![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
See also:
listed here | VfD note added | Google hits | |
Asassinated | twice | yes | 858 |
Asassineted | twice | yes | 0 |
Assasinated | no | no | 19,000 |
Assassinated | once | yes | 630,000 |
Assassineted | no | no | 5 |
In relation to some redirects listed on VfD:
Redirects are kept unless they are problematic. Is there a reason these are problematic? Angela
It often happens that the complete contents of an article on a "minor" topic are merged into an article on a broader topic. There seems to be some uncertainty about the best thing to do with the page that covered the minor topic. As far as I was aware, the most usual practice was to add the content to the broader article with an explanatory edit comment such as "content moved from name of article", and then to make the first page into a redirect to the second. That way, if someone wants to know the history of the content, they can follow it back through the history of the main article to the point at which it was added, see from the edit comment where it came from, and then go to that page (now a redirect) and explore the history of that page. To me, that seems an adequate way of doing things. I think it enables readers to ascertain the authorship of any piece of writing in the Wikipedia easily enough, at least as far as is possible in a system where anonymous contributions are allowed. (Attributing contributions is required by the terms of the GFDL, you see.)
However, a lot of people seem to have developed a phobia of redirects, and keep wanting them deleted. To preserve the history of contributions to an article and satisfy those who, for whatever reasons, want the redirects deleted, it is possible to merge not only the contents but also the histories of the pages. This is done by deleting the main article, moving the sub-article into its place, and then undeleting the main article again. This combines the histories, and thus also enables readers to ascertain the authorship of each contribution. However, my personal opinion is that this is not as nice a method, because it makes the history more confusing. Below is a discussion from Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion on the subject. -- Oliver P. 03:05, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Begin text moved from Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion
The content of [Invalid insect taxa described by Horace Donisthorpe] was used, and the page was deleted anyway. This is a violation of the terms of the copyrights of the original contributors, because the content is now being used without acknowledging their authorship. I thought we had a policy that any article whose content was merged into another article was to be kept as a redirect to that article. I think that would be a good policy to have, as it enables people to study the history of the content and who added what to it. -- Oliver P. 00:30, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
End moved text
Attempting to preserve attribution by merging page histories coulld be wrong: by essentially corrupting the history, it really removes attribution. An alternative and preferable option would be to move with a comment like:
Then copy the page history of really silly article title onto the top of the article's talk page, with a note asking people not to delete this history as it may be required for the GFDL. Martin 14:36, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The problem is you can't copy the actual history, only a list of the contributors, so you don't have any idea of how much work each of those people have put in. The GFDL says you need to list "at least five of the principal authors of the Document". With just a list, you won't know who the principal ones were. Angela 18:28, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I think that moving articles with silly titles in order to preserve their history without keeping the silly title is a very good idea. But I'm not sure about moving to [Talk:Sensible title/partial history]. That looks like it's either the talk page of [Sensible title/partial history], or a subpage of [Talk:Sensible title]. (The ambiguity there leads me to conclude that actually I don't like titles of the form [Talk:A/B] at all. In fact, I'd go further... I don't like subpages at all! I thought they'd already gone out of fashion by the time I arrived, but for some reason they've crept back in. But I suppose this is a matter to bring up somewhere else.) Either way, it looks like a talk page, which is misleading.
I think that a page in the article space whose content is used in another article should be kept in the article space, if possible, to make it clear that at least some of what is in the history is article-type material. I'd suggest moving the page to whatever title best describes its content. For example, if someone writes a stupidly titled article that nevertheless contains some useful content about Joe Bloggs's acting career, then it could be moved to [Joe Bloggs's acting career] before being merged with and redirected to [Joe Bloggs]. Then people will know to look in its history for material on Joe Bloggs's acting career. If the content can't be categorised that easily, it could be given a vaguer title, like [Joe Bloggs (further content)], or something like that. - Oliver P. 01:57, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
You might want to delete a redirect if one or more of the following conditions is met:
I disagree with this condition. If the phrase "Joe Bloggs is a loser" is one which is well-known enough to be mentioned in the article on Joe Bloggs, then the existence of the redirect firstly helps people to find Wikipedia's content on that phrase, secondly makes it easier to link to the content, and thirdly prevents people who have failed to find the content from re-adding it at the obvious title, not realising that it is already covered at a different title. Exactly the same argument applies to the phrase "Joe Bloggs is great", of course, if that is a phrase which is well-known enough to be mentioned in the article on Joe Bloggs. To allow one but not the other is contrary to the spirit of NPOV, since we are pointing people to content that flatters the subject, without doing the same for content that paints a less favourable picture of them.
But then again, perhaps what was meant was that redirects that express any POV about someone should be deleted. Then "Joe Bloggs is great" would be deleted along with "Joe Bloggs is a loser". But I would disagree with that, too. The principle of NPOV doesn't mean that points of view are not to be included, but that differing points of view should be discussed in an unbiased manner. I think that the same philosophy applied to redirects would say that it is all right to include redirects that express points of view as long as it is done fairly. If an article is NPOV, and redirects are made according to the points made in the article, then "good" redirects and "bad" ones will usually end up existing in much the same ratio as "good" points and "bad" points in the article, which seems appropriate to me. What do you say? -- Oliver P. 01:57, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Oliver, I think your concerns are already dealt with, at least in part: if the phrase "Joe Bloggs is a loser" is one which is well-known enough to be mentioned in the article on Joe Bloggs, then it is may be spared by the following text:
The deletion policy expresses this issue as a balancing act (because it was the only way to avoid me and Daniel Quinlan settling it by a duel ;-)), which I think is basically correct - and VfD is currently the way we try to find that balance. However, we could add another point to the policy:
I'm not sure that's perfectly expressed, but something along those lines would, I think be reasonable. There would still be the possibility to discourage offensive redirects that Angela and others dissapprove of, but we're explicitly taking into account Oliver's desires too. Martin 19:40, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
> They would aid accidental linking
>They would make the creation of duplicate articles less likely
>They aid searches on certain terms.
> The topic of the redirect is mentioned in depth in the article in question
>There would still be the possibility to discourage offensive redirects that Angela and others disapprove of…
I've drawn some ire from Michael Hardy over my efforts, as part of Wiki Syntax, to either fix or delete redirects pointing to missing articles—such redirects being candidates for speedy deletion. (Obviously, it's the delete part that is being debated.)
(See my initial post, his reply, and each other's reply.)
I feel he's gone overboard by plastering warnings all over redirect-target-000.txt. (I reverted him once on the basis that that wasn't the place to discuss policy, but I'd rather not engage in an edit war.) He's also considering filing this for VfD, so it should be obvious that there's a bit of a disagreement in the air.
Could somebody from Mount Olympus deliver unto us a bit of wisdom on that matter?
-- Fbriere 23:49, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Note: He's also modified WP:RFD to reflect his views on that subject.
(I should also point out that this talk showed what appears to be a clear concensus on that policy.)
-- Fbriere 01:15, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I now realize that Michael has actually protected redirect-target-000.txt. (No template, no inclusion in the list, I only found it in the log. Isn't this contrary to policy?) This is getting a bit annoying...
-- Fbriere 04:08, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've just noticed that my critics and I were both mistaken about what the long-standing policy actually says. What confused us was that the emphasis in the statement of the policy was misleading. Read the paragraph starting with "However" after item #6 at Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. In view of the list of exceptions in the paragraph beginning with "However...", I've revised item 6 at Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion in a way that is really just a changed in emphasis and I hope will avoid some rash deletions-without-due-deliberation. It now reads as follows:
Michael Hardy 03:52, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Looks like Michael may have a point about Fbriere being a bit fast on the trigger: Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, which you had on your list, redirected to Endocine disruptor, an obvious misspelling of Endocrine disruptor. Did Fbriere bother checking, or was he in a hurry to just slash away? How many obvious fixes did he overlook in his haste? -- 165.76.216.35 10:24, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I just browsed, and I found 8 obvious cases of mistakenly deleted redirects, most plainly obvious. How tight is QC on this project? -- 165.76.216.35 11:11, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This is a bit of a tempest in a tea-pot. It's worth noting (as some will no doubt recall :-) that the last time we did a bunch of these "non-existent target" redirects on WP:RfD (sorry, I don't have the time to dig through the history to find the reference), I didn't simply delete the whole bunch, willy-nilly. Instead, I went to a lot of effort (as you can see see by the existence of this template, as well as some other ones) to try and exercise a fair amount of judgement, and not simply delete them all, including any that looked like the might be useful. As you can see from my note here about this batch, again I'm going through this list carefully, and not simply bulk-deleting them. I can't speak for others, of course, but I am trying to exercise some care here. (I even found an article that had been mistakenly deleted!) Noel (talk) 12:50, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I can definitely confirm what Noel said about non-existent redirects listed on
WP:RFD being treated with care. And here's my 2 cents worth on why I do not agree with changing policy to allow redirects that point nowhere:
-- All the best, Nickj (t) 00:02, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I create a new article (for example John Doar). Am I supposed to go and create redirects like [[John M. Doar]] and [[John Michael Doar]] and maybe a few others if there might be a "jr." or something thrown in? Morris 04:15, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
See also:
listed here | VfD note added | Google hits | |
Asassinated | twice | yes | 858 |
Asassineted | twice | yes | 0 |
Assasinated | no | no | 19,000 |
Assassinated | once | yes | 630,000 |
Assassineted | no | no | 5 |
In relation to some redirects listed on VfD:
Redirects are kept unless they are problematic. Is there a reason these are problematic? Angela
It often happens that the complete contents of an article on a "minor" topic are merged into an article on a broader topic. There seems to be some uncertainty about the best thing to do with the page that covered the minor topic. As far as I was aware, the most usual practice was to add the content to the broader article with an explanatory edit comment such as "content moved from name of article", and then to make the first page into a redirect to the second. That way, if someone wants to know the history of the content, they can follow it back through the history of the main article to the point at which it was added, see from the edit comment where it came from, and then go to that page (now a redirect) and explore the history of that page. To me, that seems an adequate way of doing things. I think it enables readers to ascertain the authorship of any piece of writing in the Wikipedia easily enough, at least as far as is possible in a system where anonymous contributions are allowed. (Attributing contributions is required by the terms of the GFDL, you see.)
However, a lot of people seem to have developed a phobia of redirects, and keep wanting them deleted. To preserve the history of contributions to an article and satisfy those who, for whatever reasons, want the redirects deleted, it is possible to merge not only the contents but also the histories of the pages. This is done by deleting the main article, moving the sub-article into its place, and then undeleting the main article again. This combines the histories, and thus also enables readers to ascertain the authorship of each contribution. However, my personal opinion is that this is not as nice a method, because it makes the history more confusing. Below is a discussion from Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion on the subject. -- Oliver P. 03:05, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Begin text moved from Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion
The content of [Invalid insect taxa described by Horace Donisthorpe] was used, and the page was deleted anyway. This is a violation of the terms of the copyrights of the original contributors, because the content is now being used without acknowledging their authorship. I thought we had a policy that any article whose content was merged into another article was to be kept as a redirect to that article. I think that would be a good policy to have, as it enables people to study the history of the content and who added what to it. -- Oliver P. 00:30, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
End moved text
Attempting to preserve attribution by merging page histories coulld be wrong: by essentially corrupting the history, it really removes attribution. An alternative and preferable option would be to move with a comment like:
Then copy the page history of really silly article title onto the top of the article's talk page, with a note asking people not to delete this history as it may be required for the GFDL. Martin 14:36, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The problem is you can't copy the actual history, only a list of the contributors, so you don't have any idea of how much work each of those people have put in. The GFDL says you need to list "at least five of the principal authors of the Document". With just a list, you won't know who the principal ones were. Angela 18:28, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I think that moving articles with silly titles in order to preserve their history without keeping the silly title is a very good idea. But I'm not sure about moving to [Talk:Sensible title/partial history]. That looks like it's either the talk page of [Sensible title/partial history], or a subpage of [Talk:Sensible title]. (The ambiguity there leads me to conclude that actually I don't like titles of the form [Talk:A/B] at all. In fact, I'd go further... I don't like subpages at all! I thought they'd already gone out of fashion by the time I arrived, but for some reason they've crept back in. But I suppose this is a matter to bring up somewhere else.) Either way, it looks like a talk page, which is misleading.
I think that a page in the article space whose content is used in another article should be kept in the article space, if possible, to make it clear that at least some of what is in the history is article-type material. I'd suggest moving the page to whatever title best describes its content. For example, if someone writes a stupidly titled article that nevertheless contains some useful content about Joe Bloggs's acting career, then it could be moved to [Joe Bloggs's acting career] before being merged with and redirected to [Joe Bloggs]. Then people will know to look in its history for material on Joe Bloggs's acting career. If the content can't be categorised that easily, it could be given a vaguer title, like [Joe Bloggs (further content)], or something like that. - Oliver P. 01:57, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
You might want to delete a redirect if one or more of the following conditions is met:
I disagree with this condition. If the phrase "Joe Bloggs is a loser" is one which is well-known enough to be mentioned in the article on Joe Bloggs, then the existence of the redirect firstly helps people to find Wikipedia's content on that phrase, secondly makes it easier to link to the content, and thirdly prevents people who have failed to find the content from re-adding it at the obvious title, not realising that it is already covered at a different title. Exactly the same argument applies to the phrase "Joe Bloggs is great", of course, if that is a phrase which is well-known enough to be mentioned in the article on Joe Bloggs. To allow one but not the other is contrary to the spirit of NPOV, since we are pointing people to content that flatters the subject, without doing the same for content that paints a less favourable picture of them.
But then again, perhaps what was meant was that redirects that express any POV about someone should be deleted. Then "Joe Bloggs is great" would be deleted along with "Joe Bloggs is a loser". But I would disagree with that, too. The principle of NPOV doesn't mean that points of view are not to be included, but that differing points of view should be discussed in an unbiased manner. I think that the same philosophy applied to redirects would say that it is all right to include redirects that express points of view as long as it is done fairly. If an article is NPOV, and redirects are made according to the points made in the article, then "good" redirects and "bad" ones will usually end up existing in much the same ratio as "good" points and "bad" points in the article, which seems appropriate to me. What do you say? -- Oliver P. 01:57, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Oliver, I think your concerns are already dealt with, at least in part: if the phrase "Joe Bloggs is a loser" is one which is well-known enough to be mentioned in the article on Joe Bloggs, then it is may be spared by the following text:
The deletion policy expresses this issue as a balancing act (because it was the only way to avoid me and Daniel Quinlan settling it by a duel ;-)), which I think is basically correct - and VfD is currently the way we try to find that balance. However, we could add another point to the policy:
I'm not sure that's perfectly expressed, but something along those lines would, I think be reasonable. There would still be the possibility to discourage offensive redirects that Angela and others dissapprove of, but we're explicitly taking into account Oliver's desires too. Martin 19:40, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
> They would aid accidental linking
>They would make the creation of duplicate articles less likely
>They aid searches on certain terms.
> The topic of the redirect is mentioned in depth in the article in question
>There would still be the possibility to discourage offensive redirects that Angela and others disapprove of…
I've drawn some ire from Michael Hardy over my efforts, as part of Wiki Syntax, to either fix or delete redirects pointing to missing articles—such redirects being candidates for speedy deletion. (Obviously, it's the delete part that is being debated.)
(See my initial post, his reply, and each other's reply.)
I feel he's gone overboard by plastering warnings all over redirect-target-000.txt. (I reverted him once on the basis that that wasn't the place to discuss policy, but I'd rather not engage in an edit war.) He's also considering filing this for VfD, so it should be obvious that there's a bit of a disagreement in the air.
Could somebody from Mount Olympus deliver unto us a bit of wisdom on that matter?
-- Fbriere 23:49, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Note: He's also modified WP:RFD to reflect his views on that subject.
(I should also point out that this talk showed what appears to be a clear concensus on that policy.)
-- Fbriere 01:15, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I now realize that Michael has actually protected redirect-target-000.txt. (No template, no inclusion in the list, I only found it in the log. Isn't this contrary to policy?) This is getting a bit annoying...
-- Fbriere 04:08, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've just noticed that my critics and I were both mistaken about what the long-standing policy actually says. What confused us was that the emphasis in the statement of the policy was misleading. Read the paragraph starting with "However" after item #6 at Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. In view of the list of exceptions in the paragraph beginning with "However...", I've revised item 6 at Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion in a way that is really just a changed in emphasis and I hope will avoid some rash deletions-without-due-deliberation. It now reads as follows:
Michael Hardy 03:52, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Looks like Michael may have a point about Fbriere being a bit fast on the trigger: Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, which you had on your list, redirected to Endocine disruptor, an obvious misspelling of Endocrine disruptor. Did Fbriere bother checking, or was he in a hurry to just slash away? How many obvious fixes did he overlook in his haste? -- 165.76.216.35 10:24, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I just browsed, and I found 8 obvious cases of mistakenly deleted redirects, most plainly obvious. How tight is QC on this project? -- 165.76.216.35 11:11, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This is a bit of a tempest in a tea-pot. It's worth noting (as some will no doubt recall :-) that the last time we did a bunch of these "non-existent target" redirects on WP:RfD (sorry, I don't have the time to dig through the history to find the reference), I didn't simply delete the whole bunch, willy-nilly. Instead, I went to a lot of effort (as you can see see by the existence of this template, as well as some other ones) to try and exercise a fair amount of judgement, and not simply delete them all, including any that looked like the might be useful. As you can see from my note here about this batch, again I'm going through this list carefully, and not simply bulk-deleting them. I can't speak for others, of course, but I am trying to exercise some care here. (I even found an article that had been mistakenly deleted!) Noel (talk) 12:50, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I can definitely confirm what Noel said about non-existent redirects listed on
WP:RFD being treated with care. And here's my 2 cents worth on why I do not agree with changing policy to allow redirects that point nowhere:
-- All the best, Nickj (t) 00:02, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I create a new article (for example John Doar). Am I supposed to go and create redirects like [[John M. Doar]] and [[John Michael Doar]] and maybe a few others if there might be a "jr." or something thrown in? Morris 04:15, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)