Wikipedia:Redirect

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This page is a how-to guideline for Wikipedia, reflecting how authors of this encyclopedia address certain issues. This guideline is intended to help you improve Wikipedia content. Feel free to update this page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes.
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WP:R
WP:RDR
WP:REDIRECT
For general info and coordination guidelines for all Wikimedia projects, on creating redirects see Help:Redirect.
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Example of a redirect page

Contents

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How to make a redirect (redirect command)

To redirect a page (1) to a different page (2, also called target page), enter the following command at the top of redirecting page (1). 

#REDIRECT [[NAME OF PAGE 2]]

For example, to redirect the Cambridge University page to the University of Cambridge page, edit the Cambridge University page and enter: 

#REDIRECT [[University of Cambridge]]

You can also redirect to sections within an article. See Meta:Help:Redirect#A redirect to an anchor: 

#REDIRECT [[University of Cambridge#History]]

Don't make double redirects (a redirect that points to another redirect); they don't work, create slow, unpleasant experiences for the reader, and make the navigational structure of the site confusing.

Double redirects are usually created after a move when old redirects are left unchanged and pointing towards an old name.

Another type of undesirable redirect is a self-redirect: an article that redirects to itself through a redirect.

You can create a new page in order to make a redirect.

Everything after the redirect line will be blanked when you save the page. Any text on the same line as the redirect will stay, but will not be visible unless someone edits the page.

To go back and edit your redirect after it's working, add ?redirect=no to the end of the URL for your redirect: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_University?redirect=no

To add a reason, select one of the tags from the Tag column below and add it one space after and on the same line as #REDIRECT [[Wherever]]. For example, on the redirect page University of cambridge, 

#REDIRECT [[University of Cambridge]] {{R from other capitalisation}}

That will also add the redirect to the category listed in the Category column below. Note that there must be a space between the end of the redirect code and the template code for this to work properly.


More examples are included below:

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What do we use redirects for?

Compare the more complete template list and the corresponding category.
Reason Usage notes, and text that will be shown Tag /
Category to find articles so tagged
Abbreviations

This is a redirect from a title with an abbreviation.

For more information, follow the category link.


{{R from abbreviation}}

Category:Redirects from abbreviation

Misspellings  

This is a redirect from a misspelling or typographical error. The correct spelling is given by the target of the redirect.

Pages using this link should be updated to link directly to the redirect target, without using a piped link that hides the correct details.

For more information, follow the category link.


{{R from misspelling}}

Category:Redirects from misspellings

Other spellings, other punctuation  

This is a redirect from a title with a different spelling.

Pages using this link may be updated to link directly to the target page. However, do not replace these redirected links with a piped link unless the page is updated for another reason.

For more information, follow the category link.


{{R from alternative spelling}}

Category:Redirects from alternative spellings

Other capitalisations, to ensure that "Go" to a mixed-capitalisation article title is case-insensitive  

This is a redirect from a title with another method of capitalisation. It leads to the title in accordance with the Wikipedia naming conventions for capitalisation, and can help writing, searching, and international language issues. Apply one of the below templates to redirects created for this purpose. Other variants should use one of the other redirect templates such as from alternative spelling or from alternative name.

Pages linking to any of these redirects may be updated to link directly to the target page. However, do not replace these redirected links with a piped link unless the page is updated for another reason.

For more information, follow the category link Template:CAT.


Adding a redirect for mixed-capitalisation article titles (e.g., Isle of Wight) allows going to these articles to be case-insensitive. For example, without the redirect Isle of wight going to "Isle Of wight" or any capitalisation other than exactly 'Isle of Wight' would not find the article Isle of Wight.

Why: Articles whose titles contain mixed-capitalisation words (not all initial caps, or not all lower case except the first word) are found only via an exact case match. (Articles, including redirects, whose titles are either all initial caps or only first word capitalised are found via "Go" using a case-insensitive match.)

Note: Related redirects are needed only if the article title has two or more words and words following the first have different capitalisations. They are not needed, for example, for proper names which are all initial caps.

Examples:

  • Natural Selection redirects to Natural selection
  • Redirect Vice chancellor of austria to Vice Chancellor of Austria is needed because the Go search is case-sensitive for mixed-caps titles. Adding this redirect allows the article to be found when a user enters "vice chancellor of austria" or "vice chancellor of Austria" as a Go search.
  • No redirect to Francis Ford Coppola is needed because the "Go" command is case-insensitive for an article whose title is all initial caps. Any capitalisation (e.g. "francis fOrD CoPPola") entered as a "Go" will find the article.
{{R from other capitalisation}}

Category:Redirects from other capitalisations

Other names, pseudonyms, nicknames, and synonyms  

This is a redirect from a title that is another name, a pseudonym, a nickname, or a synonym.

It leads to the title in accordance with the naming conventions for common names and can help writing. However, do not replace these redirected links with a piped link unless the page is updated for another reason.

For more information, follow the category link.


{{R from alternative name}}

Category:Redirects from alternative names

Scientific names  

This is a redirect from the binomial nomenclature to the common name.


{{R from scientific name}}

Category:Redirects from scientific names

Scientific names


{{R to scientific name}}

Category:Redirects to scientific names

Other languages  

This is a redirect from a title in a language other than English.

It leads to the title in accordance with the naming conventions for titles in other languages and can help writing. However, do not replace these redirected links with a piped link unless the page is updated for another reason.

For more information, follow the category link.


{{R from alternative language}}

Category:Redirects from alternative languages

Accents  

This is a redirect from a title in basic ASCII to the formal article title, with differences that are not diacritical marks (accents, umlauts, etc.)

Use this redirect link (without piping) when the page concerns language translation or English language equivalents. Other pages using this link should be updated to replace text with the redirect target (again, without piping).

For more information, follow the category link.


{{R from ASCII}}

Category:Redirects from titles with ASCII

Plurals Template:R from plural

Note that [[greenhouse gas]]es shows up as greenhouse gases, so it is not usually necessary to redirect plurals. However third-party websites started adding automatic links to wikipedia from their topics (see, e.g., [1]). Many of them follow the opposite naming convention, i.e., topics are named in plural, and the link to wikipedia may land into an empty page, if there is no redirect.

{{R from plural}}

Category:Redirects from plurals

Related words Template:R from related word {{R from related word}}

Category:Redirects from related words

Sub-topics or closely related topics that should be explained within the text Template:R with possibilities {{R with possibilities}}

Category:Redirects with possibilities

Facilitate disambiguation Template:R to disambiguation page {{R to disambiguation page}}

Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages

To track statements that date quickly Template:R for as of {{R for as of}}

Category:Redirects from "As of"

To redirect to decade article Template:R to decade {{R to decade}}

Category:Redirects to decade

To redirect from a shortcut Template:R from shortcut {{R from shortcut}}

Category:Redirects from shortcut

Oldstyle CamelCase links Template:R from CamelCase {{R from CamelCase}}

Category:Redirects from CamelCase

links autogenerated from EXIF information Template:R from EXIF {{R from EXIF}}

Category:Redirects from EXIF information

From school microstub to merge location Template:R from school {{R from school}}

Category: Redirects from school articles

  • Avoiding broken links (see below)
  • Minor but notable topics

Sub-topic or supra-topic redirects (redirect with possibilities) 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 or item 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.

Some editors prefer to avoid redirects and link directly to the target article, as it is reported[citation needed] that redirects lower search engine rankings.

See also: Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages which contains a somewhat longer list of available redirect templates

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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:

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When should we delete a redirect?

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

Listing isn't necessary if you just want to replace a redirect with an article, or change where it points: see How do I change a redirect? for instructions on how to do this. If you want to swap a redirect and an article, but are not able to move the article to the location of the redirect please use Wikipedia:Requested moves to request help from an admin in doing that.

Template:Wikipedia:Redirect/DeletionReasons

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

We follow the "principle of least astonishment" — after following a redirect, the reader'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:

Don't cause a secondary redirect. They don't work like a primary redirect; same with tertiary redirects.

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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.

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Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken

Some editors are tempted, upon finding links using a legitimate redirect target, to edit the page to "fix" the link so that it points "straight" at the "correct" page. Unless the link displays incorrectly — for instance, if the link is to a misspelling, or other unprintworthy redirects, or if the hint that appears when you hover over the link is misleading — there is no need to edit the link. The link may be deliberate, may consolidate related information in one place, or may indicate possible future articles.

Most especially, there should never be a need to replace [[redirect]] with [[direct|redirect]].

Some editors are under the mistaken impression that fixing such links improves the capacity of the Wikipedia servers. Because editing a page is seemingly thousands of times more expensive for the servers than following a redirect, the opposite is true if anything. It's inadvisable to worry about performance.

One area where it is preferable to fix redirected links is in series templates, such as those found at the bottom of many articles (e.g. {{USPresidents}} on George W. Bush). In this case, where the template is placed on an article, and contains a direct link to that article (not a redirect), that link will display in bold (and not as a link), making it easier to navigate through a series of articles using the template.

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Template redirects

A template T2 can be redirected to another template T1. This creates an alias (T2 is an alias for T1). The alias name T2 can be used instead of the "real" template T2.

Aliases for templates can cause confusion and make migrations of template calls more complicated. For example, assume calls to T1 are to be changed ("migrated") to some new template TN1. To catch all calls, articles must be searched for {{T1}} and all aliases of T1 (T2 in this case).

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See also

Template:Commons

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