Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2012 February 3

February 3

This is a list of redirects that have been proposed for deletion or other action on February 3, 2012

Wp;drv

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more redirects. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was Delete all. There has been a long standing consensus against cross-namespace redirects. So, a compelling reason is required for a CNR redirect to be kept. There has been two such reasons recognized for redirects from the main namespace to wikipedia namespace: either the redirect belongs to a pseudo-namespace or it is very old. Exceptions have been rare (especially for redirects that were created a few months ago). In this particular discussion the main argument for keeping the redirects was that "it is useful for me", which is not a compelling reason. Ruslik_Zero 16:47, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wp;drv → Wikipedia:Deletion review (links to redirect • history • stats) [ Closure: keep/delete ]

Also Wp;aiv; Wp;afd; Wp;ani; Wp;fac; WP;AN, and probably Wp AIV too. These redirects were previously listed for RfD at [1], but I believe that the debate in that case was not comprehensive, and in accordance to WP:CROSS (along with other reasons) I advocate deleting these pages.

First of all, I raise your attention to the general consensus cited on WP:CROSS, which "seems to be that newly created cross-namespace redirects ... should be deleted, that very old ones might be retained value for extra-Wikipedia links." Although this redirect has been around for some time, it is (1) in fact younger than the consensus laid out over there, and (2) certainly not old enough to have a lot of extra-Wikipedia links pointing to it, unless other editors can raise counter-examples.

The previous deletion debate closed as keep mainly because editors voiced concern that WP:CROSS's reasons for deletion are not satisfied. This is not true. According to WP:CROSS:

CNRs are bad because they result in a person (reader) walking around a building (encyclopedia) and falling into the pipework (project space) because the builders (editors) thought cracks in the walls and floors would be useful for them to get around.

This applies precisely in this case, as the uncanny and hackish "Wp;" is best described as a crack from the main namespace to the other namespaces. That some editors prefer to go through this crack does not outweigh the harm done by obfuscating the main namespace (see part 3 below).

Namespaces were created for a reason, so that the encyclopedic content would be separate. CNRs work against this.

Again, see part 3 below.

The filters exist for a reason, to fine-tune search results. And some encyclopedic searches return a majority of Wikipedia pages because of all of the cross-namespace redirects; the user shouldn't have to filter through manually, that's what the filters are for.

This is one of the crux of my argument; that users should not have to filter through CNRs in the main namespace. From this search result, this one, etc., we see that this redirect is indeed listed in a main namespace search, which in principle must return only articles that are considered useful to the general audience. As Project pages are of interest only to editors, and readers far outnumber editors here, I believe that the nuisance caused to the readers may far outweigh any potential convenience the editors may receive. (And, of course, readers don't participate in RfD discussions, so we are necessarily going to have a non-neutral viewpoint here.)

Some mirrors duplicate the main article namespace but not the project namespace. Thus, cross-namespace redirects end up creating thousands of broken links on mirrors.

Once again, this hits the point home. On Wikipedia mirrors, readers using the search function will be presented with confusing pages that link to nowhere, which is most certainly unhelpful.

In addition to these reasons enumerated on WP:CROSS, here are two additional suggestions:

I highly doubt that this redirect is "helpful" enough to override all sensible guidelines on naming style and conventions. "WP:DRV" is an appropriate and concise shotcut for "Wikipedia:Deletion review"; "Wp;drv" is an ugly hack that confuses and does not conform to the style set by every other page. Really, if one really wants to save time by not pressing the Shift key, why not create a bookmark for this page?
Even if we are to reach a community consensus that redirects of this kind should be maintained, the stylistically appropriate way to do it is probably making "Wp;" or "WP;" a namespace identifier identical to "Wikipedia:", as I fail to see why these particular few redirects have merits to exist, but not similar redirects for every Wikipedia project page. If we are to reach a consensus that these pages should be kept, I will propose this idea for consideration as an alternative, since I believe that there is a need to address the aforementioned issues, whether the page is kept or deleted.

ZZArch ^{talk to me} 22:45, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. As the nominator notes, we have been over this territory before: here. The ~~verbose~~ nomination statement can be countered with a few brief observations. (1) The colon/semi-colon is a very likely typo, as can be seen from the number of times these redirects are hit.[2] (2) Some editors have disabilities (eg amputated digits or diabetic neuropathy) that make it hard to navigate using the shift key in the middle of a string of letters. (3) The strings of characters behind this and similar redirects bear no relationship to likely article titles. There is no chance that a reader looking for an article will stumble upon them. And that's pretty much the only real danger of cross-namespace redirects. --Mkativerata (talk) 22:54, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Once again, I am not at all doubting that some user may find this redirect helpful. Nevertheless, this does not trump the fact that it is very bad style and satisfies precisely the criteria on WP:CROSS. I object to the redirect creator's characterization that "there is no chance that a reader looking for an article will stumble upon them", as the search results clearly indicated otherwise; furthermore, that's not the only real danger of CNRs. I invite the redirect creator to actually read my nomination statement and present an argument against it, instead of citing arguments that has been refuted in the statement. Also, accessibility is a good point, but that warrants other forms of action that do not break the article/project namespace separation, such as actually making Wp; a pseudo-namespace. ZZArch ^{talk to me} 23:00, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - I also object to the characterization of this nomination statement as verbose. When the RfD nominator is concise, we call it insufficient and claim that it does not prove how WP:CROSS supports the deletion (see [3]). When the RfD nominator does that, we call the statement verbose? That is not healthy debate and not conductive to reaching a consensus on this matter. ZZArch ^{talk to me} 23:03, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - All right, fair call on that one. Struck. --Mkativerata (talk) 23:07, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Per WP:R#DELETE #6 and WP:CROSS. These CNRs clutter the main namespace and their advocates are defending their own laziness with far-fetched excuses about hypothetical people with disabilities (who would have bigger accessibility troubles). As the nom mentions this should be implemented as a namespace alias instead of in an ad hoc fashion, but I'll doubt there will ever be a consensus for that. —Ruud 00:04, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep again. They are demonstrably useful, they represent plausible typos, they do not create any apparent confusion that would get in the way of an actual article name and they can be easily suppressed from the search results by adding the appropriate tags. (Note that even without those tags, the two example searches above return only one and two redirects respectively. The redirect target is obvious from the search snippet. This hardly represents an undue burden for manual filtering in my opinion.)
The arguments for deletion per WP:CROSS are weak and for me do not overcome the potential value articulated in WP:R#Keep.
Finally and most explicitly, redirect do not "clutter" the mainspace - they don't clutter anything. Bad style is a good reason to teach new users not to create new redirects in this pattern, not a sufficient reason to delete existing ones. Redirects really are this cheap. Rossami (talk) 00:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
How have we demonstrated these links are used by anyone but User:Mkativerata (not as a typo, but because he's too lazy to press the shift key)? They are demonstrably harmful however. Apart from inappropriately showing up to human readers, their presence needs to be accounted for in bots and tools used to generate statistics.
These redirects already form a significant portion of the CNRs from mainspace (Wikipedia:Database reports/Cross-namespace redirects/1). If everyone, and not just Mkativerata, started to put their litter in mainspace out of convenience the situation would soon spiral out of control. I'm not particularly impressed by your suggestion that new users shouldn't be creating these kinds of CNRs, but Mkativerata apparently can. —Ruud 10:11, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't just create the redirects for my laziness but (1) for anyone who stumbles on the typo; (2) anyone who just doesn't like the shift key; and (3) those with disabilities and uncomforable keyboard layouts. --Mkativerata (talk) 00:40, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If you make a typo there's no reason to expect to be taken to the right page (as opposed to a common or even just plausible misspelling of the title of an encyclopedic subject). Just try again.

Page view statistics show there are very few "anyone" else. Why is your disliking of the shift-key more important than my disliking of CNRs?

You managed to press the shift-key several times just fine writing the above sentence. Far-fetched excuse. —Ruud 13:21, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am not disabled in a manner that affects my typing; however, I recognise that other editors may be and the redirect may help them. Your pointy ruud;cs redirect, on the other hand, helps no-one other than yourself and is a lay-down R3 candidate. --Mkativerata (talk) 19:20, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note how you had to use "may" twice. There are not many more users of wp;drv (primarily you) than there are of ruud;cs. I can't possibly imagine what you find objectionable about ruud;cs. It's useful, not a candidate for an article title and redirects are this cheap. —Ruud 20:39, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep- I agree with Rossami. I've made these kinds of typos before and found the rediercts useful. Reyk _YO! 23:09, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- I think ruud;cs is a pretty useful redirect. —Ruud 15:33, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - Really bad example. There is a big difference between adding part of your own user name to a Wikiporject as is ruud;cs and someone trying to go to WP:RFD but not hitting the shift key fast enough and accidentally typing ; instead of :. I don't think anyone opposing deletion is suggesting that they should be able to make any kind of redirect that they want (the fact that you created ruud;cs after this RFD strongly implies that you are claiming that) but that we that we should not delete a redirect which is a plausible typo something that can't be said for the ruud;cs redirect.--70.24.208.34 (talk) 19:43, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What does this have to with whether ruud;cs is useful or not? Clearly "usefulness" is the only criteria we are considering here. I think ruud;cs is useful. —Ruud 21:04, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Considering that other users have suggested that the ; is a plasuable typo and have given examples on how the typo could reasonably occur I can't see how you can claim that it is not a consideration. The suggestion that people are only saying that the redirect is useful and nothing else is simply false.--70.24.208.34 (talk) 21:17, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was merely replying to Reyk here, not to other users.

In reply to you argument, the criteria for redirects are misspellings not typos (a possibly uncorrectable confusion about how something should be spelled versus how you actually manage to type something at some particular instance and which can generally be easily corrected by trying again). Barrack Obama is a plausible misspelling, hence we have a redirect, Varack Obama is a plausible typo, which quite properly is a redlink. —Ruud 21:29, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Completely agree with Mkativerata and Rossami. I make these typos occasionally and it useful to have these redirects, while seeing no benefit in deleting them. Jenks24 (talk) 14:48, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete While a semicolon in place of a colon is a plausible typo, anyone who actually makes that typo in attempting to enter "wp:drv" or the like is overwhelmingly likely to already familiar enough with Wikipedia to immediately realize that they used a semicolon where a colon was required. Typo redirects should exist for very common typos that help readers, not for any uncommon typo that might occasionally be helpful only to editors or to some very small group. Anomie ⚔ 12:23, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Kurt Vonnegut: "I have never used semicolons. They don't do anything, don't suggest anything. They are transvestite hermaphrodites." (Timequake, Ch. 49) But seriously, the mistake is so obvious that the drawbacks of cluttering the main namespace outweigh the inconvenience of an occasional D'oh! moment. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:10, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: redirects are motivated by technical pseudo-limitations, which is really a bad idea. Given the amount of keyboard layouts out there, we'll end up with all sorts of odd redirects with a couple of lazy editors being all the redirect users. Sorry if I missed one's valuable rationale, tl;dr. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:25, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note - There is a proposal at the village pump which could remove the need for these redirects, Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Allow semicolons in place of colons for wikilinks. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 04:28, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Strong keep I use these typo-related redirects all the time. Not meaningfully, of course, but I use them all the time. In fact, I just hit on one now that took me to this RfD. In fact, I've thought in the past to go through and create even more of these. They do no harm to the function of the encyclopedia, as none of these are reasonable article titles. They only benefit its typo-prone users such as myself. I note that these get multiple hits every day, and I bet that none are looking for articles on WP;DRV or WP;AFD. Them From Space 01:32, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete low hit statistics afd, ani which seem to be in the range of one a day don't really backup the usefulness argument, and anyone using them will know the correct form. The long nomination does indicate some real problems with them appearing in search results and mirrors.--Salix (talk): 23:28, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.

Oops, sorry, page unavailable

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more redirects. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was Delete per Dmitrij D. Czarkoff. --Salix (talk): 21:38, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, sorry, page unavailable → HTTP 404 (links to redirect • history • stats) [ Closure: keep/delete ]

Not necessary at all. People don't generally find articles on Wikipedia by copy-and-pasting error messages into the search box. Yutsi ^Talk/ Contributions 16:04, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Previous nom: Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2012_January_20#Oops.2C_sorry.2C_page_unavailable

Speedy close this was recently nominated and kept 2 days ago.--70.24.208.34 (talk) 23:00, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
What browser/system uses this message? If something does, then may be it could be kept. But I don't see anything using it. We aren't going to make a redirect for every possible wording for a 404. Previous discussion doesn't indicate any clear keep outcome. In fact, arguments are more convincing for deletion. The keep !vote didn't address why this is useful (who searches for this?). — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 11:58, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I am disturbed that this is being renominated so soon after a "Keep" decision with no new information being presented to indicate why the previous decision was wrong.
Being new to this debate, I'll add my two cents.
1. This is not an error message from any browser I know. It is, however, an error presented by some websites.
2. Readers often do hunt for articles by copy-pasting error messages into a search engine. I'm not sure how useful this one is but the argument that readers don't use the encyclopedia this way is simply incorrect.
3. The history behind this page is problematic. This page was first created as a vanity page for user:Ojwang in April 2006. The user apparently realized the mistake later the same day and blanked the page. When page-blanking didn't do what he/she expected, the user moved the page to Deleted, then to Oops then to the current title. User:Curps then moved the page and its history back to the user's Talk page and deleted the redirect to the userspace. I suspect but can not prove that the current redirect was created (in Dec 2011) to resolve some overlooked redlink.
I am going to abstain from the decision pending better information or other opinions on whether the use by a few websites is sufficient to overcome the troubling history of the page. Rossami (talk) 03:19, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: search reveals that this is not at least a somehow common message. As such it is a misleading (probably even hoax) wording with no relevance to the target. Please also note the history (another part here, note the changes of April 3, 2006 by Ojwang) of the page: initially created as an attempt to react on WP:PA. Don't think we want to tribute such events. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:19, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, reiterating my delete vote as implausible synonym.--Lenticel ^(talk) 01:24, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.

Pakistan military intelligene

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more redirects. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was Delete. Ruslik_Zero 16:46, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pakistan military intelligene → Inter-Services Intelligence (links to redirect • history • stats) [ Closure: keep/delete ]

Rationale: Delete because "intelligence" is incorrectly spelled. Lyk4 (talk) 08:11, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Misspelling. Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:21, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Plausible typo. --Mkativerata (talk) 23:03, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Unlikely typo and typos like Pakistan military intellegence or Pakistan military inteligence are more likely. Plus this isn't a typo of the main page name. ~ — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 12:05, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Pakistani military intelligence – 2 misspellings is too much for a single redirect. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 19:49, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.

Salalah incicent

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more redirects. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was delete both. JohnCD (talk) 17:40, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Salalah incicent → 2011 NATO attack in Pakistan (links to redirect • history • stats) [ Closure: keep/delete ]
Salalah Incicent → 2011 NATO attack in Pakistan (links to redirect • history • stats) [ Closure: keep/delete ]

Delete because "incident" is incorrectly spelled. Lyk4 (talk) 08:11, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. *sigh* Ditto. Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:23, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Plausible typo. --Mkativerata (talk) 23:03, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Unlikely typo, not every misspelling needs a redirect. This isn't even a typo of the main page name. — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 12:05, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per H3llkn0wz's second rationale: though this should be kept if the article name was "Salalah Incident", but it isn't. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 19:53, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.