Wikipedia talk:Redirect/Archive 2020

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Encourage new article creation

FYI: "Encourage new article creation" is a common argument to delete redirects. On WT:RFD editors discuss to drop or overrule RFD keep reason #K7, i.e., keep redirect for not logged-in users and an ad-hoc expansion of the redirect into an article. This disguises missing proper enwiki articles in all other Wikimedia projects with InterLanguage Links. –84.46.52.59 (talk) 03:37, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Redirect to DAB

What is the best way to tackle Game development, the Talk:Game development is hopeless, and a SoFixIt could be okay or disruptive. –84.46.53.116 (talk) 00:36, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I'd be happy to create a disambiguation page to replace the redirect, but as you point out there are a large number of links to the page that would need to be fixed. Ping me if you'd like me to do that. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 18:32, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
@Shhhnotsoloud: I've removed my bookmark for ….170 (….116 is long gone), as expected no new insights on Talk:Game development. –84.46.52.79 (talk) 04:47, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
I think the status quo is OK now, with Game development redirecting to Video game development, which has a hatnote to Board game development. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 16:52, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Deletion section is out of step with practice

WP:R#CRD (WP:Redirect#When should we delete a redirect?) doesn't entirely reflect actual practice any longer. One of the most frequent causes of deletion at WP:RFD is that the redirected name/term (other than an obvious and common typo) is not mentioned at the target article. This redirect-deletion reason should be added to the list of rationales in R#CRD, since it is in fact one of the primary ones, and has been for at least a decade. This will also comport better with MOS:BOLDSYN, which expects that a redirected term/name will appear somewhere in the article and will be boldfaced at (but only at) its first occurrence.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:45, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Funny that, just a few days ago I was reading a discussion about such "not mentioned in target" deletions and some problems that result from them. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:07, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
Maybe RfD should conform to the guideline instead? "Is not mentioned" sounds like a lazy variant of "The redirect might cause confusion" or "The redirect makes no sense", or otherwise a bad reason to delete. A word can have dozens of synonyms and there's no need to turn a Wikipedia article into a thesaurus, or an appendix to Wiktionary, just for the sake of justifying suitable redirects. Nemo 08:14, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
This is badly needed and I would strongly support. While I agree that these cases do, in fact, make no sense, that they inevitably keep happening is evidence that the guidance needs to be clarified. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:27, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
I would be against adding that without strong caveats. For example, Journal of Nippon Medical School isn't mentioned at Nippon Medical School, but that reflects a problem with the article (which should mention the journal), and not with the redirect (which should point to the school). The solution here is to update the article, not delete the redirect. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:24, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
{{R to article without mention}} exists. While it might as well serve as a maintenance category, it has sub-cats of misspelling and incorrect names, which would be rightful exceptions to that rule, and I'd also include synonyms to that list as well. -- Tavix (talk) 11:14, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: might have an opinion here. --Izno (talk) 14:32, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
There are valid cases where the redirect-from would not be mentioned in the target article. Uncommon synonyms, formerly common terms, "flash in the pan" terms that may have been "all over the press" for a few weeks many years ago, and the like make reasonable redirects even if the term is not mentioned in the article. Perhaps the rationale used at RfD should be rephrased "Not used in article, no rationale given on redirect page or its talk page or article talk page, and no obvious rationale." Informally, this deletion rationale could easily be overcome even post-deletion by someone re-creating the redirect and providing a suitable rationale, such as "term was in common use in newspapers in 1927 [see link1, link2, ...]". davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 15:44, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
TBH, these do not seem like valid cases to me. If the linked article does not support the usage, the redirect is likely to be mystifying. I agree some common sense exceptions are applicable if the context for the usage is clear enough. In general, if the redirect is nominated for deletion and reviewers feel the usage is justified, the usage should be added in some fashion to the article. older ≠ wiser 16:08, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
Why? Why do you think that redirects are "mystifying" if the name of the redirect isn't explicitly visible on the page? I'll give you an example. There are currently 184 redirects to Paracetamol. A few are common misspellings, but almost all of them are brand names (many used only in a few countries, or in previous decades) for this drug. Do you think that the article would be improved by merging in the Paracetamol brand names (to which several dozen more brand names redirect), so that every redirect is mentioned on the page? (Regular editors at that article have discussed it, and they do not support a merge.)
Or do you think most readers are actually so easily confused that they couldn't guess why they ended up on that page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:14, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
Much depends on context. I don't have examples ready at hand, but I've often come across linked redirects where following the link IS completely mystifying. I mean, you have an article with a link through a redirect to some other article that has no obvious relation to the previous article or even to the sentence/paragraph containing the link and nothing in the linked article to indicate why I have been taken to that article. So, rather than a blanket criteria where the redirect is eligible for deletion if it is not mentioned in the linked article, I'd support some more nuanced criteria. But as a general rule, the target of a redirect *should* mention the term with some exceptions. older ≠ wiser 17:47, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
  • I think it is too overbroad as a criteria. The problem is, once people have a set of criteria, they use them as a checklist, or worse, a "if...then must" set of conditions to be applied automatically and without forethought. The idea that a redirect is not mentioned in the text is a possible thing that might lead one to think it's worth checking into fixing something. Usually (most of the time) that means adding some text to the target article instead, which is probably the best way to deal with it. In a few, rare cases, perhaps deletion would be useful, but really that would be rare. Sometimes (and probably the second-most-used action to take) is to do nothing at all, because the redirect is from something like a common misspelling or something like that. Putting a condition like this into writing would discourage thoughtful solutions to redirect issues (sometimes which are "there is no issue that needs solving") and instead turns into the sort of knee-jerk if it isn't mentioned, you must delete kind of thing we need less of at Wikipedia. --Jayron32 18:29, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
    YMMV, but it is far more than a few rare cases where deletion is the best course. All too often some trivial detail is redirected to some other article where a shoehorned mention might be possible, but more often than not is either trivia or WP:UNDUE. If the redirected term is in fact encyclopedic -- it *should* be not only mentioned, but referenced. And I think, where the topic IS encyclopedic, a redlink makes the gap more obvious than redirecting to some sortta kinda related topic that doesn't even mention the term. older ≠ wiser 18:41, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
    The point is, deletion may be the best course of action, but in cases where it isn't, this tends to encourage automated processes where careful and thoughtful consideration and discussion should occur. Wikipedia should usually favor the latter rather than the former in all but the most obvious cases of vandalism and silliness. --Jayron32 18:46, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
    There are other problems with deleting these. Imagine that I blank something from an article; I send the now-unmentioned item to RFD because it's not mentioned, and then the next week (next month, next year...), someone reverts my changes to the target article, and now it is mentioned. Or AFD closes with merge/redirect, but the target article rejects the content (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Involuntary celibacy (2nd nomination)) or trims it down considerably, so that some names get dropped, and now you want to delete the redirects because it's not mentioned by name, which means losing attribution/copyright information for a bunch of freely licensed content, not to mention hiding evidence of POV pushing and general bad behavior. The longer I think about this, the more I think the "exceptions" are going to swallow the rule. It might be a good idea to delete redirects from BLP's names, but overall, I think that most of our history should be kept. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:48, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
    Welcome to the wonderful messiness known as Wikipedia. Regarding the first part, that is all par for the course; I see no issues there. If the term is notable and encyclopedic in nature, eventually it will find it's place. For the attribution history, I don't see this as an issue either. Nothing is ever truly deleted (barring certain sorts of oversight actions). The edit history is still there, even if not readily accessible to muggles (non-admins). older ≠ wiser 22:06, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
    I'm pretty sure that having the history visible is a requirement for the license. It's not okay if you write something, I make your involvement in its creation invisible, and then anyone trying to re-use it can't find out that who wrote it. That's what it says every time you click the big blue button: "You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." It doesn't say "You agree that a redlink that no longer shows your name to anyone without special privileges is sufficient attribution". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:33, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
  • I think this is too broad. Sometimes a title is not mentioned for reasons that are existing deletion rationales such as 'the redirect might cause confusion' or 'the redirect makes no sense'. Other times it is not mentioned for editorial reasons like Whatamidoing mentions above. When not being mentioned at the target is a side effect of the redirect being generally unhelpful, then we should delete, but not being mentioned in-and-of-itself is not a good reason to delete. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:16, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Something is needed as a deletion requirement for inappropriate redirects. There's a mathematical term (A) on my short-watchlist, which redirects to another mathematical term (B), where it was mentioned for a few minutes last year. Deletion of the article (A) succeeded, but it was replaced by the redirect, and deletion of the redirect did not succeed, even though it confuses all but the few who had heard of (A), and the even fewer who didn't know that it was a distortion of a special case of (B). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:31, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
    • I disagree. The last thing we need absolute "requirement" for anything like this. There are cases where an absolute requirement simply would not make sense. The editors have to apply some common sense. That doesn't always happen, so there will be occasional problems. But I think a absolute requirement which is followed automatically and without thought would be much, much worse. Fcrary (talk) 22:52, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
As others have said, I think this is not a good reason for deletion in and of itself, and so if redirects are being deleted for this reason alone, then that's what needs to change.
My top-of-mind example is the redirects math and maths, which of course are targeted to mathematics. We obviously don't want to delete them, and they aren't typos. But there is no compelling reason to mention them in the article on mathematics — there's nothing mathematical (or even very interesting) to say about them, and no one is going to be surprised to wind up at the mathematics article after entering one of those terms into the search box. And as it turns out, there's a very good reason not to mention them, which is that if you do, you have to pick which one goes first, and it turns out people argue about that. --Trovatore (talk) 23:42, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
  • On the one hand, there is a large number of redirects out there that go to articles that currently don't – and never will – discuss the topics of those redirects, and if nominated at RfD these get routinely deleted. On the other hand, it is also true that if we take the deletion rationale that's most often quoted in these RfDs – "not mentioned at target" – and enshrined it as a Rule, it is bound to be misapplied as there are far too many conceivable exceptions. However, this is a problem with the particular wording of this phrase rather than with the underlying logic. If we tried to unpack that a bit, it would go something like: we shouldn't keep redirects to articles, where 1) the topic of the redirect is not currently covered in the target article, 2) if the article were to become reasonably complete, it would still be unlikely that it would cover the topic. (We're talking about topics, not terms – so that leaves out synonyms, alternative spellings and the like).
    Of course, some (many?) would argue that point 2 isn't necessary: redirects exist now and their usefulness or harm to readers is relative to the state of the encyclopedia at the time they're used, not to some ideal future state; why keep a redirect that doesn't give readers what they're looking for?; and the alternative: expanding the target with that precious mention is a noble aim, but in practice it's all to often less work for everyone, red tape and all, to delete a redirect than to add an informed and contextualised mention to the target; redirects are easy to recreate if needed, and if after a mention is added the redirect isn't recreated the loss isn't absolute as in most cases the content will be accessible via the search results.
    I wouldn't object to adding a carefully worded sentence about the situation at WP:R#DELETE. Trying to see it as an application of some of the other rules there would take a leap of the creative imagination. – Uanfala (talk) 23:53, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
    • Ah, that's a very different matter. I totally agree that if the target doesn't and is unlikely ever to discuss the topic defined by the redirect, then the redirect is not pointing to the right place. (That doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be deleted, of course; other options include retargeting it, turning it into an article/stub, or turning it into a disambig page, but if none of those work it should probably be deleted.)
      But the post wasn't about when the target article doesn't discuss the topic; it's about when it doesn't discuss the term. I don't think that's ever a sufficient reason for deletion. --Trovatore (talk) 00:05, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
    • In practice, because Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions and Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard, the "carefully worded sentence" would have to say that we never delete redirects on the grounds that it's not mentioned, except under these "extremely limited" situations (e.g., that a complete review of the target article has indicated that nothing related to the topic should ever be mentioned in that article, that the redirect is the name of a private BLP, etc.). If you write it the other way ("we usually delete these, except when...") then the exceptions will be ignored. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:40, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
      • Actually, policy should follow practice. Redirects are routinely deleted (and rightly so) precisely because there is no mention in the target article and no volunteers to take on the task of attempting incorporate an appropriate mention within the target article. older ≠ wiser 19:27, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
        • I haven't been following RFD lately, but if redirects are being deleted only because there's no mention in the target article of the term (as opposed to the topic), I'm sorry, that's not "rightly so". That makes no sense at all, and that should change. --Trovatore (talk) 20:20, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
          • I'm not sure I see the distinction between term and topic. There are certainly related terms which no one with a modest familiarity of English would be surprised to see are redirects. For example, above you mentioned math and maths -- no one should be surprised to find that these redirect to mathematics. But all too often, there is a term Foo that redirects to Bar and there is no mention whatsoever in Bar concerning Foo. I don't see any reason to encourage creation of Easter egg linking. older ≠ wiser 20:33, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
            • It's probably a reasonable criterion that if a typical reader would be surprised to arrive at the target, and the target does not alleviate that surprise, then the redirect is inappropriate. I don't think "not mentioning the term" is a sufficiently well-tailored proxy for that. --Trovatore (talk) 20:38, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:CREEP. Commonsense is better than trying to micro-manage this with further proliferation of rules. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:11, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Definitely not. There are tons of good reasons why a redirect might not be directly mentioned at the target article; it wouldn't surprise me if more than half of redirects were of such a nature. As per others, common sense is required. This isn't to say that bringing this fact up is invalid at RFD, but such rationales needs to inherently come with something like "this could be mentioned in the article, but it is such a minor aspect or loose relationship to the topic it is still not a useful redirect." SnowFire (talk) 00:50, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
  • The obvious solution appears to be enumerating these "good reasons" (I already mentioned one when I started: typos). That there are definable exceptions to the general rule doesn't mean the general rule does not exist. And it is a rule, since we do act on it every single day a RfD. The CREEP exists in failing to codify it, thereby making people learn it the hard way through arguing half to death at RfD for months or years, rather than us just being clear about it. There's no worse or creepier a rule than one you can't find but which others will hold against you.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:56, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
    • I disagree. First, I don't think Wikipedia has, or should have, rules. It's got policies and guidelines, which are not absolute rules. In any case, based on all the discussion here, I think we should delete the guideline about redirects being mentioned in the target article. We should replace that with a statement that redirects should follow the principle of least surprise. That seems to be what most people are saying the guideline should be about. Fcrary (talk) 20:04, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Finding-detecting redirects

I got a list of more than 14,000 Wikipedia pages, is there a quick way to find which ones of them are redirects? —  Ark25  (talk) 02:35, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

If you want to find them manually, you could use BrandonXLF's Green Redirects user script, which displays links to redirects in green font. If you are looking for a less manual way, then you could ask at Wikipedia:Bot requests for someone to generate a list of ones that are redirects. I don't know how to go about it, but I'm sure someone there would. -- Black Falcon (talk) 16:14, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

A challenge for any of you with technical knowledge

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Automatic redirects from non-breaking hyphens in page titles?. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 09:54, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Proposed new points for WP:RDEL

I found that there is a commonly used rationale at RfD that, despie frequently overlapping with points 1, 2, 4, or 5, is not really covered by any of the 10 current points. Thus, I propose adding the following item to RDEL:

  2. The redirect is from a related topic that is too obscure to be mentioned at the target. For example, an item in a video game should not be redirected unless it is nontrivially mentioned in the article.

I also found another commonly used rationale that is definitely distinct from any of the existing 10 points. For example, it is used frequently for outdated "upcoming" redirects to films.

  2. The redirect is factually misleading or incorrect, such as redirecting "Biggest planet" to "Mercury", unless it represents a plausible mistake or misconception. (Speedy deletion criterion G3 may apply.)

–LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 12:35, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Section "Targeted and untargeted redirects" should provide guidance on use of template "R to section"

The section Targeted and untargeted redirects currently doesn't mention the template R to section. Users who create redirects to sections based on the instructions in this section would currently probably not use the template. In case the template is meant to be used, the section should give guidance on when and how to use it. There is some discussion on the template's talk page on how liberally the template should be used, which has not been resolved because there doesn't seem to be a policy for this anywhere. (The usage documentation of the template itself also doesn't provide one.) Joriki (talk) 11:19, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

A list of all redirects

Is it possible to get a list of all Redirects on English Wikipedia? —  Ark25  (talk) 00:13, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

@Ark25: PETSCAN normally does that sort of thing but it is currently broken. The list will be very long! Certes (talk) 14:59, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

An anchor without its own section

I've discovered a problem here. "August Heart" is not a section name under List of The Flash characters and I don't really know what to do here. I'm not even certain how I finally found the information on August Heart which is under "introduced in season five", while the redirect causes me to end up in "introduced in season six".— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:33, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

The anchor {{anchor|August Heart|Godspeed}} is in the middle of season five at the point where Godspeed (character) is introduced, and that appears at the top of my screen when I click on the redirect. We could retarget it directly to the character article. Certes (talk) 16:50, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
For some reason that wasn't happening for me. There may be a technical problem of some kind to report.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:55, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Maybe this is for WP:VPT. When I go directly from here I get the result you did. But when I click on the Wlink elsewhere, I end up one or more lines below that.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:01, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Section redirect links frequently behave unpredictably. I think it has something to due with how various content (such as in templates or images) may render at different times causing the page to shift around and miss the mark of the redirect target. older ≠ wiser 17:28, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
I've had similar problems when the URL at the top of the screen has a section name in it after clicking on "back".— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:39, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
There are several factors at work here, it might not be possible to isolate the specific one. First, browsers differ: there's nothing we can do about that. Pretty much all Wikipedia pages include JavaScript of some kind (for example in a collapsible box or a sortable table) and until all JavaScript has finished running, it's not possible to state exactly where a given portion of the web page will eventually be displayed on the screen. If your browser jumps to the anchor before the last JavaScript has completed, that point may move.
Apart from that, anchors need not be at the start of a section. Since the id= attribute was introduced to HTML some twenty-plus years ago (18 December 1997 to be exact), anchors may be placed literally anywhere in a web page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:51, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Redirect in other languages

I've created an article, firstly which namespace is translated English but the article name is mostly known as native language. So in after I've moved the namespace to native language with latin alphabet. Can I create a new native-language ( Bangla) redirect with native alphabet? It can help someone to find the article easily.—ImranAvenger (talk) 16:50, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

The guidelines are at Wikipedia:Redirects in languages other than English. In short, you're free to create such redirects if there is affinity between the language of the redirect and the topic of the article. Redirects in Bangla for places or people of Bengal? That's appropriate, yes.
If you create such a redirect, it will be helpful – though entirely optional – to add the appropriate tag, for example {{R from other language|bn|en}} (when the redirect is in Bangla and the target article's title is in English) – Uanfala (talk) 17:44, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

talk pages

Somehow I only today realized that redirects don't work for talk pages. That is, one can't like to a talk page using the redirect name. Is this obvious to everyone else? I don't think I want to ask for all the current redirects to be added to talk space. Gah4 (talk) 19:55, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Of course you can. Redirects work in all namespaces except Category:. The list of redirects for this page is here; for example, one of them is Wikipedia talk:R. Try clicking that and see where you end up. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:20, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
Hmm. WP:Re-direct WT:Re-direct There are 10 redirects to this (talk) page, but many more to the non-talk page. The one I actually wanted is Talk:EXCP which doesn't work, but EXCP does. Gah4 (talk) 01:59, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
The redirect has to exist in order for it to work. A red link in any namespace will not work as a redirect. older ≠ wiser 10:42, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
Talk pages of redirects do not automatically redirect, they have to be manually created in exactly the same way as any other redirect. Thryduulf (talk) 12:49, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
As Bkonrad and Thryduulf say; there are several reasons for that. One is that some main page redirects exist primarily to take you straight to a specific section, and that section probably won't also exist on the talk page - for example, there is Wikipedia:NOTBROKEN which redirects to the section section Wikipedia:Redirect#Do not "fix" links to redirects that are not broken but on this talk page there is no section of that name. Another is that talk pages might be centralised; for example, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies is a page in its own right but Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Biographies is a redirect to Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment. So we need to maintain them separately. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:00, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Should this link be more prominent?

I had trouble finding this link from the Redirect help page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard/version1/Redirect John (talk) 21:23, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Redirects from alternative transliterations

Wikipedia:Redirect#Purposes of redirects says:

Here "oe" and "o" are both common transliterations for "ö". Similarly, there are languages written in non-Latin scripts that are Romanized using various transliteration systems and rules and there are common transliterations for multiple letters that their combination results in, in some cases, as much as hundreds of valid forms for a single title (e.g. around 200 forms as alternative transliterations of "Maymun-Diz"), all of which are almost equally valid. Most of them have zero Google hits, but a person with knowledge of the original name in the non-Latin script may enter any of these forms in the Search Bar.

Now that we are endowed with the redirecting feature, I think it is an absolutely good thing to create all of those titles as (unprintworthy?) redirects, while people in Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Mass_redirecting? advised against it. --Z 14:03, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

WP:COSTLY is relevant here. The existence of a large number of very obscure redirects poses a maintenance burden that can easily outweigh their usefulness. On the other hand it is true that there can sometimes be many plausible transliteration variants and that the search engine can't normally handle them the way it handles typos or some English misspellings. Some balance needs to be struck between the two competing needs. Undoubtedly good redirects are those for commonly attested variants as well as for transliterations that follow the most widely used schemes. On the other hand of the spectrum are redirects for variants that are handled natively by the search engine, for example pairs with or without diacritics, or space vs. hyphen (if you enter Maymun Diz in the search box and hit Enter you'll be taken straight to Maymun-Diz even though no redirect exists at Maymun Diz) – such redirects should ideally be created only if they're going to be used in links. – Uanfala (talk) 15:06, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes, there is absolutely no point to creating redirects simply because it is possible. There is benefit to creating redirects for alternate spellings that have some currency. But what is the use of creating redirects for spelling with no evidence they have any currency? older ≠ wiser 15:28, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
It is beneficial to readers who don't know which transliteration system we are using as Wikipedia's search engine is not perfect; I've changed my mind now though since solving this through creating redirects does more evil than good as Uanfala pointed out, as we would ultimately need a massive number of redirect pages as there are many such cases like this. Since having a more advanced search engine in the near future is out of the question, the best solution would be to assist our search engine by cleverly choosing a number of those transliteration variants and listing them in a footnote in the article. --Z 17:17, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
Which ones with the Wikipedia search find without redirects, and which ones will popular search engines find? I suspect that the latter is more common, and so probably worth planning around. Gah4 (talk) 07:04, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
In general the consensus has long been against automatically creating most sorts of redirects as its very hard to not get significant amounts of errors, either nonsense or clashes with other topics that humans need to sort out (search RfD discussions for Eubot for some examples). However, humans individually creating redirects they know to be useful is a Good Thing. There can be a middle way - if you have a proposal for the creation of a limited set of redirects of a certain pattern, then feel free to propose creating those automatically as discussion beforehand will significantly reduce the chance of errors. Thryduulf (talk) 12:19, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:MIXEDCAPS" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:MIXEDCAPS. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 May 23#Wikipedia:MIXEDCAPS until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 14:23, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes Longngocvu88 (talk) 12:31, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Clarify NOTBROKEN

In another discussion an editor is claiming that NOTBROKEN suggests that we can encourage people to intentionally link to redirects. It's my opinion that it's about not fixing links if they're already to redirects. Which is it? Please ping me as this guideline is not on my watchlist. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:51, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

As well as I know, it is mostly about not fixing links to redirects, and reverting fixes to such links. But like many rules, they are subjective. In many cases, redirects are in place of an article that could be written. If the redirect exists, one might consider if the potential article would be applicable, and so should be linked to. I believe that I have done this for redirects that I created, to satisfy a red link. I then consider other links that might be applicable. I won't suggest that people spend hours going around looking for them, but if you happen to see one... Gah4 (talk) 06:35, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
This page has good advice about when and how to create and delete redirects, but little about when and how to use them when linking. We should encourage people to intentionally link to redirects when doing so helps the reader. That's a matter of judgement but we could give guidance and examples. I would recommend using a redirect when the topic implied by the redirect is different from and more appropriate than the target article. For example, the cosine of a right angle is 0. That's much better than linking directly to Trigonometric functions (which one did I mean?) and the link will improve itself automatically if some kind editor writes a whole article about the cosine function. I also see no harm in using a redirect where its title makes the text flow better: She recorded Mozart's concertos, where the full name might disrupt the sentence. On the other hand, a piped link [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]] isn't wrong here, and guards against some popular new topic called Mozart causing us to turn that primary redirect into a dab or surname list later. I wouldn't normally change either form to the other, even if editing the page anyway for a different reason. Certes (talk) 09:43, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
The case here is requesting that people intentionally link to [[Toronto, Ontario]] rather than piping it as [[Toronto|Toronto, Ontario]]. I don't even agree with the full blue link, but I found that advice to be poor. Walter Görlitz (talk) 16:36, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
[[Toronto|Toronto, Ontario]] is entirely senseless. It should be either [[Toronto, Ontario]] or [[Toronto]], Ontario. That is clearly advised by MOS:NOPIPE and WP:NOPIPE and seems perfectly logical to me. Surtsicna (talk) 16:58, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
I think there's a bit of historical baggage here. I suspect that NOTBROKEN (especially by that name) originated out of annoyance at editors who were going around replacing [[redirect]] by [[target|redirect]], which was usually an inferior choice, and also caused irritation because of watchlist churn. So this guideline was formulated to try to put a stop to that. But the way it was phrased caused confusion; it seemed to suggest that it was OK, and maybe even a good thing, to replace [[redirect]] by [[target|redirect]] if it was done incidentally to some more substantial edit at the same time. The more important point, though, is that [[target|redirect]] is usually an inferior choice. Given that that's well expressed at NOPIPE, I wonder if we should just point the reader there? --Trovatore (talk) 18:10, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
TBH, pipe-linking & redirects are both acceptable. I suppose changing one to the other, gives editors an opportunity to do gnome edits. GoodDay (talk) 00:26, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
I disagree. Pipe linking is bad, unless there's a specific reason for it. --Trovatore (talk) 03:10, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
I suspect that more often linking to the redirect is best, but maybe not always. This should be more likely when the redirect is more specific, and less likely when it is less specific, like the Mozart case above. (Though I suspect that if Mozart is changed, it would be to a disambiguation page, which would then get fixed later.) Gah4 (talk) 01:40, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
Mozart may not have been the best example. I've recently fixed hundreds of links to Schoenberg, Tippett, Bernstein, etc. which were probably added when those titles redirected to an individual. They are now surname pages, which do not appear on disambiguation reports. Certes (talk) 10:47, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Regarding ‘WP:RD redirects here. For centralized dispute resolution requests, see ...’

The hatnote says that. And (in the event of an ‘’extremely close’’ — but thus extremely rare and IMNSHO thus highly unlikely) reading — that advice is sound. So in this real world, the existing highly malfunctional wording invites bizarre mis-recollection of the intent, and resultant confusion leading toU distracting, but unnecessary missteps by editors.    It should, instead, something equivalent to (but less verbose than)

"WP:RDR" redirects here; ...

Followed by advice less pedantic than, and thus more effective, such this logically (and I think necessarily) precise goal

‘’’R’’’equesting (use of centralized procedures for accomplishing, with re) Resolution of (various), see Wikipedia:Requesting dispute resolution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:199:C201:FD70:1CA9:7C7D:FCFC:7988 (talk) 13:50, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 September 2020

Please remove 

Redirects from list articles to categories

and add 

Redirects from list titles to categories

Redirects are redirects, not articles; the passage is talking about page titles called "List of" whatever. 64.203.187.82 (talk) 20:22, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

 Done – Uanfala (talk) 21:06, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Another one

Also, in the "Purposes of redirects", please change DSM-IV to DSM-V. Some time ago, IV became a section redirect, and V (which goes to the same article) isn't a section redirect. It would be good if the purposes list didn't include section redirects, except when it's talking about them, of course. 64.203.187.82 (talk) 20:26, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

But that would defeat the purpose of the example: it's meant to illustrate redirects from abbreviations to an article whose title is an expansion of this abbreviation, and DSM-V redirects to DSM-5. How about a different example? EU? WHO? – Uanfala (talk) 21:06, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
@Uanfala: WHO isn't that great because it could be confused with the word "who", which is a disambiguation page. EU is a little short in my opinion. I'd think NBA would be pretty good, or ADHD if you want more letters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ganbaruby (talk • contribs) 00:37, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
Ah, yes. I think ADHD is perfect. I'm going to change the example, but if anybody prefers anything else, then go for it. – Uanfala (talk) 09:38, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

RFD

I found a redirect that was recently changed to a WP:Set Index Article and want to discuss this. I tried to open a RFD, but Twinkle aborted because the title is currently not a redirect. Below are the details. What should I do here?

Zhangsun redirected to Empress Zhangsun 10+ years. Now it is a SIA with three entries. Pageviews shows Empress Zhangsun gets almost 4x the views so I think it should be the PT. If this were not a SIA, I would be bold and move this to Zhangsun (disambiguation) and restore the redirect. Not sure what to do in this case. Zhangsun (surname) also redirects to the SIA. Should the SIA just go there? MB 04:25, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
You could move it to Zhangsun (surname), though that would need an WP:RM (or a WP:RM/TR). RFD has a tendency to kick stuff like this over to RM anyway. 59.149.124.29 (talk) 07:25, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
Yes, put an WP:RM at Talk:Zhangsun to move the current Zhangsun to Zhangsun (surname) with Zhangsun then being a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT to Empress Zhangsun. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 13:40, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
Just initiated a RM. MB 04:27, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Redirect

Food for thought. Richrichole01 (talk) 02:35, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Food for thought has been a redirect to Food for Thought since 2009. If you are suggesting it be changed, you might be looking for WP:Redirects for discussion down the hall. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 02:49, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Should redirects from misspellings be disallowed?

Almost everybody has spell check these days. Deleting these redirects would also make fixing misspelled links easier. To deal with the duplicate article problem, the deleted pages could be salted. JsfasdF252 (talk) 05:51, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Does spell check work in the search bar? My desktop browser, for example, checks the spelling only in text fields longer than a single line, which excludes any search boxes. Even if we assume that in the future spellchecking will somehow be everywhere always turned on for everyone, then we'll have to reckon with the fact that this spellchecking, though capable enough of picking up mispeling or Jermany, it will probably not be able to handle Zamiaki or Qoahito. – Uanfala (talk) 06:18, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
A properly labelled {{R from misspelling}} can make fixing links easier. In theory a bot could do it, though bad links to other topics such as Jerominy do appear and human oversight is advised. Certes (talk) 15:22, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
Yes and no. {{R from misspelling}} should only be used for redirects from common, plausible misspellings. For example we have the redirect ordeurves so that readers who don't know exactly how to spell the name of the diminutive appetizers and try to guess based on how it sounds can still find information on hors d'oeuvres. That's one that a spell checker isn't likely to correct; mine thinks I want to type orderliness, which isn't even kind of correct. We have dozens of redirects from different plausible misspellings of that title, since it's difficult (it's not even English, maybe that makes it a bad example). But we don't redirect from just any possible mistake, they need to be an error that someone is likely to make to be useful, otherwise they're just clutter. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:51, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
Then the question becomes "Should redirects from rare and unlikely misspellings be disallowed?", to which I'd answer "Yes". Certes (talk) 16:11, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
Sounds good, but without a way to measure likeliness, it is hard to say. Are there statistics on search queries that failed? Statistics on use of spelling redirects? Gah4 (talk) 03:30, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
It's a judgement. At WP:RFD, redirects from spelling errors that are not particularly common are regularly deleted, but common spelling errors are often kept. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 09:15, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

RfC on categorizing redirects to the same namespace

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Template talk:R to project namespace#RfC: Should we categorize redirects to the same namespace?
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:14, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Discontinuation of comments subpages

An editor has found some work for those WikiGnomes who might be interested. Please see WT:DCS#Rcats for more info. P.I. Ellsworth  ed. put'r there 16:58, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

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