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discussion and see a list of open tasks. Note: This banner should be placed on the talk pages of project, template and category pages that exist and operate to maintain redirects. This banner is not designed to be placed on the talk pages of most redirects and almost never on the talk pages of
mainspace redirects. For more information see the template documentation.RedirectWikipedia:WikiProject RedirectTemplate:WikiProject Redirectredirect pages
WP:BLAR suggests it's good practice to add a short notice at the talk page of the target article. Is there a template (e.g. simliar to {{Merged-to}}) that we can use to satisfy this? ~
Kvng (
talk)
15:38, 2 January 2024 (UTC)reply
Hello, editor
Kvng, the only template associated with WP:BLAR that I know of is {{uw-blar}}, which is a notice for the talk page of the blanked article's creator. For this purpose the general {{notice}} template can be installed on the target's talk page below any project banners with a short notice about the blank-and-redirect. P.I. Ellsworth ,
ed.put'er there18:54, 2 January 2024 (UTC)reply
Having project banners on talk pages of redirects like
this, where the target of the redirect has a more comprehensive set of banners, seems pretty useless at best. Would it make sense for a bot to clean up banners in this sort of instance where the banner is present at the target's talk page? {{u|Sdkb}}talk00:11, 4 February 2024 (UTC)reply
No cleanup required, because more and more projects have embraced the "redirect class" and sort them to categories to track them. If I'm not mistaken, editors are not supposed to create talk pages just to banner them, but if the talk page is already there, then editors are encouraged to banner them. I've been bannering redirect talk pages for nearly fifteen years. P.I. Ellsworth ,
ed.put'er there01:39, 4 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Encouraging editors to banner all redirect talk pages that exist doesn't sound like a great idea. Since in almost all cases, the redirect page will require the same banners as the target, so bannering it just creates a syncing/completion/
redundancy problem, where the target will always have a better set of banners than the redirect. {{u|Sdkb}}talk20:07, 4 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Adding banners seems to reduce the syncing problem by making the talk page of the redirect match that of the target. However, the real problem may be that the redirect should not have a talk page at all.
Certes (
talk)
20:30, 4 February 2024 (UTC)reply
My thought is that a single concept (i.e. the subject of a page) should have only a single centralized record of the talk banners that apply to it, per
DRY. That record already exists at the talk page of the target. Having a bunch of copies of it at whichever talk pages for incoming redirects happen to exist, rather than assuming that the same project banners apply, is what creates a syncing problem.
Now, there are some times where a banner might apply to a redirect but not the target. For instance, Florida Tech Magazine (a redirect to the university) could reasonably be tagged with {{WikiProject Magazines}}, which would not have been appropriate for the university page. That's why I proposed exempting banners which are not present at the target page.
But in general, we already have enough trouble keeping project tags accurate/complete/up-to-date for 6 million articles, let alone for however many articles+redirects there are. The approach I'm suggesting also aligns with
how we approach redirect categorization, which we allow only when there's a category that wouldn't apply to the target. Does that help clarify? {{u|Sdkb}}talk20:43, 4 February 2024 (UTC)reply
I don't think we should encourage creating talk pages only to add a banner. However, there is little downside and some potential benefits for projects to be able to track these, especially in cases where the redirect has potential to become a standalone article.
older ≠
wiser20:54, 4 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Deprecation of redirecting the talk page of a mainspace redirect
A talk page is just a regular page and can therefore also be a redirect. This is sometimes done when turning a page into a redirect and always done when
moving a page since that also moves its talk page. Doing this during a move is fine in my opinion but in almost every other case, redirecting a talk page is a bad practice that should be discouraged. The reason is that if someone retargets one of the redirects but forgets to retarget the other, editors who wish to discuss the redirect will do so at the wrong place. Redirecting the talk page also provides no benefit in comparison with {{talk page of redirect}} which already acts like a soft redirect that can update itself when its page is retargeted.
So, my proposal is that we add this to WP:R or
WP:TALK:
The talk page of a mainspace redirect should not be redirected unless that was the result of a
page move or as specified in
WP:TALKCENT. In all other cases, {{talk page of redirect}} should be used instead.
Otherwise we end up with cases like
Acts of God (book) where the page itself is a redirect to
Acts of God (disambiguation) but its talk page redirected to
Talk:Acts of God (novel) before I fixed it. Note that the utility of talk page redirects is much higher in other namespaces. Someone who looks up WT:R probably wants to end up here instead of discussing the redirect itself. So those should be allowed but people should still remember to keep them synced up (not likely that WP:R will ever change but other shortcuts might). I'd also be open to the idea of having a bot sync up such redirects automatically.
Nickps (
talk)
13:31, 15 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Well, I thought about it again and I'm going about this the wrong way. I'll just ask at
WP:BOTR first and if it gets declined then we should consider this. But, if someone else thinks that the change I proposed above is worth making anyway, they are free to pick this up and even open an RfC.
Nickps (
talk)
23:08, 15 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I vaguely recall some cases where a talk page was kept so that its history was retained. That is, the talk discussion had some possibly useful information regarding the now-redirected associated page?
Johnuniq (
talk)
04:03, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Subtopic in lead: use targeted or untargeted redirect?
If a subtopic is mentioned in the lead of a page of a larger topic, is there guidance on whether the redirect for the subtopic should be:
Targeted to a specific section on the page related to the subtopic
Untargeted, where context of the subtopic's relation to the larger topic is introduced in the lead
I don't know about any policy, guidance, or essay that answers this specific question. My answer would be to think about where the reader would like to be redirected to and point to that. An easy example is if the subject of the redirect is not mentioned in the lead. In that case, it seems pretty clear to me, you'd redirect to the section where the subject is mentioned. -
Butwhatdoiknow (
talk)
15:48, 27 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I would think that if there is meaningful mention in the lead, then being redirect to the top would be preferable to being dropped in the middle of a page, often with no immediate context of where and why you ended up here. —
Bagumba (
talk)
16:56, 29 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Linking to a section from a redirect creates more
WP:ASTONISHMENT than linking to the top of an article where the linked term is mentioned (ideally in bold). The first two examples get this right. The third is a little confounding but I can't think of a way to improve it so would advocate for leaving it as it is. ~
Kvng (
talk)
19:20, 5 May 2024 (UTC)reply
Ah, I didn't realize the style guide is being deprecated. Yes, that seems like a better target. But the same question still applies. Sdkbtalk22:52, 13 May 2024 (UTC)reply
I have noticed that there are books (often novels) with a main space article, and the sequels to the books do not have their own articles, but rather are mentioned in a section, often named "Sequels". The redirects for the sequels often redirect to the section.
The problem is, when the name of a sequel is typed into the search Wikipedia field, what comes up prior to hitting Enter and invoking the redirect is the short description of the main space article. It would be ideal if redirects were allowed to have short descriptions that would override the main space article short descriptions in such circumstances.
So for example, we have a novel Argentina Wanderings (1971) by Juan Smith. In the Sequel section are listed novels Brazil Wanderings (1972) and Chile Wanderings (1973). When we search for Chile Wanderings we get "Argentina Wanderings 1971 novel by Juan Smith" displayed before we hit enter. Ideally we should get "Chile Wanderings 1973 novel by Juan Smith". The redirect would then function the same.
What do you think? Is there already such functionality via a different means that I don't know about? If this is not the place to propose this where would be the right place?
The pseudo-short description I'm seeing is "redirect to [target article]". In what context is the SD of the target article shown instead? I assume you are using the Visual Editor and start typing a link in the Wikipedia section. When I do this for an example redirect "Billi Bruno", I see suggestions of "
According to Jim / American comedy television series" and "Billi Bruno / redirect to According to Jim". This doesn't always work: if I try "Aaron Weiss" I just get a list of irrelevant people with similar names. Are we talking about the same feature?
Certes (
talk)
17:32, 23 May 2024 (UTC)reply
I think what Tfdavisatsnetnet is asking about is similar to redirects from songs to an album. For example, when I enter "Above the Law (Barbra Streisand song)" into the search box, the top result displays as "Guilty Pleasures (Barbra Streisand album)" and "2005 studio album by Barbra Streisand". I think the suggestion is whether it might be possible for the redirect to display something different.
older ≠
wiser17:44, 23 May 2024 (UTC)reply
I think you are correct, though the song/album relationship is a bit too fluid to benefit from my proposal (a song can be on multiple albums). Liu1126 has a better example below.
Tfdavisatsnetnet (
talk)
21:14, 23 May 2024 (UTC)reply
Best example
I think what you mean is when you type a redirect into the search bar (e.g.
Mithridates de differentis linguis), the target page shows up in the dropdown (in this case,
Conrad Gessner)? What happens when a redirect is searched for depends on the skin. In skins that do show short descriptions (Vector 2022 and Minevra Neue), when a redirect title is typed into the search bar, only the target article shows up in the dropdown. Even if a short description is added, the dropdown just won't display the redirect page. In the other skins (Vector legacy, MonoBook, Timeless), the redirect does show up, but those skins don't display the short description.
It might be possible to customise this by editing your own CSS and JS files (I'm saying "might" because I've never seen a user script that manipulates the search elements), but if you want to make it a sitewide standard (regardless of whether it would take a simple edit to
MediaWiki:Common.css or a rewrite by the devs at server side), it might be better to start an RFC somewhere more visible, like
WP:VPT.
Liu1126 (
talk)
17:41, 23 May 2024 (UTC)reply
Yes, that is what I mean, and that is a great example. I am arguing that a redirect of "Mithridates de differentis linguis" that reads
{short description|1555 work by Conrad Gessner} (note: I removed the second brackets for rendering)
would be superior to just the second line alone, provided that the Skin is set to substitute the proposed short description of the redirect ('1555 work by Conrad Gessner') for that of the article ('Swiss physician, bibliographer and naturalist (1516–1565)') - after all, Mithridates de differentis linguis is not a Swiss physician. It should be a site-wide standard. Let me know what you think! I will look into
WP:VPT (but I will hold off from making a proposal for a few days as the feedback comes in here), thanks!
Tfdavisatsnetnet (
talk)
21:09, 23 May 2024 (UTC)reply
Yes, that is the way it is now. I am proposing that the logic be changed to allow it. BTW I am currently looking through the VLP archives to see if this has been proposed before.
Tfdavisatsnetnet (
talk)
22:44, 23 May 2024 (UTC)reply
It's nothing that we, as English Wikipedia, can change. It's part of the
MediaWiki software, and to alter that, you need to go through
phabricator:. They will be wanting a very strong reason to change behaviour that has existed in that form for over 23 years - since at least April 2001, which is the very early days of Wikipedia. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk)
16:22, 24 May 2024 (UTC)reply
I'm not quite sure what the OP is suggesting, but I very strongly agree with the consensus in the previous discussion that replacing [[redirect]] with [[target|redirect]] is something that should not be done.
Thryduulf (
talk)
11:39, 23 July 2024 (UTC)reply
I also agree with that consensus.
I think the OP was about people changing [[target|redirect]] to [[redirect]]. I think I've seen some consensus that such changes should generally not be done as the only reason for an edit but should instead be done alongside a more substantive edit.
Mgp28 (
talk)
12:30, 23 July 2024 (UTC)reply
As well as I know it, an important reason to use the redirect is that it might be worth its own article someday. For the [[target|redirect]] case, one should consider the possibility of a new article, and which one should be used. I suspect most often it should be [[redirect]], but maybe not always.
Gah4 (
talk)
17:42, 23 July 2024 (UTC)reply
Over the past few weeks I've been removing piped links using
User:Nardog/Unpipe. In all this work I've had one objection that doing so may create a situation where there are multiple links pointing to the same target, potentially some using one redirect and some using another and some direct. The inconvenience this poses for readers is that their browser can't accurately track which articles they've visited and change blue links to purple appropriately. I don't see this discussed in
WP:NOTBROKEN but it does seem to be a valid concern. I have been addressing this by eliminating unnecessary
duplicate links and editing the article to use consistent terminology and thus consistent linking. ~
Kvng (
talk)
14:59, 24 July 2024 (UTC)reply
OK, but as above, link names should consider the idea of a possible new page replacing the redirect. I can imagine, though maybe not think of an example, where one might use the redirect, and one not. The context of the links could be different in a way not so obvious to me right now.
Gah4 (
talk)
19:51, 25 July 2024 (UTC)reply
Yes, I frequently run across examples of this. I'll try to remember to pop back here and update next time I run across one. An unpiped link is more robust in terms of
WP:ASTONISH and general maintenance this is probably a more important concern than the link tracking. ~
Kvng (
talk)
15:25, 28 July 2024 (UTC)reply