The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was convert to hard redirect and protect. There is little support for returning this to a redlink, so the only choice is between keeping the soft redirect and converting it to normal hard redirect. The long and sordid history of this title is already documented at many locations in Wikipedia: space, which is where records of this type belong. They certainly do not belong in article space. Keeping the soft redirect is an unnecessary self-reference; while interesting as a tidbit of Wikipedian history, it is of no use to readers of an encyclopedia.-- Aervanath ( talk) 19:14, 9 May 2009 (UTC) reply

Technically, this is neither an article nor a redirect, so I'm bringing it here to MfD. The weather in London is a completely implausible search term for London#Climate; no one would think of adding "the" in front of "weather in London." In similar cases, I might argue to keep the page for historical purposes; however, for this page, that argument does not apply, as it has historically been a redlink and should remain such. There is no encyclopedic or useful purpose for keeping this page; create-protection has superseded the old method of creating the page and protecting it. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:48, 30 April 2009 (UTC) reply

• keep entirely a reasonable place to redirect to. Graeme Bartlett ( talk). This is also the topic of a proposed policy Wikipedia:Intentionally permanent red link that has not gained consensus. This has one of the longest delete logs in Wikipedia. Graeme Bartlett ( talk) 05:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC) reply
  • By a Google Search, there are only 30,500 hits compared to 366,000 hits. 30,500 hits might seem like a lot, until you realize that the first four hits don't even contain the phrase and the fifth is the Wikipedia page. When (if, for that matter) people on Google search for "the weather in London," they don't expect to see a page saying "Soft Redirect" on it. Plus, red link is a permanent red link, for example; just because the policy has not gained consensus does not mean The weather in London cannot be a permanent red link. Forget the "intentional" part; The weather in London is simply a repeatedly recreated page, which by policy should be create-protected. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:51, 30 April 2009 (UTC) reply
•  Administrator note This discussion has been transcluded to WP:Redirects for discussion.-- Aervanath ( talk) 05:25, 30 April 2009 (UTC) reply
• Another debate over this? Seriously? -- MZMcBride ( talk) 06:09, 30 April 2009 (UTC) reply

• Would this be the most debated for deletion article ever? Graeme Bartlett ( talk) 06:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC) reply

No there is an article nominated 18 times. ( Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gay Nigger Association of America (18th nomination) Graeme Bartlett ( talk) 06:52, 30 April 2009 (UTC) reply

Right, but most of those were joke nominations. "Daniel Brandt" was nominated about ten times. "List_of_films_that_most_frequently_use_the_word_"fuck"" was nominated about ten times as well. "Cleveland_steamer" was nominated 9 times. The more you know. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 06:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC) reply

• Keep I argued to keep it as a red link in the first RfD, but a consensus happened on keeping it as a soft redirect, and this consensus was confirmed in the second RfD. The nom doesn't raise any new arguments that haven't been pounded to death in past discussions. -- Enric Naval ( talk) 12:46, 30 April 2009 (UTC) reply

P.D.: yes, there is a new feature that would now prevent this page from being re-created, but this would be a bitt moot because a) people in the previous discussions, like myself, argued as if they thought that this feature was already available, and b) I'm not even sure of how old that feature is, since back in May 2008 first MfD for the talk page contains a complaint that the deleted article had been create-protected! -- Enric Naval ( talk) 14:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC) reply

• Make this a hard redirect Unless there is something truly notable about London's weather, it is a component of London and should just be redirected there. — BQZip01 —  ^talk 07:49, 3 May 2009 (UTC) reply
• Make into hard redirect It's very highly plausible that someone might type this in when looking for the climate of London. Given this redirect's history, I see no harm in a protected redirect. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{( Many otters • One hammer • HELP)} 17:11, 30 April 2009 (UTC) reply
• keep as the target is entirely relevent to the term. PaulJones ( talk) 19:15, 30 April 2009 (UTC) reply
• Suggestion: how about we delete this page, but use an {{ editnotice}} to display the informative text? That might be the best solution here. On previous discussions I've argued for keeping this as a soft redirect, mainly in order to keep that text there; but I hadn't thought of the editnotice functionality until now, which might provide a way to cut this Gordian knot. Robofish ( talk) 10:08, 1 May 2009 (UTC) reply

  To explain for anyone who doesn't get it: this would enable the page to remain a red link, but anyone editing it and attempting to create the page would see an explanatory notice telling them why it doesn't exist. This would work, right? Robofish ( talk) 10:10, 1 May 2009 (UTC) reply

  • Anyway, failing the above suggestion, Keep. I still think the explanatory text needs to be here somehow. Robofish ( talk) 04:32, 4 May 2009 (UTC) reply
• Make into a hard redirect--or leave it alone. Either would do. What does not make sense is having this discussion. DGG ( talk) 16:51, 1 May 2009 (UTC) reply
• Make this a hard redirect, obviously. TerriersFan ( talk) 15:12, 2 May 2009 (UTC) reply
• Hard redirect and an editnotice as well. Keeping this in its current form doesn't seem to serve any non-archaeological purpose. Orpheus ( talk) 08:28, 3 May 2009 (UTC) reply
• Delete, If someone wants to know the weather in London, they aren't going to find it on an encyclopedia. The climate, yes; but that is different. Tavix |  Talk  14:59, 3 May 2009 (UTC) reply
• Again? I thought that the efforts of several editors ( including myself) to remove all uses of The weather in London as an example of a red link had been enough to allow it to become a proper redirect. Keep and convert to a hard redirect; were it not for its history of use as an example of a red link, nobody would think of deleting it as an "unlikely redirect (R3)". -- cesarb ( talk) 21:50, 3 May 2009 (UTC) reply
• Redirect to London#Climate. Although the title violates naming conventions, repeated recreation should be a clear sign a redirect to the proper location is needed. For non-Wikipedians soft-redirects are confusing, so I agree with everyone who said it so far, that the redirect should be hard. Pointing them to the right page immediately will teach them naming conventions, context and as an additional bonus puts it under the eyes of several hundred of not thousands of editors ready to revert any changes that aren't appropriate. - Mgm| ^(talk) 08:35, 4 May 2009 (UTC) reply
• Keep because of historical references to the "article" in WP. A redirect would totally make such references meaningless, and be a really, really, really unlikely thing for anyone to actually look for as an article otherwise. Collect ( talk) 13:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC) reply
• Just keep it as it is. Having it as a redlink will make people create this over and over again, but as it's protected, there's no such problem if it exists. (Or can you ban article names?) Hard redirecting it will make the historical references meaningless. darkweasel94 (talk) 15:18, 6 May 2009 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.