Pensapedia:Redirect
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This page is a how-to guideline for Pensapedia, reflecting how the authors of this encyclopedia address certain issues. This guideline is intended to help you improve Pensapedia content. Feel free to update this page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes. |
- 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 Whibbs Park page to the Vince Whibbs, Sr. Community Maritime Park page, edit the Maritime Park page and enter:
#REDIRECT [[Vince Whibbs, Sr. Community Maritime Park]]
Don't make double redirects (a redirect that points to another redirect); they don't work, create slow, unpleasant experiences for the reader, 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.wikipedia.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 | Template:R from abbreviation | {{R from abbreviation}} |
| Misspellings | Template:R from misspelling
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{{R from misspelling}} |
| Other spellings, other punctuation | Template:R from alternative spelling
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{{R from alternative 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 going to these articles to be case-insensitive. For example, without the redirect Isle of wight going to "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 only via 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: 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:
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{{R from other capitalisation}} |
| Other names, pseudonyms, nicknames, and synonyms | Template:R from alternative name
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{{R from alternative name}} |
| Scientific names | Template:R from scientific name
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{{R from scientific name}} |
| Scientific names | Template:R to scientific name
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{{R to scientific name}} |
| Other languages | Template:R from alternative language | {{R from alternative language}} |
| Accents | Template:R from ASCII
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{{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 wikipedia 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 wikipedia 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
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{{R with possibilities}} |
| Facilitate disambiguation | Template:R to disambiguation page
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{{R to disambiguation page}} |
| To track statements that date quickly | Template:R for as of
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{{R for as of}} |
| To redirect to decade article | Template:R to decade | {{R to decade}} |
| To redirect from a shortcut |
This is a redirect from a Wikipedia shortcut. Shortcuts are generally reserved for Wikipedia project reference pages. For more information, follow the category link.
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{{R from shortcut}} |
| Oldstyle CamelCase links | Template:R from CamelCase | {{R from CamelCase}} |
| links autogenerated from EXIF information | Template:R from EXIF
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{{R from EXIF}} |
| From school microstub to merge location | Template:R from school
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{{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 wikipedia: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[citation needed] that redirects lower search engine rankings.
See also: Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages which contains a somewhat longer list of available redirect templates
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 Wikipedia:Requested moves to request help from an admin in doing that.
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.
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.
Template redirects
A template T2 can be redirected to another template T1. This creates an alias (T2 is an alias for T1). The alias name T2 can be used instead of the "real" template T2.
Aliases for templates can cause confusion and make migrations of template calls more complicated. For example, assume calls to T1 are to be changed ("migrated") to some new template TN1. To catch all calls, articles must be searched for {{T1}} and all aliases of T1 (T2 in this case).
