Wikipedia: Redirect

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For general info on redirects in MediaWiki, see meta:redirect — part of the MediaWiki User's Guide. This article discusses policy on the use and abuse of redirects on the English Wikipedia. Other MediaWiki projects may have different approaches.

Contents

1 How to make a redirect

2 What do we use redirects for?

2.1 Renamings and merges

3 When should we delete a redirect?

4 What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects?

5 Self-links, duplicate links

6 Related topics

How to make a redirect

To redirect a page (1) to a different page (2), enter on page 1:

#REDIRECT [[NAME OF PAGE 2]]

For example, to redirect the the CUSU page and enter:

#REDIRECT [[Cambridge University Students' Union]]

It's possible to add a text in the same line after the #REDIRECT to describe why it had been created. There is a list of Redirect message templates (with titles starting with "R_") in the Template namespace that may be used for this, e.g. {{R_to_sort_name}} displays Template:R_to_sort_name, e.g. on Aasen,_Ivar_Andreas (if you click this link, you won't be redirected. When you click 'Edit this page' there, you will see how it can be used).

More are included below:

What do we use redirects for?

Abbreviations: DSM-IV redirects to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (samples)

Misspellings: Condoleeza Rice redirects to Condoleezza Rice (samples)

Aiding writing: planet Mars redirects to Mars (planet) (samples)

Other spellings: colour redirects to color (samples)
- Other punctuation: Al-Jazeera redirects to Al Jazeera
- Other capitalisations: Natural Selection redirects to Natural selection (samples)

Other names: Wellie throwing redirects to Wellie wanging (samples)
- Pseudonyms, nicknames: Butcher of Kurdistan redirects to Ali Hassan al-Majid, Rev. Fred Phelps redirects to Fred Phelps
- Synonyms: Linear operator redirects to Linear transformation

Other languages: Die Entführung aus dem Serail redirects to The Abduction from the Seraglio (samples)
- Accents: Kurt Goedel and Kurt Godel redirect to Kurt Gödel (samples)

Plurals, tenses, etc.: greenhouse gases redirects to greenhouse gas, etc.
- Note that [[greenhouse gas]]es shows up as greenhouse gases, so it is not usually necessary to redirect plurals

Related words: Symbiont redirects to Symbiosis

Sub-topics or closely related topics that should be explained within the text: Distributed denial of service redirects to Denial of service

Facilitate disambiguation: America (disambiguation) redirects to America (samples)

To track statements that date quickly: As of 2003 redirects to 2003 (samples)
- See Wikipedia:As of for more info.

Avoiding broken links (see below)

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.

See also: Redirect template message list

Renamings and merges

We try to avoid broken links, because they annoy visitors. Therefore, if we change the layout of some section of Wikipedia, or we merge two duplicate articles, we always leave redirects in the old location to point to the new location. Search engines and visitors will probably have linked to that page at that url. If the page is deleted, potential new visitors from search engines will be greeted with an edit window. The same is true for anyone who previously bookmarked that page, and so on.

On a small scale, this applies to cases where we had duplicate articles on some subject, or lots of twisty little stubs on different aspects of the same overall subject. On a larger scale, we've had a few fairly major reorganisations:

Moving away from CamelCase article names
Moving away from having homepages in the article namespace (see User:Tim Starling/Redirects from : to User: for a partial list)
Moving away from using subpages in the article namespace

When should we delete a redirect?

To delete a redirect without replacing it with a new article, list it on redirects for deletion. See deletion policy for details on how to nominate pages for deletion.

This isn't necessary if you just want to replace a redirect with an article: see meta:redirect for instructions on how to do this.

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

The redirect page makes it unreasonably difficult for users to locate similarly named articles via the search engine. (see m:redirects in search results — proposed software changes for proposals to lessen this impact)
The redirect might cause confusion. For example, "Charles C. Boyer" used to redirect to "Daniel C. Boyer", because Daniel was accidentally called Charles on one external web page. However, this caused confusion with the article on Charles Boyer, so it was deleted.
The redirect is offensive, such as "Joe Bloggs is a Loser" to "Joe Bloggs".
The redirect makes no sense, such as redirecting [[Pink elephants painting daisies]] to love

However, avoid deleting such redirects if:

They have a potentially useful page history. If the redirect was created by renaming a page with that name, and the page history just mentions the renaming, and for one of the reasons above you want to delete the page, copy the page history to the Talk page of the article it redirects to. The act of renaming is useful page history, and even more so if there has been discussion on the page name.
They would aid accidental linking.
They would make the creation of duplicate articles less likely.
They aid searches on certain terms.
Someone finds them useful. Hint: If someone says they find a redirect useful, they probably do. You might not find it useful — this is not because the other person is a liar, but because you browse Wikipedia in different ways.

For example, redirecting Dubya to George W. Bush might be considered offensive, but the redirect aids accidental linking, makes the creation of duplicate articles less likely, and is useful to some people, so it should not be deleted.

What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects?

We follow the "principle of least astonishment" — after following a redirect, the readers's first question is likely to be: "hang on ... I wanted to read about this. Why has the link taken me to that?". Make it clear to the reader that they have arrived in the right place.

Normally, we try to make sure that all "inbound redirects" are mentioned in the first couple of paragraphs of the article. For example:

Longships were boats used by the Vikings...
- longship, redirect from viking ship
Mario Party is a video game series...
- Mario Party, redirect from Mario Party 2
Edvard Munch (1863–1944) was ... The broadest collection of his works is at on display at the Munch Museum at...
- Edvard Munch, redirect from Munch Museum

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.