Wikipedia talk:Redirect

For deletion of redirects see below, and also in Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/redirects

Enforcement

Should this page be enforced on articles? An editor is insisting that he be allowed to create redirects in Second Amendment to the United States Constitution based on what is said in this page. I believe he is treating this page as a policy when it is only a guideline. A guideline means a strong recommendation and so is not binding. I believe redirects should not usually be created, unless there is a strong justification for doing so. In this case, the editor at issue believes that editors have difficulty editing with direct links in place as opposed to with the redirects. I think this is baseless. If this editor is right, then redirects should be created whenever they would be shorter than direct links. Rather than getting into an edit war, I would like to know what other editors have to say on this issue. SMP0328. (talk) 00:12, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

In a word, yes WP:NOTBROKEN applies to articles. older ≠ wiser 00:21, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

So should editors go around to article and create redirects? SMP0328. (talk) 00:29, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

No. Have you read WP:NOTBROKEN? What it says is that you should go around trying to fix redirects that aren't broken. Redirects exist for many reasons and are a convenience for readers and editors alike. There is very little benefit to editing an article for the sole purpose of fixing redirects. older ≠ wiser 00:35, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

You seem to agree with me. Articles should not be edited simply to fix, create, eliminate redirects. However, that is what happened in this case. SMP0328. (talk) 00:43, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I had only looked at the one link you provided, which seemed to imply that TJRC was simply undoing an edit where you had changed the redirects to direct links. I can see now from the edit history that it is a little more complicated. While I would not have edited as TJRC has, I can sort of understand the point. Piped links, especially where the direct link is very long, can make it a little more difficult to read the raw wikitext while editing. Since the other editor has expressed a strong opinion on the matter and the redirects don't actually hurt anything for readers and might have some benefit for editors, I suggest that you just leave the redirects be. older ≠ wiser 01:03, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for not being clearer with my linking and thank you for seeing my point. However, wouldn't your advice to me apply at least as much to TJRC? SMP0328. (talk) 01:08, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Sure, like I said, I would not have edited the way he/she did. older ≠ wiser 01:14, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

• Belated comment. I disagree with SMP0328 about needing a strong reason to create redirects. Redirects are cheap. If there's a not-completely-trivial use for the redirect and no good reason not to create it (e.g. ambiguity), then yes, create it. That said, I'm not sure about the redirects in this case. Is incorporation doctrine really unambiguous? --Trovatore (talk) 22:11, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Documenting sources for potentially controversial redirects

We have redirects from terms that are incorrect, offensive, derogatory, etc. if they are useful search terms (see WP:RNEUTRAL), particularly if they are in use elsewhere. We delete them if they are solely offensive. Much of the time it's pretty clear which redirects are which, but there are occasions when its not immediately obvious.

At Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 November 25#Tony Bliar anonymous user 74.74.150.139 came up with the idea of documenting uses of such controversial redirects so it is easily verifiable in the future. I see this as similar to Wiktionary's use of "Citations" pages accompanying many entries, see Wikt:Wiktionary:Citations. We don't need a separate namespace for this, just using the talk page directly or a documentation sub-page (see {{documentation}} and Wikipedia:Template documentation) will be fine I think.

Several people at the linked discussion think it's a good idea, but one which needs wider discussion in a more central location - hence my starting this section.

So, thoughts? Thryduulf (talk) 19:07, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I think it is a very useful suggestion that would help us avoid some bureaucracy overhead, and, more importantly, save editors' time. Thus it should be promoted in WP:R an mentioned in WP:SPEEDY. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:12, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

This will incur additional editor time, make no mistake; the total time spent documenting such redirects, even if currently-existing ones are left untouched and only new redirects documented, will outweigh the amount of time saved at RFD due to the occasional one of these never having to be brought there (or even on DRV, if it's speedied instead). Similarly, there is no possible way that an additional step to be followed can be claimed to reduce bureaucracy overhead rather than increase it. 74.74.150.139 (talk) 02:48, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

As one of those several people, I certainly approve of this. I'm unclear if just using the talk page would be easier, but I'm happy with whatever as long as it gives us a way to document redirects when needed. Hobit (talk) 01:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

This is worthwhile to do. (No surprise here, since I proposed it.) A more apt comparison than Wiktionary Citations is WP:BLP. A mention of "Tony Bliar" in Tony Blair or any other article, written so as to be clear that it was intentional and not an individual editor's typo (e.g., anywhere from "also known as Tony Bliar" in the lede to "The Economist" published a front page headline referring to him as 'Tony Bliar' in response to this statement.") would never survive without citation, and rightly so. Just because it's more inconvenient to cite sources on a negative redirect page than it is on an article, or that it's less obvious when they're missing, doesn't exempt us from the requirement in WP:BLPREMOVE to do so.

The ideal place for such citations is on the redirect itself. How reliably do the {{R from ...}} templates become visible these days? (They've always, always worked properly for me, but I seem to recall problems in the past where they could only be seen if you were editing the redirect, not viewing it.) If they're reliable, perhaps something like

{{R from misspelling|
==References==
*{{cite news|title=...}}
*{{cite news|title=...}}
}}

would work. Failing that, we should definitely create a {{R from non-neutral title}} or something similar, whose visible text prominently includes "Citations for this redirect appear on the talk page.", or that directly transcludes [[{{TALKPAGENAME}}/sources]]. Just putting them on the talk page without a visible pointer there won't save volunteer time even in the best case; bluelinked talk pages have long ceased to be evidence of actual discussion having occurred. 74.74.150.139 (talk) 02:48, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the "R from" templates showing up, it's not great. Less than 50% I'd say. Thryduulf (talk) 03:44, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

As the person who mentioned using documentation templates in the RfD, I support this, for problematic redirects. 70.24.248.23 (talk) 06:57, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I believe adding traditional references, as shown above by Thryduulf, does not interfere with the functionality of REDIRECTs; if so, that seems to me the simplest approach. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

If a person is acting in bad faith, it can also be used as a tactic to prevent ordinary users moving a page back to the name the think is better and having to ask for administrative assistance at WP:RM, hence making more work for administrators. For example talk the article Orange (colour) and decide to move it to Orange (color) then by adding sources to the redirect Orange (colour) to show that it is a minority spelling (or whatever the excuse), the second edit prevents an non admin moving the page back. At the moment such tactics are considered disruptive, but this proposed change FUDduies the issue. Now I chose Orange because it is relatively non controversial but as soon as we get in to names with nationalistic overtones or names with or without diacritics this could be a very useful POV arrow to have in the quiver. -- PBS (talk) 12:54, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

This is nothing new, though. There already many ways to make a second, not obviously disruptive, edit to a redirect page; adding or refining a Template:R from springs to mind. (uh-huh) -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:48, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

And WP:ENGVAR covers that. Most of my work on Wikipedia is in translating pages from FR:WP and HU:WP into EN:WP. So I am very familiar with having ENGVAR issues and indeed Rs from titles without diacritics etc. There was a nice one the other day with a new editor changing things into -ise instead of -ize because "there are two languages, English and American" (apparently Welsh, Canadian Scots, and Irish, let alone Indians Australians and New Zealanders etc etc ad infinitum are delibereatly excluded, because "I am English").

I am English too. I just respect there are other varieties of English. Your analogy to Orange (color) was indeed a very good one as non controversial. But I think you muddied the waters a little. See the bunfight at Komarno and Komarom if you want. Si Trew (talk) 05:37, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I disagree under WP:POV and WP:AGF. Almost every redirect and indeed article title is going to offend someone, and it is not for one editor to decide whether something is offensive, nor even "potentially offensive". I think we would just end up marking every R as potentially offensive. The criterion is: Does it help or hinder a knowledgable but naive user, perhaps one who has never used Wikipedia before, to find what they are looking for? I don't see how marking something as "potentially offensive" helps that. Si Trew (talk) 05:18, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

However I do kinda agree with Thryduulf's resoning that adding a statement saying why the R is there is perhaps effective. I tend to leave editing summaries to try to do this (per Wp:ES and my essay ate WP:FEET). I don't think the ES is read much by other editors so it may be better and more likely to be seen by having it as an adjunct to the page. So I support Thryduulf in principle, just not sure about the technicalities. Si Trew (talk) 05:26, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Time-sensitive redirects

I have just created User:Thryduulf/List of time-sensitive redirects to keep track of redirects like that have a need to be updated periodically (e.g. Recent deaths). Please add any others you know about. Thryduulf (talk) 21:13, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

New exception proposed to "do not fix redirects"

I am proposing a new exception to the general rule that "there are no good reasons to pipe links solely to avoid redirects. It is almost never helpful to replace redirect with redirect":

• It is appropriate to to replace redirect with redirect where the redirect is an acronym in order to allow a reader to see the acronym spelled out by hovering over the link.

WP:ACRONYM says that generally an acronym should be spelled out the first time it appears in an article. This rule may not be appropriate for infoboxes and tables where spelling out the acronym would mess up the formatting. Piping the full name behind the acronym allows the reader to find out what the acronym means by hovering, and without having to click through.

I do not think that this is inconsistent with any of the reasons not to change (bypass) redirects:

• "Redirects can indicate possible future articles."

>> This does not apply -- in fact, acronym redirects are often later changed to disambiguation pages.

• "Introducing unnecessary invisible text makes the article more difficult to read in page source form."

>> Tables and infoboxes are not going to be read in the page source form anyway.

• "Non-piped links make better use of the "what links here" tool, making it easier to track how articles are linked and helping with large-scale changes to links."

>> Improving the reader's ability to understand the article should take precedence over tracking how are articles are linked.

• "Shortcuts or redirects to subsections of articles or Wikipedia's advice pages should never be bypassed, as the section headings on the page may change over time. Updating one redirect is far more efficient than updating dozens of piped links."

>> Not applicable.

• "If editors persistently use a redirect instead of an article title, it may be that the article needs to be moved rather than the redirect changed. As such the systematic "fixing of redirects" may eradicate useful information which can be used to help decide on the "best" article title. "

>> WP:NAME covers this.

Comments? Ground Zero | t 13:33, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Relevant information should never be coded into the linking structure; hovering over a link is something most readers will not think to do, and we should not take it into consideration as a factor in making decisions. If it is important to explain what the acronym stands for, then this should be done explicitly in text rather than by coding it into a pipe. --Trovatore (talk) 21:06, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose for much the same reason as Trovatore. If there is any value to explaining what an acronym stands for, it should be done in the text and not hidden behind a piped link. older ≠ wiser 21:23, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
• I don't think this is such a good idea, but I have come to appreciate the efforts of a few people to "fix" redirects to some already-piped shortcuts. [[Wikipedia:Verifiability|Verifiability]] is better than [[WP:V|Verifiability]]. ([[WP:SPS|Self-published sources]], however, is better than spelling it out as [[Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_sources||Self-published sources]], for exactly the reason given on this page.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:06, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

alternative name

Nazi broad gauge: alternative name of Breitspurbahn 101.128.178.224 (talk) 03:48, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

total amount of redirects

In "About Wikipedia" page is a sentence: It has 3,838,250 content articles, and 25,903,671 pages in total. I was wondering how many of those almost 26 million are redirects? For example this Wikipedia:Redirect itself has 3 shortcuts, i.e. redirects. It would be okay, if those were only redirects, but they actually have the same article in a different address. So, this "redirect" page in fact uses four times more space than it would without redirects. 85.217.35.190 (talk) 05:25, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

We don't count redirects as articles, and I was wondering about the high number of non-article pages. Special:Statistics, however, does not give this info.Jasper Deng (talk) 05:27, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Redirects are redirects; they do not constitute "the same article in a different address" and do not "use[] four times more space than it would without redirects." -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:38, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Probably, s/he is concerned about an overhead to search engines. Probably, it is a problem, but not our ☺ Incnis Mrsi (talk) 15:45, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Do not use 4 times more space? Why not? For example: "Wikipedia:Redirect", "Wikipedia:R", "Wikipedia:RDR" & "Wikipedia:REDIR". The address bar reads one of those four respectively but the article is still the same Wikipedia:Redirect. Are you suggesting it just seems the redirect would be on different address? That it is sort of an "illusion"? The Special:Statistics page suggests otherwise: first there is "Content pages" with 3,857,198 pages and just below "Pages (All pages in the wiki, including talk pages, redirects, etc.)" with 26,087,859 pages. Why would the redirects be counted if they aren't there? 82.141.66.232 (talk) 10:49, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 10 January 2012

Please change de:Weiterleitung to de:Hilfe:Weiterleitung. While a point can be made that the existing page will eventually lead to the German help page as well, it should not be required to read about HTTP redirects just to bring an alternative title in line with its common usage.

93.198.216.251 (talk) 00:55, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Done. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:45, 10 January 2012 (UTC)