Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion

Discussion venue for potentially problematic redirects From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Redirects for discussion (RfD) is the place where potentially problematic redirects are discussed. Items usually stay listed for a week or so, after which they are deleted, kept, or retargeted.

  • If you want to replace an unprotected redirect with an article, do not list it here. Turning redirects into articles is wholly encouraged. Be bold!
  • If you want to move a page but a redirect is in the way, do not list it here. For non-controversial cases, place a technical request; if a discussion is required, then start a requested move.
  • If you think a redirect points to the wrong target article, this is a good place to discuss the proper target.
  • Redirects should not be deleted just because they have no incoming links. Please do not use this as the only reason to delete a redirect. However, redirects that do have incoming links are sometimes deleted, so that is not a sufficient condition for keeping. (See § When to delete a redirect for more information.)

Please do not unilaterally rename or change the target of a redirect while it is under discussion. This adds unnecessary complication to the discussion for participants and closers.

Current and past redirects for discussion (RfD) discussions

Current discussions

Redirects that have been nominated for discussion are indexed by the day on which they were first listed.

Old discussions

After 7 days, RfDs nominations that have finished their discussion period are eligible to be closed following the deletion process.

Before listing a redirect for discussion

Please be aware of these general policies, which apply here as elsewhere:

The guiding principles of RfD

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  • The purpose of a good redirect is to eliminate the possibility that readers will find themselves staring blankly at "Search results 1–10 out of 378" instead of the article they were looking for. If someone could plausibly enter the redirect's name when searching for the target article, it's a good redirect.
  • Redirects are cheap. They take up little storage space and use very little bandwidth. It doesn't really hurt things if there are a few of them scattered around. On the flip side, deleting redirects is also cheap because recording the deletion takes up little storage space and uses very little bandwidth. There is no harm in deleting problematic redirects.
  • If a good-faith RfD nomination proposes to delete a redirect and has no discussion after at least 7 days, the default result is delete.
  • Redirects nominated in contravention of Wikipedia:Redirect will be speedily kept.
  • RfD can also serve as a central discussion forum for debates about which page a redirect should target. In cases where retargeting the redirect could be considered controversial, it is advisable to leave a notice on the talk page of the redirect's current target page or the proposed target page to refer readers to the redirect's nomination to allow input and help form consensus for the redirect's target.
  • Requests for deletion of redirects from one page's talk page to another's do not need to be listed here. Anyone can remove the redirect by blanking the page. The G6 criterion for speedy deletion may be appropriate.
  • In discussions, always ask yourself whether or not a redirect would be helpful to the reader.

When to delete a redirect

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Further information: Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Common outcomes and Wikipedia:Moving a page § Moving over a redirect

The major reasons why deletion of redirects is harmful are:

  • a redirect may contain non-trivial edit history;
  • if a redirect is reasonably old (or is the result of moving a page that has been there for quite some time), then it is possible that its deletion will break incoming links (such as links coming from older revisions of Wikipedia pages, from edit summaries, from other Wikimedia projects or from elsewhere on the internet, do not show up in "What links here").

Therefore consider the deletion only of either harmful redirects or of recent ones.

Reasons for deleting

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See also: Wikipedia:Speedy deletion § Redirects

You might want to delete a redirect if one or more of the following conditions is met:

  1. The redirect page makes it unreasonably difficult for users to locate similarly named articles via the search engine. For example, if the user searches for "New Articles", and is redirected to a disambiguation page for "Articles" (itself a redirect to "Article"), it would take much longer to get to the newly added articles on Wikipedia.
  2. The redirect might cause confusion. For example, if "Adam B. Smith" was redirected to "Andrew B. Smith", because Andrew was accidentally called Adam in one source, this could cause confusion with the article on Adam Smith, so the redirect should be deleted.
  3. The redirect is offensive or abusive, such as redirecting "Joe Bloggs is a Loser" to "Joe Bloggs" (unless "Joe Bloggs is a Loser" is legitimately discussed in the article), or "Joe Bloggs" to "Loser". (Speedy deletion criterion G10 and G3 may apply.) See also § Neutrality of redirects.
  4. The redirect constitutes self-promotion or spam. (Speedy deletion criterion G11 may apply.)
  5. The redirect makes no sense, such as redirecting "Apple" to "Banana". (Speedy deletion criterion G1 may apply.)
  6. It is a cross-namespace redirect out of article space, such as one pointing into the User or Wikipedia namespace. The major exception to this rule are the pseudo-namespace shortcut redirects, which technically are in the main article space. Some long-standing cross-namespace redirects are also kept because of their long-standing history and potential usefulness. "MOS:" redirects, for example, were an exception to this rule until they became their own namespace in 2024. (Note also the existence of namespace aliases such as WP:. Speedy deletion criterion R2 may apply if the target namespace is something other than Category:, Template:, Wikipedia:, Help:, or Portal:.)
  7. If the redirect is broken, meaning it redirects to an article that does not exist, it can be immediately deleted under speedy deletion criterion G8. You should check that there is not an alternative place it could be appropriately redirected to first and that it has not become broken through vandalism.
  8. If the redirect is a novel or very obscure synonym for an article name that is not mentioned in the target, it is unlikely to be useful. In particular, redirects in a language other than English to a page whose subject is unrelated to that language (or a culture that speaks that language) should generally not be created. (Implausible typos or misnomers are candidates for speedy deletion criterion R3, if recently created.)
  9. If the target article needs to be moved to the redirect title, but the redirect has been edited before and has a history of its own, then the title needs to be freed up to make way for the move. If the move is uncontroversial, tag the redirect for G6 speedy deletion, or alternatively (with the suppressredirect user right; available to page movers and admins), perform a round-robin move. If not, take the article to Requested moves.
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    If the redirect could plausibly be expanded into an article, and the target article contains virtually no information on the subject.
  11. If the redirect ends in "(disambiguation)" but does not target a disambiguation page or a page performing a disambiguation-like function (such as a set index of articles). Speedy deletion criterion G14 may apply.

Reasons for not deleting

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However, avoid deleting such redirects if:

  1. They have a potentially useful page history, or an edit history that should be kept to comply with the licensing requirements for a merge (see Wikipedia:Merge and delete). On the other hand, if the redirect was created by renaming a page with that name, and the page history just mentions the renaming, and for one of the reasons above you want to delete the page, copy the page history to the Talk page of the article it redirects to. The act of renaming is useful page history, and even more so if there has been discussion on the page name.
  2. They would aid accidental linking and make the creation of duplicate articles less likely, whether by redirecting a plural to a singular, by redirecting a frequent misspelling to a correct spelling, by redirecting a misnomer to a correct term, by redirecting to a synonym, etc. In other words, redirects with no incoming links are not candidates for deletion on those grounds because they are of benefit to the browsing user. Some extra vigilance by editors will be required to minimize the occurrence of those frequent misspellings in article text because the linkified misspellings will not appear as broken links; consider tagging the redirect with the {{R from misspelling}} template to assist editors in monitoring these misspellings.
  3. They aid searches on certain terms. For example, users who might see the "Keystone State" mentioned somewhere but do not know what that refers to will be able to find out at the Pennsylvania (target) article.
  4. Deleting redirects runs the risk of breaking incoming or internal links. For example, redirects resulting from page moves should not normally be deleted without good reason. Links that have existed for a significant length of time, including CamelCase links (e.g. WolVes) and old subpage links, should be retained in case there are any existing links on external pages pointing to them. Please tag these with {{R from old history}}. See also Wikipedia:Link rot § Link rot on non-Wikimedia sites.
  5. Someone finds them useful. Hint: If someone says they find a redirect useful, they probably do. You might not find it useful—this is not because the other person is being untruthful, but because you browse Wikipedia in different ways. Evidence of usage can be gauged by using the wikishark or pageviews tool on the redirect to see the number of views it gets.
  6. The redirect is to a closely related word form, such as a plural form to a singular form.

Neutrality of redirects

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Just as article titles using non-neutral language are permitted in some circumstances, so are such redirects. Because redirects are less visible to readers, more latitude is allowed in their names, therefore perceived lack of neutrality in redirect names is not a sufficient reason for their deletion. In most cases, non-neutral but verifiable redirects should point to neutrally titled articles about the subject of the term. Non-neutral redirects may be tagged with {{R from non-neutral name}}.

Non-neutral redirects are commonly created for three reasons:

  1. Articles that are created using non-neutral titles are routinely moved to a new neutral title, which leaves behind the old non-neutral title as a working redirect (e.g. ClimategateClimategate → Climatic Research Unit email controversy).
  2. Articles created as POV forks may be deleted and replaced by a redirect pointing towards the article from which the fork originated (e.g. Barack Obama Muslim rumorBarack Obama Muslim rumor → deleted and now redirected to Barack Obama religion conspiracy theories).
  3. The subject matter of articles may be represented by some sources outside Wikipedia in non-neutral terms. Such terms are generally avoided in Wikipedia article titles, per the words to avoid guidelines and the general neutral point of view policy. For instance the non-neutral expression "AttorneygateAttorneygate" is used to redirect to the neutrally titled 2006 dismissal of U.S. attorneys. The article in question has never used that title, but the redirect was created to provide an alternative means of reaching it because a number of press reports use the term.

The exceptions to this rule would be redirects that are not established terms and are unlikely to be useful, and therefore may be nominated for deletion, perhaps under deletion reason #3. However, if a redirect represents an established term that is used in multiple mainstream reliable sources, it should be kept even if non-neutral, as it will facilitate searches on such terms. Please keep in mind that RfD is not the place to resolve most editorial disputes.

Closing notes

Details at Administrator instructions for RfD

Nominations should remain open, per policy, about a week before they are closed, unless they meet the general criteria for speedy deletion, the criteria for speedy deletion of a redirect, or are not valid redirect discussion requests (e.g. are actually move requests).

How to list a redirect for discussion

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STEP I.
Tag the redirect(s).

  Enter {{subst:rfd|content= at the very beginning of the redirect page you are listing for discussion and enter }} at the very end of the page.

  • Please include in the edit summary the phrase:
    Nominated for RfD: see [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion]].
  • Please do not mark the edit as minor (m).
  • Save the page ("Publish changes").
  • If you are unable to edit the redirect page because of protection, this step can be omitted, and after step 2 is completed, a request to add the RFD template can be put on the redirect's talk page.
  • If the redirect you are nominating is in template namespace, consider adding |showontransclusion=1 to the RfD tag so that people using the template redirect are aware of the nomination. If it is an inline template, use |showontransclusion=tiny instead.
  • If you are nominating multiple redirects as a group, repeat all the above steps for each redirect being nominated and specify on {{rfd}} the nomination's group heading from Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion
STEP II.
List the entry on RfD.

 Click here to edit the section of RfD for today's entries.

  • Enter this text below the date heading:
{{subst:Rfd2|redirect=RedirectName|target=TargetArticle|text=The action you would like to occur (deletion, re-targeting, etc.) and the rationale for that action.}} ~~~~
  • For this template:
    • Put the redirect's name in place of RedirectName, put the target article's name in place of TargetArticle, and include a reason after text=.
    • Note that, for this step, the "target article" is the current target of the redirect (if you have a suggestion for a better target, include this in the text that you insert after text=).
  • Please use an edit summary such as:
    Nominating [[RedirectName]]
    (replacing RedirectName with the name of the redirect you are nominating).
  • To list multiple related redirects for discussion, use the following syntax. Repeat line 2 for N number of redirects:
{{subst:Rfd2|redirect=RedirectName1|target=TargetArticle1}}
{{subst:Rfd2|multi=yes|redirect=RedirectName2|target=TargetArticle2}}
{{subst:Rfd2|multi=yes|redirect=RedirectNameN|target=TargetArticleN|text=The actions you would like to occur (deletion, re-targeting, etc.) and the rationale for those actions.}} ~~~~
  • If the redirect has had previous RfDs, you can add {{Oldrfdlist|previous RfD without brackets|result of previous RfD}} directly after the rfd2 template.
  • If appropriate, inform members of the most relevant WikiProjects through one or more "deletion sorting lists". Then add a {{subst:delsort|<topic>|<signature>}} template to the nomination, to insert a note that this has been done.
STEP III.
Notify users.

  It is generally considered good practice to notify the creator and main contributors of the redirect(s) that you nominate.

To find the main contributors, look in the page history of the respective redirect(s). For convenience, the template

{{subst:Rfd notice|RedirectName}} ~~~~

may be placed on the creator/main contributors' user talk page to provide notice of the discussion. Please replace RedirectName with the name of the respective creator/main contributors' redirect and use an edit summary such as:
Notice of redirect discussion at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion]].

Notices about the RfD discussion may also be left on relevant talk pages.

  • Please consider using What links here to locate other redirects that may be related to the one you are nominating. After going to the redirect target page and selecting "What links here" in the toolbox on the left side of your computer screen, select both "Hide transclusions" and "Hide links" filters to display the redirects to the redirect target page.

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