Whirled:Redirect

For general info on redirects in MediaWiki, see Wikipedia's Help on Redirects &mdash; part of the MediaWiki User's Guide. This article discusses policy on the use and abuse of redirects on the Whirled Wiki, and is taken largely from Wikipedia's policy. Other MediaWiki projects may have different approaches.

How to make a redirect
To redirect a page (1) to a different page (2), enter on the top of page 1:

 #REDIRECT NAME OF PAGE 2 

If you are redirecting to a section on a page, this would be:

 #REDIRECT NAME OF PAGE 2 

For example, to redirect the [ Administrators] page to the Whirled:Administrators page, [ edit] the Administrators page and enter:

 #REDIRECT Whirled:Administrators 

More examples are included below:

What do we use redirects for?

 * Avoiding broken links (see below)


 * Minor but notable topics

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 &mdash; 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, on Wikipedia, 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 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 the Whirled Wiki, 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.

When should we delete a redirect?
To propose the deletion of a redirect, write in the article's talk page, and add a proposed deletion template if you feel it's warranted. See the deletion policy for details on how to nominate pages for deletion. Please also see this page on Wikipedia for reasons not to delete a redirect.

This 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? on Wikipedia 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 ask on the article's talk page to request help from an admin in doing that.

What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects?
We follow the "principle of least astonishment" &mdash; 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
 * 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

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

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.