WP:Redirect

• Alice Bradley Sheldon (August 24, 1915 – May 19, 1987) was an American science fiction and fantasy author better known as James Tiptree Jr. ...
  • James Tiptree Jr., redirects from Alice Sheldon

If other articles titled a redirected term exist, a hatnote should be placed at the top of the target article or targeted section that will direct readers to the other meanings or to a relevant disambiguation page. This is usually done using one of the redirect disambiguation templates (examples).

It may also be helpful to search the list of categories for related terms.

Redirects that replace previous articles

Removing all content in a problematic article and replacing it with a redirect is common practice, known as blank-and-redirect. It is good practice to notify the article creator or significant contributors using {{uw-blar}}. If other editors disagree with this blanking, its contents can be recovered from page history, as the article has not been deleted. If editors cannot agree, the content issues should be discussed at the relevant talk page, and other methods of dispute resolution should be used, such as restoring the article and nominating the article for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion.

To make it easier for other editors to find the history of the blanked article, it's good practice to add a short notice using {{Blank and redirect notice}}, even if no content has been merged there. This is especially useful if the blanked article had few visits and infrequent edits. If the redirect replaces an article that has been deleted by an administrator, this notice is the only way for editors to know that a previous version of the article existed at all.

Content of the replaced article

See also: Wikipedia:Editing policy § Try to fix problems

The template {{R with history}} should be added to the resulting redirect. If the topic of the article can be reasonably thought to describe a notable topic, mark the redirect with the template {{Redirect with possibilities}} to indicate that it could be expanded in the future. You may also consider turning the article into a stub by removing all unsourced content and keeping the valid references, instead of blanking it.

Note that certain forms of blanking are not allowed.

Illegitimate blanking of valid content without reason is considered vandalism, a form of disruptive editing. Other forms of blank-and-redirect, although not vandalism, are still undesirable. If you want to rename the article by cutting and pasting text to a new article with a different title, you should instead move the page with the Move option. If you want to keep some content from the blanked article and add it to the target article, you should follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Merging § How to merge. Both processes will create proper links to the edit history, which is required by the Wikipedia license for legal reasons to preserve attribution of content to its authors.

Do not "fix" links to redirects that are not broken

"WP:NOTBROKEN" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Wikipedia:If it ain't broke, don't fix it or Wikipedia:Typo Team § Some typos do not need to be corrected.

There is usually nothing wrong with linking to redirects to articles. Some editors are tempted, upon finding a link to a redirect page, to bypass the redirect and point the link directly at the target page. However, changing to a piped link is beneficial only in a few cases. Piping links solely to avoid redirects is generally a time-wasting exercise that can actually be detrimental. It is almost never helpful to replace redirect with redirect.

Reasons not to bypass redirects include:

• Redirects can indicate possible future articles (see {{R with possibilities}}).
• Introducing unnecessary wikitext makes the article more difficult to read in page source form.
• Non-piped links make better use of the "what links here" tool, making it easier to track how articles are linked and helping with large-scale changes to links.
• Shortcuts or redirects to embedded anchors or sections of articles or of Wikipedia's advice pages should never be bypassed, as the anchors or section headings on the page may change over time. Updating one redirect is far more efficient than updating dozens of piped links. (The Rdcheck tool is extremely useful in such cases for finding which redirects need to be changed after an article is updated.)
• Intentional links to disambiguation pages always use the title with "(disambiguation)", even if that is a redirect.
• If editors persistently use a redirect instead of an article title, it may be that the article needs to be moved rather than the redirect changed. As such the systematic "fixing of redirects" may eradicate useful information that can be used to help decide on the "best" article title.
• It is an {{R from former name}}, and in its context of use, this was the contemporary name. For example, when discussing contemporary news coverage of World War II, using the name a publication had then makes better sense than using its modern name.

Good reasons to bypass redirects include:

• It is usually preferable not to use redirected links in navigational templates, such as those found at the bottom of many articles (e.g., {{US presidents}} at the end of George Washington). When a template is placed on an article and contains a direct link to the same article (rather than a redirect), the direct link will display in bold (and not as a link), making it easier to navigate through a series of articles using the template. There are exceptions to this exception: where a redirect represents a distinct sub-topic within a larger article and is not merely a variant name, it is preferable to leave the redirect in the template.
• It may be appropriate to make this kind of change if the hint or tooltip that appears when a user hovers over the link is misleading (see Principle of least astonishment).
• Spelling errors and other mistakes should be corrected. Don't link to a misspelled redirect. This does not necessarily mean that the misspelled redirect should be deleted (see {{R from misspelling}}).
• Links on disambiguation pages. See WP:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages § Piping and redirects for rationale and exceptions.
• Radio and TV station call letters, since call letters given up by one station can be used later by a different station.
• In other namespaces, particularly the template and portal namespaces in which subpages are common, any link or transclusion to a former page title that has become a redirect following a page move or merge should be updated to the new title for naming consistency.
• Links on the Main Page, to avoid stealthy vandalism by retargeting high-traffic redirects. Main Page links that point to an article section should utilise a section link.

Self-redirects

Avoid linking to titles that redirect straight back to the page on which the link is found. This situation may arise if a redirect is created from a red link on the page, or if the title was once a separate page but was merged.

However, linking to a title that redirects to a section or anchor within the article (redirects with {{R to section}} or {{R to anchor}}) is acceptable, as it facilitates navigation, in particular on long articles that cannot be viewed all at once on an average-sized computer screen. In addition to readability benefits, when such redirects are marked with {{R with possibilities}}, they have the potential to become independent articles in the future. However, consider using section links instead, when such redirects do not already exist.

Template redirects

A template can be redirected to another template in the same way, e.g., by entering the following markup at the top of a template T2:

#REDIRECT Template:T1

This allows the template name T2 to be used instead of the actual template name T1. All the parameters of T1 will be respected by T2.

A redirect categorisation (rcat) template such as {{R from move}} may be added to T2 (on the third line below the #REDIRECT line) as follows:

#REDIRECT Template:T1

{{Redirect category shell|
{{R from move}}
}}

While template shortcut/alias redirects are common, they may infrequently cause confusion and make updating template calls more complicated. For example, if calls to T1 are to be changed to some new template NT1, articles must be searched for {{T1}} and a separate search must also be made for each of its aliases (including T2 in this example). Moreover, changes to syntax, corrections, scans and other processes (for example tag dating) must take into account all applicable redirects.

Redirect protection

Sometimes, a redirect to an article pertaining to a very controversial topic will be fully or, more rarely, semi-protected indefinitely. This is done when any of the following criteria are met:

1. There is no reason for it to be edited
2. It is frequently expanded into whole articles
3. It is an obvious vandalism target
4. It redirects and/or refers to a very controversial topic

Redirects that are protected include Obama, Hitler, and 9/11. Soft redirects that are protected include obvious vandalism targets like dumbass.

Redirects in other namespaces may be protected for technical reasons or are protected under existing guidelines. For example, a template redirect (shorthand) used thousands of times qualifies it as a highly visible template, eligible for template protection.

Category redirects

{{#section:Wikipedia:Categorization|CATREDIRECT}}

Module redirects

It is possible to redirect a module, however it uses a different syntax. To redirect Module:A to Module:B, add the line return require Module:B to Module:A. Module XNRs however, use the regular syntax, see Module:Kivu conflict detailed map (permalink).

Suppressing redirects

When a page is moved, a redirect is automatically left behind. Some groups of users (those who possess a suppressredirect right) have the ability to prevent the redirect being created, by unchecking the box labelled "Leave a redirect behind." Currently these groups are administrators, bots, page movers, and global rollbackers. In some circumstances, a page should be moved, but a redirect from its current name is inappropriate, such as reverting page-move vandalism. Suppressing the redirect can avoid an extra action (page removal) and save time in these cases.

However, in general, the redirect will be a useful entry in the history, and it is best to leave it behind, unless there is a good reason to suppress the redirect, such as vandalism, userfying recently created malplaced items or freeing a title to be occupied immediately by another page (e.g., moving term to accurate term and term (disambiguation) to term). Redirects leave a trail to help readers find the old article, in case a new article is created at its previous location, and to prevent linkrot. Therefore, we usually neither suppress nor delete redirects. As Brooke Vibber said, "Not breaking links helps everyone, especially us first and foremost". She also said that the removal of (file) redirects is "extremely user-hostile and makes the project less useful".

Technical notes

A Wikipedia redirect is not the same as an HTTP redirect—it does not generate an HTTP 302 (or other 30x) response. Instead, a page with almost the same content as the target of the redirect is generated by the MediaWiki software, differing in that a small-text note appears below the title of the page, identifying the name of the redirect used to get there (and linking to it in such a way that it can be accessed without the redirect, e.g. so it can be changed). When a user clicks on a redirect such as housecat, the page URL initially will be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housecat, but the URL shown by the browser will change to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat after the page loads.

On one hand, this allows links like housecat#Characteristics to work as expected, but it also requires redirects to anchors to be implemented as a piece of JavaScript that jumps to an appropriate section after the page has loaded. For example, second-stage boot loader, which is rendered as the URL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-stage_boot_loader, is a page defined as a #REDIRECT to Booting. "SECOND-STAGE", in this case, is a manually defined anchor (using the markup "=== Second-stage boot loader === {{anchor|SECOND-STAGE}}") that will persist even if the section is renamed. However, whether a redirect points to a manually defined anchor, or an anchor defined implicitly via a section name, the behavior will be the same: the page will automatically be scrolled down to the pointed-to anchor only after the page finishes loading (at which point the URL bar will also change to reflect the redirected-to URL, including "#anchor" portion, rather than the redirected-from URL).

See also

• Category:Wikipedia redirects
• Wikipedia:Moving a page
• Help:Redirect
• Redirect technical help at Meta-Wiki
• Special:ListRedirects
• Special:BrokenRedirects
• Special:DoubleRedirects
• Template:Redirect
• Template:No redirect
• Template:Is redirect
• Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects, to suggest a missing redirect
• Wikipedia:Hatnote (see above)
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion
• Wikipedia:Soft redirect
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Redirect
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Redirect/Style guide
• Wikipedia:Database reports/Page count by namespace and by non-redirects/redirects
• Wikipedia:Deletion by redirection
• Capricorn, a Wikipedia gadget for categorizing redirects
• Wikipedia:Redirects are cheap
• Wikipedia:Redirects are costly