Wikipedia talk:Shortcut

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Shortcuts: WT:SHC WT:SHORT

Contents 1 Category shortcuts 2 Watchlist shortcut 3 Road WPs 4 Shortcut coding problem 5 Reason for ALL CAPS? 6 Links on shortcuts? 7 WP namespace requirement 8 Misleading 9 shortcut moratorium 10 Changing shortcuts 11 Template shortcuts 12 C: vs. CAT: claw 13 Shortcuts without expanded version 14 Use of shortcuts in an article 15 WikiProject shortcut 16 Down with shortcuts 17 what is the definition of plot diagram? 18 The search box is case-insensitive 19 WP vs. WPP 20 Problems with WP:BLP1E shortcut 21 Suggestion: enhance {{Shortcut}} to drop anchors 22 Shortcuts to sections in articles 23 New version of the shortcut box 24 Redirect=no 25 How many shortcuts in the infobox?

[edit] Category shortcuts

Hey, do the category shortcuts work for anyone? They don't work for me. For example, if I type "CAT:CSD" into the search box, I will get the article text back for Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, but not the actual list of articles in the category, making them pretty worthless to me. Is this just on my side? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 03:11, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

No, that's MediaWiki doing it. It's an artefact of how categories and redirects interact: a shortcut to a Category is a redirect, and redirects only contain the text of the page contained in the database. To make the software activate the on-the-fly listing of pages, it has to have Category: in the URL. Theoretically the software could recognise CAT: as being the same thing, but that would probably interfere with the redirect code in general, and wouldn't be appropriate for all sites that use MediaWiki. It's a non-ideal situation, but I suspect that the architecture won't allow for much better without significant re-engineering.  — Saxifrage | ☎ 08:17, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Watchlist shortcut

I'm interested in setting up WP:WL as a shortcut to Special:Watchlist. Does this interfere with Wikipedia shortcut policy (because the watchlist is not in the Wikipedia: namespace) or can I go ahead? --Netvor | T | C 08:05, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that we've got another WP to the Special namespace, so go ahead. It can't hurt. - Kookykman|(t)(c)

Yeah, WP:SB goes to Special:Sandbox, and a Watchlist shortcut is at least as useful.  — Saxifrage | ☎ 07:47, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually no. WP:SB goes to Wikipedia:Sandbox, not to Special:Sandbox. It seems that redirects to Special: pages have been disabled, possibly in a recent MediaWiki upgrade. However, I found about this after setting up WP:WL. So now we have a dysfunctional redirect page. What should I do with it? Should I list it on AfD? I feel rather silly about the whole thing. --Netvor » user | talk | mail | work » 08:02, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I should've actually checked my links, shouldn't I have? I didn't realise that a Special: link was always blue regardless of whether there's a page at the end of it. I'd say just put the speedy-delete template on it and let an admin take care of it.  — Saxifrage | ☎ 09:51, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Road WPs

Could I just set shortcuts up for them, or do I need to get them approved? --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 07:03, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Shortcut coding problem

I've been trying to make a shortcut to a particular section that is used often when I'm dealing with POV-pushers. In particular, the shortcut is WP:NPOVUW. I think this shortcut would be great if I could get it to redirect properly, but when creating the redirect page, there is a problem with the script that sends it to the section asked of. I'm going to cross-post this to the Wikipedia talk:Redirect page. --ScienceApologist 16:42, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind, I just saw the Bugzilla report. I think it is sad that we will not implement this feature. --ScienceApologist 16:49, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reason for ALL CAPS?

Wouldn't it be shorter if we didn't have to shift for all of 'em? -- Jeandré, 2006-02-18t19:26z

Well, it doesn't particularly matter, so long as you're using the search box (which isn't case-sensitive). It only matters if you're actually typing the URL into your browser. -- SonicAD (talk) 17:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I prefer keyboard shortcuts: F6 to access the URI bar and then the keywords in Firefox's quick search bookmarks, e.g. e wp:nor which goes to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wp:nor Is there a shortcut to put the search box in focus with a keyboard shortcut if the shortcuts remain in ALL CAPS? -- Jeandré, 2006-03-03t21:37z

Can we un-deprecate wp:? It being used as an excuse to delete the lower case shortcuts. Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2007_July_8. These are commonly quoted on description of changes, by many people. People would rather not have to reach and remember what gets Capitalized. Daniel.Cardenas 16:43, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that we shouldn't get lazy in the mainspace. WP: isn't a true namespace, and the more flavours of redirects from mainspace into project space, the worse off we are. Let's keep the pseudo-namespace to one set of characters where one will do the job. Wp: looks awful, wp: doesn't technically exist, and most shortcut redirects are in all caps anways, plus WP: is much more popularly linked in my experience. I'm not saying I'd go on a crusade to delete all the Wp: redirects, but without them we'll have less people being lazy and using them, so by tolerating them we allow them to spread. I'd actually be all for making them soft redirects to get people to stop using them, and to delete all new ones created (if we can catch them before they get littered in page histories and edit summaries). What would be even nicer is if they could implement software-handling for namespace shortcuts right into Mediawiki, so that lowercase shortcuts are automatically made uppercase. BigNate37_(T) 16:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Links on shortcuts?

Is there any particular reason that there are links on the shortcuts in the box? If it's only going to redirect to the page is it currently on, what is the point? It doesn't make sense. Could someone please explain this to me! --J@red ^[T]/_[+] 15:24, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Ditto... somebody just went through and 'fixed' all of them so that they are now links. I really don't understand. I'll query on the user's talk page as well. --TreyHarris 23:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I 'fixed' 3 of them to be exact. And that was because WP:SHORT, which is the current guideline, specifies that this is the suggested use. See this section. This brought these 3 shortcut boxes in line with about the 150 guideline/policy pages I checked for having the shortcut box IN the guideline notice if it had both {{guideline}} and {{shortcut}} boxes on a single page, giving all these pages a more consistent and clean look. I think the consensus on the use of the link was that this introduces people to the usage of shortcuts. People seemed to think that if you didn't link them on their primary page, people wouldn't use them to link from anywere else either. But I don't really remember anymore where i read that. I'll see if I can find that back again. - The DJ 07:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP namespace requirement

Shall we add "Shortcuts are reserved for Wikipedia project reference pages (WP: namespace) only"? (from Template:R from shortcut). Shawnc 19:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

We have already P for portals, WT for talk, Meta has WM, Wikipedia WP, adding more like H for a few help pages would be pointless at the moment. Technically all shortcuts are in the article namespace, 3 conventions to create redirects to pages in other namespaces are enough, let's not add more (H, U, HT, UT, ...) -- Omniplex 05:54, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misleading

On Wikipedia:Shortcut there is no imformation about its restricted use at all. The only thing I happen to run across about its use is in the template here[1]. I think that its use amd restriction should be layed out on the Project Page instead of hidden in a template.

The reason I am saying this is because recently I created one and it was deleted. Apparently I wasn't allowed to make one for a talk page, however I couldn't find anything that remotely said that except in that template. If its use is restrctied to WikiPedia only then it should clearly say that on Wikipedia:Shortcut. Otherwise admin that delete them really have nothing to defend the deletion of any that are created. --Scott Grayban 01:45, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

There are shortcuts to talk pages, for a list see WT:WT. So it's not impossible - but you'd need compelling reasons if you insist on WP instead of WT for a talk page. There's apparently some tolerance for useful shortcuts, e.g. WP:TIP goes to a talk page because the "real" page is blocked by the tip of the day. -- Omniplex 05:21, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] shortcut moratorium

One day you will regret all this shortcut biz. There should be a moratorium put one it. I like unique names. Else it is like a plot to get modemed users to download the same page twice. --Jidanni 2006-04-15

As modem user I managed so far. The few shortcuts I use are only because I'm too lazy to type complete names like "Village pump (technical)", WP:VP/T is as the name shortcut says shorter. -- Omniplex 05:36, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changing shortcuts

Below Changing_shortcuts I've noted what I think how changing shortcuts could work. Is that (in)complete, (in)correct, lousy, or ready to be added here? One user apparently thought that it's a good idea to grab an existing shortcut or two for another page that already has two shortcuts, because his page is more "important" :-( -- Omniplex 05:36, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Nobody said if it's good, bad, or ugly, but somebody added WP:GF again (as dupe) meaning Wikipedia:Grapefruit, and the original target page still lists WP:GF as its shortcut. Therefore I now add this section to the "guideline". -- Omniplex 18:16, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template shortcuts

There has been some discussion in WT:DYK about the shortcuts to T:DYK and T:TDYK - principally that TT:DYK does not work because TT: is an interwiki link (to the Turkish Wikipedia, I think).

It strikes me that we ought to discuss, (a) whether it is a good idea to have shortcuts to projectspace talk pages, templates and/or template talk pages, and (b) is there a risk that [[:WP:]] and [[:WT:]] could become shortcuts to Wikipedia in another language - would that invalidate all shortcuts? -- ALoan (Talk) 09:18, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

tt: is for the Tatar Wikipedia, not Turkish. Turkish is tr:. TZM^T (de:^T) 15:20, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction (I could not easily spot which language it was - now I know what to look for it is obvious, of course). But what about my questions ;) -- ALoan (Talk) 15:40, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The reason for these shortcuts is that T:DYK (Template:Did you know) is, I think, a bit of a special beast. The talk page is where the most action is (noms add stuff there, everyone comments to improve the "hooks" and point out issues with the articles (not enough sourcing, content, age, image problems etc.) and the admins pull stuff out to use, and archive older selected items, and discard older unselected items. So the template talk page is the first place people want to go, usually. The WP pages associated get MUCH less traffic, even when there's a fairly hot policy discussion going on at WT:DYK, and the template talk page is the first place most people want to go. Using TT would be swell but I suspect DYK is one of a VERY few things in WP where the template talk is MOST important. I wasn't here when it was first set up so can't comment on why it is organised that way but heaven forbid it be changed now, it would throw a lot of things off. So anyway, we came up with a namehack (T:TDYK and T:DYKT) for want of anything better. It's not the end of the world if we can't have TT working but if anyone has better ideas please bring them on! (PS, ARE there other significant areas where template talk is where the action is??) ++Lar: t/c 20:06, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

This is rather off-topic here, but perhaps we need to think about moving the suggestions away from the template talk page to something like Wikipedia:Did you know/Suggestions, more like WP:TFA? I was not there either, but I bet the current set-up is just historical accident.

The only directly analogous template I can think if is "In The News" (T:ITN or - oddly - WP:ITN) but there is not a mechanism for suggestions like T:DYK. WP:ITND goes to the related project page. -- ALoan (Talk) 20:24, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Grin. Interesting idea. The place to bring it up, is, of course WT:DYK the talk page for the guidelines/rules/processes page. :-) ++Lar: t/c 20:33, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, to answer my own second question, I think "wp" and "wt" are ok, as neither is listed at List of ISO 639 codes. -- ALoan (Talk) 21:00, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

If WM (on Meta), WP, or WT are used for something important the shortcuts will have to make room, they are not very important. Adding T: for templates is IMO a bad idea, unless it's Template:T: in the template namespace, not T: in the main namespace. -- Omniplex 13:59, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Template:T: sort of defeats the point of having a shortcut. That doesn't mean T: isn't a bad idea, but I'm not sure why it is worse than WP: or WT:... can you elaborate? ++Lar: t/c 13:27, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

If you use say {{x7}} what you actually get is Template:x7, that can be further redirected. If you try {{T:x7}} you get Template:T:x7 (example, doesn't exist). For an article (main namespace) T:x7 you'd need an extra colon in {{:T:x7}} if you want it to work as template (curly braces). Maybe beside the point for your purposes.

Unrelated, we have some prefixes like n: for news, m: for meta, s: for sources, q:, b:, what else? As soon as a t: is added (e.g. for the test Wiki server) all T: shortcuts in the main namespace would stop to work as expected. -- Omniplex 10:46, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] C: vs. CAT: claw

Three RFDs C:WPCVG, C:CSD, and C:UBT about the introduction of pseudo-namespace C: in addition to CAT:, indirectly related to a recent "speedy deletion criteria" R2 debate about "cross-namespace redirects", which got no consensus, objections including "WP:ASR is no policy" and more. FYI -- Omniplex 04:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC) (see WP:VP/T#Special:Namespaces)

[edit] Shortcuts without expanded version

It would seem sensible, in the spirit of WP:WOTTA, to say that shortcuts without the corresponding expanded version should be avoided. An example here is WP:PRODSUM. Even though it technically redirects to user space, it should probably, if it was a "Wikipedia:Foo" page, have the corresponding "Wikipedia:Proposed deletions summary" page in existence. Anyone agree that shortcuts without the actual fully-named pages behind them are a bad thing? Carcharoth 11:17, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I guess I don't see the point. If WP:WOTTA is a shortcut, then it's shorter than typing Wikipedia:WOTTA, right? And we should not be using bare links to shortcuts anyway for legibility reasons, so [[WP:WOTTA|wotta bunch of acronyms]] would be the idea in any case. Let's not go completely shortcut-crazy...you're talking about an expansion of nearly doubling the number of existing shortcuts. - this comment was by Nae'blis - the signature failed after a closing "nowiki" tag was omitted.

I wasn't very clear. What I meant was that WP:PRODSUM exists, but as a shortcut this is actually in article space. I went looking for something in Wikipedia space, but there was nothing there. This is a bad example, as the redirects point to User space. Let's take the example of Wikipedia:Proposed deletions. One of the shortcuts is WP:PROD. What I am saying is that someone could have created WP:PROD as an actual page, without creating Wikipedia:Proposed deletions. That is the sort of thing I am saying these guidelines should avoid. To me, the shortcut WP:PRODSUM implies that a page called Wikipedia:Proposed deletions summary exists, but it doesn't. Carcharoth 17:20, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, I see what you mean now. I can see someone perhaps getting confused if they went looking for, say, "PROD" in the search engine, except that that I either get sent directly to Prod, which has a {{selfref}} hatnote sending me to the correct place, or the search engine lists Template:Prod as the first result, which then has a link to the correct place. Yes, if I type in Wikipedia:PROD directly into the address bar, I get a "no such page exists" message, but it then prompts me to search for it... which gets me to the right place. WP: is a pseudonamespace (there's been some talk of making it a real namespace), invented by convention and tradition, and most mirrors are smart enough at this point to exclude it from their results. It would be easy enough (and proper, in my mind) to make your redlink redirect to the userspace summary, and/or have DumbBot build its list in project space (perhaps a subpage of Wikipedia:Proposed deletion, but trying to reconstruct page names from shortcuts is sort of perilous. Just try and figure out where WP:DNUS goes to without looking, for example. And redirects generally get created on an as-needed basis, not by a bot or procedure. I think. -- nae'blis 17:53, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Thanks for catching that nowiki tag; sometimes I move too quickly for my own good when typing. -- nae'blis 17:55, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use of shortcuts in an article

Saw this somewhere, so I thought I'd ask about it: is it appropriate to place a shortcut box, leading to a WikiProject, at the top of a relavent article? My impression has been that we try to leave any mention of Wikipedia itself out of articles. --Masamage 06:18, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Right, you should not put shortcut boxes into articles at all. That would be a "self-reference" which is not allowed. Wikiprojects should instead be advertised on the talk pages.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject shortcut

Am i allowed to create a shortcut to a WikiProject? Does it matter if i am not an administrator? Simply south 23:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Yup, you can do that. Just make the redirect, and put the shortcut-box ({{Shortcut|[[WP:whatever]]}}) at the top of your Project page. --Masamage 23:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Down with shortcuts

The most terrible thing about Wikipedia is the use of shortcuts: who the heck can figure out what the IAR in WP:IAR means unless they are online and can click on it. There should be some bot to do something about this. At least in the mouseover. You guys think everybody has ADSL. Somebody forward this complaint somewhere. Please add something about this to the main article. I drives me nuts to download some articles for offline remote reading, only to find you young whippersnappers using "WP:XYZ" thinking that "oh, the reader can just click to find out what my fun shortcut means", well no, we can't always just click. And also even if we did, why should we just to find out if we wanted to click in the first place to download another 10000 bytes just to find out what those 20 or so bytes were. --Jidanni 2006-12-29

I recommend using Lupin's excellent WP:POP tool, which follows redirects on mouseover and gives you the first paragraph of the article. Also, please post your age, so we can find out who qualifies as a "whippersnapper". Also, you can just sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) instead of typing it manually. Supadawg (talk • contribs) 00:14, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

You'd have to enable the simplePopups option to use WP with a dial-up connection, which would make it useless. See WP:WOTTA for other good reasons to avoid overuse of CUTS. -- Jeandré, 2007-01-20t18:48z

[Offline users go nuts] Mention also that offline users will go nuts wondering what the letters stand for. They must return to town to connect to the net to find out. --Jidanni 2007-02-05

I added Wikipedia:Shortcut#Readability. I found Wikipedia:Full meta links, very similar to my idea of using templates. It was rejected. This was probably caused by the fact that people specializing in working in the Wikipedia namespace and its talk pages can better remember the shortcuts than the general reader, and are also more active on a discussion page about this.--Patrick 09:39, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I've reworked this section.[2] I feel my changes are a net benefit to what you are trying to accomplish, and the one part I added suggesting it is unwise to use raw shortcuts on talk pages is something I picked up a while ago. I don't remember where I saw it, but I think most people agree in principle with it. I tried to use a more formal tone and keep it uncontroversial, while at the same time encouraging editors away from using raw shortcut links. Please consider editing my changes instead of removing them if you prefer something different. BigNate37_(T) 15:45, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

People who want to download pages containing shortcuts and read them offline would do well to download List of shortcuts and keep that page handy for reference. Or just download a complete dump of Wikipedia for offline reading. Clearly, given the increasing popularity of Wikipedia, and the increasing storage capacity of mobile computing devices, demand will grow for offline versions of Wikipedia that are complete enough to be reasonably self-contained. See: TomeRaider for example. Even when an article does not contain any shortcuts, it is still likely to contain many ordinary links which a reader might wish to follow. I personally would get frustrated with offline reading if all I had were a few hand-picked pages from Wikipedia. Wikipedia wasn't designed to be split up into little pieces. Furthermore, Wikipedia does not pay its editors, and therefore saving the time of editors is very important. Without editors, there is no Wikipedia. Editors are motivated primarily by their own personal enjoyment. Using shortcuts makes editing easier and hence more enjoyable. If that creates problems for the readers, the obvious solution is to fix the problem with software. Either make sure offline readers can download self-contained subsets of Wikipedia, or give them thicker clients that can display popup glossary definitions for shortcuts. --Teratornis 18:29, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] what is the definition of plot diagram?

school report in english II what is the exact definition of plot diagram —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.185.166.229 (talk) 16:32, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The search box is case-insensitive

"but the search box is case insensitive..." Not entirely true, but I'm unsure of the best way to fix. Ideas? (please be sure to read Wikipedia:Searching) -- Thinboy00 ^talk/_contribs @920, i.e. 21:05, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP vs. WPP

What's up with the WPP prefix for WikiProjects? Are we supposed to be using this instead of WP? Like instead of WP:ALBUM. I assume it's not a big deal, since I've been editing here for over two years, and this is the first I've heard of it. Should I bother setting up some new shortcuts? -Freekee (talk) 03:10, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with WP:BLP1E shortcut

Please look at this discussion about what to do with a messy shortcut problem, and it may bring up something that could be useful to mention on the Shortcut page: Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Shortcut WP:BLP1E should not link here Editors should know this to avoid confusion, and I suspect a lot of miscommunication has been caused by it. Three months ago (Dec. 11), the WP:BLP1E link was changed from a section of WP:BLP to WP:BIO. Editors who have thought about WP shortcuts could probably contribute something valuable to the discussion, so please take a look. Noroton (talk) 00:33, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion: enhance {{Shortcut}} to drop anchors

I suggest that the following be added at the beginning of {{Shortcut}}:

{{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{Anchor|{{{1}}}}}}}{{#if:{{{2|}}}|{{Anchor|{{{2}}}}}}}{{#if:{{{3|}}}|{{Anchor|{{{3}}}}}}}{{#if:{{{4|}}}|{{Anchor|{{{4}}}}}}}{{#if:{{{5|}}}|{{Anchor|{{{5}}}}}}}

Discussion which led up to this suggestion can be seen here. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 05:49, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Nice idea. Although it was way harder to deploy than we thought. About 3000 pages first had to be edited to correct how they used {{shortcut}}. Anyone curios about that can read on the talk page of {{shortcut}} and at CAT:SHORTFIX. But we have now added it to all the shortcut templates. See the documentation at {{shortcut}} for the details how it works.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Shortcuts to sections in articles

Could someone explain to me why shortcuts to sections don't work? I was battling this one in order to fix it without success. It seems that the only way it would work is by creating a double redirect from WP:NPOV#Undue weight. I also noticed that all other similar shortcuts don't redirect to the section as they're supposed to. Are we doing something wrong, can we fix this....? — Zerida ☥ 05:22, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I ran some quick tests. Seems there has been a software change in MediaWiki or so. I tried WP:NBSP that used to work fine and take you directly to the right section, like this: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Non-breaking spaces. But I landed at the top of the page. I checked and the redirect page WP:NBSP has not been edited for months and still contains the code to redirect to the section. And if I go to that redirect page and click the link there it works and I land in the section. But when I use WP:NBSP MediaWiki seems to only give the page URL and omit the anchor (the part after the "#"). I will investigate further and report more here in a while.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:42, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Eh? This is changing by the minute. Now MediaWiki even strips the anchor link on the redirect pages even if one goes there and clicks on the link there. Even thought the page code still has the anchor. So its getting worse...

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:56, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, whatever you did, it's working :-) Thanks for looking into it; I hope it stays working pretty please. — Zerida ☥ 01:43, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it seems to be working again. Actually, I didn't do much. I tested it and then reported it to other people on the Wikipedia IRC chats since I was in a hurry yesterday. Some others at those chats had also noticed it and someone must have reported it on to the developers. Anyway, good that it is fixed.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:16, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New version of the shortcut box

I have created a new version of the template {{shortcut}} in its /sandbox. For more information about this new version and to discuss it see Template talk:Shortcut#New version. I will wait some time for your comments and tests before I add this code to {{shortcut}} itself.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:37, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

The new code has now been added to all the shortcut boxes. Apart from a general clean-up and some fixes it means that those boxes now adds anchors to the pages they are used on. Read more about that at {{shortcut}}.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect=no

Parent5446 today suggested a major change to the functionality of the shortcut templates that seems like a useful improvement. Take a look at the discussion at Template talk:Shortcut#Shortcut links.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:58, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How many shortcuts in the infobox?

I've noticed people limiting the number of shortcuts in the shortcut infobox to one or two lately on most policy and guidelines pages, generally to the one or two most well-known, even when other shortcuts exist. There's no guidance on that on this page. Thoughts? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 23:55, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

The documentation for {{shortcut}} says this:

The point of these templates is not to list every single redirect (indeed, that's what Special:Whatlinkshere is for); for any given page, instead they should list only one or two common and easily-remembered redirects.

Since I agree with that I left the text in the documentation when I reworked those templates and their docs some weeks ago. The idea is that if we list lots of shortcuts for a page then users will use any of those shortcuts when they refer to that page from for instance a discussion on a talk page. That makes it harder for the rest of us to recognise what each shortcut means. So keeping the number of shortcuts listed in the shortcut boxes low is a good thing.

For instance: If I type WP:SG then most of us probably don't know what that means, but if I instead type WP:MOS then most recognise it as Wikipedia:Manual of Style without the need to click on the shortcut. If we listed the zillions of shortcuts to the MOS then people might start to use any of them... (But of course, using shortcuts on talk pages is evil and lazy. Shortcuts are primarily for use in the Wikipedia search box and in the Firefox Wikipedia search plugin etc.)

If you want a good example of how it could look with too many shortcuts, take a look at WP:WTF. That one uses a hand-coded shortcut box on purpose to show how it looks with too many shortcuts.

And as you are hinting at: Yes, we should perhaps state something about this in Wikipedia:Shortcut. But that is perhaps instruction creep? And redundant since the doc for {{shortcut}} already states it. But since the question seems to pop up every now and then it might need more prominent documentation.

I think the ideal is to show one single shortcut with a good name at the page top. A page can also have additional shortcuts to help people find the page, but don't list them in the shortcut box. In some cases we also use shortcuts to sections of a page but that is a slightly different thing.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:29, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Someone added WP:MANUAL to the shortcut box at WP:MOS a couple of days ago, and I reverted, explaining that the style these days is to list one or two shortcuts on style and guidelines pages. The editor thanked me for my advice but rejected it, or at least that was my interpretation, because they said that they generally were going to add shortcuts to the boxes as they found them. I don't think a message on the shortcut template page is sufficient; WP:SHORTCUT is the guideline, so if editors want to go around adding things to the shortcut boxes, and if the guideline doesn't say anything about it, then they probably can. (Or at least, that's my take on what it means to be a guideline.) - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:34, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, you are right. It should be in the guideline. I always forget that since I am a programmer so I tend to look more in and follow the advice in template documentation than the guidelines. Seems only you and me are discussing this currently so seems we have a "consensus". So if you like to, add it to the guideline text.

I don't know how to state it in a short and clear way. I don't like how it is written in the {{shortcut}} doc but I haven't come up with a better way to state it. In the shortcut doc it doesn't explain why we should keep the number of shortcuts listed in the boxes low. Stating why is usually a good thing.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:46, 31 May 2008 (UTC)