User:Tamzin/jottings-down 2

= Content guidelines do not apply to redirects =

Often an editor who is intimately familiar with Wikipedia's content guidelines will notice a redirect that seems to violate those guidelines, and will take it to WP:RFD for what they expect to be a fairly common-sense deletion. They are often then surprised when, after a week has passed, the RFD is closed as "keep" with no !votes in their favor. Why? The redirect was clearly a typo. Or titled incorrectly. Or non-neutral or even offensive. Or non-notable, maybe even dreadfully obscure.

The issue is that these guidelines only apply to articles. Redirects are governed by an entirely different set of guidelines, namely Redirects. The guidelines on when to keep a redirect have very little in common with the MOS or naming conventions. A redirect's goal is to aid our readers (and secondarily editors) in navigation, not to tell them what is necessarily correct. As such:
 * Typos are fine, if they are typos are readers are likely to make. The exact boundaries of this are often a judgment call, but something like a missed diacritic or miscapitalization will almost always result in a "keep" outcome.
 * Redirects don't have to follow the rules for article titles, although ones that deviate particularly far from them may be deleted. For instance, would be an invalid article title but is a valid redirect; however, JR (President) Biden likely would be deleted.
 * Redirects do not have to be neutral. If someone knows of a topic primarily by a non-neutral name, we want them to be taken to the right target. can redirect to Anti-abortion movements without Wikipedia endorsing the view that being anti-abortion is being pro-life. Same for conspiracy theories like, nationalist-POV titles like , and offensive terms like  and.
 * Likewise, redirects don't even have to be correct. Again, if a reader only knows the incorrect name for something, we want to correct that, not make them think we don't have an article on it. Thus, while it is incorrect to refer to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge as, many readers think of her as "Princess Catherine" and thus we maintain that redirect.
 * Redirect subjects do not have to be notable in the sense used for articles. Extremely obscure subjects, like a character who appears in a single level of a video game and is not discussed in any reviews of the game, may be deleted, and at the other end of the spectrum marginally notable subjects may be deleted if an article is perceived as viable, but in general, non-notability is not a valid reason to delete a redirect.

Other policies and guidelines still apply
That said, Redirects is not the only policy or guideline that applies to redirects. Importantly, WP:BLP still applies, e.g. for redirects that violate living people's privacy, although it's not quite as pressing a concern as with article content.

Furthermore, content policies are still relevant to redirect discussions. Statements like "This would never pass GNG as an article" or "This is very removed from our naming conventions" may well be relevant as part of a longer RFD !vote. Basing a !vote solely on content policies, however, is a good way to have that !vote ignored.