Wikipedia talk:Redirect/Archive 2011

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"Do not "fix" links to redirects that are not broken"

Given the example: That is, editors should not change, for instance, Franklin Roosevelt to Franklin D. Roosevelt just to "fix a redirect". This rule does not apply to cases where there are other reasons to make the change, such as linking to an unprintworthy redirect.

Reasons not to change (bypass) redirects include:

• Redirects can indicate possible future articles.
• Introducing unnecessary invisible text makes the article more difficult to read in page source form.
• 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.

Only one of the "reasons" appears to be actually actually valid.

• No one is going to make a valid Franklin Roosevelt article when the valid article is actually Franklin D. Roosevelt
• The "what links here" should show the all the valid articles that talk about an article not requiring a user to go to the redirect page and find additional articles.

and even the potentially valid one

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

how often does anyone actually do that? Either a better example should be given or this "advice" should be removed. Active Banana ( ^bananaphone 20:00, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

The "Redirects can indicate possible future articles" is quite valid and quite common. There are many cases where specific topics are redirected to more general ones for lack of current content. If the redirects are bypassed, then once the redirect is turned into an article, the bypassed links will be pointing to the wrong target. Whereas, if left alone, they would be correct. The "what links here" statement is also quite valid. If you use "what links here" on an article, it will show you all links via redirects. You do not have to go to the redirect page to see them. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:28, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

"Rectifying" a link may be either useful (eliminating a link pipe, changing from a non-normative form or a typo to standard one), useless/harmless/neutral (switching between synonyms/aliases), and harmful (unnecessary generalisation, or when an editor follows an incorrect redirect link). The last case is a common cause of interwiki errors made by interwiki.py/pywikipedia bots. There is some my thoughts about incoming links for RwP. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 06:43, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Whatever the potential usefulness might be, it is not at all exemplified in the sample given. Is there an actual real world example that can be used rather than these "theoretical" cases of something that might be?Active Banana ( ^bananaphone 14:48, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Indeed this part of the reasoning only applies to "Redirects with possibilities". Rich Farmbrough, 15:34, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

If linked text was not piped to the correct target, the link could end up broken. Although text may redirect to a particular target at present, it may not link there in the future. McLerristarr | Mclay1 15:02, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

But then it would be broken, so fixing it wouldn't come under fixing what is not broken? --Whitehorse1 15:52, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

But we wouldn't know it was broken till someone tried it and it failed. If the redirect has no possibilities to become a separate article and the intended target has a very low possibility to change name or topic (in the case of disambiguation and primary topics etc.), then it's safer to pipe the text to the intended target. McLerristarr | Mclay1 14:29, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm a little unclear about what you're talking about. Is this a link that's piped to a redirect? Or are you arguing that "R2D" changes should actually be made all the time? Croctotheface (talk) 18:18, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

The "what links here" does show all the valid articles, doesn't it? From the non-redirect "canonical" title, it displays pages linked to the redirect using indents so they stand out, and states "(redirect page)" alongside the redirect name; here, let me give you an example: Diamondback terrapin (smaller list, so easier to see).

If you go the other way around, it shows what links to that redirect, only; you'd know from going to the redirect page first before selecting "what links here" though I suppose; by way of example, let's look at an FDR redirect, though one with less links to illustrate it more clearly: Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. People read in page source form every time they're editing the article. Hmmm, did I correctly understand what was being asked? --Whitehorse1 15:52, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

The Roosevelt example is not designed to typify each of the rationales. Its purpose is to disabuse editors of the notion that it's helpful to go through and add the "D." each time solely because adding it avoids a redirect. Croctotheface (talk) 18:24, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

There a bot should add the D. since actually all redirect to it but in the future a disambiguation page can be created and then will have to be done by an human. Obviously the article should be improved. 204.174.87.29 (talk) 18:52, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, no, a bot should not add the D. A bot can't tell whether Franklin D. Roosevelt is better stylistically than Franklin Roosevelt. If you mean a bot should add a pipe, absolutely 100% not. [[Franklin Roosevelt]] is actively preferable to [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Franklin Roosevelt]]. By "actively" I mean, the second should be changed to the first. --Trovatore (talk) 19:54, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I am not talking "stylistically" since I agree the simpler the better but first both Franklin and Roosevelt are rather common names. Even if not great as such unfortunately there is no other way on this wiki to do something but a pipe. 204.174.87.29 (talk) 06:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't really follow your meaning. Of course there's a way to do something other than a pipe. You can just use the redirect Franklin Roosevelt, without a pipe. And that's what you should do. --Trovatore (talk) 06:53, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposal for non-Roman Redirects and Disambiguation

This proposal contains 3 distinct sections that I think should be considered separately.

The first concerns redirects in other languages. I propose that WP:REDIRECT is changed so that the heading "Purpose of redirects" contains the following:

• Name in another language (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei links to Nazi party) where the article's subject is associated with that language.

I believe that this reflects current community consensus as this is already widely performed. The alternative would be delete redirects like Geheime Staatspolizei.

The second concerns redirects in other scripts. I propose that WP:REDIRECT is changed so that the heading "Purpose of redirects" contains the following:

• Name in a non-Roman script (三峡大坝 links to Three Gorges Dam) where the article's title is a transliteration of that script and the subject is associated with that script's language ^{this point was altered in accordance with Hesperian's comments. Handschuh-talk to me 02:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)}.

I believe that this reflects current community consensus as this is already widely performed. The alternative would be delete redirects like CCCP.

The third concerns disambiguation pages. I propose that WP:Disambiguation is changed so that under the heading "Naming the disambiguation page" the text, "English spelling is preferred to that of non-English languages." is changed to:

• English spelling is preferred to that of non-English languages, so use English unless it cannot be avoided (e.g. ambiguous terms from foreign languages and foreign scripts).

I believe that this also reflects community consensus and currently the subject of WikiProjects (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Disambiguation/CJKV_task_force) in the project. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 00:03, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose I don't think much of your argument that we have to endorse names in non-Roman scripts or else we have to delete redirects like CCCP. You're offering a false dilemma. We create a redirect if our readers (who, by definition, read English) are likely to search for a topic under a name other than the title under which the topic is treated. That is certainly the case for "CCCP" and the Soviet Union. It is certainly not the case for every "name in a non-Roman script where the article's title is a transliteration of that script." Hesperian 00:11, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

  the standard of likelihood is biased. The vast majority of the re-directs (including those I create) will be rarely used. So by the same logic, articles that are not likely to be searched should not be allowed to exist. Something being unlikely does not preclude its chance of happening. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 00:32, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

  Pet is a nice simple unambiguous article title with a hatnote for PET, PETS and Pets (TV series). Should I also add to that hatnote that "Pet" is Dutch for cap, French for flatulence, and Slovene for five? Would that actually improve things? Would it aid in navigation, or make things worse by cluttering up the hatnote with pointless crud? Would the inclusion of those three foreign language definitions make the hatnote too large, requiring me to roll out a new disambiguation page, thus moving PET one further click away from pet? I think you're failing to recognise that there is a navigational cost associated with adding these redirects. And because there is a cost, the likelihood of a link actually being used as a navigation aid does indeed come into it. We don't have to agree to pay the cost of a pointless navigation aid simply because we can't preclude the chance that someone somewhere may one day find it useful. Hesperian 01:08, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

  Certainly I don't support redirecting foreign-language titles to every single article, but those with a close association with a foreign language ought to have one. I don't support 水 redirecting to Water but do support 香港 redirecting to Hong Kong. That's not "pointless crud". Heimstern Läufer (talk) 01:18, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks Heimstern for taking the words right out of my mouth :) Handschuh-^{talk to me} 02:02, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• So rephrase your proposal so that it doesn't say "Name in a non-Roman script where the article's title is a transliteration of that script." Hesperian 02:23, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

•  Done :) Handschuh-^{talk to me} 02:47, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
• Agreed because no transliteration of 乌鲁木齐 can produce "Urumqi". Close association is the more accurate description. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 02:31, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

bad example, Hesperian. Wikipedia is not Wiktionary... There are exceptions. Any proper noun or a cultural concept is valid. Shouldn't have to name proper noun examples. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 01:14, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Lol, it appears to have succeeded in getting you to rethink your position that we should create every redirect that we can't preclude from being useful to someone somewhere sometime. I reckon that makes it a pretty good example. Hesperian 01:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Well Hesperian, that's not exactly what I meant. I interpreted your response as being "re-directs should not be allowed if they won't be commonly used", and criticised as a bad basis of judgment. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 02:50, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Resolute Support Per community consensus, the norm here, and the potential usefulness of these things. I'm getting tired of repeating the same arguments (and I have other work to do), so look around for my opinion. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 00:34, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose It is not common practice to create redirects or disambiguation for terms in foreign languages, except for terms that often occur in English text, which is certainly the case with Geheime Staatspolizei or CCCP, but not 三峡大坝. Kanguole 00:36, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Common practise is common practise; since it is not illegitimate, it's determined by frequency, and not what you think it should be. Weak reasoning. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 00:43, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Agree that this argument is based on a misunderstanding of common practice. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 01:18, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• "CCCP" (note how I used the Latin unicode glyphs, and not "СССР") is never used "commonly" in English, unless you're referring to the Combined Community Codec Pack. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 10:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oh, I'd also like to point out that "CCCP" is not Latin, but Cyrillic, and thus under your argument would be disallowed, and that your link is not "CCCP", but instead "CCCP", which would be meaningless in both Russian and any Latin-based language. (If you are confus, compare this google search and this google search. Your CCCP link uses Latin, not Cyrillic.) That would be analogous to saying that POCCNR means "Russia" in Russian, when it's suppsed to be Россия. And unicode doesn't really seem to care if two glyphs look identical to the human eye, as the google searches show, since unicode is not human. Your argument kind of goes in circles. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 10:36, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• To be fair, my wikilink was also to the latin characters CCCP. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 19:00, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support Roman renderings of non-Roman scripts are often inconsistent. I had almost created a new article for Saifuddin Azizi because I saw a red link for him at another article, and the sources that I had read used other transliterations. Were there a Chinese character redirect for his article, it would have been easy to find and the wikilinks speedily fixed. Like the category system, multilingual redirects are immensely helpful to those who use them, and unobtrusive to those who don't. Quigley (talk) 01:06, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support the first part of the proposal. I believe the second is implied in the first. No clear opinion on the third. I've already discussed my reasoning clearly enough, I believe. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 01:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I included the second section only to make that implication explicit, so as to avoid confusion. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 01:57, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support. I also note that WP:ENGLISH already includes the statement that "Redirects from non-English names are encouraged." -- JHunterJ (talk) 04:35, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support Though I do feel that part 3 is a bit unnecessary. Yes, while it might be preferred, having that sentence in there isn't going to change the occurence of such disambiguation pages being created. If there are multiple articles for which such a disambiguation page would be needed, it's going to be created, regardless of what wording or language is preferred. That's just how the disambiguation process works on here. Silverseren^C 05:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support the modified version. I also note that disambiguation pages are not articles, so this really isn't the place to discuss this. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 05:34, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support per the arguments above. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:57, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support. This is clearly the right way forward. It is entirely possible to encounter a name in a language or script that one reads only marginally and want to look it up in a Wikipedia in a languages one reads well (or that is more complete). Eluchil404 (talk) 06:21, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
• Instruction creep? My apologies for not having read the whole long discussion in detail, but I'm not sure what problem is being addressed here, and get the impression that the proposal would just be adding empty or redundant words to various guidelines. Can someone justify?--Kotniski (talk) 07:48, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• I gave some thought to this being a bit instruction creey before I proposed it. Basically, as I understand it, instruction creep is really where the editor who actually writes the policy or guideline tries to be too exact and loses the spirit of the community consensus. The essay says that instruction creep is unlikely if;
  

1) there is a problem to solve. This proposal deals with something that has come up several times;
2) the problem is actually dealt with. The problem is clarity of the policy and this proposal would make it clear;
3) there are few undesirable effects. That is open to interpretation, but I don't think that it is going to cause any major issues. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 08:23, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

As for whether this is just adding empty or redundant words to the guidelines, these kinds of redirects are more and more often being created and subsequently nominated for deletion. There is nothing in the policies or guidelines that I know of that comes down clearly one way or the other on this issue, though I think way WP:Disambiguation refers editors to WP:Article titles implies that it is not strictly speaking allowed. It would be much better to have the policy/guidelines reflect community consensus on these issues. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 09:21, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose for the reasons put forward by Hesperian. English wikipedia is in English, and should only use non-English if there's a good reason. And as an aside, exactly who are these people who are able to recognise and type words in Arabic, Chinese, Thai or whatever, have clearly gone to the trouble of installing the correct keyboard driver, yet don't actually understand the language and need to read the article in English? The only target audience that I can think of is language students who are in the very early stages of their studies. andy (talk) 09:35, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Comment I frequently copy-and-paste a non-English name into Wikipedia looking for information from languages which I cannot read at all nor have the time to learn. These non-English navigation pages (redirects and disambiguation pages) work well for that. But on Wikipedia, there are many articles (which are not redirects or disambiguation pages) that use non-English lettering, such as þ (thorn) and ß (eszett) ; which are definitely not English and can't be recognized by an average monolingual anglophone, or ESL English-users not from the region where these characters are used... however, Wikipedia allows them, even uses them when a common English-lettered alternate is used in English language works. Why bother trying to delete redirects and disambiguation pages when article titles don't use English? 76.66.203.138 (talk) 10:04, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
  • @andy: Yes, but they are still people entitled to utilise Wikipedia. Even if they are language students, WP:PILLAR does not say that they should be excluded. Due to their English skill, these people may be slightly disadvantaged, and having non-Latin redirects will assist them. Also keep in mind that the English Wikipedia is the largest Wikipedia encyclopedia; certain articles might not yet exist on foreign-language Wikipedias. Plus, the English WP happens to be the most comprehensive Wikipedia - some of the articles on the Chinese Wikipedia are quite shockingly terrible/short/badly written/are stubs. A lot of IRL Chinese students that I know don't even bother with the Chinese Wikipedia; they either go for the English Wikipedia or Baidu Baike. Finally, aren't keyboard drivers irrelevant anyway? Even in non-Anglophone countries, QWERTY keyboards are used as the standard, and aren't QWERTY keyboards Latin? I don't quite get what you are trying to say by referring to computer keyboards and drivers. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 10:08, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
    • As an aside, many folk here might use QWERTY, but not all. A simple counterexample would be AZERTY variants (which I use occasionally) used in many non-anglophone countries, which (like variants of QWERTY) offer basically the same core alphabet but offers some different diacriticals &c. Some will be using keyboards that effectively offer two different alphabets (ie. ЙЦУКЕН and QWERTY printed on the same keys in different colours). There's a lot of diversity out there. Otherwise I agree with you. Our primary purpose should be writing an encyclopaedia, rather than second-guessing whether or not some readers would understand an accurate local name in a redirect/dab concerning a foreign subject, and deleting pages on that basis even though they may be useful to others.bobrayner (talk) 16:37, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
• I'm still opposed. This is the article titles policy. What names for a topic are or aren't suitable for use as redirects is utterly irrelevant here. Hesperian 09:59, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
  • This is a minor issue; this talk can be moved somewhere else at any time. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 10:17, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
    • I agree that this is posted on the wrong talk page since it deals with WP:REDIRECT and WP:Disambiguation and not WP:Article titles, but it is here because earlier on in the debate some editors miscategorised disambiguation pages as articles. It would be a bit difficult to move it to Wikipedia_talk:Redirect since it also discusses changes to WP:Disambigation and vica versa. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 22:13, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
      • You can view it as that this discussion is taking place here because this is a policy page, while the other two are guidelines and this discussion really affects all three things, so this is the better place for it? Silverseren^C 22:18, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support These redirect and disambiguation pages are quite useful to multilinguals whose preferred language is English. And yes such people exist, in Singapore and Malaysia alone you have millions of people whose preferred written language is English, but also commonly read texts in Chinese or Tamil or other languages. And it is quite possible for an Anglophone to read a foreign text, see a name in a foreign script, and have no idea what the name is in English, due to the presence of multiple competing formal and ad-hoc systems of transcription, dialect forms, the use of Western nicknames by people in Korea and China, etc.

Creating redirects for every possible transcription is clearly impractical. A very concrete example: the Korean name character 이 can be spelled in English as Yi (Yi Sun-sin), Lee (Lee Myung-bak), Li (Mirok Li), Ri (Ri Sung Gi), Rhee (Syngman Rhee), Ree (Rimhak Ree), etc. Similar situations exist for other surnames like Park/Pak/Bak/Pack/Back, Jeong/Jung/Jong/Chung/Chong, etc. That doesn't even cover the given names. Look at the 노무현 redirect. In the days following his suicide, this redirect got more than 1,000 hits. Why? Because there's more than 100 different possibilities of how to spell his name, and those of us who couldn't remember the extremely idiosyncratic way he spells each syllable of it in English, decided to skip the nonsense and go through the hangul redirect.

Furthermore foreign script redirects and dab pages are maintained by those of us to whom they are useful. Naturally if you don't read a foreign script, you will not find them useful. But if other people tell you they find redirects useful and you don't, it is not because they are lying and arguing in bad faith, it is because the two of you browse Wikipedia in different ways in order to find different topics. cab (call) 10:23, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support. We should keep many of these dab's and redirects. I start with the principle that redirects (i.e. alternate subject titles someone might type into the search box) absolutely need to include such items as the members of Category:Letters by alphabet. For example, you can type any Greek letter into the search box and get an article on that letter. This allows the English reader to cut and paste an unfamiliar language's character and get guidance on where it receives encyclopedic coverage. There is no reason why this principle should not be extended to other non-Roman alphabets, because their symbols are also part of the world's knowledge and should be treated somewhere in the encyclopedia (eventually). Now, it seems reasonable to say, "Fine, but we're going to name the articles upsilon and not υ." But here cab's point just above is well taken: "Creating redirects for every possible transcription is clearly impractical." Moreover, the real-world explorer of knowledge will often only have the unfamiliar alphabet's symbols to cut and paste, not a scientific transcription of it. Also consider that we have articles like pneuma that try to sort out disparate uses of a foreign word. In the end, I just don't know where to draw the line: if our content editors are putting these pages forward as disambiguating characters/words/phrases that need it, I'm inclined to trust them as far as I can. Wareh (talk) 16:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Exactly. The proposal allows them; it doesn't require them. Editors are trustworthy, or else Wikipedia isn't. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:39, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• I also concur. In my opinion, many of these concerns regarding the possibility of vandalism and BLP is simply a bad-faith assumption on editors. We should assume the good faith of editors creating these redirects, given that WP:AGF is one of the core policies of Wikipedia. Otherwise, why are we even bothering writing up this encyclopedia anyway? Wouldn't it be arguable that we should assume that all editors are writing false information, under the same bad-faith logic? A possibility for vandalism exists for foreign-language redirects, yes, but there's already the possibility for vandalism within page contents anyway, yet we're not prohibiting people from editing pages. The reason why we allow editors to contribute to Wikipedia is because we trust these people to contribute positively in the first place. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 17:25, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. Encyclopedia is English and should usually not have foreign letters of any sort (okay maybe the Beatles album, but usually). Another reason that I haven't seen, is that when a French user types in a word, s/he generally wants to see the French Wikipedia come up, not the English language one first, which they will get if we disambiguate (or whatever) all foreign combinations. Let's allow the sister Wikipedias do what they are doing. This overlaps and possibly pre-empts them. Student7 (talk) 02:12, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Yes, but French uses the Latin alphabet as does English. This discussion is regarding the use of non-Latin/Roman (a synonym, by the way) characters, such as Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, CJK ideographs, et cetera. Charles de Gaulle in French is still Charles de Gaulle in English. 毛泽东 in Chinese however is not the same in English, but rather Mao Zedong, as with Владимир Путин - Vladimir Putin, and 이명박 - Lee Myung-bak. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 08:55, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't see why a Beatles album should be excepted, or why German or Icelandic are currently excepted either, as article titles. I also don't see how dabs and redirects pre-empts the French Wikipedia, since none of the content is written in anything except English. 76.66.194.212 (talk) 07:06, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

• Cough, cough, cough. Just because someone is fluent in a foreign language and knows some English does not mean he will always be browsing for the Wikipedia in that language. However, your premise is based upon that assumption. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 02:20, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

  • I assume that you're refering to a French user entering a French word into a third party search engine, like Google. Sorry, I found your wording a little confusing, but if I've understood you correctly; it's not really our concern what someone finds in google. If you want the French wikipedia, then go to fr.wikipedia.org. I'm not really that savvy on exactly how search engines work, but I don't think that the English wikipedia will always be listed above the French one even if they both match the query and even if they do on, say google.com that doesn't mean that they also will on google.fr or the other language variants. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 02:35, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Ok...I just tested it using google.fr and the search query "entrepreneur"[1] (which obviously exists in both wikipedias). The first returned result was fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneur and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneur wasn't even on the first page. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 02:51, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

It depends how you carry out the search. Looking specifically for wikipedia articles via google.fr I searched for "entrepreneur +wikipedia". The first hit was the correct French article, but the second hit was English. andy (talk) 10:47, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Of course it would be? If you're specifically going to look for a word + Wikipedia, then it's going to pull up the correct Wikipedia for the language Google that you're using and then other Wikipedias that have the term. In this case, French is first and then English. I don't see the problem here, this seems to be a non-issue. Silverseren^C 18:51, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

As a further note, when you search for "Гла́сность Википедия" ("Glasnost Wikipedia") in google.ru, the English wikipedia is not returned on the first page (perhaps not at all) even though we redirect Гла́сность to Glasnost. So the use of other scripts actually seems to mitigate this issue. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 09:26, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Heavy metal umlaut is a great example of why Wikipedia needs to cater for a whole load of characters outside the standard Latin script. ϢereSpielChequers 12:41, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support per the strong arguments advanced by CaliforniaAliBaba (talk · contribs). Non-English disambiguation pages for titles such as 蜀 will be very useful to readers. Cunard (talk) 22:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support If I come across a native name or term in a language with a non-Roman script, I should be able to find the Wikipedia article about that entity/concept. The proposed amendment preserves what I believe to be the status quo of making such searches successful possible. We just need to avoid the cartesian product absurdity of having redirects for non-English non-associated-language translations (e.g. a redirect for the Chinese characters for "United States" doesn't need to exist), the the proposed wording accounts for this. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:48, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose all titles in foreign scripts unless it can be shown that the term appears in reliable English language sources and are not followed with a translation. -- PBS (talk) 07:01, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
  • What makes Latin so much more preferable than Cyrillic, Chinese and Hangul? Also, why would we need reliable English language sources for names in foreign scripts? Would any English text, excluding Wikipedia, even use Cyrillic, Chinese, Arabic or Hangul? Additionally, for those who are worried about vandalism, I can (potentially) make BLP violations in French and Turkish, which use the Latin alphabet as well; the word for "bastard" and "lewd prostitute" in Turkish look nothing like their counterparts in English, and to the unsuspecting, can appear as a credible personal name. The argument that "foreign scripts open up the potential for BLP violations" makes no sense IMHO. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 09:01, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

To allow foreign text only if it appears in an anglophone publication seems, to me, perverse - and considerably stricter than WP:NONENG. For encyclopaedia articles on subjects that are named in non-roman script, it's pretty unlikely that the best sources will all be English language. bobrayner (talk) 13:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with Latin or other scripts. If the word or phrase is not in a reliable English Language sources then there should not be a redirect or dab page, names of pages should based solely on what is used in reliable English Language sources. -- PBS (talk) 11:52, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

But your !vote reads "Oppose all titles in foreign scripts". That doesn't exclude French, Spanish and Turkish, as per the reasons listed above. Also, to clarify, script =/= language. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:01, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

bobrayner I think you are confused. This is about WP:AT not WP:V, we base article names on reliable English language sources, not foreign language sources, no matter how reliable they are. -- PBS (talk) 11:58, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

In fact I think it's you who's confused (probably as a result of this proposal being inappropriately placed on this talk page, rather than on the one it should be on, which would be WT:REDIRECT, with a note at WT:DAB). This proposal has nothing at all to do with article titles, as far as I can tell (or is it me who's confused?) --Kotniski (talk) 13:44, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support the use of non-roman characters in dabs, redirects, &c. Sounds like an ideal use of a redirect to me! I realise this is en.wikipedia but that does not impose a requirement that all anglophone readers should be able to understand all article titles. Few folk would understand Abelian von Neumann algebra - and, heaven forbid, somebody might hide POV in there which other non-maths-speaking editors might not see! ;-) - but nobody's about to take Abelian von Neumann algebra to AfD. Seriously, what harm would this do? I mostly see benefits. We're not going to run out of ink and paper. bobrayner (talk) 13:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

• Also: for article titles themselves, I would usually prefer a transliteration into English, but it's entirely possible for an article to be notable without ever having mentioned in English-language sources, and in principle there may be cases where titles are not entirely translatable. So, I would prefer to see a policy which permits rare exceptions rather than an iron rule which requires wikipedians to commit the cardinal sin of WP:OR by creating a new English name for a subject which didn't have one before. bobrayner (talk) 13:28, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

We don't base an article title on what the subject's "name" is... we base it on how the subject is referred to in English language sources. This may or may not be the same as the subject's "name". In cases where there are no English language sources that refer to the subject, then an English language descriptive title should be composed (and it would be appropriate to base that descriptive title upon what the non-english language sources use). Blueboar (talk) 17:00, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

So in the case of a Chinese character such as 蜀, for example, which is used in the names of various ancient Chinese states such as Western Shu, you would say that the pinyin term "shǔ" (or maybe just "Shu") should be preferred if this was the name of an article? But what about a dab page, or a redirect? andy (talk) 17:14, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

• Blueboar: I broadly agree with you, but if the article is based on foreign-language rather than English sources, then by "composing" an article title because policy prevents us using what the sources use, we create something in bold text at the top of the page which was not already published by reliable sources (though I'm more concerned about about the spirit rather than the letter of that policy). Most of the time I wouldn't have a problem with such composition (for instance when each word in the title translates easily, such as the name of a university) but I'd rather leave a little slack in any policy to allow for possible future cases where transcription/translation creates a slightly bigger gap between the article title and what the sources say (perhaps some pun or poetic term). bobrayner (talk) 18:05, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

We already have that slack... we can create a descriptive title (in English) that fits the subject of the article, rather than using a non-English "proper name" title. Blueboar (talk) 18:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

For example, one of my start-up articles Yangling Agricultural Hi-tech Industries Demonstration Zone is a crude translation of its original Chinese name. And I hope that in this sub-thread "titles" is referring strictly to article titles, and not re-directs or DABs; so Andy, please stray away from that AFD in THIS particular discussion. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 18:44, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

• Dabs and redirects have been discussed already and are specifically included in this "Alternate proposal" section. As neither the originator of this thread (that would be me, in fact) nor of this sub-thread, nor an administrator, please stray away from trying to muscle other points of view out of the discussion. andy (talk) 19:37, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support. Redirects are cheap. If it aids searching the encyclopedia, it's worth it. I don't think the arguments against really raise a downside. --Bsherr (talk) 20:52, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support, and maybe even wider use of redirects for unambiguous cases, and non-Latin script article titles where appropriate - I have to admit I do use this feature quite a lot and am very glad of the work that people have put into this. I don't necessarily have a problem even with 水 redirecting to Water, but this is an extreme case since most such general characters have a range of meanings (possibly differening between languages for translingual characters), but wouldn't deserve a disambiguation page (that's better left e.g. to Wiktionary to give a range of definitions for the character; however a "soft redirect" to Wiktionary would do no great harm either). There are times when copy-and-pasting foreign script queries into the Wikipedia search box really ought to produce a meaningful result, especially for non-ambiguous cases. Why on earth shouldn't 陆克文 redirect to Kevin Rudd? "陆克文" isn't going to be in a Chinese-English dictionary, and I don't really want to go to zh: wikipedia and search for "陆克文", only to then find the en: transwiki and get it back into a language I'm more comfortable with. Moreover there clearly are some instances where meaningful articles should have non-Latin characters in their name. ЙЦУКЕН should surely be an article in its own right - the Russian version of QWERTY. Instead it redirects to JCUKEN - which is a plausible transliteration, but it is also known as YCUKEN, YTSUKEN and JTSUKEN! A particular problem is that "Ц" is often transliterated as "TS" in English, which is quite unhelpful in the "QWERTY" context as it's one button for one symbol, not two for the letters T and S. So "ЙЦУКЕН" is actually a more accurate and informative title. TheGrappler (talk) 23:33, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support, per Quigley. "Like the category system, multilingual redirects are immensely helpful to those who use them, and unobtrusive to those who don't." They are inexpensive technically and would be beneficial to some, and the arguments against foreign-character redirects seem all to be based on either a failure to AGF, or on a xenophobic prejudice against 'funny foreign characters'. Our readers are not simply monolingual English speakers - it's a complicated world out there, linguistically, and the more help we can provide our readers, the better. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:17, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support Redirects are cheap and many of our readers have poor English, this strikes me as a harmless way to make Wikipedia more useful for large numbers of people who we currently don't serve particularly well. ϢereSpielChequers 12:41, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

• Note to all: there is a related discussion above, held during late July/early August. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:39, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: I just noticed an exclusion. For non-Roman re-directs, the corresponding article's title will not necessarily be a transliteration of the re-direct. It is often a translation instead. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 22:06, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose: The English Wikipedia should not be full of redirects in languages that are not written in a Latin alphabet. Redirects written entirely in Chinese text, Cyrillic, Thai, etc. have no purpose on this project. People are not going to be searching the English Wikipedia with Chinese or Japanese or Russian search terms.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:47, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

  the problem is, how will you know that people will not conduct those searches. And their purpose has been addressed above. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:49, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: from something I wrote earlier... Did you know there is a category that includes redirects from other languages? Well there is! And there's absolutely no policy or guideline anywhere on Wikipedia that explains when it's valid to create a foreign redirect! (Despite my attempts.) This is absurd. So here is my guideline, and it is almost entirely true for existing articles/redirects:
  • Proper nouns and titles, where the subject is originally from another language, can have foreign redirects from the original term. For example: Les Trois Mousquetaires→The Three Musketeers or 北京→Beijing are valid redirects.
  • Other foreign redirects, aren't valid, almost without fail. Wikipedia isn't supposed to be a translation website, even though WP:R3 implies that foreign redirects are exempt from deletion. (Oh, and with no reason given!) So, invalid translations include any random translation of nouns: voiture→car, or motocicleta→motorcycle. — Timneu22 · talk 01:18, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

  @Timneu, that's why the alternate proposal includes wording indicating that re-directs that have a close association with the subject and are translations of or variations of such translations of the said subject are acceptable. And please comment ABOVE the mixed results section if you are going to debate the merit of the proposal. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 01:24, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

  Sorry, but this whole discussion is quite confusing to follow, and frankly I don't even know what the proposal is because of all this confusion. — Timneu22 · talk 01:43, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

  The proposal is at the very top of this discussion. Yes, the discussion is getting to be way too long... much of the same arguments being repeated. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 02:20, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

  Sorry, it's still just not clear. What is being proposed to be changed/added where? I'm serious. I just don't think this thread started off correctly. — Timneu22 · talk 02:25, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

  1. The answer to What could be found at the top of this section. The answer to Where is less definitive. Perhaps to the re-direct and DAB guidelines.

  2. That's because this thread is not the real beginning of the discussion on non-Roman in redirects and DABs. At the top of the section, it says that this chunk has been transcluded from WT:Article Titles. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 02:31, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

  Actually, WP:R3 only implies that foreign redirects are exempt from speedy deletion. Which makes sense, since it forces an RfD where the community can reach consensus as to whether or not the term is a proper noun or title of a subject from that language. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 05:36, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

  Thank you for that clarification, Bobby. Was confused about "exemption from deletion". --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 05:43, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

  But I completely disagree. Random redirects (again, voiture->car have no need to exist. It's not a proper noun, and this is not a translation site. Just delete it. — Timneu22 · talk 10:50, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

  The alternate proposal covers that. It states that the language of the re-directs must be closely associated with the subject of the article and be a transliteration or translation of the title. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 15:17, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

• Strong Support. I must be naive. (Hush.) It seems like we have arrived at consensus numerous times over this issue. What's one more time? Heck, we have the guidelines at WP:ENGLISH. Can't we just follow them? ;) Cindamuse (talk) 16:06, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
• Support all. I came here originally for a different reason, regarding specifically maintaining dab pages for individual Chinese characters, but I endorse this proposal as well. We have to remember that not everyone knows that Ελλάδα means Greece and they should not be forced to go offsite to find that out. (Note: the creator of that page is not me, the name is a coincidence.) —Soap— 16:12, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

• Weak oppose I don't want to see the English Wikipedia with 3 billion redirects coming from every possible language. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:14, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

  if you read the proposal carefully, you would know that it places the requirement that re-directs must be closely associated with the article subject and be a translation of transliteration of the article title, so you would not raise this concern. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 13:33, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

If the proposal is covered by Wikipedia:FORRED then I agree. Do you agree with this essay? -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:39, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I do agree with that essay. Perhaps an actual implementation of this proposal should borrow some of that essay's language. After over a week of having my wording examined I'm not so confident that it unequivocally expresses its intention. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 02:09, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

• I somehow see this argument as a mix between WP:IDON'TLIKEIT and the opposite of Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. Would you mind to explain otherwise? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 08:39, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

• Comment - it seems this is the same as my proposal above, in the foreign languages section; what made this become a topic of interest now? — Timneu22 · talk 13:36, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

  Long story. In short, I had created a DAB for 蜀, which Andy almost immediately re-directed to "Shu". And then he targeted, possibly to further provoke me, my first creation of a Chinese re-direct on this account (中南海). Sometime in between that, the idea to ask questions on this matter (re-directs and DABs) at ANI occurred to him. Complaints about ANI being the incorrect venue forced the discussion to be moved to WT:Article titles. As the alternate proposal being debated here concerns solely re-directs and DABs, and not article titles, we have what we have now at WT:Redirects. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 13:46, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

  Your continued ad hom attacks, directed particularly but not exclusively against myself, are becoming truly tiresome. Your arguments are perfectly sound and you seem to be winning your points, by and large, so it's not necessary to game the system by "mischaracterizing other editors' actions in order to make them seem unreasonable". Why not just be civil to other participants in the debate? andy (talk) 11:53, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

  1) Because the thousands of re-directs I and some other users have singly created under this and my former account are at stake. They don't become that cheap after such a long while. This is the second time that my re-directs have been on the line. I have attempted to restrict the stronger personal attacks, though this time around I am far angrier. 2) I have reason to believe that your nomination of my first re-direct created on this account constitutes HARASSMENT, especially given the timing of this. 3) The last post was relatively mild. The only negative about an editor was the continued criticism of your RFD nomination, which you have not responded to. Until you give such a response, I will not apologise. 4) this is the only time in this particular debate that I have mentioned your little RFD, and that was to explain how this debate was moved around, not on the merits of the proposal at all. it's not even close to being an ad hominem attack. 5) Now that you have recognised the arguments, I will relent.

  and the one accusation of ad hominem by a person other than you, from PBS, was because I mis-used the word "raving". I have always believed it to mean "sermonising", but apparently that is not the case, and I have since withdrawn the statement. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 14:08, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

• Calm down, the lot of you. Take a sip of WP:TEA and come back when you're a bit more cool headed. (And just to point out, a lot of you aren't doing your bullet-point indents properly. the colons come before the asterisk.) -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 01:58, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

• Thank you for correcting me, Bojie. I thought it was otherwise. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 02:07, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

  It is otherwise. Or can be, anyway. If you're responding to a bullet point, you should indent from that bullet *:. If you've got a hierarchical sub-bullet, then you should bullet from the bullet **. If you've got a bullet from an indented reply, you should bullet the indent :*. The colons and asterisks come in any order; you should maintain the previous layers and add whichever one you happen to need (bullet or indent), so my reply here was ::::*:. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:10, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

  ok, well this was originally a bullet. thanks much for the explanation. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 02:17, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support I think everything but the disam proposal is non-controversial. And even that seems clearly reasonable to me. The purpose of WP is to be useful to the readers , and navigational devices should be oriented to that purpose. DGG ( talk ) 15:17, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support Any and all of the alternate names listed in the lead of an article should redirect to it regardless of script. The use of alternate scripts is fairly common in area studies books, as well as the more pedestrian maps, physical objects etc. While I think the proposal's tailoring is good for preventing excessive numbers of redirects, I think that some non-transliterated words should occasionally redirect, especially when they are generic types of geographical location. For example, Област should redirect to Oblast (which is covered by the proposed policy), but analogously 県 should redirect to Prefectures of Japan (which isn't since "prefecture" is not a transliteration).--Carwil (talk) 17:31, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

mixed results

Given the results so far... it seems we have a solid "no consensus" (with a slight majority in favor of the proposal). So now what? Blueboar (talk) 15:07, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean? I haven't analysed the discussion, but counting the boldface supports and opposes, the supports seem to have it by miles. (I still don't see why it's being proposed on this page, though.)--Kotniski (talk) 15:24, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Well... looking again, you are correct that support is more than "slight" (I have struck that)... but I would not put it at "by miles" either (remember an RfC is not a simple majority vote)... We have people strongly supporting and others strongly opposing the proposal, and solid arguments for both positions... and this leads me to say that we don't have a solid consensus either way. Blueboar (talk) 15:42, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Are we looking at different discussions? I can only find 4 5 oppose votes - one opposes because he thinks the proposal is about article titles (which it isn't), one because he thinks this is the wrong venue (which it is, but...), and one for no reason at all. Only Student's argument about Google searches seems to be a genuine objection to the proposal, and that seems to have been satisfactorily answered. I'd say we actually have pretty clear consensus at this point.--Kotniski (talk) 15:49, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

to add to Kotniski's talking points, Kanguole's arguments, which were based on "common practise" (in itself ill-defined), have been answered. Student7, who has since left the discussion, was talking about Google searches. That only leaves Andy as the only genuine. Yet the only basis that Andy opposes the alternate proposal on is "EN Wikipedia is in EN". Both weight and number of supporting arguments, which is the real determining factor in RFC, win by light years. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 16:18, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

It really depends what we're talking about. If you take this sub-thread there's a preponderance in support, although you shouldn't dismiss people who have their say and then don't contribute further - we weigh the opinions, not the verbosity. But if you take the entire thread from its inception there are plenty of points of view on both sides, not necessarily flagged as oppose or support in bold text. I don't see how it could be said that we had reached a conclusion as far reaching as altering a key WP policy (which is why when I raised this canard all I was looking for was some clarification) andy (talk) 16:51, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

What alteration of which key WP policy do you think this proposal implies? I thought it was just about tweaking a couple of guidelines.--Kotniski (talk) 17:38, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Guidelines interpret policy. If a guideline is to be altered in a way that wasn't envisaged when the policy was drawn up then in effect the policy has changed. For example the policy on article titles is silent on dab page titles, so any guideline on dab page titles extends the policy. It's a bit like the English Common Law which over time has become entrenched legal policy. andy (talk) 11:32, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not convinced of a valid consensus to edit these guidelines yet either. Firstly, you cannot make a call on the above discussion by the numbers. Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/CJKV task force were informed of the discussion (and of course they broadly agree with my proposal), whereas there's no central body of editors that I can think of who might form the other camp. For balance I left a note about this discussion on the talk page of Wikipedia:Subtle Vandalism Taskforce, since there was a suggestion that this change may increase problems with subtle vandalism. If anyone knows about a Deleting foreign redirects/disambiguation pages Taskforce, please let them know.

Secondly, this is not the correct venue. The discussion here followed on from a proposal to alter the WP:Article titles policy, which was correctly posted here. But changing the guidelines at WP:REDIRECT and WP:Disambiguation should really take place on their respective talk pages. I don't think that it's really feasible to break up this thread now and try and drop it into the two other talk pages where it belongs. I put this discussion on centralized discussion to try and make it available to all concerned parties, but that's really no substitute for having it on the correct talk page.

Thirdly, it's only been five days. Many editors who made their opinions known before the proposals were posted haven't had their say on these changes. I'm not suggesting that we wait for everyone, but more comments are still being posted daily. I think that before things get even more ingrained here, we should restructure this in such a way that we're at the right venue, where all concerned parties can reach a real consensus. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 21:52, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I just read Kotniski's suggestion to move this proposal to WT:REDIRECT with a note on WT:Disambiguation. I think that's a good solution, and unless someone has some serious objections I think he should go ahead and do it. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 22:01, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) [Can we move the discussion and !votes as well? I'd rather see the discussion continued than restarted from scratch.] By all means, let's extend this discussion for as long an additional period, within reason, as anyone wishes. I do think, however, that central listing is a substitute for conducting the discussion in some other, notionally perfect, place. Moreover, while there is an obvious relevance to the Disambiguation project, I think it is true that (1) some major voices from that project have chimed in here, (2) there are some compensating advantages for not having the discussion take place there, as this question in many ways has more to do with general-signposting issues than with the implementation of disambiguation. Let the disambig project discuss how to keep things running smoothly and elegantly, I say, but I'm glad the discussion on the broader question is taking place in a forum of broader interest. Just my two cents & effort to speak for the other side, Wareh (talk) 22:03, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

 Done I just did the move as suggested by Kotniski. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 23:25, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Discussion was moved from Article titles talk page by Handschuh-^{talk to me} 23:17, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

• Important note: this debate was a part of a much longer debate which should be read in its entirety. A number of !votes in that longer debate which are highly relevant here have now been effectively removed, giving a misleading impression both of the argument itself and the views of various editors on its pros and cons. This is now the third time this debate has been moved. andy (talk) 11:26, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

But the previous !votes concerned a different proposal, surely, not this one? Do you think there are any objections that were made before that still apply to this proposal? I may be missing something this whole time, but this proposal just seems to be a minor clarification to the guidelines that the great majority of people commenting seem to think will be useful, and to which the objections seem to be either procedural or based on misunderstandings. Are there still any unanswered arguments against it? --Kotniski (talk) 11:35, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, let's start at the top:

What harm do they do? They're disambiguation pages! Physchim62

all article titles, dab or otherwise, should be readable by English-speakers. Beyond My Ken

There should be no exceptions - unless we want to say that dab pages can be in any language and any characters. Dougweller

I don't see any reason not to have Chinese characters in titles of redirects and dab pages rʨanaɢ

I'm not keen to see this… This is going to result in thousands of redirects for every article RegentsPark

and so on. And of course you're missing all the discussion about these comments. Then there are more general but still highly relevant points that some people made about WP:UE.

andy (talk) 11:53, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

So do we still think that "this [the current proposal] is going to result in thousands [presumably not meant literally] of redirects for every article"? That seems to be the only relevant objection of substance out of the above.--Kotniski (talk) 12:05, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh come on! Those are brief extracts from just some of the comments made on a lengthy page, to demonstrate the point that you have excluded a lot of legitimate opinions by people who thought that they had contributed to the debate. You asked "Do you think there are any objections that were made before that still apply to this proposal" and I said yes, I do, and gave what I made clear was a non-exhaustive list which excluded a lot of discussion. Are you now saying that they should be rejected because in your opinion they were "based on misunderstandings"? Several of those contributors, on both sides of the argument, went on to make detailed and carefully thought out points in good faith that you have now airbrushed out of the discussion. andy (talk) 12:18, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, but I and probably most other people arriving at this discussion don't really want to wade through a whole lot of past discussion which concerned a different proposal in any case. Can you at least summarize what you consider to be the case against the current proposal?--Kotniski (talk) 12:41, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

It didn't concern a different proposal - it was the background discussion that led up to this proposal and covers a lot of the same ground. I don't see why, just because you made a fork, I should try to summarise nearly 7,000 words of detailed argument on behalf of several different editors. The most appropriate thing would be for you to contact each participant who isn't represented on this talk page, advise them that their previous comments are now likely to be ignored, and suggest that they might wish to restate their case here. andy (talk) 13:21, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

• Ok Andy, we're open to suggestions. We shouldn't be having a debate on the redirect and disambiguation guidelines on the article titles talk page. Any consensus that we achieve there is moot, but changing the venue was disruptive. What do you think we should do? Handschuh-^{talk to me} 13:45, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

  the proposal for re-directs should have been proposed only here and for DABs only at the DAB page; neither of them are truly article titles anyway. It's like legislation. Try to accomplish too much in one bill, and your chances of being thwarted will increase. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 13:58, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

  Actually, I meant my earlier suggestion without irony. This discussion will have alerted everyone to the problem, so if you add a polite note on the Talk pages of every non-represented participant I don't see that any harm is done. If dab pages are to be involved then there should be a relevant note on the talk page there. andy (talk) 22:16, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

  Agree. I will post a note there if it hasn't been done. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 22:24, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

  And one of you will inform the disenfranchisees? andy (talk) 23:07, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

   Done There was a discussion of foreign language re-directs on this very talk page, and I've notified all the participants of it. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:29, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

   Done Informed almost everybody, though I feel this discussions is going to be too long. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:47, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

• Note: this little sub-section should NOT be the place to discuss the alternate proposal. It should only be the venue to discuss the outcome of it. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:50, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Kotniski I did not mean to confuse you so I'll explain further but what I have to say will come as no surprise to you because you already know my position on use English. HXL, I am not raving and I would appreciate it if you would strike out that ad hominem comment. Redirects and Dab pages are covered by Article titles policy. If, because of the current name, you do not think so then I suggest we move the policy page again to make that clear. The point of both redirects and dab pages is to aid navigation for the English reading public. The only time that a foreign language word or phrase should be included as a redirect or a dab page is if the word or phrase commonly appears in reliable English language sources. The same goes for words and phrases in foreign scripts, and to make that clear, I include in that all letters and funny foreign squiggles not in the English Alphabet. Unless it is in English reliable sources (usually without a translation or transliterated next to it) then the redirect or the dab page it is not based on a reliable English language sources and should not appear in the English language Wikipeida. -- PBS (talk) 01:28, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

The word "English" does not appear in WP:RS. I use reliable sources in other languages, including ones written in funny foreign squiggles, all the time to improve the encyclopedia. So if the squiggly RS says that the squiggles refer to topic X, there's no WP:OR involved in associating the squiggles with X. Wareh (talk) 02:07, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

It may not appear in WP:RS (which is a guideline and covers content) but it is one of the key components of WP:AT "Generally, article titles are based on what reliable English-language sources call the subject of the article." that is the policy on naming pages, and it has been subject to yards of discussion on the WP:AT talk pages. -- PBS (talk) 03:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Whatever you should move the discussion of whether article titles include re-directs and DABs upstairs. after all, this section is entitled "mix results" --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 04:19, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that with the statement "I think PBS seems to be raving rambling about titles when the formalised proposal is clearly on re-directs and DABs, not articles" that you opened the door to my replying here and a response of "whatever" to my comments does not seem to me to be the repost formulated by someone who had consider the arguments put to them and who has a considered reply to those the arguments. Indeed where I come from "whatever" is the response of a truculent juvenile not an adult, but you are probably from a different culture, so perhaps you would do me the favour of explaining what you mean.-- PBS (talk) 09:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

why would you see it as an ad hominem attack if I was only commenting (criticising) on your decision to talk about article titles, which are different from re-directs and DABs. And an article is an article. come on. And Wareh has a point here, --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 02:16, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Because you have made a statement of fact not expressed an opinion such as "I think ...". All you have done is rearranged the deck chairs you have not withdrawn you ad hominem attack. -- PBS (talk) 03:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

fine then. I realise that I was being too detached with my wording; I thought that the "I think" was implied.

it may be an unintended attack (my intent was criticism), but not ad hominem. I suggest you read on the definition of the term, as I was not attacking you as a person. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 04:12, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

If it was an unintentional attack then I would appreciate it if you would unequivocally withdraw it. -- PBS (talk) 09:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Handschuh, I came to this discussion by accident this morning (my time) from another talk about foreign language redirects, and it's taken me an hour to read it and the earlier one above. You started this debate nine days ago but I don't think it's finished yet, but from what I can see, you appear to have a consensus for support, and you can add my latecomer support to it. I say this because I strongly support keeping redirects of book, movie, and other media whose foreign title may still be the only search term known to a lot of English speaking visitors to the encyclopedia. From my own personal experience, in spite of, or because of, my polyglotism, the foreign language name is the only one known to me.--Kudpung (talk) 06:32, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me there isn't much point in continuing this "discussion" - the proposal is clearly supported, no-one seems able to formulate any substantial objections to it (the little opposition there is seems to be mainly emotional - because the proposal was originally wrongly placed on the article titles page, people thought this had something to do with renaming articles to use names in foreign scripts). Is anyone going to be awkward if we simply implement the clear majority decision here, and move on?--Kotniski (talk) 09:55, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Majority does not mean consensus. I for one do not see it as "renaming articles to use names in foreign scripts" I saw it as a proposal to use redirects in foreign scripts when there is no support for the usage in reliable English language sources. For example the wording "where the article's title is a transliteration of that script and the subject is associated with that script's language" is so vague as to be meaningless for many many articles. Take a word like tea is the proposal here to allow redirects in every single language and script on the planet to the article tea if tea is drunk in by people who use a particular script, or is it only those nations that grow tea, or those that trade it as a comity, or those countries that blend it? What about social constructs taxes and government which are shared by all cultures? We already have the links to languages of articles on other language Wikipeidas which in most cases do a good job of approximating the relative importance of the subject in other languages. -- PBS (talk) 17:31, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the wording "and the subject is associated primarily with that script's language" or something like that is implied, but not explicitly stated, which it needs to be.

there obviously will not be usage of certain scripts in reliable English language sources. But that is not the question here, because such a characterisation applies only to article titles, which should be in Latin script (including diacritics used in Japanese, Vietnamese, Polish, etc.) anyway. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 18:36, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

What makes you think that redirects are not covered by the WP:AT poilicy? -- PBS (talk) 21:51, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:AT says this:

• WP:AT#Treatment of alternative names: ...an article can only have one title.[...] These may include alternative spellings, longer or shorter forms, historical names, significant names in other languages,[...]For example, the city now called Gdańsk is referred to as Danzig in historical contexts to which that name is more suited (e.g. when it was part of Germany or a Free City). All significant alternative titles, names or forms of names that apply to a specific article should be made to redirect to that article.
• WP:UE: Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese, or Russian names, must be transliterated.

In Thailand, for example, where transliteration to Roman characters is arbitrary, the name of the settlement of Kudpung in the village itself is transliterated in several different ways, including Kutpung, Kutpung, Kut pung, Kutpueng, Kut Phueng, Kud Phueng. Unless the site software can parse all this automatically, it's clear case for redirects for each version, plus one with the Thai name กุดผึ้ง. --Kudpung (talk) 23:44, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Gdansk and Danzig are English names for the place so it is not a good example to use for this exchange. A better example would be Wien which is little used in English for Vienna.

If the name is transliterated differently in different reliable sources then there is no reason why there should not be different transliteration, but that is no reasons to include กุดผึ้ง unless that is used in reliable English language sources without any transliteration. It seems to me that for most purposes the links to other language Wikipedias will take care of searches on other scripts because if someone wants to search on that particular set of characters and the subject is notable enough in that language to have an article then it will show up in a search without the need for redirects. -- PBS (talk) 03:34, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Following your line of thought, then you believe that there is no reason to include the native name[s] (in a non-Roman script) of a place on an article?

no. absolutely not. you can't assume that everyone will do everything the way you like it. we *belaboured* this point, that... some people who have knowledge with the language will still prefer to read the English Wikipedia. Enough said.

plus your reasoning is somewhat discriminatory. of course an English-language source is not likely to use a non-Roman script, unless that script is within a picture or something. so what does that leave us? dictionaries? Translation dictionaries cannot possibly have translations/transliterations for every damn place in a country. Yet there are no citation needed tags for native names. Funny. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 03:45, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Phil, It's highly likely that the en.Wiki might be the only one to have an article on a settlement, book, movie, etc., from a developing country. You might like to run a search for those Roman transliterations and see what you get. Then, if you haven't got Thai script on your keyboard, just copy and drop กุดผึ้ง into the search box and see what you get. Even if there were a page for กุดผึ้ง on the Thai Wiki, it would still be a bit easier for me to read an article about it in English, German, French, or Spanish.Kudpung (talk) 03:51, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I do not think the results are mixed. I think there is clear consensus for including these redirects, when they can be documented. There is no need for the original to be documented in English language sources, any reasonable reliable source will do--it's a redirect, not a heading. We cover a great deal of the world for which there is no English language source, and should cover more of it. The only time that we need be concerned about is finding which transliteration is the standard in in choosing a transliterated heading for the article -- and even here there is no reason to make much of a fuss, because cross references solve the problem for all practical purposes. Had I not commented above, I'd be prepared to close this. DGG ( talk ) 16:50, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

• When this sub-thread was started the results were most definitely mixed, although clearly starting to come down on one side. The big problem has been the way the debate has been moved from place to place and refactored. It's a complete mess. I'd concur that the majority of participants now agree with your position, and closing it that way would not be a bad thing, but there were some genuine concerns that are under-represented in this "final" version of the debate. There seem to be (possibly) two schools of thought, namely a minimal one that English readers may come across foreign words in non-Roman scripts and would want to be directed to an article or a dab page in English; or a maximal one where any English article ought potentially to be available from foreign language redirects within English wikipedia. The latter option is what scared some earlier participants who have now been effectively removed from the current version of the debate. (FWIW I'm a minimalist). andy (talk) 22:32, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

  agree with Andy's analysis, though some, such as Timneu22, were clearly daunted by the length of this bloated discussion that repeats much of the same arguments. When should we call for a summary of the arguments? It's getting close to that stage, and it would be of immense benefit to any non-participating observers to include such a section. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:18, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

!Tally

AFAICS, if we take out all the meta talk we seem to get:

Support for non Roman redirects

1. Handschuh
2. Heimstern Läufer
3. Quigley
4. JHunterJ
5. SilverserenC
6. 李博杰 (BenliSquare)
7. Nihonjoe
8. Eluchil404
9. 76.66.203.138 (Might be the same as 76.66.194.212)
10. bobrayner
11. cab (call)
12. Wareh
13. 76.66.194.212 (Might be the same as 76.66.203.138)
14. WereSpielChequers
15. Cunard
16. Cybercobra
17. CaliforniaAliBaba
18. Bsherr
19. TheGrappler
20. Colonies Chris
21. Timneu22
22. Cindamuse
23. Soap
24. Magioladitis
25. DGG
26. Carwil
27. Kudpung
28. HXL49
29. Rich Farmbrough, 17:53, 16 December 2010 (UTC).
    

Opposition to non Roman redirects

1. Hesperian (does not appear to differentiate between hatnote/dab/redirect
2. Kanguole
3. andy
4. Student7
5. PBS
6. Ryūlóng
7. Magioladitis (weak, due to FORRED)

Unclear comment or argument, undecided or apparently neutral

1. Kotniski
2. SilverserenC
3. Blueboar

Kudpung (talk) 03:10, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

O_o Why am I listed as Support and Unclear? I am very much support. Silverseren^C 21:20, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I daresay feel free to correct this list, as I have done myself. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 22:59, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

You're not the only one. My position, which I have made very clear, is not simply Opposition or Support but a very conditional form of Support (much less enthusiastic than yours!). I also note that the edit patterns for Support #9 and #13 are identical, so there's probably only one of them. And despite my earlier comments in this sub-thread the list doesn't mention the earlier !votes of Physchim62, Beyond My Ken, Dougweller, rʨanaɢ and RegentsPark (1 support, 4 oppose). This is a misleading list. There is a totally unacceptable level of POV pushing going on here! andy (talk) 23:07, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

then would you care to re-iterate it? and if I were you I would not be so quick to accuse Kudpung of POV-pushing. Certainly neglect, but... --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:12, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

While I'm at it, I just did a slightly more thorough job on the original thread. I found the following additional participants who don't seem to be mentioned here: Septentrionalis, T. Canens, llywrch, HalfShadow, chaos5023, Born2cycle and Johnuniq. This is revisionist. I don't care what these editors' views are - my point some time ago was that a lot of people have been airbrushed out and by my count that's 12 people. Out of 36 unique names on the original list that's a lot. andy (talk) 23:23, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I notified nearly all of them, but none of them have gave their input on this alternate proposal. If we are to include them they should explicitly state support, oppose, or neutral, or the like. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:29, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

• I'm not aware of any requirement that a !vote should be explicit, still less that it should be in bold. If someone makes their views clear by saying "sounds good to me" they don't have to shout Support as well. It helps, sure, especially in such a long, rambling and fragmented discussion as this one but it's not a requirement. And now that I've listed these people an admin can easily check their views. Perhaps someone should revamp the list above to include all the missing participants? If so, the section headings should be Support, Partial Support, Oppose, Unclear/Neutral. andy (talk) 11:18, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

• I've just restored a section at the top of this page which had been archived but covers much of the same ground and is referred to in the current debate by Timneu22. Quite fun to read, really. andy (talk) 23:34, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

RFD

There's a redirect for discussion about foreign redirects: here. I'd really like to see a policy that makes sense on this, and I've stated it repeatedly and in my delete vote on that page. If something originated in that language, a redirect is valid, otherwise it is not. Voiture→car is not a valid redirect. — Timneu22 · talk 21:28, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

zooming

Zooming in general is a complete mess. Somebody needs to take the various topics in hand. 204.174.87.29 (talk) 01:17, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

In what way is Zooming a complete mess? It's a redirect. If you mean Zoom is a mess, then that's irrelevant to this WikiProject because it is not a redirect. McLerristarr | Mclay1 07:40, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The crusade continues...

Could someone else please look at this[2]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.139.5.80 (talk) 06:11, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Could someone else look at this redirect and see if it's the best use?[3]

They seem OK at the moment. WP:RIGHT was first used for the wikiproject, so they can have it; WP:Con is pointing at WP:CON right now.

My rule of thumb is that the first one to claim the redirect should keep it unless there is an actual discussion and strong agreement to change it. Changing these later will break lots of talk page comments, so stability is important. And there are lots of redirects available. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:58, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

We are just creating a new page with the name "DYNAMIC". The word "Dynamic" has a redirection (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dynamic&redirect=no) to "Dynamics".Is it possible to change the redirection to "DYNAMIC" and who is going to do that?

Normally, we would change the redirect into a "disambiguation" page if both meanings were equally likely. However, in this case, because DYNAMIC is a much less well-known topic, we would add a message to the top of Dynamics pointing to it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Can dogs see ghosts?

What is the precedent for interrogative redirects? Do we simply delete them under R3? Are they ever kept? If so, when and under what conditions? Thanks, Blurpeace 09:28, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Being an interrogative is no different than being any other phrase or meme. Some are independently notable, some are notable enough to be a useful redirect, most are not useful at either level but very few are speedy-deletable unless created as part of a pattern of vandalism. Rossami (talk) 16:52, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Some Redirects and Merges make terms difficult to find

If you search for "term" then you will not find categories named "term". If "term" (or an article named "term") is redirected to an article that doesn't contain "term", then if you use an Internet search engine to search for "term" you probably won't find all the material about "term" on Wikipedia. So it seems important to check if there is a category named "term" before redirecting from "term", and also use redirect templates and/or hatnotes so as not to give users unpleasant surprises, also where appropriate ensure that "term" exists in the redirect target page. If "term" is redirected, but a category named "term" exists, then a hatnote (on the redirect target page) that links to the category page will help users find the material about "term".

(When merging an article on "term" into another article. it seems important to check if the categories on the "term" page also exist on the other article page).

An example of over-zealous merging and redirection, without due diligence as to related categories or categories with the same name as the redirected items—is discussed here. LittleBen (talk) 15:45, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid your point is unclear to me. Dreadstar ☥ 15:54, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Did you look at the example I cited, to make it clear? LittleBen (talk) 15:59, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but this appears to be covered by the last line in the section Wikipedia:Redirect#What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects?. Dreadstar ☥ 16:03, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

The original wording was intended to make it clear that—because searching for "term" doesn't find category "term"—before redirecting "term" you should first check if there's a category named "term" (and how to do this). This is not intuitive, so I think it needs to be explained. A category named "oldterm" does not necessary exist, but editors should check if "oldterm" or related categories exist before redirecting, otherwise users won't find the term(s). LittleBen (talk) 16:23, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I think the current version is clear and I don't think that editors need to be spoon-fed - besides, there are sufficient instructions in links provided. The earlier versions [4] [5] were too verbose and contained instruction creep. Dreadstar ☥ 16:25, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it's clear anywhere on Wikipedia that searching for "term" doesn't find category "term", so surely it needs to be spelled out why researching categories (before redirecting or merging) is important. LittleBen (talk) 16:53, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

One can search categories and virtually all areas of Wikipedia:[6] (e.g. category scientists}, something that is mentioned in Help:Searching#Search engine features. In any case, this guideline wouldn't be the place to describe that, doing that here is exactly instruction creep. Dreadstar ☥ 16:57, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Redirect from non-notable to related but different notable concept

Hi,

I have been having a mini-conversation with a new user over at User talk:Baapress‎ about whether we should apply a redirect on a topic that has been deemed not notable (or perhaps is notable but does not yet have an article), to some related topic. The article that started the conversation was Gadarenes, which at the time redirected to Legion (demon), the reason being that the Gadarenes are mentioned in the Biblical tale of the Legion. I have since found a better target for that redirect, the modern town corresponding to Gadara (whence the Gadarenes hailed), so there's probably no problem in this instance, but that does not answer the underlying question.

Another example of this is Brooklyn Beckham. Currently it "redirects to Dad" per the move request at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brooklyn Beckham (second nomination), but Baapress makes what may be a valid argument that this is incorrect and that actually the Brooklyn Beckham page should just be a red-link, given that we have deemed him non-notable. Arguments for this are:

• We have a search page for redlinks, giving users a range of choices and not a forced one. In the Beckham case this would include his mother's article, Victoria Beckham as well as his father's.
• Google honours our redirects as well, meaning a search for Brooklyn Beckham actually has the David Beckham Wikipedia article as its top result. Again, that may not be right - an off-wikipedia site may provide better info on Brooklyn for those interested.

The WP:REDIRECT page is largely silent on this issue, and in particular it does not mention the above as a legitimate use of redirection, so would be interested to hear people's views. I may consider a deletion request on the Brooklyn Beckham redirect and others like it, depending on the outcome of this conversation. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 17:48, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

It will always have to be a case-by-case analysis. Redirects should point the reader to a place that is reasonably helpful (or at least, not actively confusing). Redirects that are sufficiently off-topic that we don't want Google to recognize them can be tagged with, for example {{unprintworthy}}, but they may still be appropriate to keep if they contain useful history or preempt the creation (or re-creation) of content that the community has already decided it doesn't want.
If you think retargetting is the right answer, either be bold or open a discussion on the respective Talk pages. If you think something should be redlinked, that's a good question to raise at RfD. Remember, however, that a redlink is an explicit statement that we want an article at that title.
To your specific example of Brooklyn Beckham, redlinking would be inappropriate since the AfD discussion clearly shows a decision by the community that we do not want an article at that title. Yes, there is a value judgement about whether the father or the mother is the better target. However, since both articles link to each other, any interested reader is going to quickly find what he/she needs either way.
Note: In some cases (examples generally not including family), turning the redirect into a disambiguation page may be more appropriate. In that case, be bold. Rossami (talk) 20:55, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to modify D8

The current text for "Reasons for deleting," criterion 8, is:

If the redirect is a novel or very obscure synonym for an article name, it is unlikely to be useful. Improbable typos or misnomers are potential candidates for speedy deletion, if recently created.

I propose that an addition be made (changes highlighted):

If the redirect is a novel or very obscure synonym for an article name, it is unlikely to be useful. In particular, redirects from a foreign language title to a page whose subject is unrelated to issues specific to that culture should generally not be created. Improbable typos or misnomers are potential candidates for speedy deletion, if recently created.

Comments? Support? Oppose? Also my addition reads rather awkwardly, any suggestions for improvement? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:23, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

• I think the first sentence should be lost. Obscurity is subjective. Things like that are best taken to RFD. Perhaps the foreign language thing could be a separate criteria to avoid users nominating a useful foreign link and an administrator deleting because they think it's a typo. McLerristarr | Mclay1 07:59, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
• I oppose the policy change (again). Proposals to disallow foreign-language redirects have failed multiple times in the past. All the same reasons for allowing them still apply. Rossami (talk) 16:07, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
  • I've gone through the archives, and none of them "failed" per se; rather, they failed to implement the proposal. Most of them were due to lack of active participation. The most recent one, "Proposal for non-Roman Redirects and Disambiguation," had significantly more support than opposition in fact, but it tried to address too many things at once and got too messy to deal with. Therefore I have reason to believe this proposal may succeed. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 09:18, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
    • Can you point to a specific instance of the community rejecting it? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:09, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

First I would suggest dropping a note on the village pump to attract more attention to this discussion. Few even read this talk page. Second I mostly agree with this proposal. For example United States has a laundry list of redirects in at least 10 different languages and most with more than one variation (Spanish has about 15 alone). I would be ok with some being kept but this to me is way overkill and IMO if the reader doesn't know how to spell United States then they are unlikely to be able to read the article once they get their. We should not be getting into the habit of duplicating the Interwiki links on the articles into variations of redirects. That will get to the order of millions of redirects in no time. --Kumioko (talk) 17:35, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

• This was discussed at length in a centralized discussion now summarized at WP:FORRED. The only consensus reached is that we'd prefer that such redirects not be created indiscriminately. The essay is useful for coaching and correcting the editors who start to create them en masse. We did not, however, reach consensus that those redirects should be deleted once they are created. Redirects are cheap and we ought not to be bloating the database with unnecessary deletions any more than we want to see others bloating it with unnecessary additions. Rossami (talk) 18:11, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree that we shouldn't be adding bloat but I would argue that the cons for keeping these outweigh the cost of adding a byte to the database, which we need not worry about anyway. --Kumioko (talk) 23:10, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
    • What cost exactly? What cons?
      That's why the proposal keeps getting defeated - no one has been able to clearly identify any explicit cost or harm from these redirects. Deleting them saves no effort, reduces no maintenance and improves no system performance. Deletion of a non-harmful redirect has no impact except on the attitude of the volunteer who took the time to create the redirect in good faith. Rossami (talk) 02:11, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Here are a few pros and cons I worked up regarding keeping/not keeping some of these redirects.

Pro

• Redirects are cheap
• accounts for misspellings
• accounts for people who don't read or write english well
• potentially makes the article more available
• could be a contributor to article edit counts such as the very high hit rate the United States article gets

Con

• Typos when linked will appear in blue and may lead the reader/writer to either miss the typo or believe they are correct
• If the people can't spell United States then the likely won't be able to read the article either
• could make the article less available to some readers (including the cross wikilanguage links at the bottom of the articles)
• We have links to some languages but not others (should we link to all)
• linking to all langauges and potential variations could lead to an overload of redirects in the order of millions
• Wikipedia is not a dictionary

Feel free to add to either group. --Kumioko (talk) 03:22, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the cons:

• Typos will appear in blue like correct spellings - Unlinked typos appear in the same font and color as correctly typed words. We trust that future editors will fix them. The blue-link is explicitly not an endorsement since an editor can just as easily make a typo when using a piped-link such as Wikipdia:Redriect. Links have no value as spell-checkers.
• If they can't spell United States then they won't be able to read the article - This assumes only one form of navigation of the wiki and does not apply to those who may navigate differently. During RfDs, many native english speakers have said they find value in these redirects. Regardless, that's an argument that the helpfulness may be weaker, not that the redirect is harmful.
• "make the article less available - I don't see how. Interwiki links are completely unrelated to foreign language redirects within a wiki. Can you please explain this concern in more detail?
• Links to some but not all - Wikipedia is inconsistent. And that's not a bad thing. (Meta: has a better article on this principle but I can't remember the title.)
• Overload if we allow linking to all potential variations - That's a strawman argument. It also is probably not true because redirects really are that cheap. But if someday it does become a problem, I am sure that our developers will tell us so and that we will quickly be able to clean them up, especially if they are properly tagged with {{R from foreign}}.
• WP:WINAD - I strongly agree that articles must be more than merely lexical content. But taking your argument to it's logical conclusion would mean that we must eliminate all redirects for synonyms. That would be a disservice to readers and contrary to one of the core values behind redirects.

Some other Pros

• Captures links created where the foreign language usage is appropriate in that context (such as Ketjap manis in an article on Indonesian cuisine)
• Aids readers who see a word out of context and come to Wikipedia to find out more (the "cut-and-paste into the search box" argument)
• More cleanly captures loanwords and other synonyms that are accepted in one part of the english-speaking world but not yet introduced in other areas
• Deletions are inherently hostile and should be avoided unless necessary to protect the project. Wikipedia is an all-volunteer effort dependent on a constant influx of new editors to replace the ones who quit, pass away or have to cut back on their wikiaddiction - We cannot afford to drive off good-faith volunteers unnecessarily.

Note: I am still not arguing that we should create foreign language redirects willy-nilly. Merely that once created in good faith, there is no value to deleting them. The creator should be coached why it's unnecessary, not browbeaten with a deletion process. Rossami (talk) 16:13, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with your point that creating foreign language redirects is appropriate when used to say redirect the German spelling of Germany to the article for German or to allow for changes in the articles name of time (such as the countries formerly part of the soviet union). I also agree that redirects are needed and I am not advocating they be eliminated completely but I also don't think we need to link to every language and I don't think we need to start creating redirects of misspellings just in case someone mistypes it. If someone accidentally types Unitd States instead of United States it won't take long fo rthem to figure out what went wrong and fix it and I don't think thats going to drive anyone away and I don't think that deleting some of these would be bitey. Many of these links where created before the advanced search was created and it required things to be exact match. So if I was looking for United States and typed in United states I wouldn't get a result because it wasn't a match. Thats not the case anymore. I also believe that we could continue to go back and forth, using links to various wiki policies and guidelines on the merits of why we should or should not have these links. Eventually though we will need to clean up some of these or Wikipedia will be flooded with a sea of redirects from typos, foreign links and people guessing at what someone might try and search for. As it is only a small percentage of the redirects that should, actually have the {{R from foreign}} or {{R from typo}} templates. --Kumioko (talk) 18:02, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Hard vs Soft redirects

I'm trying to start a discussion on hard vs soft redirects, and in particular on whether soft redirects could/should be used internally as a replacement for hard redirects in certain cases. If you would like to join in the discussion, please come do so at the soft redirect talk page. - TexasAndroid (talk) 21:36, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Tobey Black

I just came across this newly established redirect. The talk page is not set to Class=Redirect. It's no longer an article, but the stats include it as such [7]. Also see Category:Redirect-Class Canadian music articles and Talk:Tobey Black. I didn't see anything in the guideline dealing with the item's talk page. Please help. Thanks. Argolin (talk) 22:42, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I may have been too WP:BOLD in adding a third item to the guideline Redirect: Categorizing redirect pages. I have posted a question at Wikipedia_talk:Categorizing_redirects#Categorising the Discussion page of an article. I guess the discussion here should be some sort of addtion to the guideline regarding the changing an article to a redirect? The change of an article to a redirect effectively deletes the article per Tobey Black as done here [8].

The Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Redirection is concerned only with the name of the article. In the case of Tobey Black, it does not apply. Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#Criteria may apply per A7: "No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content)". However, I found this entry at allmusic.com: [9] (one of the websites listed as WP:RELIABLE at Wikipedia:BAND#Resources). My main concern is that the issue of WP:N (specifically WP:BAND). None of the many WP:MUSIC projects were alllowed to form Wikipedia:Consensus regarding the effective deletion of this article per WP:PROD, WP:Afd, or, if quick enough, at WP:SPEEDY.

I believe something needs to be added to this guideline. Thank-you. Argolin (talk) 05:27, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Issue with redirects

I originally posted this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect, but the last post before mine was March 1st. Hopefully more people actively watch this page.

I've noticed that some redirects do not display the most current revision of a target page. When I click on the page or discussion (which ever is appropriate) link at the top to go to the actual page, the current version displays. I originally thought this was a caching issue in browser, but noticed that the issue is only apparent when I haven't logged in. Is this related to the Wikipedia:Pending changes for article revisions? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 21:10, 24 March 2011 (UTC))

Are redirect talk pages also redirected?

Please weigh in at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#Are redirect talk pages also redirected?. Thanks. Aristophanes68 (talk) 23:21, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

ampersand<->and

Hi everyone. There's a discussion going at WP:BOTREQ and I'd like people's opinions on this. I propose that there be a bot (an automated computer program) that scans Wikipedia regularly - no more than once per week - and that it create redirects, where none exists, to ensure that:

• Every page that contains the phrase " & " has a redirect from " and ", with the spaces (eg for Morecambe & Wise Show (1978) Episodes, ensure that Morecambe and Wise Show (1978) Episodes redirects to it).
• Every page that contains the phrase " and " has a redirect from " & ", with and without spaces (eg for the page Dalziel and Pascoe, ensure that Dalziel & Pascoe, Dalziel&Pascoe, Dalziel &Pascoe and Dalziel& Pascoe all redirect to that page).

The bot would only create a redirect if no article or page currently exists for that search term. I can personally program the bot, if people think it's a good idea. The first time it runs it may create many such pages. From then on it will create fewer articles each time it is run. - Richard Cavell (talk) 04:02, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Why? Redirects for synonyms are generally accepted but that does not mean that the creation should be automated. I would much prefer to see editors continue exercising human judgment about which synonyms are appropriate. Rossami (talk) 05:11, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Dalziel and Pascoe <--> Dalziel & Pascoe seems like a good idea, but the various spaces variants seem overkill to me. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:23, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, the spaces like "XXX& YYY" seem a little unnecessary. Otherwise, seems like a good idea. Redirects are cheap. :) I recently found all articles with " and " in them and made the redirects from the ampersand version. I haven't done the reverse, i.e., making the redirect from AT and T to AT&T and the like. ^Avic_ennasis @ 11:17, 3 Nisan 5771 / 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. I can't see anything wrong with making it automated. Although, I agree that the redirects from typos with the spaces are unnecessary. They're "implausible typos" and qualify for speedy deletion. McLerristarr | Mclay1 11:29, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Could I just clarify people's views: It is proposed that AT&T should have a redirect from AT and T. What about AT & T? What about Morecambe&Wise (with no spaces at all)? - Richard Cavell (talk) 12:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe that as long as the title is balanced, it'll be fine. We are looking at what readers are likely to type (or copy/paste) into the search bar. XXX&YYY and XXX & YYY are likely - XXX& YYY, not so much. ^Avic_ennasis @ 21:03, 3 Nisan 5771 / 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with that, but with the exception of titles that start or end with "&". So XXX&YYY would have one but &XXX would not. Tideflat (talk) 22:11, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I did a database scan for all articles containing an ampersand in the title. Results: 12,192 articles, as seen at User:Avicennasis/sandbox4. Feel free to edit/copy/whatever that list as needed to suit your needs. :) Hope that helps. ^Avic_ennasis @ 02:12, 4 Nisan 5771 / 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm uncomfortable with such a large number of redirects being created by bot - some of them will undoubtedly be useful, but there will be many that aren't. I'll edit the list to strike those I really don't think will benefit. Thryduulf (talk) 07:14, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not going to use the list. It would be much more useful if you could come up with an algorithmic means of identifying articles that shouldn't have the redirects. Or if such a decision can only be made by a human, then oppose this request. - Richard Cavell (talk) 08:18, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Let me clarify: If my bot's going to do this, I'd prefer to generate the list of potential targets on the fly and use a blacklist to identify articles that should not have redirects created. If you mess with the list, please use strikethrough so that I can identify which items are on the blacklist, or create a separate blacklist. - Richard Cavell (talk) 10:54, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As a starting point for discussion, I think the following can be created by bot:

• Redirects from "word(s) & word(s)" to "word(s) and word(s)" and vice versa, e.g. Benson and Hedges → Benson & Hedges and The Black & White Minstrel Show → The Black and White Minstrel Show
• Redirects from "X & X" to "X and X" and vice versa (where X is one or more letters), e.g. FM and AM → FM & AM
• Redirects from "word & word(s)" and "word and word(s)" to "word&word(s)", e.g. Soap and Skin → Soap&Skin, Soap & Skin → Soap&Skin.
• Redirects from "X and X word(s)" to "X & X word(s)" and vice versa, e.g. C and F Agent → C & F Agent, Y & Z Holes → Y and Z Holes
• Redirects between all forms of "word(s) & word(s) & word(s)", "word(s) and word(s) and word(s)", "word(s) & word(s) and word(s)" and "word(s) and word(s) & word(s)", e.g Paris Conference on Passports & Customs Formalities & Through Tickets → Paris Conference on Passports & Customs Formalities and Through Tickets.
  • This should also work for titles like Northwest 6th & Davis Street and Northwest 5th & Couch Street

I think everything else though should be done either only by humans or with specific consensus (e.g. if there is a desire to create redirects from "Texas A and M" and/or "Texas A & M" to "Texas A&M", then that should be specifically requested, probably at WP:BOTREQ with a notice on the target talk page(s), Thryduulf (talk) 11:02, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Where should "Luther" be redirected?

I argue Luther should go to Luther (disambiguation), but other editors revert any change back to Martin Luther. Please weigh in at Talk:Luther#Do not redirect to Martin Luther. Thanks Aristophanes68 (talk) 05:25, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Bot for undoing self-redirects

Hi everyone. When a page links to itself, the software displays the text in bold and does not link it, like this: WT:Redirect. A self-link/self-redirect is therefore an error, unless it takes a person to a particular part of that page (eg Animal#Etymology).

I propose to set up a bot that will examine pages and, if the page contains a self-link/self-redirect, remove that link. Do you think this is a good idea? The bot would initially select pages at random or from recent changes, and eventually I propose that the bot will do this job incidentally as just one of many jobs that it will eventually perform on any page. - Richard Cavell (talk) 13:20, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

A self link is not always an error, and almost never is when the link is on a transcluded template (or other transcluded page for that matter). It would be a good thing for a tool that flags cleanup options for a human to apply or not apply. However, because there are a few cases where it might be desired (e.g. when linking to a redirect marked as {{R with possibilities}}) it isn't something that is suitable for automatic bot. Thryduulf (talk) 14:12, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

The method that I am describing would not identify links that are transcluded - I'm proposing to parse the wikitext, not the rendered HTML. I don't think I fully understand your example with the {{R with possibilities}}. Is that a specific example of the transclusion general case? - Richard Cavell (talk) 14:22, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

No it's nothing to do with transclusion, it's related to links to titles that redirect back to the current page where the redirect is tagged as described. For example, if Page X links to Page Y, where Page Y is a redirect back to page X that is marked as having possiblities [for expansion into an article], then removing the link to the redirect is not always going to be beneficial. Many of these will redirect to sections of the current article, and so should not be removed.

This leads me to think that not all such redirects are marked as such (e.g. I saw one the other day that was on an article about a make of cars that linked to a specific model that redirected to the section of the current article that listed the models. Unfortunately I can't remember the article in question), and so I don't think a bot should remove any links to redirects that target sections of the current article.

The point about transclusion is taken, but still many templates and other pages designed to be transcluded link to themselves purposefully, so this bot should not run on pages outside the main namespace. Thryduulf (talk) 22:24, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

• The proposed bot would never undo any links in transcluded templates. These links would only appear as self-linked in the transcluding page because of the nature of transclusion. I don't see what reason there can be for not removing them all from within articles. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:22, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
• Sounds useful to me. I take it it would be a bit more time-consuming to check for links to pages which redirect back to the original? -mattbuck (Talk) 16:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
  • The bot will obviously have to do more work to check self-redirects rather than self-links, but it's not a problem. I note Thryduulf's comment above - I'd like a clear consensus on whether we want to keep them. - Richard Cavell (talk) 23:30, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
• It sounds like a trivial edit that will have no impact on the reader's experience but will add a slew of entries in the database and clog up a whole bunch of watchlists. I have no objection to cleaning up those minor hiccups when making some other substantive edit to the page but a bot to do just this is going to create more work than it solves. Rossami (talk) 19:24, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

External redirects?

Is there a way to redirect to external sites?

This does not apply to wikipedia, but to my own wikimedia site.

Let's say I want to make a lot of pages containing a link to a certain site, eg. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set Mandelbrot], but I want to prepare for the future, for when I want to change them to another site, like [http://http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MandelbrotSet.html Mandelbrot]. It would be easier to just have the links point to a central location, like [[Mandelbrot]], and have that page (on my own wiki) redirect to the external site.

I tried the normal way of redirecting, only with an external link: #REDIRECT [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set Mandelbrot], but when I click the links, I just see the following:

Mandelbrot From <my wiki name> REDIRECT [1]

Is it possible to make it redirect automatically? --Zom-B (talk) 16:21, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe so (short of changing the code you're running). Wikipedia:Soft redirect talks about how Wikipedia handles redirects to Wikimedia sister projects. You could implement something similar on your site. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:08, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

MediaWiki is set to not allow external redirects by default. Redirecting out of your own domain a tactic common to hacker and other malicious sites and will be seen as very suspicious and will really hurt your search engine rankings. If you must, though, there are some extensions that you can add to allow non-standard functions like this. You could also try posting the standard HTML redirect command on the page - <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="1; url='http://www.example.com/'"> You'll have to put that command inside some parameters so that MediaWiki recognizes it as active HTML rather than text about HTML. If I remember right, you also have to configure $wgRawHtml. Or if you're obsoleting and redirecting the entire site, just make a text file with that command as it's sole content and save it as index.html in the folder that held your wiki. Rossami (talk) 03:34, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

REDIRECTs using parser functions

Following a discussion about the obvious problem with the REDIRECT Recent deaths (what's recent?), User:Gfoley4 came up with the clever idea of using the parser function "#time:Y" to make its target always the current year. However, it turned out that a REDIRECT so constructed will not function properly, but more behave like a double redirect. As that edit at Recent deaths has now been reverted, I've set up User:Michael Bednarek/sandbox (#REDIRECT [[Deaths in {{#time:Y}}]]) to show the faulty behaviour.

Is this known behaviour? If so, it should be documented at Wikipedia:Redirect. Preferrably, it should be fixed. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:18, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I guess it's unlikely the developers would treat this as a bug to be fixed. I believe (though I'm not sure) that redirects are handled through a special table in the database - the software doesn't check the content of the redirect page each time it deals with a redirected title - so it would require quite an overhaul of the software to make this work. The best thing to do would probably be to make a soft redirect or similar. (PS This limitation is already noted at Help:Redirect, which is the more technical description of the function - it probably isn't necessary to document it here as well, though add it if you want.) --Kotniski (talk) 10:11, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) It is already documented at Help:Redirect which states "Note that the redirect link must be explicit – it cannot contain magic words, templates, etc." That is the appropriate place to do so vs. this page as this page provides guidance on purpose and usage and the help page provides the how to & technical details. As far as changing how the software works, that would require the developers and your best bet is to file a enhancement request in MediaWiki's Bugzilla. -- JLaTondre (talk) 10:16, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the prompt replies, especially for the hint to the more relevant Help:Redirect page. 'Tis a pity about the technical limitations – Gfoley4's was such a clever idea. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:27, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Cross namespace redirects

Is Wiknic supposed to redirect to the relevant articlespace article (Community of Wikipedia#Wiknics]] or to WP: space? Marcus Qwertyus 16:33, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Categorising redirects.

This clearly states, "Discussion pages. If a discussion/talk page exists for an article, please change the article's class to "class=Redirect" for all projects," but this suggests that every misspelling, incorrect capitalization etc should be categorized to a project, which is patent nonsense and totally at odds with what happens when you move a page when the talkpage is, by default, redirected to the new page. I would change it myself now in a fit of rage at it, but I think it best I leave it to others more familiar with redirects. Please, somebody at least clarify it! Cheers. --Richhoncho (talk) 15:29, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Isn't that only for redirects that also have talk pages? I wonder what percentage of redirects have those? But you're right, it could be clearer. Aristophanes68 (talk) 02:49, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for response, I feel a little abashed at the moment, having not read correctly "talk page exists." Another editor was adding redirects to empty talkpages, and I undid all his good faith work by redirecting the talkpage, oh what a lot of time we wasted! Still think it could be a little clearer. I also note that not all projects like these to be added in any event. --Richhoncho (talk) 09:07, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Redirects and grammar

I am wondering whether there is a policy governing redirects and grammar? I found a reference to plurals but I am concerned about a foreign language term, actually a genitive case, which was left a redirect after I moved the article to the nominative case. I therefore put the redirect up for discussion. It's a rather obscure and not very helpful topic, so I don't think it's worth keeping, but others disagree. --FJS15 (talk) 18:17, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Question on Wikipedia redirects

If a page is redirected to another, doesn't normal process ask for the Talk page to be redirected also? I'm kind of puzzled in the situation at Death of Caylee Anthony with the Casey Anthony article being redirected there, but people above are asking for the associated Talk page to stay separate. Anyone have a good answer for this? -- Avanu (talk) 14:34, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I haven't checked in on the Casey Anthony thing in a few days, but from what you're saying here I guess that the question is "why isn't Talk:Casey Anthony redirected to Talk:Death of Caylee Anthony?", right? I think that sort of thing (redirecting the talk page to the article target talk page) makes sense normally, but in this case the discussion on Talk:Casey Anthony is directly about whether or not that page should be a redirect. Since there's a RFC there (or there was, at least, last time I checked), and the discussion is about the redirect, it seems perfectly reasonable and appropriate for that discussion to occur on the redirect page's talk page.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 15:02, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Someone had asked about making a Casey Anthony article on the Death of Caylee Anthony page, and I noticed there were several discussions at the Casey page and moved them over to the Caylee page and placed a redirect at the Casey article. So, you're saying that the creation of a new page is best at the Talk page of a non-existent article, rather than an article it would be spun out from? -- Avanu (talk) 15:17, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

The point is: redirects can have their own talk pages. Discussion should not be deleted simply to redirect the page. McLerristarr | Mclay1 08:22, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Odebrecht

This page should redirekt to Odebrecht (disambiguation)‎ because there are many names refering to Odebrecht. Somebody has redirected Odebrecht Organization to Odebrecht which is not logical.--Cruks (talk) 09:12, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I think you may be looking for WP:Requested moves. You moved the page from Odebrecht to Odebrecht Organization on July 28, without any discussion. Isa Roarte moved it back on July 31. This looks like WP:BRD -- you were bold and made a unilateral move and were reverted. Now the move should be discussed and establish consensus whether or not the organization is the primary topic for the term. older ≠ wiser 10:26, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

The article Odebrecht as it now is should be moved to a disambiguation page, which already exists and not back to Odebrecht. This seems very useless, since there are many names with Odebrecht. But, excuse me, I dont care what you do a kind of mess here on en.WP. The main thing is, that my system works on de.WP.--Cruks (talk) 11:53, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

This isn't de.WP. The article was at the present location for a very long time with no apparent problems giving some indication that it is correctly a primary topic. You attempted to change this without discussion, another editor reverted you and now it is time to discuss. However, this is not the correct forum for such a discussion, which should be on the talk page of one of the affected articles with notices places on the talk pages of the other affected articles. older ≠ wiser 13:14, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Redirect templates

What is the difference between listing a redirect using say {{R from alternate name}} or just putting in the category Category:Redirects from alternative names? They end up being categorized the same, so does it matter? I've noticed others using HotCat to enter the category rather than using the template. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars (talk) 20:12, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

The templates generate a message that is displayed on the redirect page (only under certain circumstances but we hope to get that changed eventually). Using a template also allows for updates to the categorisation to be made to all the pages at once. Some templates also include or . McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 98.148.231.244, 18 August 2011

Please redirect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlington_Public_Schools to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Burlington_Public_School,_Burlington_Oklahoma 98.148.231.244 (talk) 15:38, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Let's wait until the page is created first. — Bility (talk) 16:53, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

We don't normally redirect from mainspace --> projectspace. See WP:Cross-namespace redirects. -- œ^™ 18:37, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Problem with redirections to sections/anchors

If I create a page named redirection_page and add something like

#REDIRECT [[target_page#section]]

or

#REDIRECT [[target_page#anchor]]

this works fine for as long as I have JavaScript enabled. However, it will only take me to the start of the target_page article, not the section/anchor within, if JavaScript is disabled and I link to [[redirection_page]] in another article or type the name of the redirection_page in the search box. The resulting link displayed in the browser's link bar while viewing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/target_page

is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/redirection_page

If I then follow the "Redirected from redirection_page" link at the top of the article, I will be shown the redirection link like target_page#anchor on the redirection_page. Clicked, this link will correctly bring me to the desired anchor/section within the article.

It looks as if the hashed argument would get stripped off at some stage if not using JavaScript. I tried to URL encode the hash-mark using

#REDIRECT [[target_page%23section]]

or HTML encode it as follows:

#REDIRECT [[target_page#section]]

But this does not change anything.

Since the help pages read as if this should not be any problem at all, is this a known behaviour or limitation, perhaps only under certain other conditions? I'm using Firefox 6.0, and JavaScript is typically disabled for security reasons. Before I test more configurations, I would like to know if I can expect this to work at all. Thanks. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 15:42, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Suggested changes to {{R from alternative language}}

I have proposed some additions to make it possible to specify the alternative language, in a standardized and more convenient way than currently in place. Details are on the talk page. 155.33.149.25 (talk) 21:17, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Another reason for re-directs not mentioned in the article

I don't see the following on Wikipedia:Redirect#Purposes_of_redirects:

A redirect from a page about a company that was bought out by another company to the parent company. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=QNX_Software_Systems&action=history .

Is there any way to locate information that was available on Wikipedia before the company disappeared? Ottawahitech (talk) 17:01, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

In the case that you mentioned, QNX Software Systems, there is no history there. I think the redirect is incorrect. It should go to QNX. But your general point is true. I'd say it is covered by the bullet: Sub-topics or other topics which are described or listed within a wider article. There are lots of reasons a sub-topic title might redirect to a section of another article. older ≠ wiser 17:42, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I wonder how such a re-direct can be undone (so those who are interested can view the original content), if in fact it is "incorrect"? Ottawahitech (talk)

There are number of ways to display and edit the redirect page. Commonly by clicking on the link in the "(Redirected from ...)" notice at the top of the page. Once there, the redirect page can be edited just like any other page. See Help:Redirect for more information. older ≠ wiser 18:30, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

An argument against redirects for at least some common misspellings

I just went around and corrected a bunch of misspellings: "Tuscon, Arizona" is often written when "Tucson, Arizona" is meant. Because Tuscon, Arizona is a redirect, many authors do not notice their own error - but they would if the link turned up as a red link. There are reasons to redirect from misspellings to correct spellings, of course, but there is this downside.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:52, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, for those misspelling-redirects that are properly tagged with {{r from misspelling}} - it would be very easy and I think noncontroversial for a bot to go around and repair those redirects, or it could be a thing for AWB to autocorrect (I think there will be only very, very few intentional misspelling-redirects linked, and maybe those should not be tagged as {{r from misspelling}}). WP:BOTREQ anyone? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:18, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Redirects with intentional "misspellings" should be tagged with {{R from alternate spelling}} or a similar variant. I agree there should be extremely few intentional links through {{r from misspelling}} or its variants. The only cases that come to mind are where a misspelling is linked in a direct quotation or where an article might be discussing the misspelling itself as an encyclopedic topic. older ≠ wiser 12:19, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Rather than a bot auto-fixing, perhaps it'd be better for it to add it to something link a [[Category:Links to redirects from misspellings]] or some such; just one more list for us lowly humans to peruse and ponder.  Now if  Preview  could mark {{r from misspelling}} links differently from standard (example) that might prompt the editor to correct when posting (assuming they preview).  But is it reasonable for the server to scan the contents/flags of all redirects on a page while builting the preview HTML? — Who R you? Talk 07:33, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

And, uhm…, this may be a dumb question, but isn't {{r from misspelling}} supposed to add some nifty text, below the redirect (as well as adding it to the appropriate category); and if so, anyone know why this one "Tuscon, Arizona" doesn't (at least for me)? — Who R you? Talk 07:59, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

It sometimes does.

As for the suggestion to disallow redirects from misspellings: this is part of the German Wikipedia's de:Hilfe:Weiterleitung#Falschschreibungen and quite rigourously enforced: the term de:Boing 747 has been deleted four times now. On balance, I find that less reader-friendly than the practice here. The important benefit of redirects from misspellings seems to me that search terms entered mistakenly will go directly to the intended article. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:17, 29 October 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)

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)

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)