Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2009 December 23

December 23
This is a list of redirects that have been proposed for deletion or other action on December 23, 2009

Alfred Candidus Ferdinand Windischgratz
The result of the discussion was Delete all those nominated for deletion except Alfred I, Fürst zu Windisch-Grätz and Alfred I, Furst zu Windisch-Graetz. ~ Amory ( u •  t  •  c ) 22:45, 5 January 2010 (UTC) all above are harmless, included here for completeness R2 for all above (see below for more explanation) R1 for all above (see below for more explanation) R3 for all above (see below for more explanation)
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect • [ history] • )
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect)
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect)
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect)
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect)
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) 
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) <span id="Alfred I Fürst zu Windisch-Graetz">
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect)
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) <span id="Alfred I, Fürst zu Windisch-Grätz">
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect)
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) <span id="Alfred I, Fürst zu Windisch-Graetz">
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) <span id="Alfred I, Furst zu Windisch-Gratz">
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) <span id="Alfred I, Furst zu Windisch-Graetz">
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) <span id="Alfred I, Fuerst zu Windisch-Graetz">
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) <span id="Alfred, 3rd Furst of Windisch-Gratz">
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) <span id="Alfred, 3rd Furst zu Windisch-Graetz">
 * → Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (links to redirect) <span id="Alfred, 3rd Furst of Windisch-Graetz">

Delete, except where harmless: There are now 33 redirects to Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz, which seems to me disproportionate. Where above I have suggested are:


 * R1, they really are just so much clutter that the WP search engine would almost certainly resolve to the appropriate article.
 * R2, they could equally validly link to Alfred III, Prince of Windisch-Grätz (or, less convincingly, Alfred II, Prince of Windisch-Grätz.
 * R3, they should probably link to Alfred III, but since nothing actually does, there's little evidence within WP or from a Google search that the names appear in this form in real text, and so it is impossible definitively to prove Alfred I is not meant. However there is strong evidence in that:
 * Alfred, 3rd Fürst zu Windisch-Grätz
 * Alfred, 3rd Fürst zu Windisch-Graetz
 * Alfred, 3rd Fürst of Windisch-Grätz
 * Alfred, 3rd Fürst of Windisch-Graetz

all link to Alfred III, as and the similarity of these pairs is on a report here.

I suppose we could, as plausible typos, add more redirect pages for the "Third Furst" and then, of course, for the "First Furst".

None of these redirects have any incoming links except user pages, talk pages or Wikipedia archives. Admittedly there were two (or three?) that did have a few each, but almost exclusively they were piped links anyway, and on the few occasions they were not I changed it to the article title because in my opinion it did not harm, and sometimes improved, clarity. Someone else can pipe it if they really think necessary, but I did not introduce a pipe just to avoid a redirect (i.e. have not failed WP:NOTBROKEN).

From Talk:Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz it would appear that about four or five years ago there was a frenzy of moving this article about. If, since then, everyone has settled on piping to three or four names, then it seems ridiculous to keep this number of permutations. In fact all now pipe to the article itself as I changed the handful that did not (and this does not violate WP:NOTBROKEN, since changed what a piped link pipes to is not the same as changing a link to a redirect to a link to the article, then piping it).

I can see that someone will just respond with a blanket "keep all as harmless" here. I argue they are not harmless.


 * 1) They are a maintenance headache for any editor trying to achieve consistency across a series of articles when there are so many forms of a name around (which is how I came about spending hours sorting this out in the first place). It can not impress readers to have, in a series of related articles, the name spelled in so many different ways.
 * 2) For the forms that do not include a sequence number, they are genuinely ambiguous since almost inevitably father and son were contemporaries for a time, as were son and grandson.
 * 3) Perhaps most worryingly, they could set a precedent that almost every conceivable permutation of every conceivable plausible typo must be placed on every conceivable article, which is ridiculuous.

I appreciate that each taken individually are plausible (with the exception of the genuinely ambiguous ones, R2, which were used wrongly in one list article); but this has just got out of hand, and any suggestion it gives that such redirects should be made pre-emptively with perceived possible typos must be quashed. Redirects without diacritics, fine, but this list includes such with one diacritic changed (e.g. "Fuerst" or "Furst") and the other not (Graetz or Gratz), which is silly; some hyphenated some not; some "zu" and some "of", and so on, (and surely "zu" is not a plausible typo for "of", at least if the rest of the name is changed from German to English).

The way to get rid of this combinatorial explosion is to delete the lot of them, except those I said were harmless, while they are not used, and start afresh if new redirects are genuinely useful (for example, Prince Windischgraetz is vaguely common as a pipe, but actually redirects to the set article Windisch-Graetz, I haven't checked what yet and I would bet probably some mean to go to our friend Alfred I).

Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 22:09, 23 December 2009 (UTC) 'The above is preserved as the archive of an RfD nomination. Please do not modify it.'
 * Delete all, with special prejudice against those that mix English and German (e.g., "Fürst of", "Prince zu"), except Alfred I, Fürst zu Windisch-Grätz and Alfred I, Furst zu Windisch-Graetz (and of course, the first three listed redirects, which are not nominated for deletion). I agree with the nominator that the majority of these redirects are unnecessary as we should not attempt to use redirects to bypass the search feature altogether. I also agree that their existence is not harmless because it makes it possible to introduce links to all of these different variations, which undermines consistency across articles. –B LACK F ALCON  (T ALK ) 19:32, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

<span id="Yes/old version">Yes/old version
<div class="boilerplate mfd" style="background:#FFEEDD; margin-top:0.5em; padding:0 10px 0 10px; border:1px solid #888888;">The result of the discussion was Delete ~ Amory ( u  •  t  •  c ) 20:37, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
 * → Yes and no (links to redirect • [ history] • )

I removed the PROD from this, as that protocol isn't applicable to redirects.

However, I can't say I disagree with the rationale of the nominator, which was:

"Unneeded redirect with no page history and no incoming links from article space; awkward name with slash seems to be left over from old page moves"

Add to that, I don't see any significant page views, and I think this one can be deleted. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 10:20, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

'The above is preserved as the archive of an RfD nomination. Please do not modify it.'
 * Delete per nom: not a plausible search term, no significant incoming links, few page views, and the pagemove history is preserved in the page history of Yes and no. –B LACK F ALCON  (T ALK ) 01:27, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. Implausible. — The Man in Question (in question)  05:23, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * See User talk:Anthony Appleyard for a history of what happened, and also User talk:Anthony Appleyard/2008/October-December. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 12:20, 24 December 2009 (UTC)