Wikipedia:Shortcut

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

✔ This page documents an English Wikipedia guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss your idea on the talk page.
Shortcuts:
WP:SHC
WP:SHORT

Shortcuts in Wikipedia are a specialized type of redirection page that can be used to get to a Wikipedia project reference page more quickly. Lists of available Wikipedia shortcuts can be found at WP:WP = Wikipedia:List of shortcuts, WP:WPR = Wikipedia:Project shortcuts, WP:PORTCUT = Wikipedia:List of shortcuts/Portal shortcuts, and WT:WT = Wikipedia:Shortcuts to talk pages.

Contents

Procedures

See also: Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages

Shortcut class redirects should be tagged with {{R from shortcut}} so they will auto-categorize in Category:Redirects from shortcut. Like this:

#REDIRECT [[Pagename]] {{R from shortcut}}

How to use Wikipedia shortcuts

A Wikipedia shortcut can be entered into the Wikipedia search box to quickly bring you to a reference page.
For example, you can type "WP:R" into the search box and click the "Go" button to get to the Wikipedia "Redirect" reference page, instead of having to type "Wikipedia:Redirect".

Alternatively, you can use the shortcut in the URL (web address). For example, you are currently viewing the Wikipedia:Shortcut page in English. The URL for the English-language page is:

http://en.wikipedia.org../../../../articles/s/h/o/Wikipedia%7EShortcut_2a54.html

You could get from here to the Wikipedia:Redirect project reference page by replacing "Wikipedia:Shortcut" with "WP:R" in the URL (web address) field (followed by "Enter").

Shortcuts are presented in all capital letters ("All-Caps"), but the search box is case-insensitive. For example, in the search box, you can type "wp:r" instead of "WP:R".

However, using the URL method typically requires that you match the capitalization of the shortcut itself.

Readability

Shortcuts are often linked on talk pages without any piped text, although for the general reader this type of shortcut can decrease readability. Some editors are familiar with the bulk of Wikipedia's project namespace shortcuts, recognizing what they stand for on sight. Others get a cold elitist insiders-only impression when faced with a page full of shortcuts, the meaning of which is undecipherable and worse, unaccessible if, for example, the reader happens to be offline.

While shortcuts can help with linking, it is best not to use them as a title when referring to a page. For example, the link shortcuts uses a shortcut to link but gives readers an idea of the target, while quoting WP:SHC is unhelpful to those unfamiliar with the page. One should be mindful of the intended audience, and when quoting a page one should consider using its proper title.

A proposed method to increase readability is using templates producing full meta links. Individually a registered user can use navigation popups, a JavaScript tool.

Adding shortcut link boxes

A shortcut link box can be added to a page by placing {{shortcut|WP:<x>}} at the top of the text while editing. The ideal is to show one or two shortcut names that are easy to remember at the page top, and sometimes for particular frequently-cited sections. A page can have additional shortcuts that are not mentioned in the shortcut link box, but we recommend against listing extra shortcuts in the link box, because that makes it more likely that people will refer to pages using unfamiliar shortcuts.

Guidelines with shortcuts pointing to them typically use {{guideline|WP:<x>}} instead of {{shortcut}}. The box at the top of this page is such a {{guideline}} box. Another example is {{style-guideline|WP:<x>}}, see also Wikipedia header templates.

To learn more about the different shortcut boxes and their functions, see the documentation at {{shortcut}}. Among other things there are boxes that flow to the left and they now put anchors on the pages thus making it much simpler to link to sections of a page.

How to create a shortcut

The abbreviations "WP" and "wp" for the namespace "Wikipedia" are automatically translated by the Wikipedia servers, so they work anyway regardless of redirects. Similarly "WT" and "wt" are automatically translated to the namespace "Wikipedia talk". Thus WP:TS = Wikipedia:TS.

For an existing page like Wikipedia:Template Standardisation create the desired new Wikipedia:TS page with a single line: (example, this shortcut already exists)

#REDIRECT [[Wikipedia:Template Standardisation]] {{R from shortcut}}

Many shortcuts are acronyms, others are abbreviations, quite a lot are simply WP:BAD, but technically they are redirections.

Please note, when creating a shortcut for a category, it is necessary to insert an additional colon (":") at the beginning of the link, as follows:

#REDIRECT [[:Category:Redirects from shortcut]] {{R from shortcut}}

Changing shortcuts

Technically that's easy, click on the shortcut wherever it is, on the page it leads to (a shortcut is a redirect) click on the "redirected from" link (forcing &redirect=no), edit the target #REDIRECT [[Wikipedia:Whatever]], then add {{R from shortcut}} if that expression doesn't already appear. But there are some potential traps and pitfalls:

  1. If the shortcut is already listed on Wikipedia:List of shortcuts or a similar list like Wikipedia:Shortcuts to talk pages, please update that entry showing the new target page.
  2. If the old target page mentions its shortcut, then that also should be updated, typically in {{Shortcut}} or similar Wikipedia header templates.
  3. Above all check the shortcut backlinks with "what links here"; changing a shortcut used elsewhere can be highly disruptive.
  4. If it has no backlink folks might still use it directly with search forms, if you're not 100% sure that the old target is unused; so ask about it on the shortcut's talk page.
  5. For controversial cases, go to Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion.

List of shortcuts

An incomplete list of shortcuts can be found at Wikipedia:List of shortcuts, and as expected this page has itself various shortcuts like WP:WP, WP:CUTS.

Other shortcuts for shortcut lists are WP:WPR for Wikipedia:Project shortcuts and WT:WT for Wikipedia:Shortcuts to talk pages. Obviously many shortcuts are (ab)used to make a WP:POINT and best described by WP:WOTTA.

On Meta shortcuts start with WM:, the list is at m:WM:WM. As shown, links to shortcuts on other projects work as expected, but redirects (incl. shortcuts) to pages on other projects won't work—this former feature was abused and hence it has been disabled.

Use special pages to find uncategorized or unlisted pages starting with a given prefix, e.g. Special:Prefixindex/CAT: for some category shortcuts.

List of prefixes

The following four abbreviations are automatically translated by the Wikipedia servers:

WP: Wikipedia:
wp: Wikipedia:
WT: Wikipedia talk:
wt: Wikipedia talk:

Commonly used pseudo-namespaces include:

MOS: Wikipedia:Manual of Style
CAT: Category:
P: Portal:

The following pseudo-namespaces are less commonly used, for a variety of reasons:

WPP: Wikipedia:WikiProject
MoS: Wikipedia:Manual of Style
Mos: Wikipedia:Manual of Style
Special talk: Wikipedia talk:Special
Cat: Category:
C: Category:
T: Template: or Template talk:

See also