Wikipedia talk:Cross-namespace redirects: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 19:08, 29 July 2006

Comments and/or proposed amendments are appreciated. --Zoz (t) 15:05, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Have you added this to Centralized discussion? It's supposed to be a clearinghouse for changes to deletion standards, above all else, from what I understand. -- nae'blis _(talk) 18:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've just left a notice at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). --Zoz (t) 18:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC) and added this to {{cent}}. --Zoz (t) 12:04, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback is welcome. If you don't like this proposal, please leave a comment and explain why, or alternatively, fix it right away. --Zoz (t) 16:19, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Searching vs linking

This proposal seems to consider CNRs only from the aspect of the search bar. However, wikilinks behave differently and show up red no matter whether a similar term exists in a different namespace. Some CNRs are type-in (like cat:csd and the other uncontroversial shortcut redirects), but Articles for deletion has often been used as a direct link on talk or project space, not as a type-in shortcut. How should links to shortcuts work, especially if a term exists both in article and in shortcut space? Kusma (討論) 15:36, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

People use Articles for deletion and AFD for shortcuts because they are there - it saves typing a few characters. If they noticed they were red links then they would fix them... There's no excuse really not to use the WP: shortcuts for this. /wangi 15:43, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

AFD is not a shortcut. I agree that if CNRs should go, they need to be redlinks instead of {{deletedpage}} (because that creates situations like Userbox, which is a blue link: a self-referential page talking about Wikipedia in article space without the benefits of a cross-space redirect). Kusma (討論) 15:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to add: I absolutely hate {{deletedpage}}. Deleted CNRs would stay as redlinks of course. --Zoz (t) 16:00, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the main usability problem here is when newbies can't find Wikipedia:Articles for deletion simply because they forget/don't know they should type Wikipedia:. As for linking, I do remember a discussion at WP:RfD about redirects from months like March 1426. There were consensus to delete them because when the editor notices they're redlinks, they would correct it to the proper target. I think making linking easier is not as important as making navigation easier (searching). Besides, links to Articles for deletion could be corrected by an automated bot even if Articles for deletion doesn't exist as a redirect. --Zoz (t) 15:53, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All of the links to Articles for deletion have already pretty much been corrected; there used to be a lot more links than there are now. Someone ran a bot on it (I don't remember who, could've been me). --Cyde↔Weys 16:02, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rory096, IIRC. Kusma (討論) 16:08, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And what newbie is going to type in "Articles for deletion" - to know it's called that assumes prior knowledge. Someone new to WP is going to be searching for delete article, article deletion, delete a page and the like - not our esoteric term! /wangi 16:04, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There could be redirects from Wikipedia:Delete_article and Wikipedia:Article_deletion and Wikipedia:Delete a page. They would be able to find it. --Zoz (t) 16:14, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And every other possibility? There are hunners of them! /wangi 16:18, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just like with other redirects, if it's implausible that anyone would type it, then we won't create them, but from a couple of plausible titles (like the ones you mentioned) we could create redirects. It would be much better for newbies compared to the current situation - when typing delete article doesn't take you anywhere. --Zoz (t) 16:47, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, once someone already knows it's called "Articles for deletion" I think they will be able to find it. I just searched for "Articles for deletion" and the second search result was Wikipedia talk:Articles for Deletion, which immediately leads you there. The cross-namespace redirect is unnecessary. I really don't understand why people insist on putting non-encyclopedic content in the encyclopedic namespace. --Cyde↔Weys 16:06, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose you found Wikipedia talk:Articles for Deletion because you have "search in Wikipedia_talk:" on. Newbies with default settings don't have that on. --Zoz (t) 16:14, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if proposing to change the defaults is a good idea; Wikipedia is first and foremost an encyclopedia, and the search should only return encyclopedic results by default. Maybe we can discuss modifying the default search options for logged-in users (pure readers probably aren't looking for Articles for deletion anyway). But I find it inexcusable that, when someone has setup their search options to specifically search just the encyclopedic content and none of the Wikipedia stuff, they will get hits on Wikipedia: stuff anyway because someone has made an XNR that effectively makes the search filter useless. --Cyde↔Weys 16:23, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree. Read the proposal: "Modify the default search filter for logged-in users [...] These settings could be changed anytime at Special:Preferences."; "The default search filter for users searching Wikipedia anonymously would stay as article namespace-only". If someone sets up their search options to search just the encyclopedia, it won't return WP stuff at all. That's what this proposal attempts achieve, anyway. --Zoz (t) 16:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is putting the cart way ahead of the horse, but I can see two situations: either you reset everyone's Search Preferences to follow the new behavior, thus "breaking" years of habit, or you only implement the new Search Preferences for new users, in which case the impact of the helpful software change is reduced proportional to how many people will actually see it. I've got no strong opinion on this as such yet, but I figured it was worth mentioning... -- nae'blis _(talk) 02:33, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My original idea was to implement this change only for new users. But yes, it might be better to change the search filters for all users who have the default settings at the time of its implementation and notify them once at the "login successful" page (at their first login after the change) with something like "Please review your search preferences at Special:Preferences/Search". Editors don't have the default (main namespace only) settings would not be affected by this change. (I think it wouldn't be a good idea to change the settings for those who have already altered them to according to their preferences.) --Zoz (t) 12:04, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Software changes, but... in the short term?

This essay seems to focus on software/config changes which could be made to help resolve this problem. While this is good in the longer term it would be nice in the short-to-medium term to address the current issue.

Is there consensus to avoid cross-namespace redirs 99% of the time? Can we put together a guideline to that effect...

I'll get me coat! /wangi 15:48, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's consensus to avoid CNRs. The 'keep' arguments are actually quite strong, and I don't think deleting all CNRs without these software changes would solve anything. Obviously I'm not a WP developer, but from my experience in programming in C++, I suppose that that these source code changes could be done relatively quickly. As for the related changes in the database - I don't know. But given a debate of this scale, I think there is no short-term solution. --Zoz (t) 16:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where have you been looking? There is a consensus to avoid XNRs; most of the ones brought up on RFD end up being deleted. Also, there's WP:ASR, and despite people making the outrageous claim that "it's not policy, it's just a guideline, therefore I am free to totally ignore it", it makes a compelling case for why the separation of encyclopedic content and unencyclopedic content is important. I have a simple question that no one has been able to answer yet, and I'd be glad if you could. The namespaces were originally created because Wikipedia-specific stuff was being created and it was getting confused with the encyclopedic content. Once the namespaces were created, the non-encyclopedic content, you know, the stuff that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia, was moved to Wikipedia:. Why oh why should we violate that separation of namespaces by having a redirect to every Wikipedia:XX page from XX? It makes no sense and I've seen at least half a dozen examples now of XNRs camping on names that were later turned into valid articles once I went through and deleted the XNR. --Cyde↔Weys 16:14, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We should not ignore guidelines, but weigh their importance and their applicability to a specific topic. Per WP:ASR and the "purity" of encyclopedia space, we should (for example) delete all instances of {{deletedpage}} right now. We don't do that because {{deletedpage}} has some uses, and we have some blatantly nonencyclopedic pages like Brian Peppers in the encyclopedia namespace. Would you want to delete Brian Peppers? Kusma (討論) 16:25, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Look, Cyde, I think your arguments for deleting the CNRs are really compelling, but the fact is there are lots of editors who don't want them simply deleted (in short-term, without software changes), and there are a couple of valid and strong arguments (usability, WP:BITE) for keeping them. I think there is no consensus to delete all of them right now, but I hope with the help of this proposal they can be dealt with accordingly. --Zoz (t) 16:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do believe I've already explained why WP:BITE isn't relevant here. --Cyde↔Weys 17:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I agree with you there, but I think this proposal is still preferable over the "delete all CNRs right now" solution, because it's more friendly to newbies (Okay, let's call it "newbie-friendliness" or "usability" instead of WP:BITE.) and at the same time it keeps the namespaces separated, and thus solves the "mirror issue", etc; and pretty much everything from here. --Zoz (t) 17:34, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Aid in accidental linking?

I've seen people bring this up occasionally but nobody's ever explained what it means or why it's a good thing. Care to explain? --Cyde↔Weys 17:33, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think what Kusma means is when someone wants to link Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and they accidentally link it as Articles for deletion, they would still be able to arrive at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion without changing the link. That's simply an (admittedly not too strong) argument to keep CNRs. However, as I explained here, this proposal would not keep CNRs, and accidental linking would be corrected by an automated bot and/or users correcting themselves after they realized it's a redlink. --Zoz (t) 17:42, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Related to the above, there is an RFD underway right now for Wikibreak. Someone might well type the term into the search engine (as indeed I did) and hope to find a page explaining what the term means. In fact, there is no such page ... instead, the redirect goes to Wikipedia:Wikiholiday which is a term I rarely hear used. The apparent assumption is users will magically know to type in "Wikipedia:Wikiholiday". I actually saw someone post a comment (in another cross namespace debate) that Wikipedia shouldn't make things easy for its editors. I think that's utter bollocks, personally. We should make things as convenient as possible, and I've yet to read any argument that persuades me that having a redirect that, say, allows someone to type "3RR" into the search engine and be sent to the page on the Three Revert Rule, thereby saving time and keystrokes, in anyway harms Wikipedia. 23skidoo 18:21, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

However, there is a redirect from Wikipedia:Wikibreak to Wikipedia:Wikiholiday, so a user searching the project space shouldn't have any problems. I don't think the accidental linking is a reason to support CNR's; the onsite search being broken so often is certainly more persuasive for me. -- nae'blis _(talk) 22:26, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reason removal

While it's nice to be quoted, and I think the majority of CNR's are harmful (for many of the reasons listed), I've removed one of the reasons referened to me as it has been subsequently shown (by Splash) that I mis interpreted the page in question. On further reading, the legally questionable bit of verbatiam copying is more aimed at cases where a mirror changes an article from "blah blah blah This nonexistent article blah blah blah" to "blah blah blah This nonexistent article blah blah blah". Regards, MartinRe 23:13, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's ok, but do you think this proposal could work? Any suggestions on how to improve it? Since you were quite active in the discussions about CNRs, I'd like to hear your opinion on this. --Zoz (t) 16:19, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think creating a namespace for short cuts is a good idea, as often when searching for something, many of the first results are all pointers to the same article, it would be nice to have a google ways of "ignore duplicate pages" (or filtering on the target of the redirect). However, I think the default search for logged in users should remain just the encyclopedia, as just creating an account shouldn't modify a user's search functionality. (To me, having a different default for anon and logged in users is not the least surprising option - log in, and your search function changes?). I think many of my reasonings against CNR's are in the proposal, except for maybe the comment that "when searching encyclopedia Bitianica, you would not expect to find minutes of a Bitianica board meeting, so why should it be that way for wikipedia?". Also, to reply to the WP:BITE suggestion above, I think the opposite is the case. Deletion of CNR's isn't biting newcomers, the fact that the encyclopedia and wikipedia are not interchangable is an important concept, but blurring the line with CNR's is giving newcomers the wrong impression from the start, and that is doing them a dis-service by creating confusion in the long run. Also, I believe that if someone has not selected "wikipedia" in their search, we should not return wikipedia results. Yes, they may have not selected it as a newbie, or it may be an experienced user who has forgotten to tick the box, but both have the option of ticking the box and searching. However, for the reader who has deliberately unselected the box because they don't want wikipedia results, it is unfair to return them anyway. With CNR's, a reader can choose to search wikpedia by ticking the box, but they have no option not to do so. Without CNR's, readers wishing to search wikipedia can do so, and those who do not want to can also do so. Thus, the existance of CNR's removes choice, for the minor convience of a subset of editors, which is not a valid trade off in my view. It is important to remember that we are creating an enclyopedia that is freely available, so entwining it with one particular host (wikipedia) goes against that principle in my opinion. I want the enclyopedia I contribute to to work just as well, no matter who it's hosted by, now, or in the future. Personally I think any non-WP: style enclyopedia redirects should either be re-targeted to remain in the enclyopedia, or, if no valid target exists, deleted. (retargeting any incoming links, as appropiate). I'd also support it becoming a speedy criteria, for the simple reason that currently if an editor, well meaning or otherwise, creates dozens of redirects out of enclyopedia space, they each have to spend the week on rfd, which seems a little overkill. As an alternative, something that might be considered is whether CSD G4 can apply to redirects. Surely if say, speedy delete is deleted by rfd, speedy deletion which contains the identical content/target is a valid G4, but the impression I've received is that this might be contravertisal to some, and each redirect needs to be rfd'd. Anyway, hope that expands somewhat, unfortunately I'm busier than normal so my contribution time has been limited recently. Regards, MartinRe 19:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support

I fully support this proposal. It will allow people to find the pages they are looking for outside the article space easily without redirecting to non-encyclopedic content from the main namespace. Polonium 15:18, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 48: / Line 48: @@
 While it's nice to be quoted, and I think the majority of CNR's are harmful (for many of the reasons listed), I've removed one of the reasons referened to me as it has been subsequently shown (by [[User:Splash|Splash]]) that I mis interpreted the page in question. On further reading, the legally questionable bit of verbatiam copying is more aimed at cases where a mirror changes an article from "blah blah blah [[This nonexistent article]] blah blah blah" to "blah blah blah This nonexistent article blah blah blah". Regards, [[User:MartinRe|MartinRe]] 23:13, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
 :That's ok, but do you think this proposal could work? Any suggestions on how to improve it? Since you were quite active in the discussions about CNRs, I'd like to hear your opinion on this. --[[User:Zoz|Zoz]] ''[[User_talk:Zoz|(t)]]'' 16:19, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
+::I think creating a namespace for short cuts is a good idea, as often when searching for something, many of the first results are all pointers to the same article, it would be nice to have a google ways of "ignore duplicate pages" (or filtering on the target of the redirect). However, I think the default search for logged in users should remain just the encyclopedia, as just creating an account shouldn't modify a user's search functionality. (To me, having a different default for anon and logged in users is not the [[Principle of least astonishment|least surprising option]] - log in, and your search function changes?). I think many of my reasonings against CNR's are in the proposal, except for maybe the comment that "when searching encyclopedia Bitianica, you would not expect to find minutes of a Bitianica board meeting, so why should it be that way for wikipedia?". Also, to reply to the WP:BITE suggestion above, I think the opposite is the case. Deletion of CNR's isn't biting newcomers, the fact that the encyclopedia and wikipedia are not interchangable is an important concept, but blurring the line with CNR's is giving newcomers the wrong impression from the start, and that is doing them a dis-service by creating confusion in the long run. Also, I believe that if someone has not selected "wikipedia" in their search, we should not return wikipedia results. Yes, they may have not selected it as a newbie, or it may be an experienced user who has forgotten to tick the box, but both have the option of ticking the box and searching. However, for the reader who has ''deliberately'' unselected the box because they don't want wikipedia results, it is unfair to return them anyway. With CNR's, a reader can choose to search wikpedia by ticking the box, but they have no option not to do so. Without CNR's, readers wishing to search wikipedia can do so, and those who do not want to can also do so. Thus, the existance of CNR's removes choice, for the minor convience of a subset of editors, which is not a valid trade off in my view. It is important to remember that we are creating an enclyopedia that is freely available, so entwining it with one particular host (wikipedia) goes against that principle in my opinion. I want the enclyopedia I contribute to to work just as well, no matter who it's hosted by, now, or in the future. Personally I think any non-WP: style enclyopedia redirects should either be re-targeted to remain in the enclyopedia, or, if no valid target exists, deleted. (retargeting any incoming links, as appropiate). I'd also support it becoming a speedy criteria, for the simple reason that currently if an editor, well meaning or otherwise, creates dozens of redirects out of enclyopedia space, they each have to spend the week on rfd, which seems a little overkill. As an alternative, something that might be considered is whether CSD G4 can apply to redirects. Surely if say, [[speedy delete]] is deleted by rfd, [[speedy deletion]] which contains the identical content/target is a valid G4, but the impression I've received is that this might be contravertisal to some, and each redirect needs to be rfd'd. Anyway, hope that expands somewhat, unfortunately I'm busier than normal so my contribution time has been limited recently. Regards, [[User:MartinRe|MartinRe]] 19:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
 == Support ==