Redirects are your friend...

[J. Noel Chiappa]

I have a theory about redirects, and I'd like to see if people agree with it. My theory is simple: 'use lots of them'. This has a number of advantages, the most important of which is to prevent the creation of duplicate articles (very, very bad - waste of time and energy).

Also, when people add links in their articles, they are more likely to hit if they don't have to get the exact title (and let's be realistic, people don't always feel like taking the time to do a search on every linked item in an article they're writing.)

My suggestion is that when writing an article, we should encourage the writer to add all the useful redirects they can think of: in particular, from common short forms of the full name (e.g. "Alzheimer's" -> "Alzheimer's syndrome"), from alterate capitalization where there's any chance someone might use all-caps for an article whose proper title is uncapitalized, and vice versa ("Attention Deficit Disorder" -> "Attention deficit disorder"), from acronyms ("ADD" ->  "Attention deficit disorder"), from plurals ("apples" -> "apple"), etc.

Yes, some of them may later turn into disambigs - that's fine. As long as there's something there to prevent creation of a duplicate article. So whadday'all think?

[Hayford Peirce]

Yer preachin' to the believers, man. I try to make as many redirects as is humanly possibly for the articles I start (or run across), if there's any possible way that a reader will search for it in some way other than the article's actual name.  This is so common-sensical that I wonder that anyone would argue agin it. And if we need disambig pages, so what?

[Aleta Curry]

Redirect Queen, here.

I think we had a 'to redirect or not to redirect' thread here recently, Noel.  Someone was saying not to, if I recall correctly.

My question was, does it do any harm to the wiki?

The answer seemed to be 'no'.

So I redirect away.  I don't generally redirect from plurals, unless it's a known debatable one fish-fishses; pair/pairs or something usually thought of in plural sock/socks--something like that--but I do from common spelling mistakes and capitalisation issues.  So now I'll add 'plural' to my list.

[Derek Harkness]

I have to say I'm rather bad at this. I write the article then forget to add the redirects and now there's a backlog of them that I'll need to go through. I think it is very important for the readers that the system connects what they are searching for with an article and doesn't throw any errors.

Some of these redirects should really be hardcoded into the system rather than added manually. The site needs to be altered so that basic differences such as plural forms, capitalisation and punctuation do not cause search failures as they currently do. Other search engines manage to do this automatically so it is doubly confusing to users that our system does not.

[Christian Kleineidam]

Yes, we should have a bot that creates basic redirects if there don't already exist pages where the bot would want to create a redirect. Another option would be to give the user who creates an article a list with possible redirect where the user can uncheck the redirects he doesn't want.
1) For articles that are longer than two words a redirect should be created that uses the first letters of every word in the article title, if there doesn't already exists an article with that name. ("Attention deficit disorder")->("ADD")
2) Is there are words that end in 's or s a redirect should be created without that ending. ("Alzheimer" -> "Alzheimer's" )
3) When pages are named "word, [something/]" the bot should create a page with "word [workgroupname/]" and one with "word ([workgroupname/])" ("French history" -> "French, history" and "French (history)" -> "French, history")
4) When an article is name "string (anything)" an redirect from "string" should be created ("Exchange sacrifice" -> "Exchange sacrifice (chess)" and "Giant Panda" -> "Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)")

[J. Noel Chiappa]

I think we had a 'to redirect or not to redirect' thread here recently

Thanks, I'll try and find it.

I was asking in part because if there is general consensus that it's a good idea to have redirects, we should add something about it to the 'how to write an article page'; it's much easier to have the article/creator writer do it, than try and come along later and add them.

So now I'll add 'plural' to my list.

There are some aspects of Wikipedia I'm unhappy about (duhh), but their policy about redirects seems to me to be on the mark, and I suggest we use it basically 'as-is'.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

Some of these redirects should really be hardcoded into the system rather than added manually. The site needs to be altered so that basic differences such as plural forms, capitalisation and punctuation do not cause search failures as they currently do.

I am generally in agreement with this, with two caveats. First, programming resources are in short supply, so it's unlikely to happen soon. Second, it needs to be coded in such a way that it can be manually overridden (e.g. by creating an actual redirect).

Yes, we should have a bot that creates basic redirects if there don't already exist pages where the bot would want to create a redirect.

Not a bad idea...

[Aleta Curry]

Some of these redirects should really be hardcoded into the system rather than added manually. The site needs to be altered so that basic differences such as plural forms, capitalisation and punctuation do not cause search failures as they currently do.

...it needs to be coded in such a way that it can be manually overridden (e.g. by creating an actual redirect).

Yes, we should have a bot that creates basic redirects if there don't already exist pages where the bot would want to create a redirect.

Yep, any or all of the above.  But very basic, because bots can mess up.

I guess if the bot messes up, authors could check from their watchlists?


About a hundred years ago on another wiki, I was writing about theatre.  In the body of whatever article I typed [[ingenue]] - a pretty archetypal role.  Well, it went to Ingenue, a KD Lang album.  I think it was K.D. Lang--the point is it was a singer.

Of course, that wouldn't have happened if the author had called it [[Ingenue (K.D. Lang album)]] in the first place.  Yet one more reason to get the CZ Workgroups straightened out, so they can set guidelines.  Did I just segue into a hobby horse?  Yes, I think I did. 

Well

[Hayford Peirce]

[  Yet one more reason to get the CZ Workgroups straightened out, so they can set guidelines. 

Workgroups and guidelines are only gonna be as good, and as useful, as the people manning/womaning them, and how much attention they're paying. Your Lang example is one that would, I think, have slipped by many, many workgroups unless they've got a bunch of obsessed soup nazis scrutinizin' every word every written in CZ....

[Christian Kleineidam]

In principle I think, someone who sets an internal link should check where the link goes.
Words can always have meaning in other fields, be it philosophy, mathematics or music.

As long as there is no articles on the archetypal role of ingenue I don't see why ingenue shouldn't redirect to the music album.

Bots can and will mess up, but humans will too (not many people who will add album articles will know that the word ingenue describes something in the threatre). In general I don't see much harm in typing a word in the bar and going to an article I didn't search.
Afterwards I can simply disable the redirect and/or search for the thing I want using the search button.

[J. Noel Chiappa]

In principle I think, someone who sets an internal link should check where the link goes.

Yes. Experience on Wikipedia taught me to always check where all the links in any article I wrote wound up, because almost always at least one was wrong. I propose we add this to the 'how to write an article' guide.

Noel

[Aleta Curry]

[  Yet one more reason to get the CZ Workgroups straightened out, so they can set guidelines.

Workgroups and guidelines are only gonna be as good, and as useful, as the people manning/womaning them, and how much attention they're paying. Your Lang example is one that would, I think, have slipped by many, many workgroups unless they've got a bunch of obsessed soup nazis scrutinizin' every word every written in CZ....

Ah, no.

Sure, some things have specific meanings to specific workgroups, I don't expect any but the exceptional to 'think outside the box' (and I don't count myself in that category).

The KD Lang one was actually taken care of very easily, as it should have been.  The organising folks, when they came up with guidelines, ordained that every album should be titled Ingenue (album), and books [[Ingenue (novel)]] or, if more than one [[Ingenue (Aleta Curry novel)]] and [[Ingenue (Hayford Pierce novel)]].

What could be simpler?    (now you're probably gonna come up with something simpler....)


Christian and Noel: You're both right, of course.  But some will still slip through the cracks, and some things will not exist at the time you right, some will be renamed/moved etc etc and so forth.  So it's an all-round effort, there's no one fix.

[Christian Kleineidam]

But even when all albums are named in the format [[Ingenue (album)]] I still think that when there is no other article that has something to do with [[Ingenue]] there should be a redirect from [[Ingenue]] to [[Ingenue (album)]].
When another person writes [[Ingenue (theatre)]] there should be a disambiguation page that lists both pages because the reader could search for either of them.

[Aleta Curry]

Ah, no.

BECAUSE

(I've said it before, I'll say it again till people are sick of me)

Some things "own" a name

A "baker" is someone who cooks tasty things.  Sir Sam Baker was a British explorer and Howard Baker is a US politician, but neither of those should redirect to 'baker'--ever!  (Even if 'baker' is empty!)

[Hayford Peirce]

Yer right! I think everything should redirect to Josephine Baker, complete with a picture of her wearing nothing but a skirt of bananas!