Atkinspedia:Redirect
From Atkinspedia
- For general info on creating redirects see Help:Redirect.
Contents |
How to make a redirect
To redirect a page (1) to a different page (2), enter the following on the top of page 1.
#REDIRECT [[NAME OF PAGE 2]]
For example, to redirect the Cambridge University page to the University of Cambridge page, edit the Cambridge University page and enter:
#REDIRECT [[University of Cambridge]]
Don't make double redirects (a redirect that points to another redirect); they don't work, create slow, unpleasant experiences for the reader, waste server resources, and make the navigational structure of the site confusing.
Double redirects are usually created after a move when old redirects are left unchanged and pointing towards an old name.
Another type of undesirable redirect is a self-redirect: an article that redirects to itself through a redirect.
Please note that you can redirect only to articles, not sections in them; although the syntax allows them, they don't work:
#REDIRECT [[University of Cambridge#History]]
Everything after the redirect line will be blanked when you save the page. Any text on the same line as the redirect will stay, but will not be visible unless someone edits the page.
To go back and edit your redirect after it's working, add ?redirect=no to the end of the URL for your redirect:
http://en.Atkinspedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_University?redirect=no
To add a reason, select one of the tags from the Tag column below and add it one space after and on the same line as #REDIRECT [[Wherever]]. For example, on the redirect page University of cambridge,
#REDIRECT [[University of Cambridge]] {{R from other capitalisation}}
That will also add the redirect to the category listed in the Category column below. Note that there must be a space between the end of the redirect code and the template code for this to work properly.
More examples are included below:
What do we use redirects for?
| Reason | Usage notes, and text that will be shown | Tag / Category to find articles so tagged |
|---|---|---|
| Abbreviations |
This is a redirect from a title with an abbreviation. For more information, follow the category link. | {{R from abbreviation}} |
| Misspellings | Template:R from misspelling
| {{R from misspelling}} |
| Other spellings, other punctuation | Template:R from alternate spelling
| {{R from alternate spelling}} |
| Other capitalisations, to ensure that "Go" to a mixed-capitalisation article title is case-insensitive | Template:R from other capitalisation
Adding a redirect for mixed-capitalisation article titles (e.g., Isle of Wight) allows "Go" to these articles to be case-insensitive. For example, without the redirect Isle of wight a "Go" for "Isle Of wight" or any capitalisation other than exactly 'Isle of Wight' would not find the article Isle of Wight. Why: Articles whose titles contain mixed-capitalisation words (not all initial caps, or not all lower case except the first word) are found via "Go" only by an exact case match. (Articles, including redirects, whose titles are either all initial caps or only first word capitalised are found via "Go" using a case-insensitive match.) Note: "Go" related redirects are needed only if the article title has two or more words and words following the first have different capitalisations. They are not needed, for example, for proper names which are all initial caps. Examples:
| {{R from other capitalisation}} |
| Other names, pseudonyms, nicknames, and synonyms | Template:R from alternate name
| {{R from alternate name}} |
| Scientific names | Template:R from scientific name
| {{R from scientific name}} |
| Scientific names | Template:R to scientific name
| {{R to scientific name}} |
| Other languages | Template:R from alternate language | {{R from alternate language}} |
| Accents |
This is a redirect from a title in basic ASCII to the formal article title, with differences that are not diacritical marks (accents, umlauts, etc.) Use this redirect link (without piping) when the page concerns language translation or English language equivalents. Other pages using this link should be updated to replace text with the redirect target (again, without piping). For more information, follow the category link.
| {{R from ASCII}} |
| Plurals | Template:R from plural
Note that [[greenhouse gas]]es shows up as greenhouse gases, so it is not usually necessary to redirect plurals. However third-party websites started adding automatic links to Atkinspedia from their topics (see, e.g., [1]). Many of them follow the opposite naming convention, i.e., topics are named in plural, and the link to Atkinspedia may land into an empty page, if there is no redirect. | {{R from plural}} |
| Related words | Template:R from related word | {{R from related word}} |
| Sub-topics or closely related topics that should be explained within the text | Template:R with possibilities
| {{R with possibilities}} |
| Facilitate disambiguation |
This is a redirect to a disambiguation page. This redirect is used by links that should always point to the disambiguation page, rather than be disambiguated. For more information, follow the category link.
| {{R to disambiguation page}} |
| To track statements that date quickly |
This redirect page affects an "as of ..." link. All redirects should use capitalized month names. The primary purpose of linking to this redirect is to keep track (using the "Whatlinkshere" feature) of information that was current in the year when the link to this redirect was created, but may need updating later. For more information, follow the category link.
| {{R for as of}} |
| To redirect to decade article | Template:R to decade | {{R to decade}} |
| To redirect from a shortcut | Template:R from shortcut
| {{R from shortcut}} |
| Oldstyle CamelCase links |
This is a redirect from a CamelCase title. In the initial versions of Atkinspedia, all links had to be CamelCase. They are kept to keep edit history and to avoid breaking links that may have been made externally. For more information, follow the category link.
| {{R from CamelCase}} |
| links autogenerated from EXIF information |
This is a redirect of a wikilink created from JPEG EXIF information (i.e. the "metadata" section on some image description pages). Since MediaWiki offers no control over the link target of these autogenerated wikilinks, redirects like this are created to make the wikilinks useful. WARNING: It might appear that no pages link to this redirect. This is because the EXIF links don't show up in these listings. This redirect is most probably not orphaned! See also: Category:Redirects
| {{R from EXIF}} |
| From school microstub to merge location | Template:R from school
| {{R from school}} |
- Avoiding broken links (see below)
- Minor but notable topics
Sub-topic redirects are often temporary, eventually being replaced by fully fledged articles on the sub-topic in question. Be conservative when creating sub-topic redirects — they can sometimes be counter-productive, because they disguise the absence of a proper article from editors. Sub-topic redirects should only be used where the main article has a section on the sub-topic. For example, denial of service has a section on distributed denial of service. Sub-topics should be boldfaced on their first appearance in the section, to indicate that they are in fact alternate titles or sub-titles.
In accordance with Atkinspedia:naming conventions (precision) it's best to have an article at a well-defined, unambiguous term, with redirects from looser colloquial terms, rather than vice versa.
Some editors prefer to avoid redirects and link directly to the target article, as it is reported that redirects lower search engine rankings.
See also: Atkinspedia:Template messages/Redirect pages which contains a somewhat longer list of available redirect templates
Renamings and merges
We try to avoid broken links because they annoy visitors. Therefore, if we change the layout of some section of Atkinspedia, or we merge two duplicate articles, we always leave redirects in the old location to point to the new location. Search engines and visitors will probably have linked to that page at that url. If the page is deleted, potential new visitors from search engines will be greeted with an edit window. The same is true for anyone who previously bookmarked that page, and so on.
On a small scale, this applies to cases where we had duplicate articles on some subject, or lots of twisty little stubs on different aspects of the same overall subject. On a larger scale, we've had a few fairly major reorganisations:
- Moving away from CamelCase article names
- Moving away from having homepages in the article namespace (see User:Tim Starling/Redirects from : to User: for a partial list)
- Moving away from using subpages in the article namespace
When should we delete a redirect?
To delete a redirect without replacing it with a new article, list it on redirects for deletion. See deletion policy for details on how to nominate pages for deletion.
This isn't necessary if you just want to replace a redirect with an article, or change where it points: see How do I change a redirect? for instructions on how to do this. If you want to swap a redirect and an article, but are not able to move the article to the location of the redirect please use Atkinspedia:Requested moves to request help from an admin in doing that.
The major reasons why deletion of redirects is harmful are:
- a redirect may contain nontrivial edit history;
- if a redirect is reasonably old, then it is quite possible that its deletion will break links in old, historical, versions of some other articles — such an event is very difficult to envision and even detect.
Therefore consider the deletion only of either really harmful redirects or of very recent ones.
You might want to delete a redirect if one or more of the following conditions is met (but note also the exceptions listed below this list):
- The redirect page makes it unreasonably difficult for users to locate similarly named articles via the search engine. (see m:redirects in search results — proposed software changes for proposals to lessen this impact)
- The redirect might cause confusion. For example, if "Adam B. Smith" was redirected to "Andrew B. Smith", because Andrew was accidentally called Adam in one source, this could cause confusion with the article on Adam Smith, so it should be deleted.
- The redirect is offensive, such as "Joe Bloggs is a Loser" to "Joe Bloggs", unless "Joe Bloggs is a Loser" is discussed in the article.
- The redirect makes no sense, such as redirecting [[Pink elephants painting daisies]] to love.
- It is a cross-space redirect out of article space, such as one pointing into the User or Atkinspedia namespace. Note that while "WP:" shortcut redirects (like WP:RFD) are technically in the main article space, they are typically treated as their own "pseudo-namespace". All "articles" beginning with "WP:" are in fact redirects.
- If the redirect is broken, meaning it redirects to an article that does not exist, it can be deleted immediately, though you should check that there is not an alternative place it could be appropriately redirected to first.
However, avoid deleting such redirects if:
- They have a potentially useful page history. If the redirect was created by renaming a page with that name, and the page history just mentions the renaming, and for one of the reasons above you want to delete the page, copy the page history to the Talk page of the article it redirects to. The act of renaming is useful page history, and even more so if there has been discussion on the page name.
- They would aid accidental linking and make the creation of duplicate articles less likely, either by redirecting a plural to a singular, or by redirecting a frequent misspelling to a correct spelling, or by redirecting a misnomer to a correct term, or by redirecting to a synonym, etc. In other words, redirects with no incoming links are not candidates for deletion on those grounds because they are of benefit to the browsing user. Some extra vigilance by editors will be required to minimize the occurrence of those frequent misspellings in the article texts because the linkified misspellings will not appear as broken links.
- They aid searches on certain terms.
- You risk breaking external or internal links by deleting the redirect. Old CamelCase links and old subpage links should be left alone if there are any existing external links pointing to them.
- Someone finds them useful. Hint: If someone says they find a redirect useful, they probably do. You might not find it useful — this is not because the other person is a liar, but because you browse Atkinspedia in different ways.
- The redirect is to a plural form or to a singular form.
For example, redirecting Dubya to George W. Bush might be considered offensive, but the redirect aids accidental linking, makes the creation of duplicate articles less likely, and is useful to some people, so it should not be deleted.
What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects?
We follow the "principle of least astonishment" — after following a redirect, the reader's first question is likely to be: "hang on ... I wanted to read about this. Why has the link taken me to that?". Make it clear to the reader that they have arrived in the right place.
Normally, we try to make sure that all "inbound redirects" are mentioned in the first couple of paragraphs of the article. For example:
- Longships were boats used by the Vikings...
- longship, redirect from viking ship
- Edvard Munch (1863–1944) was ... The broadest collection of his works is at on display at the Munch Museum at...
- Edvard Munch, redirect from Munch Museum
Don't cause a secondary redirect. They don't work like a primary redirect; same with tertiary redirects.
Self-links, duplicate links
Avoid self-links, including self-links through redirects ("loop links"). Also, avoid having two links that go to the same place. These can confuse readers, and cause them to unnecessarily load the same page twice.
Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken
Some editors are tempted, upon finding links using a legitimate redirect target, to edit the page to "fix" the link so that it points "straight" at the "correct" page. Unless the link displays incorrectly—for instance, if the link is to a misspelling, or if the hint that appears when you hover over the link is misleading—there is no need to edit the link. Most especially, there should never be a need to replace [[redirect]] with [[direct|redirect]].
Some editors are under the mistaken impression that fixing such links improves the capacity of the Atkinspedia servers. But because editing a page is thousands of times more expensive for the servers than following a redirect, the opposite is actually true.
See also
- Atkinspedia:Soft redirect
- Atkinspedia:How to edit a page
- Atkinspedia:How to rename (move) a page
- Atkinspedia:Redirects for deletion
- Atkinspedia:Redirects with possibilities
- User:Daniel Quinlan/redirects-project
- Atkinspedia:List of interwiki redirects
- Atkinspedia:Double redirects (maintenance list for items to be fixed)
- Atkinspedia:Redirects to be made
- Atkinspedia:Disambiguation
