Wikipedia talk:Redirects for discussion

Mis-spelling policy

I'd like to suggest that we try and come up with a policy about mis-spelling redirects (instead of arguing each one out separately).

My position is that for any word, there are a multitude of potential mis-spellings, and I see no reason preferentially treat one misspelling (which someone has accidentally created on Wikipedia) over all the others (which haven't been).

Not that I have a blanket rule against variant spelling links, as you can see from Thutmose (which you can find explained here).

I feel that if you happen to have some evidence that a particular misspelling is a common mis-spelling, or alternatively that it's an alternative spelling which is in non-trivial use, then that's an OK reason to keep it. If nothing else, it will prevent someone from creating duplicate content when they think something "isn't there".

However, the bulk of mis-spellings come from a dropped, or typoed character (e.g. "entaglement" or "entanglrment" for "entaglement"), and I think those should be delete without debate.

Noel 16:29, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you here - 'common' misspellings are good redirects, 'random' misspellings just clutter up the database. Which of course leaves the question of which are 'common' and which 'random'. Andre Engels 10:01, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Whether a misspelling is 'random' or 'common' could be found using the Google test. Jay 09:17, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Right ;)

As long as we don't have another tool, I'm not quite sure what we'd use instead. BTW there is a project to expand these redirects further, see User:Daniel_Quinlan/redirects.

We could build a List of redirects of misspelings similar to Wikipedia:Links_to_disambiguating_pages and generate a list like Wikipedia:Disambiguation_pages_with_links. This way the redirects will be put to some use. -- User:Docu

What does this mean, "clutter up the database"? When Wikipedia is slow, it's not because of large redirects. If a misspelling redirect exists, then that is prima facie evidence that the word is ; it may be mispelt again. We all have better things to do than to delete things that do no harm and clearly do a slight amount of good. This is why it's been Wikipedia policy from the beginning (or at least since I arrived in 2002) to not delete mispelt redirects, and a good policy it is too. -- Toby Bartels 01:22, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Let's ignore the technical argument, because clearly the database can deal with it. Let's focus instead on the "why single out some typos for special condideration" argument. You say it's "evidence that that word is sometimes misspelt in this way", but that's not evidence that it will ever be mis-spelt that way again. In my original proposal (above), I suggested that we keep typos for which there is evidence (e.g. from Google) that they are common (and we could set a number threshold here, so that it's not a subjective decision). But what about the others? Would you be opposed if I started a campaign to add dozens of potential misspellings to every article in the database - every one for which I can find one instance in Google - i.e. evidence that the "word is sometimes misspelt in this way"? What, other than the accident of it having been typed once here, distinguishes these existing but not common mis-spellings from others? Noel 15:00, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I propose deletion of redirects created by random spelling errors. Jay 08:19, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think the best solution here is a technological one. The software should make available to us the number of requests made for pages with a given title (regardless of whether or not the page exists). Then we can evaluate the creation or maintainance of misspelling redirects based directly on how often they are requested by readers. This would also be handy for identifying "high-profile" articles - ones that we have to watch the content of carefully to avoid creating a bad impression.

Derrick Coetzee 01:17, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I also think it would be reasonable to perform a simple search, such as that done by spell-checkers, through the article names for very close alternatives when there is no match. This would eliminate the need to create many of these redirects manually, including many of the less frequent ones.

Derrick Coetzee 01:27, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Let's not create more work for ourselves, please

I disagree strongly with the notion that redirects that are uncommon mispellings should be deleted. Why?

The database and web server can handle it. Easily.
If someone mispelled it once, there is at least a chance that someone else will. So what if it's a 0.01% chance? Better safe than sorry, and leaving the mispelling as a redirect costs us nothing, aside from a few meager bytes of disk space and bandwidth (see previous reason).
It is a supreme waste of time to dicker over whether a mispelling is "common enough". There are countless other ways we could be spending our time to improve Wikipedia.
The established deletion policy already frowns on deleting mispellings.

By its very nature, RfD doesn't get a lot of traffic. Most vandals aren't clever enough to redirect Amazingly fat and stupid dog-faced fart-sniffer to the article on their least favorite person in the world. Let's accept the fact that there's not a whole lot for us to do on RfD, and stop trying to make more work for ourselves. • Benc • 08:14, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Subvert the system (a bit)

Am I right in thinking that a REDIRECT is simply an article which begins #REDIRECT [[somewhere else]] and that any further content is ignored? If so, why not simply add some sort of explanation to a REDIRECT? You could then have something like:

Coblers
#REDIRECT [[Cobblers]]

Common mis-spelling

which would then show up on a search. HTH HAND --Phil 09:26, Mar 11, 2004 (UTC)

I like this idea. Actually, we could even do one of those {{msg:<foo>}} thingys for it. Maybe even one for typos, and another for genuine alternative spellings? Noel 15:05, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You mean something like Mediawiki:RedirectAlternateSpelling which could read something like "this is an alternate spelling: do not delete"? --Phil | Talk 15:47, Mar 12, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, exactly - except I'd use names which were shorter, like "typo" and "altsp", or something. Noel 16:48, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea as well. I tried to combine it with another suggestion and use the redirects for sorting, e.g. people by surname, see Wikipedia_talk:Redirect#Redirects_for_sorting. -- User:Docu

A policy on redirects to nowhere

I would like to have a policy on the deletion of redirects to nonexistent articles. Some are leftovers from deleted articles, some are redirects made from a template, and some are just the usual bits of anarchism.

In some situations, the redirect and the nonexistent article have similar titles. When one or both of the pages are created at some point in the future, there will be a discussion of if the two are the same thing (and if they're the same, which should hold the article and which should be the redirect). It seems unfair to bias that discussion against the page currently redirecting before either article has been created.

As such, I recommend that all redirects to nonexistent pages be deleted, unless the redirect page has links to it and there already exist a scheme for that redirection (e.g. 2004 Canadian election -> Canadian federal election, 2004 and 1878 Canadian election-> Canadian federal election, 1878). --Ben Brockert 23:17, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

There is a policy. See point 12 on Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion. They can be deleted straight away. Angela . 23:55, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

Oh ah. Thanks for that, I somehow missed it. Perhaps it should be included somewhere in the redirects for deletion area? --Ben Brockert 00:17, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Yes. I've added it to Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion#When should we delete a redirect?. Angela . 01:19, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Redirects with quotes

Folks, we have about 90 redirects of the form '"article_name"' - that is, the name of an existing article surrounded by double quotes. Examples include "Desolation_Row", "list_of_slovakian_companies" and "All_My_Trials". I'd like to take a reasonably aggressive approach and delete these where:

Nothing links to them
They redirect to the article of the same name without surrounding double quotes
The actual article does not include anywhere in its text its title surrounded by double quotes (this would exclude "All_My_Trials" for example).

I wanted to give folks a few days to think on this and object/comment/offer assistance before I go ahead. - TB 15:47, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)

How do you know they haven't been linked externally? Is there a reason to risk breaking external links by deleting any of these? What harm are they doing? Angela . 20:28, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)

Most look like they've been created by following a red-link that inadvertantly has had quotes inside the square brackets rather than outside (common in bibliographies, lists of film or song titles an such). My initial interest was in scanning for and correcting instances of these red-links to prevent more badly-named aricles appearing. Now that that process is working well, I wanted to remove any remaining examples of quoted titles before some someone decides its a convention and creates more of them. If I limit my removal to those that existed for less than 24 hours (most were moved within minutes) before being moved to an unquoted title will his allay your worries about external links ? - TB 22:21, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)

Not wanting to mislead people into making the same sort of links again does seem a reasonable reason for deletion. I have no problem with ones that were moved the same day being deleted and I don't strongly object to the others. Angela . 00:34, Aug 14, 2004 (UTC)

Access Counts?

Somebody suggested that the software should provide information on how often a page is accessed, but I think that might have privacy implications and is a bad idea. [originally unsigned by 66.32.123.183 08:47, 16 Aug 2004 ]

Also, it's too easy to artificially inflate access counts with some distributed scripting and wasted bandwidth. • Benc • 22:02, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Out of process deletion

Please see User_talk:Sam_Spade#ha ha. User:Zanimum appears to have deleted my Gnome Chompy redirect out of process. Some assistance, please. Sam [Spade] 10:40, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Uhh... What's a "Gnome Chompy" and where did it redirect to? Etz Haim 10:57, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It was a redirect to Noam Chomsky. In my opinion, a pretty poor joke, and trying to defend it as a "misspelling redirect" is plain ridiculous. I rather get the impression that this redirect was created to ridicule Noam Chomsky. Maybe it should have gone regularly through WP:RFD, but somebody marked it as a speedy deletion candidate. It could be argued that it was nonsense... Sam, would you prefer I restored and listed it properly on WP:RFD? Lupo 11:31, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Redirects are for things people might put. Say Noah Chomsky, Nome Chomsky, Noam Chompsky. But "Gnome contains a silent "G". Nobody in their right mind is going to put in a silent "G", in front of Noam's name. My position, as you lamb-baste me as on your talk page, is not "Your position, as I see it, is exclusionary in nature, and rooted in haughtyness and academic argot." No one interested in a particular linguist is going to be as illiterate to completely screw up on a spelling, that far from reality.

While it's not a true gage of all the internet, Overture offers the Search Term Suggestion Tool. Type in a name or phrase, see how many searched for it. 11292 searched for "noam chomsky", 213 "noam chomsky biography", 187 "manufacturing consent noam chomsky and the media", 145 "noam chomsky quote", 83 "noam chomsky book", etc. etc. The misspelling "Noah Cmomsky" was searched for 50 times even. But was "Gnome Chompy" searched for even once? No.

Another gauge is Google's spell check. A search for "Gnome Chompy" pulls up no suggestions, meaning they don't think anyone in their right mind would search for such a thing. And people search with the oddest of terms on Google. The Britney Spears spelling correction system query page lists the hundreds of ways her name has been spelled by searchers. Anyone for her Welsh speaking clone, "Bretniy Spears", or her Indian counterpart, "Pretny Spears". Can't wait for "Brythey Spears" next album. So you see Google redirects even the worst mistakes. Gnome Chompy is beyond the worst. -- user:zanimum

There's 592 ways Google "redirects" to Britney Spears. -- user:zanimum