Wikipedia talk:Redirect/Archive 2007

The purpose of redirects

What is the purpose of redirects? I really don't see the point of having articles that direct to other articles. I am a rebel to this rule, and I don't abide by it at all (see WP:IAR). Then people say that redirects can be used to create articles in the future. What's wrong with deleting redirects if no pages link to them? No one can find them, and they are useless. Creating articles in the future is good, but you don't need to create them with a no-good redirect. All for the sake of stylistic conformity? I am not convinced. In my opinion, redirects are useless, clutter the namespace, and not needed. What is the functional need for redirects? --Imdanumber1 ( Talk | contribs) 02:09, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Someone (i.e. our target audience - a regular user, not a Wikipedia editor) types "Samuel Clemens" into the search box and hits the "GO" button. If Samuel Clemens wasn't a redirect, they would get this. But it is, so the user is taken directly to the appropriate article, Mark Twain. That's the purpose of redirects. Hesperian 02:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Redirects aren't always needed, though. There are some cases where they are useless. This requires further discussion, for now. --Imdanumber1 ( Talk | contribs) 02:55, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure my response answered all three of your questions: "What is the purpose of redirects?", "What's wrong with deleting redirects if no pages link to them?" and "What is the functional need for redirects?". If "this requires further discussion", perhaps you'd like to tell us which redirects are useless, and why. Hesperian 05:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

For cases where they are clearly useless, there is Redirects for deletion. -- Visviva 05:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

It is more efficient to simply delete redirects that have no pages linking to them. They have no other use, and if people want to "create articles in the future", why can't one just start one simply instead of using a redirect?

Redirects are useless if:

1. No pages link to them.
2. A misspelling (too common), people refuse to fix them.

Redirects are good if:

1. A shortcut

There are a lot of contradictions to this. Redirects have their purposes, but they clutter the main namespace. We need to have a consensus to create a category for redirects. If a consensus is reached, we should fix all links to the target name and have redirects deleted by admins. I have no objections to redirects such as WP:IAR, which expands to Wikipedia:Ignore all rules because shortcuts saves time, but using rdrs that are just sitting in the namespace shouldn't be encouraged. Just fix the articles with the rdr names to the target name, and have the rdrs deleted. --Imdanumber1 ( Talk | contribs) 05:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

To save you the effort of reading what I wrote above, I'll repeat myself. Redirects serve a specific and important function even when no article links to them. If I type "G. W. Bush" into the search box and press the "GO" button, I should be redirected to George W. Bush irrespective of whether or not any articles link to that redirect. Hesperian 05:41, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

There may also be numerous links from page histories and old versions; there is considerable value in preserving these, and very little to be gained by removing them. -- Visviva 05:46, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Redirects that do not have articles linking to them are often extremely useful as navigational aids used to make searching easier. As an example, if you needed to find a listing of Canada's islands based on size, it could take you several search attempts before you got the phrasing just right and pulled up List of Canadian islands by area. However, via the magic of redirects, search terms like List of Canadian islands by size and Canada's islands by area will also get you to the correct article. --Kralizec! (talk) 05:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Imdanumber1 - when you say Redirects are useless if ... No pages link to them, you've actually got the matter completely backwards. The ideal situation is to have NO incoming links. If a wikipedia article links to a redirect page, that wikilink should be changed. John Broughton | Talk 00:07, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It actually shouldn't - see Wikipedia:Redirect#Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken. --NE2 00:17, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, had my mind wrapped around disambiguation pages. Thanks for the pointer.

Also, for some reason, I'd thought that when moving a page, one should also (ideally) change all wikilinks to the old page name, but reading more, it looks like only double redirects are problematical. I'll pay more attention next time I move a page, and see exactly what the instructions say. John Broughton | Talk 21:27, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Redirects are useless if no pages link to them??
Nonsense. When I create a new article I often create a dozen or so redirects to it.
Some of these are common misspellings. I anticipate that someone may create a new link in some other article that is misspelled. If there's no redirect, people clicking on that link won't find out about the error, and won't find the article. And someone may then create a new article after clicking on the misspelled red link, and then those editing the two articles will not find out about each others' existence and won't be able to work together. Michael Hardy 00:33, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Redirects to anchors

Now that redirects to subsections and anchors are possible, are there any guidelines as to how aggressively this should be used? For example, take a look at the following, and please tell me, if it is good or bad:

• Argument from contingency
• vice versa
• 1 Corinthians 9:22

The developers said "use wisely", and I wonder what is wise usage? --Merzul 00:04, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I like the redirect for argument from contingency and am OK with the one for 1 Corinthians 9:22 (though the name of that section header may not be stable). But I have to say I find the redirect for vice versa less than ideal; it isn't easy for me to pick out the target item from the page. As a naive user, or even a Wikipedian unfamiliar with this functionality, I think I would be confused as to why I found myself in the middle of this giant list. Cheers, -- Visviva 01:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it's important to remember that when redirecting to an anchor, the user no longer sees the helpful "(redirected from..." text which resides at the top of the page. That alone should be sufficient cause for minimizing use of this feature. Powers ^T 15:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I will add something of the opinions here to the guideline. I will be conservative, so it should be fairly safe. --Merzul 23:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Halleluiah for functionality! That being said, I think the "redirect to the middle of a long list" would be less confusing if the page name actually changed (i.e. in my browser, one of the above renders as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_versa#vice_versa. If it was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases#vice_versa it'd be even less confusing. Still, hooray! -- nae'blis 03:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Redirects from stock symbols

Just a heads-up, I've created {{R from stock symbol}} and tagged it on a few redirects. So just keep it in mind; the next time you see another stock symbol redirect, consider tagging it appropriately. Thanks. --Cyde Weys 17:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Switching a redirect

Can someone explain to me the standard procedure for moving a page to a page that currently redirects to the first one (sorry if that's confusing...). Currently, Getsumen Toheiki Mina is the page being used, and Getsumen To Heiki Mina redirects to it. But Getsumen To Heiki Mina is the most commonly used spelling, and I would have simply moved the page, but the redirect page already existed. I don't want to just up and move everything, because that doesn't seem proper. Can someone give me some advice? Leebo⁸⁶ 06:24, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

First, do not move the pages by cutting-and-pasting content. That just screws up the attribution history (and maintaining the attribution history is a requirement of GFDL). First, seek consensus on the respective Talk pages that the new name really is the best one for the topic. Once consensus has been achieved, ask an admin to move the pages. That will involve temporarily deleting the current redirect, moving the page and then undeleting. Hope that helps. Rossami (talk) 06:49, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that helps a lot. The show begins airing today, so hopefully that will generate enough traffic to have a meaningful discussion. I knew cutting and pasting would be a bad idea, but I couldn't find the steps for the process. Thanks again. Leebo⁸⁶ 07:34, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requested moves is the correct place for handling these cases & it has the instructions to follow. -- JLaTondre 14:18, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Confused about "Redirects from title with ASCII"

I'm very confused about the "Accents" box in section 3: the title is (of course) accents and the example is Kurt Goedel -> Kurt Gödel, but the template linked to is Template:R from ASCII , which states "This is a redirect from a title in basic ASCII to the formal article title, with differences that are not diacritical marks (accents, umlauts, etc.)" (emphasis original.) Further confusing is that a number of the pages in that category ARE diacritic issues (although Kurt Goedel isn't there.) Does someone know exactly what this template is supposed to be for, and how it differs from Category:Redirects from title without diacritics? Zombiejesus 21:48, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I added a row to the table for Category:Redirects from title without diacritics and moved the Kurt Goedel example down there. I pulled a fairly obvious example out of Category:Redirects from titles with ASCII and put it in that section. I hope that clears things up. --  timc  talk   03:34, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe Category:Redirects from title without diacritics is for Kurt Godel -> Kurt Gödel ; but ss -> ß and oe -> ö are a different kind of redirect, since the alternate spelling is actually accepted as correct... -- Jokes Free4Me (talk) 14:58, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

What can I do for making a redirection of codenames?

See examples: Kuma (processor), Rana (processor), Agena (processor) etc...

They are of the same microarchitecture (namely K8L), but somebody did start new articles and put part of the contents from the K8L into the page, and I can see this trend for Intel processors. I do not think that these codenames are "notable" enough to start a new article for that, but I cannot find a suitable redirection template for the redirections, what can I do? --202.71.240.18 11:34, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

You don't have to use a template; just redirect. Although {{r from subtopic}} probably isn't too far off. -- Visviva 15:19, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Categorising sections using anchored redirects

Please contribute to the Village pump discussion started at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Categorising sections of an article. Thanks. Carcharoth 14:23, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

"Don't fix redirects that aren't broken"

Ok, someone had made an edit, changing a link from a direct link to a redirect (assumedly to match the way the rest of the page was -- it was a change in the language of the name). Me, unknowing of the explanation nicely layed out here, went and added a pipped link so it didn't redirect, as I thought that was the right thing from previous observations. Along comes the same editor, and reverts that, citing the explanation here -- but wouldn't being reverted cause the same issues as me changing it in the first place? I dunno, it just seems like an odd rule. It makes for inherent sense to minimize redirects from other pages in general, unless it's something that could easily have an article in the future, like, say, circus music which could easily have its own article but doesn't. But if you come across Shakespeare in an aritcle, why not change it to Shakesphere -- it just seems a bit neater and cleaner when you click on a page to not have the little blue notice up top. Maybe I'm way off... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 14:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

it's a fine line. As you say, some redirects make sense to fix (especially ones that go to disambiguation pages), others are potential articles and "fixing" them will break opportunities to make new articles later. On a more humorous note, I had to fix Chantilly Lace (song) the other day because it had a piped link to Margaret Keane - via big-eyes! Sometimes the fixers and bots and scripts are too clever for their own good... -- nae'blis 19:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Abbreviated redirect tags

Wouldn't it be useful to have abbreviations for the redirect tags, similar to redirects for Wikipedia policies (like WP:R). I must admit I am lazy and don't always look up the proper redirect tag phraseology when making redirects. If we had abbreviations that substituted the correct tag, it would be much simpler. So for example to use {{R from related word}} you could type {{RRW}} or or {{RW}} and have this generate the correct tag. Other examples: {{R from other capitalisation}} would be {{ROC}} or {{RC}}, {{R from alternative spelling}} would be {{RAS}} or {{RS}}, etc. Dhaluza 13:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

No. It would be too easy to use the wrong one and miss it This way, if you get it wrong, there is no category at all, which you are more likely to notice. — Randall Bart 17:07, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Misleading preview

I created a redirect from Constint to Constant. The preview started with a 1., but the final page started with a →. Is there a bug? Constint 19:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

The preview interprets the # as a numbered list. When it is saved, the software processes the whole #redirect command and shows it as a redirect. There is an existing bug report covering this. It's priority is trivial so it probably won't be changed anytime soon. -- JLaTondre 20:17, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

This policy is idiotic. Why must a Wikipedia policy require misspellings?

This page says:

In particular, there should never be a need to replace [[redirect]] with [[target|redirect]].

This is idiotic! If an article misspells a person's name in a link, so it goes to a page that redirects to the correct spelling, I should just leave the misspelled name in the article??

People who write Wikipedia policies using the words "always" or "never", especially when emphasized like this, are almost (ha!) always being similarly stupid. Michael Hardy 00:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

No, no, no... It is not intended for unprintworthy (or whatever they're called) redirects. The idea is that you shouldn't fix let's say [[uncaused cause]] into [[cosmological argument|uncaused cause]], because we might at some point have an article specifically about the usage of the term "uncaused cause". --Merzul 00:34, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

No---you're wrong. It says "there should never be a need to replace [[redirect]] with [[target|redirect]]". It does not say what you suggest. I am inclined to agree with a policy that says what you suggest, but that's simply not what the policy says. If what you suggest really is what was intended, then whoever wrote it should learn how to write what they intend instead of writing something that comes out saying something else. Michael Hardy

Correcting a misspelled redirect is going from [[misspelling redirect]] to [[correct article title]], not [[redirect]] to [[target|redirect]]. Leebo⁸⁶ 00:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, I think I see what you're saying. But the fact is, someone criticized me on my talk page for changing [[misspelling (or otherwise inappropriate) redirect]] to [[correct article title]] and cited this policy page to support that. Michael Hardy 00:54, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

It seems like they misunderstood it. There's no need to make a misspelled redirect into a piped link, which is the only thing that sentence you cited covers. Correcting a spelling is still a direct link, you wouldn't use a piped link to correct the spelling. Leebo⁸⁶ 00:58, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and Michael, can you see if the guideline is clear now, and maybe tweak the wording to avoid similar confusion in the future. I tried to specify that "redirect" must be the same in both uses, I think that might have caused the confusion. --Merzul 02:00, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Probably the misunderstanding resulted more from the comments on my talk page than from the policy as written here. Michael Hardy 02:46, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

What if the misspelling is within a quotation? Michael's point stands - the "never" should be softened. Hesperian 03:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

If it's misspelled in a quotation, then it's probably a plausible misspelling and might warrant its own redirect page for that misspelling. Leebo⁸⁶ 03:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Still softening the never might not be a bad idea, especially if you are editing the page anyway. As suggested above, fixing [[Shakespeare]] into [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] might not be a bad idea. Who knows, next year there might be a super smash-hit musical called "Shakespeare", which would then be a disambiguation page... --Merzul 03:29, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

In that scenario, we would fix the redirect next year. There is no need to fix it today and good reason to leave it for the future editors who, after all, will have all the facts and be able to make exactly the right fix. Rossami (talk) 22:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Here's an interesting example which might relate to this sort of thing. I was recently tidying up and massively expanding (completing, actually) the list at Royal Medal. The source I used was the names as quoted on the Royal Society's website. It is clear that the list there is of the names as they were stated at the time of the award. Our articles on the scientists are often at different names. The question then becomes whether the correct approach is to use the spelling and form that the Royal Society use (as in options 'a' and 'b'), or 'correct' the name the Royal Society used (option 'c'). ie. Either (a) redirect to our article, or (b) pipe the link to point at our article, or (c) to 'silently' change the name to the one used at Wikipedia. I'll show what I mean by some examples below. Carcharoth 23:45, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Examples

• Johann Franz Encke (Wikipedia name) vs Johann Friedrich Encke (Royal Society name)
• Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve (Wikipedia name) vs Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve (Royal Society name)
• A. P. de Candolle (Wikipedia name) vs Augustin Pyrame de Candolle (Wikipedia redirect) vs Auguste Pyrame De Candolle (Royal Society name)
• Eilhard Mitscherlich vs Eilert Mitscherlich (Royal Society name)
• Bennett Lewis (Wikipedia article) vs Wilfrid Bennett Lewis (Royal Society name)
• Basil John Mason (Wikipedia article) vs John Mason (Royal Society name)

That last one is a particularly good example, as a link to 'John Mason' cannot be redirected to the article. If you want 'John Mason' to appear in the list, you have to pipe it in front of the target of 'Basil John Mason'. This is what I did for the 1991 entry in the Royal Medal table, piping it to appear as 'John Mason' because that is what the source says. A 'silent' change to 'Basil John Mason' would misrepresent the source. Linking to 'Basil John Mason' gives the right person and the right article, but causes momentary confusion for the reader. Possibly a footnote at the Basil John Mason article would make clear that he is sometimes credited with awards and other things by the name of John Mason.

What do people think is best for this and the other examples? Piped links? Redirects? Moving the articles to different names? Carcharoth 00:14, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The position that we should never pipe past redirects is based on the assumption that the redirect might some day be an article. Your examples are all situations where the redirect will never be an article. No-one is ever going to make an article that says

"Auguste Pyrame De Candolle is an archaic spelling and capitalisation of the full name of A. P. de Candolle."

All these redirects may be legitimately piped past - indeed they should be - and the "never" policy position should be softened. Hesperian 00:19, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

One slight concern is that one day someone may come along and say "why is this a redirect? No-one spells the name this way. Let's delete the redirect." If the redirect is in use (ie. linked from an article or two), that shows that the redirect has a purpose. This concern could be addressed by people actually using the templates that label types of redirects (such as 'mis-spelling' redirects), and the genuine historical and alternative spellings being listed somewhere at the target article. But I agree that a distinction needs to be made for cases where no article is ever likely. This is actually explained already at Template:R from alternative spelling, but unfortunately, Wikipedia:Redirect#Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken doesn't make this clear. Carcharoth 00:51, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

That Basil John Mason is the same John Mason who received the Royal Medal award needs to be determined via a valid source. If we have a valid source (note: I'm not doubting you, I'm simply building an argument), then the Royal Medal table most certainly can be changed to list Basil John Mason instead of John Mason. It probably needs be listed along the lines of Basil John Mason (under the name John Mason) and most certainly the source should be provided, but we don't have to maintain an exact copy of the Royal Society's list if it's inaccurate (or misleading if you prefer to look at it that way). -- JLaTondre 01:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Off-topic stuff copied to Talk:Basil John Mason. Carcharoth 03:47, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The sentence above deals with replacing an existing link to a redirect page. I don't think it applies for your example: When creating that list, you have every right to use [[wiki name|list name]]. Especially so for John Mason, which isn't even redirecting to what your list needs.

If, however, you meant to say that you were editing the list, which contained already existing links to such redirects, i believe you should leave those as they were. Except for John Mason. Actually, if the "list name" isn't the redirect you need (it is either missing or a disambiguation page), you can (and you likely should) pipe-link to the desired target. This doesn't fall in the scope of the [[redirect]] -> [[target|redirect]] because it wasn't a redirect in the first place. :-)

In short, I do believe the "never" is correctly mentioned in the policy. -- Jokes Free4Me (talk) 15:20, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Is 83 redirects to one article being disruptive?

[1]. See Special:Whatlinkshere/Aquinas_College,_Perth. Or doesn't it matter? There's no policy against it that I can see. —Moondyne 11:59, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I'm too naive, but I don't think its disruptive, I think whoever created them has misunderstood the purpose of redirects. In my opinion, 90% of these redirects should be deleted because they are "unlikely search terms". --Merzul 12:12, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Disruptive was not the right word. Perhaps 'unuseful'. —Moondyne 12:31, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

How should it be dealt with? It would probably be easiest if someone could convince him to put {{db-author}} on the ones that aren't needed. He seems to be on a constant pace, and may create even more in the meantime. Leebo⁸⁶ 13:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Wow. I thought I'd gone overboard with Special:Whatlinkshere/Thomas-François Dalibard, but that is nothing compared to what's been going on over there. One question. When you have a term in brackets, does the Wikipedia search engine pick it up when people search by the term in the bracket, or is a redirect better? Compare Wizard (fantasy) with Wizard fantasy and Fantasy wizard. Carcharoth 14:09, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

It's at 105 at latest count. I thought 31 redirects to Mahatma Gandhi was a lot. It's not disruptive, since it's not in the way of anyone except when reading whatlinkshere. Still it should be stopped. — Randall Bart 17:16, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી is a good one for Ghandi! :-) Carcharoth 17:45, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Add new redirect category

Hi, I'm involved in WP:UW, and I unilaterally thought that it might be best to have a sub-template of {{r from other template}}, called {{r from warning template}}, to describe templates that are redirect templates to user warning template like {{uw-vandalism1}}, and that sort of thing. See Category:Redirects from other template, under "U", for perhaps a good reason to do this (size), understanding that there will be more templates like this.

In addition, their function is essentially different from {{r from other template}}, since their brevity is a salient feature of their use (when cleaning up vandalism). I propose that this new template have the category "Redirects from warning template", a subcategory of Category:Redirects from other template.

In this category would be {{uw-b1}}, {{uw-b2}}, {{uw-b3}}, {{uw-b4}}, {{uw-d1}}, {{uw-d2}}, {{uw-d3}}, {{uw-d4}}, {{uw-o1}}, {{uw-o2}}, {{uw-o3}}, {{uw-s1}}, {{uw-s2}}, {{uw-s3}}, {{uw-s4}}, {{uw-s4im}}, {{uw-t1}}, {{uw-t2}}, {{uw-t3}}, {{uw-v1}}, {{uw-v2}}, {{uw-v3}}, {{uw-v4}}, {{uw-v4im}}, {{uw-vand1}}, {{uw-vand2}}, {{uw-vand3}}, {{uw-vand4}}, {{uw-vand4im}}, {{uw-vandal1}}, {{uw-vandal2}}, {{uw-vandal3}}, {{uw-vandal4}}, {{uw-vandal4im}}, and latently others.

So what do you think? Gracenotes^T § 15:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. Gracenotes^T § 06:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

What to do with redirects to a page that was moved

Coppertwig correctly moved Canada's Food Guide To Healthy Eating to the new government term Canada's Food Guide. Several double redirects recreated. I fixed those, and links to the old page. He implied that the links to the old page should have remained (based on Wikipedia:Redirect#Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken) as they redirected. Since the term has changed, were my actions correct? --Walter Görlitz 17:57, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

It depends upon the context of the redirect. In general, fixing redirects isn't needed. However, if the redirect is a mistake (misspelling, etc.), then it should be changed. Proper names are in the middle ground, in my opinion. If the usage is meant to be the proper name, then it should be changed from the redirect to the new title. If the proper name is not needed in the context of the article, then it wouldn't need to be changed. -- JLaTondre 19:41, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Wordsounds

Should we make redirects on wordsounds, like making nayboar or naybor redirect to neighbor? ffm ^yes? 22:50, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Who would that help? I can't imagine anyone ever typing in those particular spellings. Remember, we tolerate redirects for common misspellings, usually as a clean-up after someone creates a duplicate article at the wrong spelling. We do not normally create redirects for misspellings directly. Rossami (talk) 01:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, what if the person couldn't spell the word, but wanted to look it up? ffm ^yes? 02:05, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

There are many better sources for phonetically guessing English words. We can't force the redirect feature to handle the incredible volume of possible misspellings, pronunciations or transliterations for every possible article title. Redirects are cheap but not that cheap. Rossami (talk) 02:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Problem with {{Redirect5}} tag

On the Template:Redirect5 page it says that this can be used without a second argument:

• Redirect5|A||B

To achieve:

• Redirect5|A|other uses|B

However, it only acheives:

• Redirect5|A||B

This is not a big issue and is probably an easy fix, I just wanted to point out the issue. MadScientistVX 05:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Announcing WhatLinksHere.js

Announcing User:Barticus88/WhatLinksHere.js. To use it put this in your Special:Mypage/monobook.js (or <skin>.js) file

importScript('User:Barticus88/WhatLinksHere.js');

It adds a bunch of tabs to the tab bar. (If you're using <skin>.js, for "tab" read "whatever your skin does with the p-cactions portlet".) The rightmost tab loads up to 5000 links and then selects the redirects. That's right, a single click to get all the redirects for a page (unless there's more than 5000 links, like [[2007]] or [[Germany]] or something). Let me know what feature enhancements you want. — Randall Bart 01:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Does this work with the "simple" skin? I added it to User:Eep²/simple.js but it doesn't seem to have done anything. :/ ∞Σɛ_Þ² ^(τ|c) 04:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Categorizing redirects

Was there consensus for this change? I thought standard practice was not to categorize redirects. If a category is on the redirect rather than the article, you can't get to that category from the article. --NE2 08:25, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

• AFAIK, there is no standard save that if you do add a redirect to a category, to use a space (' '), asterisk ('*'), an exclaimation point ('!'), or Right curly bracket ('}') before the {{PAGENAME}} in the pipesort to set it off from the main body of links, and even there many just use the name of the page it redirects to, so they are grouped together.
    Categorizing a page to the category makes sense, even if it duplicates the primary page, after all, for none of us can guarantee the context wherein a term is come across, and the way another thinks. The space and exclaimation point are usually also used by some to indicate a template categorizing pages to the category, or a template associated with it. // FrankB 14:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

See also: Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects

-- Petri Krohn 02:27, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

For the curious

52% of Wikipedia mainspace articles are in fact redirects. Source.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  02:44, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

No, 52% of pages in the Wikipedia mainspace are redirects. The count of articles (1.7 million or so) excludes redirects. So there are about 3.4 million pages in Wikipedia mainspace, of which a bit more than 1.7 million are redirects. -- John Broughton (♫♫)

Interesting. --JianLi 23:29, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Categories

Hey, uhm - the fact that redirects are uncategorised means they show up in the pages without categories list, which is annoying. Is there any way they could be stored in a meta-category so it's clear they don't need categories? WilyD 14:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Fixing unnecessary piped links

Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken addresses the issue of links to redirects. What about links that are of the format [[direct|redirect]][[redirect|direct]]? Is there a consensus as to whether or not these links should be changed to [[direct]][[redirect]], or does this issue need to be addressed? ShadowHalo 13:38, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I would say that it promotes proper wikilink formatting to change them, so as long as it results in the same link, it's probably okay. It's probably also okay to change things like [[Japanese]] to [[Japan]]ese, and other links like that in the interest of promoting better formatting for people who look at the article later. Leebo ^T/C 14:08, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• conditionally semi-disagree... it's not cut and dried. I'd suggest evaluating these ones case by case based on histories of the two pages, and especially if your 'redirect' base page is marked as either something which has been merged (thus endorsing your proposed 'fix'), or tagged with (R with possibilities) and/or a stub-sorting template--indicating future expansion to the name under that 'redirect' pagename. (Adding a stub-sorting template to such pages is a good way to get an editor with expertise in the area to take a look at growing such a redirect.)
    If a plain redirect, whether the topic should be so tagged, and certainly the proper {R from tagging} should be added/checked as well as a possible stub sorting template or two if it does have prospects as a stand alone article topic.
    Checking such titles against online competing sites (answer.com, dictionary.com, encarta, etc.) can give a good feel for whether the topic is worthwhile for {R with possibilities} and such stub tagging--but the later is really more important, as will gather more attention sooner than the unsorted/untargeted generic listing in Redirects with possibilities.
    Also, the closer in time the creation of the redirect relationship is to your edit, the issue might best be resolved by asking the editor making the oddly pipetricked link--they may not have been aware of adding any {R from ______} templates, or the possibility of stub tagging such. In short, keep an eye on which way things are evolving, and slow down once in a while and ask questions. The later courtesy might remind someone they meant to create the page as a stub, and the link isn't harming something since it does connect, however unusually. // FrankB 15:46, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

My thought? The policy is intended as more of an "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" type. If a link is already automatically redirecting appropriately, don't pipe it. If a piped link is going to the correct article, don't un-pipe it, even if the word would redirect correctly un-piped. --Siradia 18:07, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Fixing an unbroken redirect doesn't change the reader's experience and it doesn't cause us to consume less computer resources. On the contrary, the edit to make the fix consumes server space (since we keep copies of every version in the history) and triggers the watchlist of everyone monitoring the page. You would actually be making work for other people without adding any value to the reader.
Now, if you want to do some link clean-up on a page that you're already editing, go right ahead. But please don't start making mass changes just to fix unbroken redirects. Rossami (talk) 20:12, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Leebo. Taking the time to correct these links would promote good form, and would make the linking more simple, elegant, and straightforward. ShawdowHalo, did you mean [[direct|redirect]] (or [[target|redirect]]) rather than [[redirect|direct]]? --JianLi 22:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Yes, I meant to ask about changing [[direct|redirect]] to [[redirect]]. ShadowHalo 00:13, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Table editing

I can't edit the table at Wikipedia:Redirect#What do we use redirects for? because most of the text isn't there when I click "Edit". I just wanted to capitalize the word "wikipedia" twice, and spell "susceptable" as "susceptible". Art LaPella 01:11, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. "Susceptable" was in a template. The "wikipedia"s were in the table though. --Siradia 15:36, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

 Done Art LaPella 22:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Number of redirects

Hi, I was wondering; how many redirects are in the database? I was recently told that redirects are stored in a different way to all the other pages, and if this is true (is it?), I guessed it must be easy to find the answer to my question. — Jack · talk · 19:35, Wednesday, 11 April 2007

There appear to be some historical stats at [2] & [3]. They look a bit complicated. I don't know of a way to determine your answer in real-time. From Mediawiki version 1.9, it looks like redirects are now stored in a separate table (mw:Redirect_table). You could download a database dump and calculate it. -- JLaTondre 23:18, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Pagemove as useful history

I was recently informed that the following text (below) in the "When to delete a redirect" section does not apply to recently-created redirects. Could someone please note that this applies only to redirects created before a certain date? Thank you, Black Falcon 21:15, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

If the redirect was created by renaming a page with that name, and the page history just mentions the renaming, and for one of the reasons above you want to delete the page, copy the page history to the Talk page of the article it redirects to.

The statement already trys to cover the issue when it says "and the page history just mentions the renaming." These days, when you move a page, the page history will show:

"moved [[original name]] to [[new name]]: reason"

In older versions of the Mediawiki software, the page history would only indicate it had been renamed and not what the to and from where (I forget what the actual syntax was & I cannot find one at the moment). There might be a better way to word it, but using a date is probably not the best. -- JLaTondre 21:45, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see now. I'd never encountered a redirect that didn't mention a pagemove as "moved from A to B". Then again, I've largely steered away from the older redirects. OK, thanks for the clarification. Cheers, Black Falcon 22:44, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

One question please: what about pages that have been moved twice (e.g., A to B to C)? I recently nominated a whole batch at RFD here. Prior to nominating, I'd copied all the pagemove histories to the talk pages of the new destinations. Can the redirects (A and B following the example above) now be safely deleted? -- Black Falcon 22:47, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Not automatically, no. The redirect(s) still serve to direct the reader/editors who were used to the older titles to the new location for their future contributions. Moving a page and then deleting the redirect sometimes leaves those editors stranded, unable to find the place where their article was moved to.
If A->B->C all happened in a matter of minutes and no one edited the pages during the intermediate stage, then the B->C redirect can be safely deleted and A->B repointed to A->C. But I'm not sure why you would bother. Deleting a redirect costs more than leaving it in place and really has no downside for the reader or the project. Rossami (talk) 04:28, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The redirects in question are all cross-namespace redirects which would not aid accidental searches (in my opinion). The history in this case is as follows: "A" is created in mid-2005, in January 2006 it's moved to "B", one day later it's moved to "C". After almost 1.5 years, I don't think anyone uses the old redirects to this Wikiproject. In fact, there's been no activity on the project page and talk page since September 2006, so I don't know if the project's even active. My reason for wanting to see the "A" redirects deleted is that they are cross-namespace and potentially confusing in that they might prompt someone to start a page under that title. Any attempt to do so would violate WP:NOT#DIR and probably one or more copyright laws. As to why I bothered, well ... the honest answer is rather simple: I was bored; given the amount of time it took, it's quite apparent that I was extremely bored. ;) Cheers, Black Falcon 17:39, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The fact that they are going to inactive Wikiprojects may be evidence that the links are no longer used. That would not necessarily be true for other redirects, even cross-namespace redirects. It would definitely not be true for old policy or essay pages, many of which are externally linked. Having looked at the pages in question, I'm actually inclined to think that the redirect would prevent recreation of the lists, not encourage it. Thanks for your continuing work on clean-up. Rossami (talk) 01:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Additional Way

There is an additional to make a page redirect. Move it to the redirect name, then movie it back to the previosu name, and the name you moved it to before will redirect to the page. Note-worthy? 98E 14:56, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Not really. We shouldn't be encouraging people to do repeated page moves since it clogs up the article history. ShadowHalo 14:59, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

This needs to be clearer about redirects being good things

I've been having issues with a user for a while, most recently at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New York City Public Transportation#Templates vs. redirects, who refuses to understand that linking to a redirect is not a problem. Should a sentence be added here to make it clear that using a redirect does not show laziness or anything else bad? --NE2 22:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Redirect/DeletionReasons & Capitalization

Centrx added[4] the following text to number 2 of the avoid deleting such redirects section of Wikipedia:Redirect/DeletionReasons:

Note that differences in capitalization do not warrant redirects; they are already handled by the MediaWiki software, for links and for searches.

I have reverted that addition for two reasons:

1. This is not consistent with standard practice at WP:RFD. While intentional creation of alternate capitalization redirects is not encouraged, the overwhelmingly consensus from debate after debate is that they are not deleted.
2. This is not factual correct. The MediaWiki software does not automatically handle them for links (ex: USS Atakapa (ATF-149) vs. USS atakapa (atf-149)). Also, many people enter article titles directly into the address bar of their browser and the URLs are case-sensitive.

I don't believe this addition should be made without discussion and consensus first. I welcome other people's comments on this. Thanks. -- JLaTondre 23:26, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

The software does handle them for searches, which are all that is necessary for a redirect to be unnecessary. Misspellings and miscapitalizations in articles should be corrected; there is no need to account for possible future links when handling redirects, and it may even be best to have them as red links for that purpose. Consideration, or correction, of existing incoming links is a feature of any redirect deletion and does not need to be accounted for specifically in this provision; if there are no incoming links for some redirect then existing links need not be considered. As for entering URLs directly into the address bar, it would be best to change the functionality of the software if they should be redirected rather than having a billion capitalization redirects for this extremely rare case.

These redirects do significantly diminish the usefulness of the search function. Whereas that is less of a concern for redirects of different words, when the redirects are all the same word with merely different capitalizations all of those capitalizations appear with the same Relevance rating for a search of a word in the title; if you have a bunch of capitalization redirects for some titles, a search for a word will not show the proper result even in the first page of the search, even though there might only be 5 actual articles on the entire wiki that have the word in their title. —Centrx→talk • 23:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

We have templates ({{R from other capitalisation}} & {{R from misspelling}}) and categories (Category:Redirects from other capitalisations & Category:Redirects from misspellings) specifically for alternate capitalizations and misspellings. People have repeatedly found these useful and chosen to keep them. While at first glance your red link argument makes sense, it is counter balanced by the fact that people will sometimes not realize a red link is a result of one of these cases and will create a duplicate article. These types of redirects avoid that and mistakes in articles can be easily fixed by maintenance of these categories. That is actually an easier way to find errors than trying to find arbitrary red links. While the search engine is pretty bad, I'm not convinced it is as bad you say it is. -- JLaTondre 00:36, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I often get search results that are just a bunch of redirects to the very same article. This is exacerbated when the redirects use the very same words, such as if the only difference is capitalization. Only Template:R from other capitalisation is applicable here; misspellings will not automatically be corrected by the software. Looking through the category, it looks like most of them have the same level of usefulness as redirects for implausible typos. The red link situation only applies to creating new links when editing. For an example of crappy search results that are a consequence redirects, search for "a dance" or "a song". These are contrived examples, but there are hundreds of legitimate search results that are pushed down and away because of redirects. —Centrx→talk • 02:58, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I still don't see the issue. In your scenario, each of the redirects in the search result will lead you to the correct article. So what's the problem other than the search results look cluttered? That's an argument for a better search engine. The search engine should list the target article with an indication of the redirect match. Using your example searches, a lot a titles are returned. Titles are one area where capitalization in links is frequently wrong. People don't follow the MoS and the result is duplicate articles (see the article history for the first result on "a dance"). -- JLaTondre 17:23, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

No, it pushes results down that have no duplicates or duplicates at the top. They do not appear at all. For example, search for "confessions dance". The first fifteen results are the very same song. None of the results on the second page appear in duplicate form at all on the first page; fourteen of the results on the first page are completely useless and are pushing legitimate results out. This happens all the time. —Centrx→talk • 17:51, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

What are the legitimate results that you are thinking of? Me personally, if something might be in the title, I use the Wikipedia search engine. Otherwise, if the search terms I am using appear in the text but not the titles, I use something like Google instead. Does this affect Google searches as well? Carcharoth 17:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

This is interesting, because I am in the habit of typing directly into the URL bar rather than the search box, so I have to remember to type capitals in the right place. For names I can understand, but there are cases where capitalisation is not so obvious. For example McMurdo Dry Valleys (compare with Mcmurdo Dry Valleys and McMurdo dry valleys). I've just created those redirects - are they examples of ones that shouldn't be created? Carcharoth 16:45, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Other examples: James Surowiecki, James Michael Surowiecki James Michael Surowiecki, J. M. Surowiecki. Those last three didn't exist until I created them. Should I have created those redirects? And have a look at the redirects I created at Talk:Thomas-François Dalibard#Correct spelling of name?. How does mediawiki software handle that kind of thing? Carcharoth 16:48, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

And the redirect people always forget... What if you can't remember the guy's first name? Surowiecki - which should become a disambiguation page if another Surowiecki ever gets a page written about them. Carcharoth 16:52, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Out of date examples

See Wikipedia:Redirect#What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects? - both examples are out-of-date as the redirects appear to have been turned into their own articles. Can anyone find any examples that are likely to be more permanent! :-) Carcharoth 17:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I updated it with two new examples that should be pretty static. If others can think of better examples, please change them. -- JLaTondre 17:39, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Those look great. Carcharoth 17:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposal - cross-namespace redirects to portals

A proposal on March 24, 2007 here to 'mass delete' a large number of cross-namespace links to portals (for example History portal ⇒ Portal:History) ended in "no consensus". A similar proposal is currently under discussion here. To avoid this becoming a regular topic of discussion, I would like to make a proposal, based on the following reasoning. From The guiding principles of redirects for discussion:

• If someone could plausibly type in the redirect's name when searching for the target article, it's a good redirect.
• Redirects nominated in contravention of Wikipedia:Redirect will be speedily kept.

Turning to Wikipedia:Redirect, the guidelines say:

You might want to delete a redirect if:

5. it is a cross-space redirect out of article space, such as one pointing into the User or Wikipedia namespace....

However, avoid deleting such redirects if:

• 5. Someone finds them useful. Hint: If someone says they find a redirect useful, they probably do.

In my opinion, redirects from the article namespace to the portal namespace are very useful for non-wikipedians, for whom typing in a phrase such as 'history portal' is considerably more intuitive than 'Portal:History'. Several others have expressed similar views in the above mentioned discussions, while the number of such cross-namespace links that have been created is evidence that many others share this view. Since 'someone finds them useful', in my view, and in accordance with the existing guidelines above, such links should not be deleted.

My proposal is therefore to make this situation explicit - i.e. that redirects to the portal namespace should be listed as an exception on Wikipedia:Redirect - i.e. that the text should be changed to read somthing like:

When should we delete a redirect?

You might want to delete a redirect if one or more of the following conditions is met:

5. It is a cross-space redirect out of article space, such as one pointing into the User or Wikipedia namespace. The major exceptions to this rule are a) redirects that aid navigation from the article namespace to the portal namespace, and b) the "WP:" shortcut redirects (like WP:RFD), which technically are in the main article space but in practice form their own "pseudo-namespace". All "articles" beginning with "WP:" are in fact redirects.

Your comments are invited below... Gralo 18:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't see that this as a change in the guideline, but rather a clarification. Therefore, I see no reason to oppose it (exccept maybe for the fact that it creates unnecessary redundancy). Regarding the mass nomination on March 17, I would have recommended "keep all" in that case, had I participated. As for the 4 redirects I nominated recently, I only did so because I did not think that they would "aid navigation" (in that they are prefixed by "The"). I didn't ignore the possibility; on the contrary, I considered it and found it to be unlikely (maybe I was mistaken). -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:35, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Wait, this proposal only applies to redirects to the portal namespace. Why? -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Because portals are "are meant for both readers and editors of Wikipedia" (see WP:PORTAL). An example of this is the wikipedia main page, typically the first page general readers encounter, which is virtually a portal. Portals are, considering its audience, more similar to articles and different from project or user pages which are primarily intended for editors but not general readers. Therefore, it doesn't make much sense for XNRs to portal namespaces to be using the same criteria as XNRs to user or project namespaces. --Melanochromis 01:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

This is a change in the guidelines based upon past discussions regarding XNRs. There is significant disagreement regarding them. I don't think specifying any XNR target as automatically valid is the right thing to do. The current approach of allowing RFD to decide which ones are useful enough to keep has been working, in my opinion. A redirect to portal space should not be kept simply because it is to portal. Portal is a valid word in encyclopedic topics. Redirects to portal space should not have free reign to usurp titles that might be better suited as articles or redirects to articles. -- JLaTondre 19:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Support the proposal. It's practical. We can't expect non-wikipedians to understand and follow the cross-namespace concept. If a new user or a non-wikipedian person wants to see the fish portal, he will most likely search for "fish portal" or "the fish portal" but not "Portal:Fish". This is (kind of) suggested in the current policy already but better make it explicit as there've been deletion nominations before. In the future, if there is going to be an article about the fish portal, then convert the "fish portal" redirect into article. But meanwhile, it's useful to have "fish portal" redirect to portal:fish. In addition the policy should state that when a redirect to portal or a page related to a wikiproject is proposed for deletion, the portal maintainers and/or relavent wikiproject must be notified. This is to be fair to all parties because sometimes the creators or people who actually use the redirects aren't aware of the deletion nomination until it's too late. --Melanochromis 22:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Infrequent users, which are the majority of our contributers, often have difficulty with redirects and do not understand that they can convert them to articles, much less how to do it. Redirects discourage article creation. Our default position should not be to allow XNR redirects for encyclopedic titles. While fish portal will unlikely ever to be an encyclopedic article, this is not true of all possible portal titles (ex: web portal). As for notification, there is already community consensus across all deletion types that it is a good idea, but not required. There is no reason for this specific subset to be unique. -- JLaTondre 22:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

General readers, which far outnumber editors, are not aware of the concept of different namespaces, let alone the policy of cross-namespace redirects. They would have no idea they are supposed to type "Portal:<name>" in order to get to a particular portal instead of using the common sense search terms ("fish portal", "portal fish" etc.). And remember that portals, unlike project or user pages, are meant for general readers as well as editors (even wikipedia main page is a portal). Editors, on the other hand, have much better understanding of wikipedia. Even new editors will eventually learn how the redirects work. There's a clear reason why this proposal is needed for the sake of general readers. --Melanochromis 01:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

No, there isn't. Readers as inexperienced as you describe aren't even going to know about portals in the first place. It does not benefit general readers by allowing portals free reign to claim any title regardless of conflict with possible articles. -- JLaTondre 16:58, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Strong Oppose. Article namespace should be reserved for articles, with few exceptions. New users and readers will probably be looking for articles first and foremost, not Portals or other namespaces. The articles themselves contain cross-namespace links which are clearly visible. Users who arrive at a Portal page will most likely not do so through a redirect, unless he/she sees it in a talk page discussion. Subsequently, if the user wishes to revisit the portal page, the user knows how to reach it: through the corresponding article.

My biggest concern is that the redirect occupies a plausible future article name, and new users might be discouraged from creating it if they see it is a redirect to a non-article (a quick Google search revealed other websites with similar names using Portal, such as Fish Portal, History Portal, etc.) That is why different namespaces are there in the first place.

However, aside from my CNR objection, I do believe the Portal links could be better presented in an article (which is usually at the See also sections). Mtmelendez ^{(Talk|UB|Home)} 13:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

what about the redir button?

This does not mention the button. Is it not included for any reason? Or has it simply been missed? Stwalkerster 18:44, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The redir button is simply an editing convenience; it saves a few keystrokes. There isn't any need to mention it here; it should be mentioned when all of the editing buttons are discussed, as, for example, at Help:Edit toolbar. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:06, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Categories on redirects needs clarifying

Recently the categories on a set of redirects to list entries were deleted. I think it makes sense for the redirects to have their own categories, so they appear separately to someone browsing the category. It's one thing to say that a redirect from a misspelling shouldn't have a category, it's quite another to say that all redirects to individual characters in (say) List of The Simpson's characters shouldn't have categories. The guideline seems to be poorly phrased as it's encouraging people to delete categories from the latter type of redirect. Gimmetrow 00:43, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I completley agree with Gimmetrow. Too many people seem to be misunderstanding this rule and deleting every single category from every redirect, even if they fit perfectly. We need a clearer rule on this for us all to follow. --Piemanmoo 23:17, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

This issue has arisen again. Discussion is at User_talk:DC&Marvel_maniac. Gimmetrow 16:38, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

The issue never felled in the first place. I have explained my reasons and all. Gimmethrow, once there is a clearer rule made, the discussions and heresay will be over. Who will begin such a rule anyways? DC&Marvel maniac 16:54, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

The practice already exists. It's been discussed in the archives, and several people found it useful. If it needs to be clarified, that's fine, but guidelines are descriptive, not proscriptive, on Wikipedia. -- nae'blis 20:27, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Gimmetrow's change is quite reasonable. If people are arguing that the prior wording required redirects to not have categories then his change is absolutely necessary as that was not what it meant. Most redirects should not be contained in the same category as the target article, but there are some that should be. Normally is not the same as always. Categories are navigation aids and we shouldn't be hindering navigation. -- JLaTondre 20:41, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Even with alternative names and other such things, they don't need to be categorized. The first thing people will do is searc for a term, at which point they'll likely be directed to it. Likewise, when you have a list of characters or something to that effect, a lack of names in a category leads them to just one conclusion: it's in the list. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 23:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe. Other people will browse a category. Also, the list may not be in some of the categories appropriate for some redirects to list entries. Could you explain why "it can result in duplicate listings of the same page within a category" is given as a reason *not* to categorize a redirect? That seems at worst neutral, and in some situations a good thing. I also object to the characterization that this is "ammo in an argument". It's adjusting a text which has been (ab)used to delete categories with no explanation, as for instance the album example (which existed when this section was discussed in December 2006) was removed in February 2007 without any useful explanation. The text I added was from that discussion, with another bit from a July 2006 discussion. Gimmetrow 23:27, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Both archived and the changes since deleted. Your attempt may have been in good faith, but you're still editing th page to tip the argument in your favor. If you need an example of ridiculous repeat categorization, look no further that Category:Data Digimon. This actually had more relevance back when section links didn't work, but it's still grossly overcategorizing a subset of pages. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 23:33, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Fine, where is the argument that is being biased by editing this page? I came in as a neutral editor (to the argument, I've supported this feature in the past) and would like to see what you're referring to. Your definition of how things are decided/changed seems odd to me. -- nae'blis 00:05, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

See either Gimm's or DC&Marvel's talk page. They're both in a drawn-out argument over redirect categories. Altering the guideline to favor one view or the other isn't acceptable as far as I'm aware. I wasn't implying any particular process of confirmation in this case, just a conflict of interest in editing. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 00:11, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Another user removed some categories on one redirect I happen to have watchlisted. The discussion is linked above. This issue reminded me about the incoherence of this text, but as you can see I proposed editing this weeks ago. Now, the text Someguy0830 is defending was added here on 25 December 2006. The text was weakened shortly after, but this was all done without any prior discussion. There has still been no explanation why "duplicate listings of the same page within a category" is a bad thing. Gimmetrow 00:20, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I too was confused for a while on whether redirects that redirect to something should be accepted. So it is apparently allowed then, I figure, no matter the circumstance? ~I'm anonymous

No, not "no matter the circumstance." It needs to make sense and be an aid to navigation. Variations on a title, misspellings, redirects that aren't sufficiently discussed at the target, etc. shouldn't be included. -- JLaTondre 11:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

While we shouldn't be prohibiting categories on redirects, we should not be taking it to excess either. They only are worthwhile if they help navigation. If it's overdone, that will actually hinder navigation as the categories will become bloated with redirects that provide little value. I believe the addition of that paragraph was meant to address an alternate push to over categorize redirects. What is needed is balance and I believe Someguy0830's current wording is a pretty good attempt for that. -- JLaTondre 11:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with this. Only when aiding in navigation should they be used. Redirects do not need things like "Fictional super-strong guys" and the like. They only should be used when it's a well-known alternate spelling, name, and so on. Loading them down with everything imaginable is just pointless. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 23:51, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Why would we want to put a redirect in a category? Unless the real article is also put in the category, someone reading the article can't access the category. --NE2 09:18, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

There are occasions when two titles can be well known for the same thing. We don't want duplicate articles, but we shouldn't be excluding one of the titles from the appropriate category if it is something that can be reasonable expected to be looked for by a reader and is sufficiently different (i.e. not a variation of the article title). For example, some authors have written under multiple names and are well known by those names. It is very possible someone would look in Category:American novelists (assuming an American author) for either of the names the author published under. If the name is well known enough, the reader may not know its a pseudonym. -- JLaTondre 11:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Another example is when songs/fictional characters are redirected to a list or summary article, but categorizing everything on the page would result in a massive mess at the bottom of the page. Categories are primarily for association and navigation, not to be seen on the article page, in my opinion. -- nae'blis 14:18, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I merely don't see this problem being solved. Until there is proper establishment by power of consensus that all redirects be categorized by recommendation, then I won't combat it further. The guideline is vague, 'tis naut officialized. DC&Marvel maniac 16:13, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

The guideline as written pretty much sums up practice - it can be done. I wouldn't expect any policy to say it should never be done, or it should always be done, because either would be incorrect. Gimmetrow 17:18, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

As Nae'blis said, categories are primarily used for association. It looks awful when a list or summary article has a huge lump of categories at the bottom. They really shouldn't be seen on the article page unless they apply to the article as a whole as well. Some people argue this saying that people searching in a category that click on a page an get redirected don't see the category at the bottom of the new page, so it's hard to continue browsing. Which is a weak argument because we have back buttons on most browsers.

For example, lets say a page was a list of characters from star wars. And let's also say that Han Solo redirected to this list article. If we put the category of "characters that are played by Harrison Ford" (which is obviously a stupid category, but bare with me here) at the list page it won't make any sense, and it will be right next to "characters played by Mark Hammil" which makes the page look ridiculous. Plus, searching in that category would bring up "list of characters in Star Wars" instead of just "Han Solo" like it should. See what I mean? There are certain instances when it is less clutter to categorize redirects --Piemanmoo 20:57, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Pipetricks for redirects

This thought seems to be missing in the erudite discussion above. In the three years or so I've been around, redirects are generally categorized so they pipe sort with the target term (e.g. Neap tide(s), Spring tide(s), and Tide), especially if a technical term that is essentially the same, or so they sort out above or below the list as a whole Pipetricked to one of

'| Space{{PAGENAME}}]]' or '| *{{PAGENAME}}]]' (both list ahead), while '}{{PAGENAME}}]] lists down the bottom.

Some projects, such as WikiProject Novels (WP:NOVEL) have their own standards and use '*' and space prefixing for other meanings, and the best collision avoidance I've found with such seems to be the last -- sorting to '|}]]' -- which so far as I know sorts by PAGENAME automatically after prefixing the '}', just as if {PAGENAME} is given, however, the latter is needed on non-main namespace pages (Templates or Categories usually) least they all sort to T OR C, as the system actually appends the Help:magic word {FULLPAGENAME}.

Moreover, not categorizing redirects to me is nonsensical. The more links people have to look at that might jar the old memory cells or make them relate better, the better we satisfy their needs. Lastly, categorizing a page to an article with a fair number of categories is also easy these days, taking a bit of cut and paste using {{Tlx|Cat also|Pipetrick|cat1|cat2|...|catN}}. All you do is type the template name inside the curly-braces, plus how you want it to pipetrick, Swipe the cats off the article page you're linking to, and paste them in... the system even adds the pipetricks between the copied category names. Just be careful to not grab administrative categories like unreferenced and so forth. Since those generally list first, that's no problem. // 213.120.114.7 09:30, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Redirect non-existent "Song" to "Album": good or bad policy?

Some people come to Wikipedia to look up information about songs (I know that I do sometimes), but often the less popular song titles do not have articles so the search comes up empty. Would it be good or bad policy to create an article for a song title and then redirect it to an album article that contains the song in its track listing? For instance, Kinda I Want To by Nine Inch Nails does not exist, but it is a song from the album Pretty Hate Machine, so a possibility would be to link the nonexistent article to the existent album. The alternative would be to create a two-sentence stub that is a copy of the album information which may never expand and links to the album anyway. Thoughts? — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 01:24, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like you are looking for the {{r from song}} redirect tag. It, and other less common tags can be found at WP:TMR. --Kralizec! (talk) 01:58, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

That is exactly what I needed to know. Thank you. — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 02:53, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

What to do about "redirect warriors"?

Recently I ran across a "redirect warrior" who was going through the hundreds of pages linking to the recently moved Chicagoland article and replacing them with Chicago metropolitan area. When I pointed this editor to Wikipedia:Redirect#Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken and indicated that fixing un-broken redirects is not generally considered a good thing, the editor replied on my talk page saying that they were "engaged in a battle to change 'Chicagland' to 'Chicago metropolitan area.'" Interestingly enough, if you go through the edit histories, it appears that the editor actually started this "battle" a week before the article in question was even moved ... so first he/she was changing Chicagoland links to Chicago Metropolitan Area, and is now changing the links again to Chicago metropolitan area.

Since the editor has declined my recommendation to stop fixing these redirects that are not broken, what do we do now? Is there there anything we can do other than ask nicely? It appears that there are still over 400 pages still pointing to Chicagoland, which is a lot of unnecessary server churn ... --Kralizec! (talk) 13:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

In this case, I agree, changing the redirects makes little sense. I don't totally agree with the "don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken" statement, and there are, as it says, exceptions. By the way, is there a reason your links are prefaced with a colon? I thought that was only needed for images and categories? Carcharoth 13:21, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

My guess is that the prefacing was a nod to defensive programming. --Aarktica 16:05, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Dynamic redirect

Is it possible to redirect to a dynamic page?! something like #REDIRECT [[page_{{CURRENTYEAR}}]], well I mean I tried it in a wiki (in some site) but it didn't work, I wanted to use it to do some kind of archiving say each Year. Is there any other way? and why it does not work?

I don't know. I tried it it and it didn't work. :) —Centrx→talk • 03:43, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

It's not possible and I daresay it never will be. To implement this, MediaWiki would have to set database triggers on all their magic words, to ensure updates to the link tables whenever the output of a magic word changes. In the case of {{CURRENTSECOND}}, this would trigger a link table update every second for all eternity. Hesperian 04:06, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

LOL! The end of the world!! Carcharoth 14:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh! thanks for the response, you are right! but then is there any way to archive a page automatically?! something like a page for current events say for each day or week...

A talk page? There's a couple bots out there that will archive regularly based on criteria you set... MiszaBot I/MiszaBot II/MiszaBot III are just one set of examples, for different namespaces. -- nae'blis 14:44, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

what links here: redirects only?

Is there a way to get the "what links here" (like Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia_talk:Redirect) to only show redirects? -Eep² ^{(Talk|Contribs)} 09:56, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Nothing I am aware of, but perhaps someone has an external script that can do it ... --Kralizec! (talk) 13:39, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Further up the page at Wikipedia talk:Redirect#Announcing WhatLinksHere.js, there is an announcement of a script that will do that. I haven't tried it so I don't know if it still works. -- JLaTondre 20:32, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. ∞Σɛ_Þ² ^(τ|c) 04:26, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Justification on talk pages.

There are instances where an article would mention a pseudonym for the subject. It seems reasonable to have the pseudonym as a redirect to the article in question.

However, there are certain redirects up for discussion whose connection to the article in question is far from obvious. For this reason, I propose such redirects be justfied on the talk page for the redirect. If the argument for creation holds water, it would probably cut down on the number of redirects brought up for discussion.

Comments? --Aarktica 14:45, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

_{Note: This request was initially posted at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion; it was recommended that I move the proposal here instead. --Aarktica 16:03, 18 May 2007 (UTC)}

The idea is fine in theory, but I don't think every person who creates a redirect is going to give a reason in the talk page (and through example is how people who are creating the controversial ones would only start to do it themselves). How about a forced message template? If new redirect is created and it does not contain ‘'{{r [space]‘' afterward, it brings up a message directing the person to the templates indicating that one should be added. I'm not sure how practical this would be, but it seems like a better solution. — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 18:30, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

The justification will be focused on redirects that are questionable or suspect. It would be counter-productive to require it for every redirect — especially if it is obvious. --Aarktica 18:46, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Assuming I am understanding the proposal correctly, I ask this question: questionable or obvious to whom? The reason many questionable and suspect redirects of any kind are probably created is because, like any other good faith edit, the person who created them saw no problem and is inexperienced with WP. It's the regulars who understand all of the policies. Concerning redirect-creation experience only, the inexperienced person would create the redirect without thinking or knowing that it could be suspect and would probably give no thought that talk page justification was needed, and the experienced user probably wouldn't create many suspect ones in the first place that would need a talk page explanation. — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 21:16, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

You know, I thought this question would come up; I really need to avoid using the word obvious. ^{(mental note)} (Update: A word just got banned from my vocabulary.)

With that said, I invite you to consider redirects like Bandit or H20; I doubt these would come up for discussion or deletion. Although, it would be interesting to see what sort of arguments would be made if it ever occurred.

However, the target for the Mickeysoft redirect is one that I am unable to justify. If the creator of the redirect posted a sentence justifying its existence, I suspect that it would cut down on the number of RfD nominations. (At least it would provide a gentler starting point to hash out possible challenges...) --Aarktica 22:39, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't pipe red links to larger blue ones; instead make a redirect?

Does anyone object to adding the following to Wikipedia:Redirect#Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken?

Similarly, if you come across a red link, you should generally not pipe it to another article, unless it is a misspelling or other unprintworthy text. Instead, create a redirect. This is particularly important when the redirect is to a larger topic, and it is feasible that an article on the more specific topic will exist in the future.

--NE2 13:04, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

It's okay, except there's many/a few industrious folks who are 'correcting' redirects in piped links, so eventually the redirect becomes less used and you end up with very odd pipe links like [[University of Southern California|Doctorate in Pagan Studies]] (not a real example, AFAIK). It's very difficult to catch and track down, and extremely frustrating because it masks information gaps. I guess what I'm saying is that I fear your effort will be in vain, as people aren't following the current guidelines about redirects. -- nae'blis 14:41, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Whenever I see someone do that, I revert. That has led to a dispute (see several discussions down). I think we need to be harder on people who insist on bypassing redirects for no good reason. --NE2 01:29, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Cross name space redirect?

A user has been fighting to prevent Panotools and PanoTools from being a redirect to Panorama Tools now for several days due to, it seems, some external politics. Now, after lots of arguing with me and ignoring policy another user (that makes 3 against him) has come along and informed him that what he was creating was not right. So instead, he has done a cross-namespace redirect to a category instead. Is this acceptable? I've not seen a cross-namespace redirect before on the site (other than in project/user talk space) and a bit uneasy with it.-Localzuk^(talk) 12:01, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Cross-namespace redirects are controversial. If you look through the talk history here and on other redirect related pages you will find mixed opinions over them. However, the general consensus is article content should come first so if there is a legitimate main namespace target, that should take precedence. -- JLaTondre 12:31, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

New proposal - Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects

Following discussion at Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization#Categorizing redirects, I've started a proposal at Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects and would like community input and help to edit the proposal and see if it is acceptable. Please discuss on its talk page, and suggest other places to get input. Thanks. Carcharoth 23:16, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Page history missing

I've come across a few cases where the original page history of a merged page that was changed to a redirect was apparently lost, and can't be found under either title, but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place. An example: Danae Sims redirected to FSU Cowgirls. DGG 21:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. It looks like Danae Sims was created as a redirect to FSU Cowgirls. There was no content there in the first place. The logs for that page don't show any previous versions that were deleted. Why do you think there was a merge? -- JLaTondre 21:41, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Need help

I'm dealing with a user, Imdanumber1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who continually bypasses redirects because he dislikes them. His latest is on 1 (New York City Subway service). Can somebody please advise me? Thank you. --NE2 01:27, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• This sort of request would be best on a WikiProject page... I'll help you direct on your talk though, as the page has been locked down for a cool off period. // FrankB 20:44, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Redirect templates

Could someone please explain what all the redirect templates are used for? The only function I can think of is to keep the redirects from appearing in the list of uncategorized articles. Is there some other maintenance function I'm not understanding? I can't imagine that regular users browse these redirect categories. So why all the categories? If the purpose is getting them off the uncategorized list, couldn't they all be in one huge category? Perhaps I missed something obvious, but I'm not seeing it. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 09:49, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Since they are listed under the What do we use redirects for? section, I always presumed the templates were a form of standardized explanation for why the redirect exist. Likewise, some of the templates add the redirects to specific cats such as {{R from misspelling}} puts pages in Category:Unprintworthy redirects. --Kralizec! (talk) 12:04, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I do not believe redirects show up in uncategorized articles anymore, but if I'm wrong there, that's still not the main point of the redirect templates. The templates help provide additional information that can be beneficial to users & editors. For example, {{R from merge}} (why isn't that one listed?) is important as indicates that there a merge has taken place and the edit history at the redirect needs to be maintained. -- JLaTondre 14:06, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I still don't understand how someone would actually use Category:Unprintworthy redirects. If these categories are being used as a way to note the reason the redirect exists, couldn't that just be done by creating a template that displays on the page without creating the category? For instance {{R from misspelling}} could say "This page name of this redirect is misspelled. It redirects to the correctly spelled article." {{R from merge}} could say "This redirect was created as a result of a merged page. This redirect needs to be maintained because its history is part of the history of the merged page." If you want to see what redirects use the templates, you could click on "what links here". What function does the category serve? Categories exist for navigation. When do redirects need to be navigated? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sam (talk • contribs)

I use Category:Redirects from misspellings occasionally. I will go through it, pick a likely redirect, & correct any links to the redirect to match the target. Misspellings are one case where the redirect should be corrected in the article as it's incorrect. People found them useful enough to create, what harm is there in having them? -- JLaTondre 12:57, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Bolding of redirects?

I've now seen, twice, cases where bolding was done of article names that are redirects (that is, where [[ABC]] is a redirect to [[XYZ]], and the article on "XYZ" begins something like this: "Organization XYZ was founded by person ABC"). In one case, I reverted the bolding because I thought it was obviously wrong, but now that I've seen it done a second time, at a different article, I thought I'd bring it here for discussion.

Bolding of redirects, except for subsections (this is not the situation here) isn't discussed in the guideline. So is the bolding in these two articles incorrect, or should the guideline be changed? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:13, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Where the redirect is from an alternate name, then (usually) that name should be bolded -- but because it's an alternate name, not because it's a redirect. Redirects from subtopics, list items, etc. should definitely not be bolded IMO. I can't recall ever encountering this behavior before. -- Visviva 13:27, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Neither have I. It could be some sort of spamming, giving undeserving emphasis on certain names, titles, and articles, or maybe just itchy-bold-trigger fingers from new editors. In any case, I also believe redirects [like the one mentioned above] should not be in bold. - Mtmelendez ^{(Talk|UB|Home)} 01:52, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Rediects should be bolded, especially when the word is in the middle. This is a way of easily finding the required topic. Otherwise often the person starts reading an article and thinks "What the heck? Where am I?" "Undeserving emphasis" is an unjust judgement. It is just an emphasis. And "calling itchy fingers" without really looking into who does this is a disrespect to fellow editors.

Boldface for a redirect target is an especially valid emphasis when the redirect is tagged {{R with possibilities} }, which indicated that a casual word may well deserve a separate article. And seeing a bold term in the middle may trigger someone to actuall write this separate article, so emphasis is good in more than ne reason. Mukadderat 16:58, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Actually the policy clearly says this: "We follow the "principle of least astonishment" — after following a redirect, the reader's first question is likely to be: "hang on ... I wanted to read about this. Why has the link taken me to that?". Make it clear to the reader that they have arrived in the right place." And tyhe given example is just like the // "Organization XYZ was founded by person ABC"// Mukadderat 17:08, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

The fact is I have not seen this type of use (bolding redirects of related subjects) across any articles I've encountered, so I reasonably assumed this was not a common practice. First, I've seen my fair share of promoting ideals across articles, and "bolding" words is a discreet way of doing it. Secondly, I didn't mean any disrespect, which is why I said maybe and new editors (I've also seen that around, users not adhering to WP:MOS). Pardon me if I'm quick to judge based on past experience, its a natural habit.

I'm accustomed to bolding redirects for other spellings, related words, sub-topics, and related subjects when they are discussed in an article. For example, I bold names of subsidiaries that redirect to the parent company because it contains information on the subsidairy, but I don't bold owners and management personnel when the main article doesn't contain any information on them other than trivial. By trivial I mean information on who founded it and who currently runs it, which doesn't merit bolding unless the article expands on such topics. If that were the case, all redirects should be bolded, just because its a redirect.

For example, why did you emphasize the Yahoo Watch redirect to Public Information Research? Is Yahoo Watch such an important sub-topic of Public Information Research which would merit the Bold text? Why aren't Google Watch and Wikipedia Watch bolded? Is their relation to the article less noteworthy than Yahoo Watch? These are basic questions a common reader might ask, since one word receiving more emphasis than others warrants an explanation or expanded discussion within the article, other than "it's run by Public Information Research".

I've tried looking, but I have not found a policy or guideline on when not to use bold or italic text. Sorry for not expanding my thoughts before, but now that I have, do you understand my argument? - Mtmelendez ^{(Talk|UB|Home)} 00:44, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

In support of not bolding redirects except where there is an alternative (common) name that redirects (in which case there should be an "aka" phrase at the top) - the principle of "least astonishment" also pertains to readers who come directly to the article other than by a redirect (presumably this is the most common way). For them, it will be surprising (and not particularly understandable) that certain words (like "Yahoo Watch") are bolded and others (like "Google Watch") are not. Or, if all of them are bolded, it will be puzzling as to why. Similarly, redirects from corporate officers to articles on corporations, if that results in bolding the names of the corporate officers in the article on the corporation, will lead to puzzlement on the part of readers.

Also, regarding surprise, there is a note at the top of an article saying that the reader has been redirected, when a redirect occurs. Granted, it's in smaller font than the article title, but it is there; perhaps the solution would be larger font rather than trying to change policy on what is, by now, tens (hundreds?) of thousands of redirects. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Double redirects to SPD

Can I be bold and get a bot to update all the following redirects to point to the actual article instead of the redirect page? The SDP is an abbreviation for a political party and here's an example where the SDP party is redirected by its acronym while the DDP party is redirected (correctly) by its article name. → AA ^{(talk • contribs)} — 09:38, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

No, that's not needed. SPD is a redirect. DDP is a disambig page. Links to the DDP political party need to be spelled out. The SDP link gets to the appropriate article so Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken applies. -- JLaTondre 16:23, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Was beginning to think this was a lonely place :) Is it not more appropriate to use SPD as a disambiguation page since it is only a redirect? → AA ^{(talk • contribs)} — 16:55, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your question. There is a disambig page for SDP at SPD (disambiguation) with an associated dab link at the top of Social Democratic Party of Germany. This is the standard practice when a term is best known for a specific use, but there are other uses as well. That seems to be the case here. -- JLaTondre 18:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Changing redirects to direct links

Yes, I'm aware of the headline on the main page. But I'm aware that this guideline is not set in stone, and as all guidelines aren't, they do not always have to be followed. I find them useful in some cases, but in other cases, they appear to be disruptive. Some are used as abbreviations, some are cosmetic, and some are too obscure to use and keep around. A user edited an article one day, and rewrote part of the section using redirects, whereas I cleaned them up, and he reverted, thus sparking an edit war. Even several other users disagreed with him stating what I said above. I may need some input from some experienced Wikipedians regarding this issue to prevent another edit war and to prove that the user's use of redirects are so-called "wrong" and uncalled for, thus making them deleted in some way. —Imdanumber1 (talk • contribs • email) 00:15, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

The guideline Wikipedia:Redirect#Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken exists because it is part of consensus. Exceptions to this guideline certainly occur. What are your specific reasons as to why a particular article should be exempt from these guidelines? --Kralizec! (talk) 11:44, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

It should be a matter of common sense. Replacing a redirect is usually not necessary, but it can be appropriate at times. Obviously, redirects associated with spelling errors should be fixed. Replacing abbreviations can be useful also; especially if its not clear to non-expert what the abbreviation stands for. I think the question to ask oneself is "does it improve the readability of the article?" If we keep that in mind, we shouldn't go wrong. I don't think, however, it requires a change in the page wording. -- JLaTondre 12:38, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps I read too much into the original message, but my presumption was that this issue is above and beyond the typical common sense guideline, especially as the redirects in question were described as being "disruptive." --Kralizec! (talk) 15:17, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Those make good sense. The original reason I brought this up is because there are some redirects that are too obscure too keep, cosmetic, and for abbreviations. I believe redirects of this purpose should be deleted, and since other users agreed with this on a article talk page, consensus has been reached, and it will remain that way. I find them useful in some occasions, such as linking to a specific section of a page, other than that, I think they should be avoided, especially when one blatantly uses them for some sort of non-encyclopedic purpose. Thanks for the input. —Imdanumber1 (talk • contribs • email) 15:19, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Using the redirect at 1 (NYCS) is not "disruptive". --NE2 21:09, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I abhor landing on a redirect page. I will end up clicking twice to end up on the "right" page and have the correct address in the address bar. --Nricardo 02:32, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Those are called "double redirects". But those are not what is being discussed here. Ewlyahoocom 03:48, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe Nricardo is talking about regular redirects. He doesn't like the URL being the redirect name rather than the article name, so he clicks the "article" button to "fix" the URL. You could write a little JavaScript to do that automatically. —  Randall Bart   Talk  04:38, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Set default sort key to the asterisk

What does everyone think of setting the default sort key of Wikipedia:Redirect to * using {{DEFAULTSORT:*}}? This would have the effect of putting the page under the * heading in categories it is included in. This is undesirable for categories like Category:Wikipedia editing guidelines, but this page also transcludes many redirect templates and as such is included in categories like Category:Redirects from misspellings, Category:Unprintworthy redirects and Category:Printworthy redirects. In those, it makes sense to have this page at the top of the list as seems to be convention for pages which are significant to a category. We don't want to give the impression this page is a redirect to anyone looking at the category. Additionally, the sort key can be manually specified to be Redirect for categories the page is directly added to. Your thoughts are welcome. BigNate37_(T) 14:50, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and made this change. The categories intended for redirects themselves sort Wikipedia:Redirect as "*", and the categories intended for Wikipedia pages sort it as "Redirect". BigNate37_(T) 19:16, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki redirects ?

I am wondering what we should do with "interwiki redirects". There are quite a few of them redirecting user (or user talk) pages to pages on another wiki (see User talk:Bouchecl for a random example), which obviously does not work. They are basically useless, except for indicating where the user should click — a task that could be done efficiently using a template (which probably already exists). I know they are probably harmless, but I was wondering if this had been discussed in the past; the main reason I wonder about them is because they clutter the page Special:BrokenRedirects; it happenend more that once that I missed a real entry because it was close to two user pages. Schutz 20:19, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

We do have {{softredirect}}. I have seen it used on user pages before. I know of no discussion either promoting or discouraging it, however. I think a template (either softredirect or a user specific version) is preferable. Not only for Special:BrokenRedirects, but because they can be confusing to new users. A user specific version of the softredirect template would be able to add an explanation. -- JLaTondre 23:18, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy to create a new, specific, template derived from {{softredirect}} for use with interwiki links, but do we only suggest that people use it, or should we think about replacing them ? Schutz 12:53, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

R to abbreviation

We have {{R from abbreviation}}, but is there any analogous template/category for redirects to abbreviation titles? The specific example is CMOS, which has redirects such as Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor, Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor, Complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, and Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor, and probably more, all of which are uncategorized. BigNate37_(T) 20:23, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

We do not have anything like that to my knowledge. Perhaps we should consider creating a {{R to abbreviation}} ... ? --Kralizec! (talk) 17:20, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Why not just use the {{R from abbreviation}} tag? I suspect most users will understand the intention. Ewlyahoocom 06:45, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirecting to another language

I want to redirect my user page and my talk page to my dutch pages, so that I only have to maintain the one page. I've looked around on this page, but couldn't figure out how to get this done. Can someone help me with this? Thanks!--Zoidberg666 15:56, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirects between projects don't work. Many people place #REDIRECT [[interwiki:name]] (where lang = the appropriate interwiki prefix & name = username at target) on their user pages, but it won't actually redirect. It will just display a link people can click on. In my opinion, it's better to just leave a note along the lines of "see my account at [[interwiki:name]]" as that's more understandable for newer users. -- JLaTondre 16:35, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I'll leave a short note with a link then. Thanks for the info! --Zoidberg666 06:19, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirect template confusion

What's the difference between {{R from ASCII}} and {{R from title without diacritics}}? Looking through their respective categories, they seem to be used identically. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 05:38, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

In actual use, there doesn't seem much difference as people use them interchangeably. In theory, I believe {{R from title without diacritics}} is strictly for diacritic cases (ex: "a" to "ä") where as {{R from ASCII}} is for other non-ASCII cases that aren't diacritics (ex: "ae" to "æ"). I'm not sure why we need the distinction. I cannot figure out a case where someone would be interested in a specific subset, but it is possible, I suppose. -- JLaTondre 11:48, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we should redirect {{R from title without diacritics}} to {{R from ASCII}}. What would you think about that?

In any case, I have another question: in what case would you ever be writing an article and want to link to a redirect tagged with {{R from ASCII}} or {{R from title without diacritics}}? Wouldn't you always want to link directly to the page in question (for example, California Über Alles instead of California Uber Alles? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 22:59, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

category redirects

Is the information here current? I think the bot mentioned no longer runs, and I seem to recall that there actually was finally some change to the mediawiki software. DGG (talk) 15:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

redirection example confusing

I'm just learning about redirects, and when I clicked on the Cambridge University link in 1.0 I was confused when it didn't auto-redirect to University of Cambridge. OK, I saw in a bit that the redirect had been suppressed by the ?redirect=no flag on the URL, but it was definitely confusing. Perhaps we should mention the auto-redirect suppression right then and there - I almost left that page thinking it wasn't what I wanted. Maybe even put it on the Cambridge University page? --JaGa 06:26, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Argentine films and list

Discussion moved from Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2007 September 10 for wider input

Currently, one of our users has made a large quantity of redirects (in the thousands) for essentially every Argentine film which does not already have an article. These redirects all go to the relevant decade of List of Argentine films (see the full "What Links here" lists for each decade's list - the redirects start usually several hundred down), but I'm concerned by the huge quantity of articles being created solely to redirect to a general list. Especially as none of them have even been run by notability or verifiability standards; all that can be ascertained is an IMDb entry (and the consensus at WP:CIMDB was that IMDb is not a reliable source). I'm somewhat conflicted about mass deleting all of these redirect articles, especially as some of them certainly might one day be articles, but I am dubious that most of them will be. What thoughts do you all have about the process? Thanks, Girolamo Savonarola 23:23, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - What to do depends mostly on the the handling of the list itself. List of Argentine films and its subpages seems to list essentially every Argentine film ever made, including many items that do not have their own article or unlikely to ever be created. In such a case the redirects are of the type {{r to list entry}} and helpful as they can be linked and provide at least some basic information. The problem of verifiability is than one of the list itself: Should there be an entry for a specific film and how is it sourced? But in as far the redirects correctly reflect the content of the list, they are legitimate. They could be expanded to articles on a step-by-step basis and need to be deleted if the corresponding list entry is removed. --Tikiwont 09:56, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Let me just add, that above is one of two ways of using a list of topics that are regularly brought up here. If, alternatively, the list was clearly confined to topics considered notable, one would rather have redlinks inside the list (ruling out redirects thereto) thus encouraging article creation. It can be pointed out that redirects obscure the lack of an actual article and might make thus article creation more difficult, while lists with excessive redlinks might invite the creation of non-notable articles, but I am not sure how important either point is in the long run: articles are being cerated not only because of redlinks and certainly over redirects. Nor would I want to endorse the list or the mass creation of redirects, just that mass deletions don't seem to be the right answer, nor do I see a valid policy reason for doing so. But maybe someone has a second opinion? --Tikiwont 14:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I see what you're saying, and I tend to agree. However, being as this isn't a hypothetical, what actions would you advise be done to handle this properly and fairly? Many thanks for your time, Girolamo Savonarola 23:38, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry if i sounded general, but i wanted to put my initial remark in context, not least because there are actually partial lists of Argentine films by decade of either type mentioned above. While I am not sure what you mean by acting "properly and fairly," it is in fact very easy to create a redirect and requires a good reason to delete one. Now that the redirects have been created (and the creator has been advised that this is not uncontroversial), I would mostly ask how the list should eventually look. If you want to keep them rather complete, than the redirects may stay per above. If a whole list gets deleted, the redirects would go as speedy candidates as well. If you opt for pruning the lists from notable entries, the corresponding redirects should be removed as well, but it might be stiil tedious to bring them all here. So basically I'd suggest to agree here that redirects to those film lists can simply be tagged as speedy candidates per R1 (missing target) if the respective entry has been removed from the list (assuming that this discussion is closed in that sense and that the tags explicitly refer to it).Tikiwont 20:17, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

comment Once again what do any of you know about this huh?? There are only about half of Argentine films listed in the lists and there was far from thousands of redirects (although it might have seemd so). Argentina and SPain have very large film industries and domanite half of world cinema in the Latin world. Eventually given time they will be all have articles. I don't intend wasting my time - I believed I was setting out a basis. Getting the wikiepdia system to recognize these films and redirecting to a brief of the cast and director of the film and year until a full article cna be created. Nothing wrong with this. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^"Talk"? 20:51, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Sir, me been to the movies, too;). Seriously, as per above, there are two ways to handle lists of topics (redirects to vs redlinks inside). So there is nothing 'wrong' with the redirects you created, otherwise they would be deleted, and I personally see the sense. Nevertheless, if others want to organize it differently, it is difficult to remove them, even for cases when a film is taken off the list. But this is a characteristic of redirects. Which is why I suggested to relax if necessary the speedy criterion for this case to ease maintaining the list.--Tikiwont 08:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirects to missing targets

As far as I understand, redirects to deleted pages and to nonexistent pages can be deleted speedily, because they are considered broken and we do not need to worry about their edit history. So I have two questions:

1. There might be cases when a redirect with edit history remains after a merge, the target page is deleted and hence the redirect, but then the deletion of the original target is undone and the article restored. How do we assure that the redirect is restored as well?
2. In other cases the target may not be a separate page, but a distinctive entry in a list (see above thread for an example). If the list entry is removed, the redirect is logically broken, but not technically. If somebody actually notices, the redirect has to be brought to RfD. Would it make sense to apply the R1 criterion in some specific cases here as well, namely to redirects to list entries that do not have a meaningful page history and where it can be evidenced that the target entry has been deleted, e.g. on the lists talk page?

Any thoughts? --Tikiwont 07:56, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikmedia Commons

I was wondering, is there any way to redirect a page in Wikimedia Commons to a page in Wikipedia? ~ Bella Swan 22:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Don't know if this is the right place...

If it's not, perhaps someone can point me in the right direction. But anyway--:

Is Wikipedia primarily targeted at Americans? I thought it was for everyone. However, a search for "elk" goes straight to the article for "Cervus canadensis" while "Alces alces" (the true European elk) redirects straight to "Moose"! The article entitled "Moose" is actually about the species "Alces alces" as a whole, not just the North American mammals called "moose". So shouldn't the article be entitled "Alces alces" with sub-divisions for the European elk (the true name, which is even reflected in the scientific classification "Alces alces") and the North American moose? The entire set-up is incredibly biased. Just because the European settlers in America mistakenly gave the name "elk" to a completely different species, the North American deer (Cervus canadensis), that does not justify scientific obfuscation.

In the interests of scientific accuracy and neutrality, the entry names and redirections should reflect the scientific classification rather than the political/cultural influence of the continents in question. "Moose" and "elk" searches should both be redirected to an integrated article titled "Alces alces" that would have two sub-sections for the European elk and the North American moose. To avoid confusion for Americans, a search for "elk" could provide a choice between going to (European) "Alces alces" or to (American) "Cervus canadensis". Alternatively, there could be separate entries for "Alces alces" (European elk) and "Alces americanus" (North American moose), which is a distinction gaining favor in some sectors of the scientific community.

Either way, it reflects a massive American bias to have a search for "elk" go straight to the article for Cervus canadensis while "Alces alces" redirects straight to "Moose". 24.116.151.23 19:52, 2 November 2007 (UTC) Aelswyth

"R from hyphen" redirect category?

With the endash (–) now being allowed in article titles, I think there should be a category just for titles that redirect from hyphen usage to endash usage, for example Market-Frankford Line redirects to Market–Frankford Line. It doesn't seem to me that the hyphen redirects fit in any current redirect category, and there would be tons of pages that would fit into this category if it was created.

Why would that category be useful? What would you do with it? Rossami (talk) 05:02, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

The second question is easy to answer: you would use it in order to frantically run around re-naming articles! --Kralizec! (talk) 16:43, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Explanatory text

Some of the "R from..." series templates include explanatory text, but this is not shown at all since all you see is the redirect arrow. Is there a way to make this text show up? —Random832 18:41, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, not sure I follow you. Which redirect arrows are you referring to? Thanks, Kralizec! (talk) 20:15, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

If you go to a redirect page like Interstate 86 in Pennsylvania, you see explanatory text when you preview an edit, but not when you save. --NE2 20:13, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

link to redirect

I am in discussion with a user who uses AWB to fix redirects. Like changing [[actor|actress]] to [[actress]] and changing [[United States|U.S.]] to [[U.S.]] . I always thought it was better to link directly to the article and skip the redirect. Or at least to not change a non redirect link to a redirect. Am I wrong here? Garion96 (talk) 11:41, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Neither is better and, in general, it doesn't matter which one is used. There are occasionally cases where linking to the redirect is better (ex. a redirect with possibility of becoming its own article) and occasionally cases where linking to the actual target is better (see examples given at the end of WP:R2D). In most cases, it doesn't matter.

In neither case, should links be changed simply for the sake of changing them. While not specifically mentioned in WP:R2D, the same principles apply to the reverse case you describe. -- JLaTondre 14:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I for one hate having a link go to a redirect. It looks sloppy and unprofessional, as if one could not be bothered to figure out the correct article name. Changing [[United States|U.S.]] to [[U.S.]] (and the like) is unacceptable as far as I am concenrned. —Nricardo (talk) 17:55, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with JLaTondre -- neither is better and it doesn't really matter whether a link goes through a redirect or not (unless the redirect is from a common misspelling or other form that should be fixed). But editing an article for the sole purpose of changing an otherwise functional link is poor form and arguably a waste of time as well. older ≠ wiser 18:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Is really neither better? I can understand that perhaps actress will be changed later into an article. But U.S. will always be a redirect. A redirect right now linked more and more since the editor is quite busy working on changing [[United States|U.S.]] to [[U.S.]] right now. Along with other fixes of course. The editor is not only editing the article to change that. Garion96 (talk) 10:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

In terms of strictly redirects, neither is truly better. However, in terms of style guides, the first usage should always be spelled out with the link on the full name, ex. United States (U.S.). Further usage in the article could then be simply the acronym, but there is no need for it to be linked unless it sufficient distance from the first usage. -- JLaTondre 17:44, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

User bypassing redirects

FCYTravis and several other editors are unnecessarily bypassing redirects on California State Route 160, making the page longer with no actualy improvement. --NE2 20:12, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Update -- WP: and Wikipedia:

This page needs to take into account the fact that "WP:" is now a synonym for "Wikipedia:". Specifically, item five in the first list. --Thinboy00 @77, i.e. 00:51, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

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