User:J947/Essays/Redirects aren't costly
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This essay counters the points made at Wikipedia:Redirects are costly and also counters frequently-occuring arguments made at RfD in support of deletion.[a] The premise of this essay is that there is little point in deleting a redirect if it unambiguously should target a specific article. A similar essay is Wikipedia:Redirects are cheap,[b] which admittedly doesn't have much substance and is used more as a phrase than as an essay – which makes sense considering the content in it.
Server space and bandwidth are cheap, so deleting this redirect is cheap
[edit]Don't worry about performance. It isn't relevant. This occasionally comes up at RfD, and should be quickly dismissed as an invalid argument.
A fallacy related to this argument is that deleting a redirect frees up server space. It doesn't. Admins can still see the content of the redirect, so it must be kept in the servers, and an addition to the deletion log has to be added anyway.
Redirects sometimes need to be updated as articles change
[edit]Redirects need looking after
[edit]Incoming traffic is cheap
[edit]Sending redirects to RfD is costly
[edit]"Implausible" misspellings
[edit]I've found that at RfD, misspellings are often declared implausible before due dilligence has been done. Before such a determination is made, pageview stats and a cursory google search should be examined. On many an occasion misspellings are incorrectly nominated for deletion when the misspelling is either plausible or not a misspelling at all but an alternative name. Placing a burden on the RfD process because of lack of due dilligence is something RfD nominators should strive to avoid. Note that nominators aren't the only ones to err in this regard – subsequent delete voters often just pile on without doing simple checks.
Even when a misspelling is implausible, it doesn't automatically mean that deleting the redirect is the best option.
Foreign-language redirects
[edit]Unusually punctuated redirects
[edit]Errors in the act of disambiguation
[edit]Pandora's box
[edit]"Defamatory"/controversial redirects
[edit]"Unnecessary" redirects
[edit]Redirects that impede searching
[edit]Experimental (redirects)
[edit]A fair few of these have been nominated for deletion recently.