User talk:Nickj/Redirects

"Orphaned" Redirects
In 006, 009, 010 and 012, the redirects that "remain to be fixed" are not linked from anywhere except that page, a general "Encyclopedia Topics" and in one case, an obscure talk page (something/parentheses/s). I didn't strike them out because I think it's too much work and a lot more waiting for pages to load, etc. In retrospect, I should have stricken the ones that are linked from the Encylopedia topics list or talk page so your program wouldn't pick it up again on the next run, but there's only about 5 in total. Regarding Nakhon Pathom, Nonthaburi and Yasothon (in 012), all of the pages who point to that page refer to the capital and never the province, so I didn't think the redirect should point to the province (of the same name), so I've stricken it. If you disagree, I'll/you remove the strikethrough. Anyway, let me know if those pages can be added to the complete list. --jag123 09:10, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * There's at least a couple more, to do with centuries, where someone has used a construction like  to display "12th and 13th centuries" with the appropriate linkage: these are totally bogus (far better is  ) but the REDIRECTs have been created anyway. --Phil | Talk 16:49, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Redirects insufficiently specified
I've seen several redirects created now based on suggestions apparently from this page. In particular, redirects are suggested for Township articles when they should be disambigs. For example, Portage Township or Medford Township. If possible, please update the report criteria to do a better job of identifying articles with the same name before the first comma. Or at least, have some instructions to users to do some sort of verification (either searching on Wikipedia or using the Americam Factfiner to check for other entities with the same name. older &ne; wiser 16:40, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)


 * Good catch. What I was doing before was using cut-offs and percentages so that the most popular choice would be suggested as a redirect, rather than a disambig, if it was popular enough. That works well for most things, but, as your examples show, it does not work well for geographical names. So I've added a new category for "Geographical Disambiguations", where one or more of the suggested target names include a comma, and also includes the name of an American state (note I'm not an American, but the simple fact is that the majority of geographical articles currently are American). For geographical disambigs, if something is suggested even once, then it gets added to the disambig - (which for example now catches all the things you added to Portage Township and Medford Township). Note that these new listings can overlap with the other redirect and disambiguation listings - so I've also commented out the current remaining disambig listings, and I'll regenerate those after the geographical disambigs have been done. Also I won't add any more redirect listings until the 19 geographical disambig lists have been completed. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 03:38, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The little numbers which are usually 7
What do they mean? Do they indicate the number of times that such a link redirection occurs? --Smack (talk) 03:35, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * They indicate the number of different pages that a suggestion occurs on - for example something else would count as one suggestion that "something else" should be a redirect to "something". Suggestions only get counted once per page, and were only listed if "something else" did not already exist, but "something" did. For more detailed info, there was a discussion on User talk:Jag123 about how the numbers are generated. Hope that helps. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 04:03, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Struck-out suggestions
Please create a list of suggestions that were struck out on your next run. Some were probably valid. r3m0t 17:33, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * This has been done now, but sorry it took me 8 months! :-) All the best, Nickj (t) 06:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

a different way to suggest redirects
If anybody would be interested in the coding, I think I have useful way to suggest some good redirects. If an article is titled with the word Guatemala, for example (like history of Guatemala), suggest a redirect for the adjective, as in Guatemalan history (and vice versa). It'll produce some bad hits, but a lot of useful ones. Tuf-Kat 07:41, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages
If there is an existing page: Best city in Australia is either: * Sydney * Melbourne * Canberra and a link "best city in Australia", would it be reasonable to suggest that Hobart be added? --Martin Rudat(T|@|C) 08:13, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds very reasonable to me. So where:
 * There is a link on page C, where the link label is A, and A is "a good link", and the link target is B.
 * There is a disambig page at A, which does not link to B, or contain any link that redirects to B (e.g. cannot contain Hobart, Tasmania).
 * Then suggest that disambig page A also include target B in the list of possible definitions.
 * The main problem I have (besides actually writing the code to do this) is how to communicate the suggestion. The previous approach of "easy preview" links to create/update redirects/disambigs will no longer work (they've been disabled in MediaWiki since Feb of 2005 - see the bug for getting these re-enabled). So although I think it's a good idea, it may have to wait until that bug is resolved, and I get around to testing some code for doing this (which, knowing me, is likely to take a while). Alternatively, if you're feeling super keen, you're more than welcome to have a go at implementing it. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 03:06, 3 March 2006 (UTC)