaZ 16:52, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to figure this out. The whole section seems to have been added as a warning against cases where the redirect is desirable to keep (such as in the case where the redirect name might one day be expanded into a real article or need to become a disambiguation page). However, while it includes a caveat for spelling mistakes, I think there are other instances where a redirect is undesirable; I can see no reason not to correct those, especially if one is already editing the article. One must be careful, though, to make sure the redirect isn't otherwise desirable (either now or in the future) for whatever reason (something I haven't done in the past). Powers 14:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the section as it makes absolutely no sense and runs contrary to logic. It also jumps to unsupported conclusions. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 00:31, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this section should be restored. On more than one occasion I have gotten involved in discussions where someone brings up links to redirects as a problem. It has been very useful to send those editors here. It came up again just today, and I was going to suggest the user read this section but discovered that it's now gone. Perhaps the explanation could be changed, but please restore it for now. (As for templates, I don't know the wiki software well enough, but it's possbible that templates are incorporated into the articles as stored on disk and not reloaded each time the page is viewed.) See also the section above #On "fixing" redirects which links to some actual benchmarking. Ewlyahoocom 20:20, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I have restored the section. Pegasus1138, you say "it makes absolutely no sense and runs contrary to logic". Here's the text:

Some editors are tempted, upon finding links using a legitimate redirect target, to edit the page to "fix" the link so that it points "straight" at the "correct" page. Unless the link displays incorrectly—for instance, if the link is to a misspelling or other unprintworthy redirect, or if the hint that appears when you hover over the link is misleading—there is no need to edit the link. Most especially, there should never be a need to replace [[redirect]] with [[direct|redirect]].

Some editors are under the mistaken impression that fixing such links improves the capacity of the Wikipedia servers. But because editing a page is thousands of times more expensive for the servers than following a redirect, the opposite is actually true.

Since I wrote most of the text above, I can't say if it makes absolutely no sense to others or not; it reads okay to me, but perhaps you could explain how it makes no sense. As for how it runs contrary to logic, that's entirely the point. One's intuition would naturally lead one to believe that fixing redirects could only be a good thing for improving the capacity of the servers. But in truth, it does not. See Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups/About fixing redirects for information about the benchmarks I ran about this. It's a difference in how editing utilizes the database versus how reads do. Edits are many orders of magnitude more expensive than queries, and the query for a redirect is extremely lightweight. --TreyHarris 00:07, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

You see that, I see that but the readers don't see that and I know for a fact that for the readers hitting a redirect is confusing is hell since they more often than not do not realize they have been redirected. It is also overly broad since it should be noted that even though name redirects are never needed that if your changing the display name anyway you should change the redirect in the process to be the more direct link. I also see the impact on the server the same way images and certain template calls impact the server which is negligible at best, sure if they add up they could cause problems but fixing a couple of redirects that you run across isn't going to ruin anything so if nothing else this is just policy-cruft. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 00:10, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Also, I apologize for acting unilaterally but the fact that people are quoting this incorrectly as policy are what spurred me to act since it appears that people are being misled by this passage. Since you insist that it stays despite my reasoning and objections then I won't get into an edit war over it since it would be unwiki but I think it should definitely be rewritten to be clearer, more concise and less of an essay on the evils of fixing redirects that aren't broken which is how it reads now. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 00:14, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

"Despite my reasoning and objections"—I haven't heard your reasoning yet, only your objections. You said that it "makes absolutely no sense". You said it "runs contrary to logic". Those are complaints, not the reasoning behind them. I can't respond constructively without understanding specifically what your reasoning is, I can only elucidate the rationale for the section. The rationale was that people were using AWB and bots to mass-"fix" non-broken redirects. We needed something to point people to in order to say, "don't do that". Fixing redirects that aren't broken is an evil, just as much as editing a page just to change inter-sentence spacing or to add or remove blank lines after section headers. It pollutes watchlists, adds burden to the servers, and does not have any appreciable positive effect to the reader.

"I know for a fact that for the readers hitting a redirect is confusing is hell since they more often than not do not realize they have been redirected"—I don't understand this statement at all. How is hitting a redirect any more or less confusing than hitting a piped link? If all links were accidental, and I could assume that a link reading Brassica napobrassica would go to a page called "Brassica napobrassica", then I'd see your point—going to Rutabaga instead could be confusing. But Wikipedia is rife with piped links, and it's just as likely that Brassica napobrassica could go to a page called "Root vegetable", or anything else.

"It is also overly broad since it should be noted that even though [[directarticle|name]] redirects are never needed that if your changing the display name anyway you should change the redirect in the process to be the more direct link"—No. You may fix the link if the redirect is broken. But it is extremely common that redirect terms are potential future splits. Today, we have fibroplasia phase as a redirect to wound healing. But that latter article is getting big, and at some point, someone may decide to split out the fibroplasia information into its own article. If people diligently "fixed" all occurrences of [[fibroplasia phase]] to [[wound healing|fibroplasia phase]], then when that split happens, all those links will be silently broken—whatlinkshere will be no help at all. Someone will have to tediously walk through every link to see if it would be better edited to go to the new page. Using (non-broken) redirects future-proofs links.

"I also see the impact on the server the same way images and certain template calls impact the server which is negligible at best, sure if they add up they could cause problems but fixing a couple of redirects that you run across isn't going to ruin anything so if nothing else this is just policy-cruft"—that's not the point. People feel justified, even virtuous, in "fixing" non-broken redirects because they believe they're helping the server capacity, when they're actually doing the opposite. The debates over images and meta-template calls have all been based around suggestions to make humans jump through hoops to improve the capacity of the servers. I have no problem with our deciding that, no, we're going to take the server hit to make things more logical and convenient for the humans. But having humans jump through hoops to make server capacity worse is just perverse.

I'm happy to work on a rewrite, but I'm not going to sweep the technical and information-architecture truths under the rug to do so. --TreyHarris 00:57, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

search redirect pages by default

After installing MediaWiki, I notice users have to enable the "include redirects" checkbox in the search result page in order to include redirect pages to the searching. But in Wikipedia, it seems by default, the search function will include all redirect pages. In fact, I could not find the "include redirects" checkbox under "Search in namespaces" options.

Can anyone tell me how to make the searching works like Wikipedia? Or, how I can default the "include redirects" option to "checked" for all users and every search. (I posted the same question on MediaWiki but got no reply.) Thanks! --Elo0000 00:56, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

suggested change to don't fix redirects that aren't broken section

Previous quote:

Some editors are tempted, upon finding links using a legitimate redirect target, to edit the page to "fix" the link so that it points "straight" at the "correct" page. Unless the link displays incorrectly—for instance, if the link is to a misspelling or other unprintworthy redirect, or if the hint that appears when you hover over the link is misleading—there is no need to edit the link. Most especially, there should never be a need to replace [[redirect]] with [[direct|redirect]].

Some editors are under the mistaken impression that fixing such links improves the capacity of the Wikipedia servers. But because editing a page is thousands of times more expensive for the servers than following a redirect, the opposite is actually true.



Suggested quote:

Unless a redirect displays incorrectly—for instance, if it link is to a misspelling or other unprintworthy redirect, or if the hint that appears when you hover over the link is misleading—there is no need to fix the redirect. There also may be a need if the hint that apppears over the links is incorrect or misleading. Replacing [[redirect]] with [[direct|redirect]]. Should never be needed and as with other uneeded edits should be avoided unless it would already be part of your current changes. "Fixing" non broken redirects can also be even detrimental to the servers as saving the page change to fix a redirect uses up more server resources than people going to the redirect through the page link.

comments/suggestions/etc...

  • I think this is a good change since it shortens it and it makes it less of an attack on anyone who doesn't follow it to the letter, also even though policy isn't quite held to the same NPOV standards as article it is quite frankly more neutral sounding and sounds more official for a guideline. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 00:22, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I added a note to it about the server impact, if you have a page with the stats on the studies about that please add a link to it to the suggested version since that would be of great help in convincing people that unecessary redirect fixing does have an effect on the server (albeit a negligible one) and having stats to link to will definitely help convince people of it's merits. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 01:04, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Policy pages aren't just "[not] quite held to the same NPOV standards as [an] article"; NPOV is orthogonal to policy pages. Guidance in policy pages are speech acts—by stating something, they cause the policy to be actionable in that way. A policy page is not neutral. (How would you NPOV-ify WP:NOR, for instance? There are plenty of editors who would like to just ignore NOR, but we're not going to take a neutral point of view as to whether you can engage in original research or not.)

Your proposed revision has taken two things out: the explanation as to why editors are often tempted to "fix" non-broken redirects, and a strong statement about the adverse server impact of redirect-fixing-only edits. Perhaps those are the points you felt weren't "neutral". I think these two points are important. The explanation of why people are tempted validates the intuitive reasoning editors have that removing redirect links must help the server, and serves as a signpost that the guidance that follows does not necessarily follow from common sense ("warning—subtlety ahead"). The strong statement about the adverse server impact serves to warn the reader that even the most fastidious editors, the kind who alphabetize interwiki links or change &mdash; to —, should not be fixing non-broken redirect links.

The information at Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups/About fixing redirects should be sufficient, if you feel that this needs to be documented. If you just look at the MediaWiki code, though, it's quite clear what the difference in impact would be, just based on the SQL statements. My benchmarking showed the difference to be a factor of over ten thousand. For my text here, I said "thousands" because it may vary slightly based on caching, etc., and there's no way I can run this benchmark on the production Wikipedia servers. But the thousands number is one I can be completely confident of; it's not that a redirect-changing edit can have that factor of impact compared to following a redirect, it will. I asked Brion Vibber to read that page for technical errors when I wrote it, and he found none.

I'm not happy with your toning down the language about never replacing [[redirect term]] with [[direct term|redirect term]] (though I'm not sure the boldface is necessary; that was added by someone very recently). If the displayed link text is legitimate in its setting, then that's the link term that should be followed, in order to future-proof the link against potential page moves and splits. You shouldn't change [[redirect term]] to [[direct term|redirect term]], even in the course of making other edits. I'd like some other folks' input here; I still like the original text better. --TreyHarris 04:23, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Trey. If anything, I think the language should be strengthened! It is the caveats about double-redirects, misspelled words, etc. that should be toned down -- they only confuse the matter for editors who haven't quite grasped the concept. (I've recently run across a editor who appears to enjoy disambiguating links but eschews both piping and redirects!) The "fixing" of non-broken redirects is, in my opinion, at the same level as the "fixing" of single spaces/double spaces after a period/full-stop -- a complete waste of time and effort. (Note for those who might be unaware of this: Wikipedia displays any number of spaces as a single space). Ewlyahoocom 16:12, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Problems with redirects

Recently I've been having problems with redirects showing up as actual pages with a tiny numbered list on them. For instance, the redirect I've created to go from "State Route 302 Spur (Washington)" to "Washington State Route 302 Spur" occasionally works, but will frequently take me to a page that reads...

1. REDIRECT Washington State Route 302 Spur

Any help? -- Northenglish 20:34, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello! They can be a pain, can't they! You gotta stick to this format really closely:

#REDIRECT [[Insert text]]

with no extra spaces or blank lines. This redirect worked briefly when another editor fixed it.[2] Ewlyahoocom 21:27, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
On second look, maybe it's more complicated. According to this edit it looks like you inserted a blank line before the redirect. But when I try to edit that version of the page I don't see the blank line. I'm stumped -- someone else please take a look at it. Ewlyahoocom 21:38, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Understood... The version that worked briefly was posted by another editor while I was trying to make mine work (my original forgot the link brackets). When I tried to edit my original version (unaware that the other version was up), anything the other editor had done to fix it had disappeared. Anyone else who can fix it would be greatly appreciated. I swear I won't touch it this time! -- Northenglish 22:54, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Plurals vs tenses

In the table, there's a row for "Plurals, tenses, etc" which has as its tag {{R from plural}}. Since the template only mentions plurals, it's obviously confusing to use it for a redirect because of tense differences. Is the intent that other templates will be added here, or that the template will be changed, or should we just remove ", tenses, etc" from the first column? Steve Pucci | talk 15:25, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I've removed ", tenses, etc" for now. Feel free to revert if someone has something else in mind. -Steve Pucci | talk 04:56, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't fix redirects at all

It's not just that fixing redirects doesn't improve anything, it even makes things worse, regardless of server load issues. XY is a [[foo]] is much more readable when editing a page than XY is a [[bar|foo]]. Not to mention the horrible scenarios where redirects from subtopics get "fixed" by sending them to a more general page, which may later on end up not including any information about the redirected title, thus confusing the reader. When the subtopic article gets written, it takes a lot of tedious work to find out which links need to be corrected back.

There seems to be some broader misunderstanding here. Redirects are not a bug, they're a feature. The information that an article is linked from another article through a redirect is useful to both readers and editors. With the exception of misspellings, no useful purpose is served by "fixing" redirects. Zocky | picture popups 20:00, 20 May 2006 (UTC)</nowiki>

I agree that redirects are a feature, but my view is that should used as a capture for editors using inexact terms they wikilink, so as to add linking value even if the link isn't accurate. I honestly don't care if people have trouble editing because they cannot understand a disambiguated link--that's one of the more simple constructs, and as they say, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Editing Wikipedia articles is not meant to be for people with low IQ's or low thresholds for pain.
Also, I think we should look at far more than server load issues. What about search engine optimization? Wouldn't disambiguated links work better for searchability overall? I think so. Ultimately, links should be cleaned up, but to help with server issues, perhaps generally do these changes along with other needed updates to the article. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 17:01, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Do you mean "piped to the redirect target" when you say "disambiguated"? While links to disambiguation pages should be disambiguated by piping to a unambiguous target, links through redirects should rarely be piped (they should sometimes be changed to direct links, though, in case of misspellings). Kusma (討論) 22:54, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Let's for a moment disregard that there is a guideline here. I am talking about what should be done with regards to links through redirects and search engine optimization. When you link directly, you have the exact-linked article's name in the title attribute, but if it's a redirect, you do not. Therefore, for SEO purposes, it's best to have a direct link. I am saying that what drags down server resources more is an irrelevancy compared to having a resource that has semantic connections that are optimized. Redirects should only be used for accidental linking, not for the final link. The final link should be exact. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 02:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Why should we be interested in search engine optimization? Wikipedia articles are typically ranked too high on Google already. Kusma (討論) 03:44, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
It's not merely a search engine optimization. It's also a semantic optimization. Linked text is the context, and titles are descriptive of what's being linked to. Redirects sometimes get in the way of this contextual contract for linking (most important for internal links in this case), as it were. —  Stevie is the man!  Talk | Work 01:03, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I think you have it backwards. Article titles are chosen not only for descriptive purposes, but to minimize ambiguity. If the term Prairie schooner is more apt for an article than Conestoga Wagon, nothing whatsoever is added to comprehension by piping the link. Since, as pointed out repeatedly, the server load issue is a chimera, I agree with the title of this section: Don't "fix" redirects at all. Robert A.West (Talk) 01:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I think that there are benefits to both systems (this is not a reply to Robert, I'm just indenting). I agree that there are no performance benefits to piping links, and I do not think search engine optimization is important at this time. However, I prefer piped links in many cases because I know where the link is going. I find it frustrating when I am expecting to go to an article on a subject, yet I end up at a general article, an article that is only slightly related or a list with short dictionary definitions. When I was new to Wikipedia, it was particularly maddening because I did not know which terms redirected. For instance, I kept trying to find articles on various forms of solar power, but a huge number of them redirect to solar power (at least they did at the time). If I have not been to the page before, I usually to check where it goes before clicking on it by moving the cursor over the link. I find this system even more useful when the site is running slowly because I do not have to wait for the page to load. The advantages of not piping have already been given. -- Kjkolb 14:12, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Another benefit of piped links is that they allow the identification of stubs, as the stubsensor does not work on redirects. Links to redirects appear to be full-length articles no matter how short the article they redirect to is. I use the stubsensor all the time. I do not know if it is as big of a deal to most people. -- Kjkolb 11:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Sounds like a bug to me. In any case, we should not be editing articles for the benefit of a cleanup script. Robert A.West (Talk) 12:23, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Is it feasible to fix this? If so, I would have thought that it would have been fixed long ago. Anyway, there are still the other benefits. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kjkolb (talk • contribs) 14:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC).
I agree with Zocky. Don't "fix" redirects by making links more complex than they need to be. — Omegatron 14:31, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Text after redirect

This page, and also Help:Redirect still states that text on the lines following the redirect are deleted, but this is no longer true (see for example, Paul "Mad Dog" McGuinness). I had a discussion with another editor about this, and it seems logical that, when turning an article into a redirect, most of the text is better to be deleted, because:

  • if the text below the redirect contains a link to page A, the redirect will be listed in the "whatlinkshere" of page A (while in fact the redirect does not visibly link to A)
  • disk usage
  • text is invisible anyway
  • text is still in the db, which means that every tool that uses the export feature or the database dump (which include all scripts on the toolserver) will behave as if the text were visible; for example, a tool for searching the db for spelling mistakes detects mistakes in the invisible text

On the other hand, it seems to me that there are at least two reason for having some text after the redirect line:

  • categories; especially Category:Living people seems relevant
  • an item to be used if the redirect is then turned into a disambiguation page, if this seems to be an actual possibility

Is this reasonable? - Liberatore(T) 11:16, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Please see the "New section proposal: Categories inside redirects" I posted below about documenting all of that. -- 62.147.112.177 09:54, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

help

I'm trying to redirect sexyback to SexyBack , but it doesn't work. if I search for sexyback or Sexyback it takes me to the redirect page instead of the targeted SexyBack. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Myrockstar (talk • contribs) .

Looks OK to me. While I was there I changed it back to a "from other capitalisation" redirect. "From CamelCase" means the redirect itself (not the target article) is a CamelCase name. In the fairly distant past, Wikipedia was run using different wiki software which required links to be CamelCase (see Wikipedia:CamelCase and Wikipedia). -- Rick Block (talk) 13:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Redirects with categories

My bot, in implementing category changes per WP:CFD, sometimes encounters categories containing redirects (for instance it did so here). I think I am justified in getting it to remove the categories from the redirect when it comes across one; article categories should be for articles! - does anyone have a different view? I am not talking about any redirects properly categorised using the {{R from...}} templates. --RobertG ♬ talk 17:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Please don't do this. Categorizing redirects is a very useful technique when an article either includes multiple topics that don't each warrant their own article or is about a topic (or person) known in different contexts by different names. The specific example you ran into is perhaps dubious, but as a general technique I think it's perfectly valid. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Please don't eliminate these. Since categories are used for navigation at times, not having anything in the expected spot harms users trying to find things. Categorized redirects don't do any harm and do a lot of good (as long as the categories are on the same line). -- nae'blis (talk) 19:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
The categories don't even have to be on the same line anymore. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:02, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Excellent, I'd seen it a couple of times but wasn't sure it was true or just poor formatting. -- nae'blis (talk) 04:05, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, yes I see. My robot will no longer remove categories from redirects. --RobertG ♬ talk 10:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Please see the "New section proposal: Categories inside redirects" I posted below about documenting all of that. -- 62.147.112.177 09:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Is there a definition for the word "pipe"?

Y'all have invented this jargon "pipe", and you haven't defined it. Wikipedia:Redirect uses the word "piping" twice and "piped link" four times. Wikipedia:Template_messages/Redirect_pages uses the word "piping" four times and "piped link" five times. The various category pages and other pages including this talk page here use this term. Will someone in the Wiki Cabal please give me a definiton of "pipe"? Barticus88 21:20, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, we didn't invent it; see Vertical bar. Also, if you could add future comments to the bottom of talk pages, it would be helpful for readability and clarity. -- nae'blis (talk) 22:21, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Ummm, well I know how to pipe command output, I know how to smoke marijuana in a pipe, and I know how to sew piping when making a pillow, but none of that answers my question. What does "piping" or "piped link" mean in the context of Redirect? I can find you at least ten pages which warn me about this, and nary a one has a link to a definiton. How can I not do it if you won't tell me wht it is? Am I being advised not to send the output of a command to a link? What does that mean?
As far as where to post is concerned, new topics belong at the top, new info in an existing discussion belongs at the bottom. Putting a new topic at the bottom is slavishly following the "no top posting" rule where it doesn't apply. Barticus88 06:50, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
The definition you seek is here. To get that link, I typed [[piped link|here]], which is a piped link. I put the desired destination, in this case the 'piped link' page, first, then the vertical bar '|', then the text I wanted you to see, 'here'. It sends the reader directly to the destination to which I want to send them. Does that answer your question? If not, I guess I need more information. Put your question here or on my talk page, or both. -- Baseball,Baby! balls•strikes 07:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand

I'm trying to make the word Traben redirect to Traben Bass Company, but can't get it to. To I have to make a page called Traben first? Gopherbassist 20:31, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, what you want is to edit Traben to have the content #REDIRECT [[Traben Bass Company]]. Of course, this only applies if the ONLY usage of Traben anywhere is for the company; in this particular case, you can probably get away with also putting
{{redirect|Traben|the German city|[[Traben-Trarbach]]}} at the top of the company article, which will give:
"Traben" redirects here. For the German city, see [[Traben-Trarbach]].
-- nae'blis (talk) 20:58, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. Gopherbassist 03:13, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Also, make sure the redirect info is the only thing on the page otherwise it could cause problems with the redirect. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 03:15, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Excessive numbers of redirects

I was involved in a case recently where another user had created a very large number of redirect pages (71 to be exact) all of which redirected to either of two new articles which he/she had created, apparently in "competition" with a page which I am involved in maintaining and possibly others. These redirects were clearly designed to direct casual searches about the subject in general to his/her articles rather than any others. The redirects have now been deleted by an admin, and the articles merged, but I have been wondering if there is an actual policy covering cases like this; I can't find anything referring to what I would call "internal link spam" or "redirection spam". Rwxrwxrwx 19:44, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Actions not explicitly covered by existing policies are covered by the catch-all wording at the beginning of Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. Reasons for deleting redirects are listed at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion#When should we delete a redirect?. In this case it sounds like perhaps the first and/or second reason listed might have been applicable. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:42, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

How to add 'redirect' icon to the 'edit' page on wikis?

Wikipedia has added a 'redirect' quick button in the edits. Anyone know how to add this same functionality to another wiki? thanks TheHYPO 18:59, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of redirects...

WP:R, WP:RED, and WP:REDIRECT all go to this page. But WP:REDIR goes to Help:Redirect. Anyone know the reason for this? --Galaxiaad 20:05, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Shortcuts happen when people make them, so they're bound to be inconsistent. That shortcut you mention is listed on Wikipedia:Shortcuts, and was pointed there back in April, so it's probably doing no harm. A way to help the reader might be to put hatnotes on both pages that link to the other one, in case somebody types in the wrong redirect for...well, redirects. -- nae'blis 20:34, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Redirects from more general term to more specific

I consider such redirects harmful, as they hide the hierarchy of the concepts. Are there any rules or guidelines that are considering the issue? Can such redirects be made? I think that it is better to have a red link than pointing human to male just because there is no good information in the "human" article. Hyperbolic example, of course, but it illustrates the point quite well. Actually, the issue started here: Talk:Coelenterata. I think this guideline needs to be updated with statement "Never create a redirect from a more general concept to the one which is clearly a subset of that concept". Really need someone's advice, please comment. --Maxxicum 00:53, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there can be a hard and fast rule. Sometimes, limited information is better than no information (especially in cases where the more specific article touches upon the general concept). Perhaps a guideline statement talking about the downsides (right after the one on "Sub-topic redirects" after the table) would be a good idea, but not a "Never create" one. -- JLaTondre 01:02, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
When the specific article has information of the more general concept, you can simply move that information there and create a stub. A stub is always better than redirect, am I wrong? --Maxxicum 01:09, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Depends. Moving the information is usually probably not correct as it provides context. Copying the information to a stub might make sense, it might not. It general it probably does, but it would depend upon the specific situation. As I said, a recommendation would be better that a rule. -- JLaTondre 01:29, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

What about "Avoid redirecting a more general concept to the one which is clearly a subset of that concept." This would sound more like recommendation. Does anyone disagree with adding this into the guideline? If nobody disagrees, I'll do so. --Maxxicum 12:31, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

No, that doesn't sound like a recommendation. That still sounds like a rule. Please refer to the current paragraph starting "Sub-topic redirects are often temporary,..." for an example of how to write it as a guideline. I'd also recommend you leave this sit here for a couple days before making the change. Not everybody checks every day. -- JLaTondre 12:53, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Please help me make it sound like recommendation, could you? I'm not very good in writing guidelines, I guess. And of course I wasn't going to add this after 1 hour. Let it be here at least a week to make sure everyone has the opportunity to discuss. --Maxxicum 13:08, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I think the key to guidelines is that they should avoid absolutes. "Avoid", "Never", "Don't", "Do", "must" are all rule-words. What about something like, "The reverse of this situation (where a general topic redirects to an article about a more specific subtopic) is often less desirable. Consider creating a stub at the general topic by moving some of the general information upstream." I can't think of a specific example where we have this situation currently, and the word "upstream" is much less than ideal, but it might be a start. See the difference? -- nae'blis 15:02, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion and explanation. Regarding an example of current situation - see Talk:Coelenterata, this is what raised the issue. --Maxxicum 15:38, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Usefull combinations of accents in redirect

Hello. I think, that Karel Blažej Kopriva is useless redirect page. Correct name is Karel Blažej Kopřiva and usefull redirect page is Karel Blazej Kopriva. I put speedy delete template on Karel Blažej Kopriva, but admin things "it's fine as-is". Where I can find any Wikipedia policy about this type of redirect?

We can allow all combinations of diacritics for Karel Blažej Kopřiva. But what about e.g. Tomáš Dvořák (sš, aàá ) ... 26 combination?

I prefer Tomáš Dvořák (correct name), Tomás Dvorák (ISO-8859-1) and Tomas Dvorak (without accents) redirect only.

Another problem is Wikipedia search engine and "No page with that title exists - create this article". Probably, engine can acts better (when searching for word with some no ISO-8859-1 characters and when no article found) and suggests searching for ISO-8859-1 equivalent article name (or search for ISO-8859-1 equivalent immediately). --mj41 13:10, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Precedent at WP:RFD is that redirects of this type are cheap. They are usually unnecessary, but don't do any harm, so we don't delete them although we don't go out of our way to create them. Your example should be kept as a typical {{R from misspelling}}. Kusma (討論) 13:17, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
In this particular case, it seems that the article was created at Karel Blažej Kopriva before being moved to the correct title. If somebody mistyped the name once, then somebody could mistype it again, in which case this redirect is useful. You do have a valid point about the search though — this already checks for uppercase and lowercase variants of the requested title, so it could possibly check for accented and unaccented variants as well. Check Bugzilla to see if this has been filed as a feature request already. — sjorford++ 15:14, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

New section proposal: Categories inside redirects

I'm suggesting the following section (or a rewritten version of its content) for insertion:

==Categories inside redirects==

In some cases, it is useful to add categories to a redirect pages, so that legitimate alternative titles or names can be found in the categories lists, or so that a category isn't incomplete.

  • For instance, the music album The Essential Lynyrd Skynyrd (1998, MCA) has been reissued identically but for a new title and new record label as Gold (Lynyrd Skynyrd album) (2006, Geffen). For such case, the new issue is documented at the original article, and the redirect is:
#REDIRECT [[The Essential Lynyrd Skynyrd]]
{{R from alternate name}}
[[Category:2006 albums]]
[[Category:Greatest hits albums]]
[[Category:Lynyrd Skynyrd albums]]
[[Category:Double albums]]
[[Category:Geffen Records albums]]

And, in order to prevent good souls from adding the "missing categories", you can add a HTML comment after the main article's own categories, such as:

<!--
  THE RETITLED REISSUE IS CATEGORIZED SEPARATELY ON ITS REDIRECT PAGE
  IN ORDER TO BE DISPLAYED CORRECTLY IN THE CATEGORIES' ALPHABETICAL LISTS
 -->

Such setup is NOT to be done for each reissue or variant of a music album. This one was done because readers may legitimately expect to be able to find the new title "Gold (Lynyrd Skynyrd album)" in all those categories. Also, because of the new title, a category such as "Geffen Records albums" could be considered incomplete without it.

== (end of proposed section) ==

Notes:

  • The problem used in the example is documented at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums, if that's any use.
  • One concern I have, that should maybe be sorted out first, is about this new MediaWiki feature of allowing multiple lines in redirect, instead of keeping only the first line. Very useful and most probably intended by the developers, but since it isn't documented here or at meta, maybe it should be verified with the devs first? (Because if it's actually a temporary glitch, the next software update could wipe all multi-lines redirects...)
    P.S.: Just to be on the safe side, I have asked the question of multi-line redirects at WP:VPT, so we'll see about that. Please note that even if multi-line redirects are actually prohibited, the setup still worked with all categories piled on a single line, and was stil useful for adding categories to some redirect pages, so it should still be documented here (with a single-line code example).
  • Note that the redundancy between Wikipedia:Redirect and Help:Redirect isn't helpful. (I originally posted comments about this issue at the talk for the Help: and Meta: pages, but actually it seems debates are done here, which I wouldn't know from the redundant pages.)

Objections, additions, tweaks?

-- 62.147.112.177 09:52, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Content of the new section is ok, but perhaps a little too specific to albums. As a rule, I would say that if the target of redirect X mentions that X is an Y, then X can be categorized as Y (IMO, categories should not be used to add information that is not already in articles).
As a said above, an important category that surely should be added to redirects is Category:Living people, as redirects can be easily turned into articles, and these have to be checked as all other bios of living people.
Possibly, I would also add: "some text can be added after the redirect, if considered useful for some reason, but please do not use links there". For example, in a redirect neighborhood -> city, one may mention "this is a neighborhood of that city"; this text is not visible, but may help if someone wants to turn the page into an article. I am in particular thinking to redirects that could in the future be turned into disamb pages. I'd avoid links in this text because they could end up cluttering whatlinkshere pages. (Liberatore, 2006). 11:09, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea of a section of this nature, but I agree that it's broader than just albums. I think some variant of the "If article Y says redirect X is category Z, categorize the redirect rather than the article." I've used this to keep fictional categories useful for navigation without a million stubs. -- nae'blis 17:46, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Good criterion. Note that I didn't intend the section to be only about albums, it's just that the "complete example" I give is about one. But my first paragraph wasn't enough developed about the generality of the topic, indeed. The "Content of redirects: templates, categories, multiple lines" thingy in the section below took my time, but at least now we've confirmation that it's all official. I'll be back to develop the above draft. -- 62.147.38.54 19:04, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Image redirects

I recently came across several images that redirect to other images, which seems kinda useless to me, since it's only the description page that's redirected... Is there some standard way for dealing with these? --Fritz S. (Talk) 10:36, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Redirecting current events to the portal

The redirect from Current events to Portal:Current events was up for deletion. Now, I think that redirect is bloody useful, as I'm still used to the old address, so I added changed part of Wikipedia:Redirect/DeletionReasons (changed in italic):

  1. Someone finds them useful. Hint: If someone says they find a redirect useful, they probably do. You might not find it useful — this is not because the other person is a liar, but because you browse Wikipedia in different ways. (For example, Portal:Current events used to be in the article space, at Current events, and many people still have bookmarks pointing there.)

Comments? That could probably be written more tersely. flammifertalk 07:14, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I have reverted that edit. It is inappropriate to list an open RFD as an example. You may use that rationale to argue for keeping the redirect at WP:RFD, but you should not change the reasons page until after the debate is closed and there is consensus for adding the example. I personally don't see the point of listing any one example for this particular criteria. By the way, I also reverted your removal of the RFD tag from Current events. Do not remove deletion tags from open deletion debates. -- JLaTondre 12:07, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Content of redirects: templates, categories, multiple lines

See the last subsection Summary of those informations for the final answers

After asking official developers on #wikimedia-tech, it seems the status of some of those things we are currently doing could be a problem, or at least that developers should need to be aware of our practices -- but developer Brion was in a meeting and too busy at the moment for details.

So I'm posting here a summary of the issues (both for developers and editors), and excerpts from the IRC answers I got, so that developers can come back later and provide authoritative answers on those topics.

We have three separate issues:

  1. The use of templates (plain text, no links) inside a redirect page.
  2. The use of category tags inside a redirect page.
  3. The use of multiple lines inside a redirect page (usually in order to have a more readable source with those additional templates and categories).
The use of templates (plain text, no links) inside a redirect page.

The use of the "R templates" is currently officialy documented at Wikipedia:Redirect. There is also their complete list at Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages and Category:Redirect templates.

Note: It has been said that wikilinks inside redirect pages are a big no-no for the database, but none of those official template has links.

The use of category tags inside a redirect page.

It's already done automatically by the "R templates", to sort redirect pages. It's also much in use for categorizing alternative titles or names, that we want to appear in the lists. Usually it's done by stuffing all category tags on the single line after the #REDIRECT itself.

The use of multiple lines inside a redirect page

Until recently, redirect pages were storing only the very first line and deleting everything else. Recently, redirect pages have been storing more than the first line. Many have started using this bug-or-feature for adding information to redirect pages without having to pile everything on the first line (category tags, redirect templates, meta-information in HTML comments, etc.) -- but whether this new behavior is official or a glitch remains unknown.

Recent references of wikipedians needing/using those features:

The current discussion about documenting categories inside redirect pages:

Wikipedia talk:Redirect#New_section_proposal:_Categories_inside_redirects

An older discussion about multi-line redirects and categories:

Wikipedia talk:Redirect#Redirects_with_categories

The "categories inside redirect" discussion/documentation at WP:ALBUM, and other people having used it since a long time:

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums#NEW.21_Categorizing_retitled_reissues
Refactored excerpts from IRC (Wednesday 30 August 2006 ca. 14.00 UTC)
  • * Now talking in #wikimedia-tech
  • <qtech> Hello. A quick question: Redirect pages are now storing multiple lines (not just the first line), is this an official feature we can document and use, or a glitch?
  • <brion> categories and templates are likely to break on redirects, they should not be used
  • <qtech> It's been used for a long time, now, there is a whole PAGE of 20+ templates for redirects.
  • <brion> qtech: they should all be removed. that's why there was a restriction to one line, to prevent this corruption
  • <qtech> ...another possibility, which would be better, would be the ability to write this:
  • <qtech> [[Category:Thriller films|Unleashed|Danny the dog]]
  • <qtech> That would be listed BOTH at "U" and "D" under two names. Would centralize info nicely.
  • <brion> at this time markup and links in a redirect page are likely to corrupt the link tables. this may produce incorrect results, and is not supported at this time.
  • <brion> as for the future, we'll have to talk about it later. busy with other things right now.
  • * brion is in a meeting :P

...

  • <Duesentrieb> brion: the ability to categorize redirects is much requested - and i think was the reason this was changed
  • <qtech> you mean, the fact that redirect page now store more than 1 line was done officially (not a glitch) and is there to stay? Or who could confirm/infirm that?
  • <Duesentrieb> i think someone changed it intentionally. But i can't confirm this explicitely, no.
  • <Duesentrieb> whoever did it didn't think of all the implications, i guess.
  • <Duesentrieb> wait for brion to get back. You can make a notethat the templates MUST NOT EVER contain any links.
  • <Duesentrieb> "normal" links on a redirect page a EVIL
  • <Duesentrieb> extremely bad
  • <Duesentrieb> bound to break things
  • <Duesentrieb> categorization is acceptable - even if it's kind of an accidental feature, i guess it'll have to be kept. Or we get a smarter way of categorizing under different names. Such as shwing the sort key in the category.
  • <Duesentrieb> i would personally recommend against templates also, but that's no *so* critical.

...

  • <henna> why are categories on redirectpages needed?
  • <qtech> For instance, you have an article for the movie Unleashed (film) (U.S.) and a redirect for Danny the Dog (film) (U.K.) but you want both names to be categorized.
  • <qtech> People from the U.K. expect to find "Danny the Dog" into the categories, they may even have never heard about "Unleashed". So, the redirect page need to bear some categories too.
So, the questions asked from Brion and other developers
  1. We are currently officially using the "R templates" in redirects (plain text, no links): what should we do/not do about that?
  2. We are currently semi-officially using category tags in redirects (it's often needed): what should we do/not do about that?
  3. A growing number of us are currently using the new feature of multi-line redirects: before it's spread too much, what's the official technical policy on that? Is the new feature a glitch and we should stick to "everything on a single line"? Or was the new feature intended by a developer, and we can document and use it from now?

-- 62.147.38.54 15:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Additional infos from developer User:Tim Starling

Refactored excerpts from IRC (Wednesday 30 August 2006 ca. 16.00 UTC)
  • <qtech> TimStarling : Well, someone must have added that new feature of "multi-line redirects", no? And there's the matter of the two other things we use, but seem to be forbidden by devs. That's strange.
  • <TimStarling> it's hardly new
  • <TimStarling> has it stopped working or something?
  • <TimStarling> you can put category tags on redirects but not templates, is that the problem?
  • <qtech> Nope. But the news that one can use multi-lines in redirects is spreading fast, and people are using it, but nobody knows or cares if that's official or a glitch. If it's a glitch, then the next software update will WIPE tons of useful information stored in redirects.
  • <TimStarling> I enabled it like 18 months ago or something, so obviously it hasn't been spreading that fast
  • <TimStarling> I thought it was silly to have to put category tags on the same line as the redirect
  • <TimStarling> if brion says otherwise then I will respectfully disagree

...

  • <TimStarling> well, I wouldn't put templates in redirects, that's just silly
  • <TimStarling> asking for performance trouble
  • <TimStarling> I will happily break that

...

  • <qtech> So in summary, you say that "multi-line redirects" are not a glitch but a feature you enabled, so we can document it and use it?
  • <TimStarling> yes, but the fact that templates are registered in the outgoing links for redirects is a bug

...

  • <TimStarling> http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/includes/Article.php?r1=12312&r2=12339
  • <TimStarling> see, before that, it used to "remove all content but redirect"
  • <TimStarling> which meant everything from the #redirect to the first line break, as you can see from the preg_match
  • <TimStarling> it was a bug
  • <TimStarling> it was stupid and embarrassing that it ever worked like that
  • <qtech> A bug? I had read that redirects were purged on purpose so as not to keep unwanted/uneeded data?
  • <TimStarling> rubbish
  • <TimStarling> once categorised redirects were allowed, it was a bug
  • <TimStarling> before that, it made sense, although the implementation was flawed
  • <TimStarling> it should have deleted everything after the ]]
  • <TimStarling> that's why the implementation was flawed
  • <TimStarling> but then categories on redirects were enabled by accident, due to that bug in implementation
  • <TimStarling> people started using them
  • <TimStarling> then I broke them, not realising we even had that feature
  • <TimStarling> people complained, so I fixed them, including the one-line restriction which didn't make any sense anymore
  • <qtech> But I've not seen anywhere (official) that categorized redirects are allowed either ;) It's useful and in use, but not documented. i've started a "section proposal" for documenting it precisely because it was missing.
  • <qtech> Myself, I started looking into all that because I needed it so bad for my "Gold" redirect. But I found no documentation, not even the acknoledgement that categories in redirects were OK.
  • <qtech> ...which is why I'm drafting a documentation for "categories inside redirects" -- BUT I wanted first to check with devs if all that stuff was OK, since we have no official doc about those practices.
  • <TimStarling> well there you go, now you have the story
  • <qtech> As I gather it, your position is: OK for categories in redirects, OK for multi-line redirects, but NO for the "R templates" in redirects.
  • <TimStarling> yes
Summary of those informations
  • Categories in redirects are officially OK
  • Multi-line redirects are officially OK
  • BUT templates in redirects, such as the "R templates", are not OK for performance reasons, and may be broken in the future.

(It would be better if Brion and/or Tim Starling could just come and officially confirm I didn't make this up, though.)

-- 62.147.38.54 17:13, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Additional information

No more need to make TimStarling come here - User:Paolo Liberatore provided this useful link, which documents multi-line redirects and categories as being officially enabled by developers: bugzilla:1476 (especially comment #19)

-- 62.147.38.54 17:35, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

response to developer comments

Wow. Sounds like we'd better get a bot running that can convert all of the {{R from typo}} to Category:Redirects from misspellings & Category:Unprintworthy redirects, etc, and quick. -- nae'blis 20:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

There are currently 52 templates "R from..." and "R to..." in Category:Redirect templates, but fortunately 34 are unused. The remaining ones are used in 14921 pages. I'm certainly not volunteering to make the changes manually :-) Seriously, I cannot make the bot myself at this moment, so a request at Wikipedia:Bot requests is in order. (Liberatore, 2006). 21:06, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Request made, and someone's already replied, though they said 15,000 chanegs might take a while. I suppose the templates can still exist as long as they are substituted, and have commented to that effect on Wikipedia_talk:Template_substitution. -- nae'blis 21:41, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I had already commented at Category talk:Redirect templates, but nobody answered so far. I also assumed that these templates work if subst.
Regarding the update to be done on this page, I noticed that there are actually two kinds of categories one may add to a template:
My question is: is there any case when a redirect has both kinds of categories on it? (Liberatore, 2006). 09:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me that forbidding the use of templates on redirects for performance reasons may be a bit extreme. Currently, the templates have no effect on the behavior of the redirect when it is followed (linked through, if you get my meaning). The category information is only processed on the page save (whether in a template or not). Couldn't we just make the current behavior "official": templates will not be processed when linking through the redirect. So, for example, you couldn't use a template to build the redirect directive itself, but you could use templates for categories and other purposes (such as documentation, as in the {{R from...}} templates). –RHolton≡– 14:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Asking developers to make a change in the software is certainly possible. However, given their current workload I doubt they will implement something they do not feel necessary so quickly.
No developer action is required. The current behavior is fine. All that is required is that the current action is accepted as "good", and retained in future versions. –RHolton≡– 16:20, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Another note: while preparing the "R from/to" templates for an eventual subst, I noticed that many of them have (regular) links. According to the IRC log above, they should be un-linked. (Liberatore, 2006). 14:42, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the templates should not include any links. I'll work on that. –RHolton≡– 16:20, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

IATA and ICAO airport codes

Are IATA and ICAO airport codes that don't have other meanings supposed to redirect to the page for that airport? It seems that sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. If they are supposed to then I would be interested in adding some of the ones that don't, but I want to know what the wikipedia policy is first before I do anything. Thanks. Abc30 18:16, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Quite awkwardly, an answer may be found at redirects for deletion. As far as I can tell, a redirect may be created as long as it is useful for some reason, and these ones seem useful to me. At the same time, I do not see any drawback for them (Liberatore, 2006). 10:09, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Liberatore. I'd only add that it would be good to make sure the codes that have other meanings are included on disambiguation pages. –RHolton≡– 14:10, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Subst of redirect templates

I made this new thread to discuss if and how the redirect templates should be substituted. I have made some changes to these templates so that they currently do not include other templates (this was to avoid anyway, per WP:AUM), and this is now fixed.

However, many of them also include regular links; according to the IRC log above, these links should be removed. Some of these templates are designed to be included in this project page so that the "include"'d part is actually a section of this page. Some of these templates use commented out "noinclude" and "includeonly" tags, so that they do not work when subst'ed; Template:R from other Capitalization is an example of this.

For these reasons, and also because I see there is some disagreemnt about whether these templates should be substituted, I have asked Betacommand to delay substituting. Comments? (Liberatore, 2006). 15:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

WP AUM was rejected. Subst is of limited use and certainly harms, because the centralized place for certain message gets lost. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it's clear per the above discussion that templates within redirects must ultimately be removed; that means all the {{R from ...}} templates. However, I think it is important to not be hasty about anything and to have a clear go-ahead from developers for whatever is done, because it may be hard to reverse such changes.
this is absolutly not clear. It's Tim's personal opinion. It will create a mess if implemented. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:53, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
As I understand it the motiviation for creating the {{R from ...}} templates was:
  1. MediaWiki ignored everything but the first line of redirects, so a template allowed inclusion of multi-line information. This is no longer an issue.
  2. "What links here" for a template gives more information than for a category; as far as I know a template is required for something like this link, which gives a list of pages that link to misspelled redirects.
To me, one issue is whether {{R from misspelling}}, {{R from alternate spelling}}, etc. should be substed or removed altogether. I think it would be a good idea to have a clear decision that categories on redirects will be supported in the future; otherwise the purpose of these templates and categories will no longer be feasible. Wmahan. 16:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Just to elaborate a bit on the use of {{R from misspelling}}...Having these redirects are good so that users can find the page under the correct spelling. At the same time, having these redirects linked to on article pages is bad. We don't want misspellings in articles. So Category:Redirects from misspellings gives a convenient way of finding articles that have misspelled links. However, sometimes the misspelling is of an alternate title or related word. For example, Anthromorphic is a misspelling of Anthropomorphic, which is a redirect to Anthropomorphism. So the template on Anthromorphic includes the correct spelling information—Anthropomorphic—but redirects to the correct destination. Some of the other templates work similarly. We could dream of a day when the software will support some sort of notification to the user that they arrived at the destination page via a misspelling, but that's off topic for now. –RHolton≡– 17:10, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Also, I am not entirely convinced that templates must be removed from redirect pages. The reason expressed by Brion was performance, but he might be making assumptions about how templates might be used. There may be a lesser restriction that would still allow for using templates. For example, it could be stated that templates would not be evaluated when the redirect page is linked through. This would seem to address the performance issue, but allow for templates for adding categories and documentation. –RHolton≡– 17:10, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I think your arguments are reasonable on both counts; maybe it would be a good idea to get a further opinion from the lead developers. Wmahan. 17:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
In the meantime, why is there a bot (User:BetacommandBot) doing automated subst's when that is specifically deprecated by WP:SUBST? What is the emergency? Robert A.West (Talk) 02:52, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I think the bot owner was trying to be helpful by responding to the person who commented above, "Sounds like we'd better get a bot running...and quick" (see here). But I completely disagree; without careful planning, a bot can do a lot more harm than good. Wmahan. 18:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Subst'ing the templates seems like a bad idea. Imaging having to update manually the pages when deciding to change the name of a category. Besides, I don't think there should be any categories on the redirects that don't apply to a series of redirects. -- User:Docu

Keep the R from templates

motivation:

My Redirect did not work

The Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Australoid, Capoid was originally copied by User:Anthroexpert with the new title Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Australoid because s/he claimed Capoid was not a real race. The article was never moved it was just copied. User:Yom reverted the redirect on Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Australoid, Capoid, claiming Capoid was a real race. Now there are two articles with the same content. I tried to redirect Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Australoid back to Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Australoid, Capoid in order to remove its redundancy. It didn't work. The "edit page" function and "compare selected versions" function both show that the page was redirected but the "article" does not reflect this redirect. Does anyone know how to correctly redirect this page?--Dark Tichondrias 03:14, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Redirects on talk pages?

I can't seem to find any policy information about the inclusion of redirects on talk pages. I could test it easily to see if it works from a technical standpoint, but I wanted to ask about policy here first. Right now I'm in the process of splitting a large article (Drexel University) up into a number of smaller articles: one for each college, one for each branch campus, etc. I expect the smaller ones on the colleges to be about two or three paragraphs plus an infobox when fully fleshed out; large enough to merit a separate article but not large enough (or controversial enough) to generate much discussion. Is it a bad idea to have talk pages for subpages redirect to the main article's talk page? It seems like a good way to keep discussion together, but I suppose it could confuse editors if it's not a standard practice. Thoughts? --TexasDex 01:01, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Redirect from an E

Hello. Is it OK when I make a redirect like this from the page E412 (an E number):

#REDIRECT [[Guar gum]] {{R from alternate name}}

Or would it make any sense to make a new template especially for E numbers, like Template:R from E number? --Tobias Schmidbauer 11:03, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

redirects to dab pages

I've kinda started a discussion over at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Dab pages and redirects about how redirects should point to dab pages. Feel free to pipe in there. McKay 04:31, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Redirects in categories?

Are redirects like lift bridge supposed to be in categories? --NE2 21:44, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

It depends. We have templates to categorize redirects based upon misspellings, alternative titles, etc (see Category:Redirects for the whole list). It is also useful to place a redirect into a non-redirect category if the redirect title would be expected to be found in that category and the target name would not (probably would happen if the redirect is a subsection of the target) or if the target name doesn't convey it covers both topics. People navigate by categories so including both would help people find information. However, including redirects based upon every alternative spelling would not be appropriate if the target one covers it (ex. John Doe; John Doe, Jr.; John S. Doe; etc.). -- JLaTondre 13:43, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

redirects to pages with these: —

How do I make redirects to pages with the following symbol in them? —

For example:

#REDIRECT [[Barrie—Simcoe—Bradford]]

Is the — there to represent something else, just like a _ represents a space? Wikada - Talk Contributions 01:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The easiest way is to copy & paste the article title from the top the target page. You cannot copy & paste from the browser's rendition of the URL if it shows the characters as encoded (ex. Firefox shows Barrie%E2%80%94Simcoe%E2%80%94Bradford) as redirects don't work with HTML encoding. The "—" is probably an em dash. I'm not sure why people like to use fancy dashes in article titles as they are a pain to type. If that didn't make sense, let me know. -- JLaTondre 13:28, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Redirect from full name?

I've just created Greg Sams (my first attempt at a new article, sorry there are no sections yet).

However, Greg Sams is also known as Gregory Sams. People are just as likely to type in Greg as they are Gregory. What do I do? Do I create a Gregory Sams dummy page and then redirect it? Or is there an easier way to do this? Tris2000 19:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

To create a redirect, you would edit Gregory Sams and enter #REDIRECT [[Greg Sams]] as the content. -- JLaTondre 02:33, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks - done it. Tris2000 02:29, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Did i make a booboo???

I have created an article called Bonus rule. I then redirected Bonus baby to the page. However, when i type "bonus baby", "Bonus baby" or "Bonus Baby", they seem to appear with the full text of the article. When i go to edit, i see the redirect command that i placed. What did i do wrong and can someone help me fix the problem? // Tecmobowl 09:53, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks fine to me; that's what redirects should do. -- Visviva 12:04, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Looks OK to me too. You mean you still see the full text of the bonus baby article as it was before your redirect? Try refresh your browser cache. Femto 12:56, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, it was spooky, i had refreshed my cahce and it didn't seem to fix the problem. However, several hours later, it seems to have resolved itself. // Tecmobowl 18:22, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Improvement on software

IMO, Wikipedia should have someone capable of improving its software so that redirect can target a section of an article. There is a lengthy debate at [[3]] because of the low capability of Wikipedia's software. Miaers 19:43, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

This is an existing enhancement request, see bugzilla:218. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Cross-namespace redirects

A little over a month ago, there was a fairly large change made to the recommendations on cross-namespace redirects, from "CNRs can probably be deleted from mainspace, as long as they're not a shortcut" to "the only CNRs that should be deleted are ones that might conflict with a real article". [4] As far as I can tell, the only discussion that led to this change occured at Wikipedia talk:Cross-namespace redirects. Discussion there was mixed, and the proposal was tagged {{historical}} to note there was no consensus to change existing practice one way or the other.

For as long as I can remember (eg. 1.5 years), the general consensus has been to delete most CNRs. There have been hundreds of RFD's where non-shortcut CNRs have been deleted at RFD, I can only find a handful where they weren't deleted [5] [6] [7]. Some admins believe the issue is so settled that they speedy delete CNRs [8]. This edit is a very large change, and should not be made until there's considerably more agreement to change longstanding practice. --Interiot 02:31, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the change; the automatic deletion of XNR's is one of the sillier pieces of bullying, for which I have never seen a cohenernt justification. The proposal which was defeated was to delete them all after tweaking searches. Septentrionalis 03:20, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Redirects into the userspace are usually bad because experience taught us that they were often attempts to "hide" articles that would otherwise get deleted. Redirects into the Wikipedia space, on the other hand, are generally navigational aids, are never used in articles and are usually quite difficult to confuse with encyclopedia articles. I also endorse the change to specify that we only care about cross-namespace redirects when they either directly conflict with an article or when they are created with malicious intent. Rossami (talk) 05:26, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Several comments:
  1. The header is transcluded to multiple pages. The discussion regarding that change occurred here: Wikipedia_talk:Redirects_for_discussion/Header#Cross-space_redirects. The discussions at Wikipedia talk:Cross-namespace redirects were not directly related to the change. While I'm not particularly fond of the change, I think the lack of objection at the time and the fact it's been over a month does indicate that automatic deletion of CNRs is controversial. This is especially true when the objection to Wikipedia:Cross-namespace redirects is taken into account.
  2. You missed a few more keeps: [9], [10], [11], [12], [13] (first 3 for that day). While the deletes do well outnumber the keeps, from my experience, I'd be surprised of the deletes are in the "hundreds." Also if you look at the deletes, a number of them were closed as deletes when the discussion was pretty much split and there wasn't consensus. At least one admin feels strongly about deleting CNRs despite the discussion.
  3. I also think you are overstating the change. The list provides possible reasons and does not specify the "only" reasons. The change does not prevent non-conflicting CNRs from being deleted. Also, number 5 on the avoid deleting list (Someone finds them useful) applied just as much before the change as after and that is the reason most people give when arguing keep.
-- JLaTondre 06:02, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

other # words

are there other commands besides #redirect that start with an # and do something interesting? I just found meta:ParserFunctions, but is there anything else? --Abdull 15:35, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I assume you mean something beyong the obvious... ;-) I think this and ParserFunctions are all there is, but I can't say for sure. -- Visviva 17:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Redirect BUG?

See this version of Kin Kin. For me it says: "1. REDIRECT Kin Kin, Queensland" But one version worked... [14] so it is now reverted to that. Note that I think I added a space onto the end of one of the edits.

The third revision didn't work because it had two pound signs (##) instead of one. That's to be expected. What's interesting to me is that the first revision, in which the comma was replaced with %2C, also didn't work. Apparently URL-encoded redirects always fail, although redirects with HTML entities and underscores do not. (Test: if you replace one of the spaces/underscores with "%20", that will also cause the redirect to fail.) -- Visviva 05:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
This appears to be a known bug, though not a high priority... it seems to me that fixing this would just require a single call to PHP's urldecode function, but I'm not a developer. In the meantime, this page should probably mention something about how links pasted from the URL may not work. -- Visviva 05:20, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

"Everything after the redirect line will be blanked"

From the article: "Everything after the redirect line will be blanked when you save the page. Any text on the same line as the redirect will stay, but will not be visible unless someone edits the page." The second sentence makes me assume that everything below the redirect will be deleted when you save, but for the two articles I have redirected, neither removed the text below the redirect. The first was months ago, and I assumed I did something wrong so I deleted the information myself. The second time was yesterday where I let the article sit for 12 hours before checking again and the information was still not removed. So is this a bug or am I misreading? By not removing anything, categories remain which results in duplicates next to each other in the same category. — CobraWiki ( jabber | stuff ) 21:10, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The software does not automatically delete everything after the redirect. I believe the page is referring to the fact that text after the redirect is not displayed when you view the page. There are actually cases when having a redirect in a category makes sense. -- JLaTondre 22:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
The software used to remove everything following the redirect line. Preserving this content was a change in the not too distant past (6 months, maybe?). -- Rick Block (talk) 02:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Rick Block. That has really had me confused for a while. — CobraWiki ( jabber | stuff ) 06:00, 25 December 2006 (UTC)