Wikipedia talk:Soft redirect

Great idea
This is an excellent idea, Pete. Thank you! My two cents worth of rationale for supporting this idea:

I reckon this template is a much better solution than having to constantly list dicdefs on VfD. No matter how often we delete them, well-meaning newbies are going to constantly create new dicdefs. &bull; Benc &bull; 09:51, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Agreed - this is great. - DavidWBrooks 13:41, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Me too! Noel (talk) 17:54, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Great idea! Dwheeler 02:04, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

All commentary - including one on WP:AN, now copied here:


 * I think this is a good policy for topics with no encyclopedic potential. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:00, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

having been positive, and a decent time period for comment having elapsed, this is deemed to move from "proposed" to "adopted". Will modify the page accordingly. Noel (talk) 11:51, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Are soft redirects allowed?
I thought they were speedy-deletable. Kappa 15:30, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * If you delete them, someone else will likely re-create the page - and add content, to boot. A soft redirect, while somwhat ugly, is preferable to that. Noel (talk) 14:03, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The page is obsolete
Interwiki redirects have been disabled in MediaWiki (see e.g. m:Help:Redirect), so that the page is obsolete. It should be probably deleted or completely rewritten. --Mormegil 08:28, 31 May 2005 (UTC)


 * The page has been updated to reflect the fact that (hard) interwiki redirects have been turned off. However the page is not obsolete! We still want to create soft redirects for borderline cases where the decision has been to include the content in a Wikimedia wiki other than Wikipedia. Pcb21| Pete 16:12, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Spoilers
Anakin Skywalker is a soft redirect to Darth Vader to avoid spoilers. Is this a valid use of a soft redirect? Perhaps that should be mentioned. Coffee 06:24, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Since there are no objections, I will add it in. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 06:16, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Heh, not much activity here. This should have been discussed at WP:SPOILER. I've removed the now disputed section (disputed by myself) pending the outcome of the discussion on Wikipedia talk:Spoiler warning. -- Ned Scott 07:01, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

What about the template?
Am I missing something, or why doesn't the article make mention of the template? Or is this referring to a different type of soft redirect, even though that template links to this page?

Can talk pages of normal redirect pages be soft-redirected?
Suppose there is a page with a long title, Aaaaaaa Bbbbbbbbbb Ccccccccccc Dddddddddd, and ABCD as an abbreviation redirects to it. Now if someone wants to link to the talk page of the main article, they should be able to link to Talk:ABCD. This will link to the talk page of the redirect page, which they probably did not want. Putting a hard redirect in Talk:ABCD is probably overkill, as someone may want to talk about the redirect page itself. It seems reasonable to put a soft redirect on the Talk:ABCD page, to the Talk:Aaaaaaa Bbbbbbbbbb Ccccccccccc Dddddddddd. What is the policy on this? --Kprateek88 ( Talk |  Contribs ) 06:33, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Depending on how the redirect was made, many will redirect to the proper talk page. If one name redirects to another, then it's ok to do the same with the talk page. If there is old content on the talk page then it probably should be archived on the talk page the redirect points to. -- Ned Scott 07:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. --Kprateek88 ( Talk |  Contribs ) 07:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

how much content on a soft redirect?
Should the template be the only thing on a soft redirect page, or can there be one or two sentences explaining the item in addition? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Why is that necessary? nadav (talk) 08:11, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Redirects to sister projects
If a page is transwikied and deleted, should it usually be replaced with a soft redirect? Some say that all redirects out of the wikipedia mainspace are to be avoided. See this RfD for a particular case, though I am more interested in the general question of redirects to sister projects. nadav (talk) 08:09, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Question re: soft redirects to other GFDL wikis
See Village pump (policy). --Stormie 00:08, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Here is an updated link to the archived discusison: Village pump (policy)/Archive 3 -- Explodicle (T/C) 14:07, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Question: Redirect usage for clarification
Is this soft redirect from slack space to internal fragmentation a good use of a soft redirect? I am pretty sure it is not, but what else can I use? Using a hard redirect will probably confuse, but the term itself does not need its own article. Qevlarr (talk) 12:41, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Soft redirects to reduce data duplication in WP -- Where's the policy?
Wikipedia is full of duplicated data, often contradictory (e.g. see the History section of United States, compare with History of the United States). Frankly, the whole thing is becoming a mess. The solution is an increased use of soft redirects to channel editors towards a "core" article. Where is the WP policy against duplication? Emmanuelm (talk) 14:03, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Soft redirect discussion
I have started a discussion on soft redirects, and their future on the project, here. Any input from people knowledable about redirects in general is welcome and encouraged. - TexasAndroid (talk) 19:50, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Has been archived to Village pump (policy)/Archive_34 without much response. --Kubanczyk (talk) 13:13, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The transwiki section does not belong here!
The whole section "Soft redirect" does not belong here. If unexperienced Wikipedians look for a guideline what to do with a dictdef article, they do not expect that the answer can be found under "soft redirect" title. The "soft redirect" is in fact the answer! I think this section should be moved to WP:AfD WP:SISTER. --Kubanczyk (talk) 13:22, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. --Kubanczyk (talk) 08:43, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Deletion of soft redirects
Background that led up to this:


 * User talk:TexasAndroid/Archive7 - an early breif discussion in the saga of soft redirects.
 * Articles for deletion/Omglolwtfbbq - an AFD discussion on a soft redirect
 * Village pump (policy)/Archive 34 - Village pump discussion attempt that suffered from a lack of interest.
 * Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 28 - My abbortive attempt to get a CSD A3 wording change. Abborted for lack of interest.
 * User talk:TexasAndroid/Archive7 - someone who intensely dislikes soft redirects, and thinks all should be subject to A3 deletion.
 * User talk:UsaSatsui - Discussion today that kicked this off.

Basically, the issue at hand is whether, for project administration purposes, soft redirects should be treated as articles or as redirects. This mostly applies to deletion of these things, but may also have other applications. Articles and redirects have separate deletion systems, separate speedy deletion criteria, etc. In the links above, it's become evident that soft redirects are considered by many on the project to be more related to articles than to redirects. And given their mechanics, this is a little true. But functionally soft redirects mimic the purposes and effects of true redirects.

It's my opinion that soft redirects should be handled explicitly by the methods and systems in place for redirects, not by those in place for articles. Thus, they would be subject to WP:RFD, and not subject to WP:AFD or WP:PROD. They could be speedy deleted under R# criteria, especially R1, and could *not* be deleted under A# criteria, especially not A3.

For some people, this will be how it should have been all along. For others, it'll be a change. This discrepancy highlights the fact that we are currently a bit ambiguous as to which systems should cover these.

My plan is that, baring any major objection here on this talk page, I'll add text to the accompanying page in a week or so clarifying that these shoud be goverened by Redirect guidelines, not Article guidelines. Given the lack of any interest in the subject that I have encountered in the past, I plan to add the text even if I get little or no response, though any opposition will need to be discussed and taken into consideration. - TexasAndroid (talk) 15:38, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I think this is a non-controversial change, so please consider introducing it right now. These points have been already made in the Criteria for speedy deletion policy and survived three days - seems like a sign of silent consensus. --Kubanczyk (talk) 19:05, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Added - TexasAndroid (talk) 14:15, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Soft redirects on DAB pages?
Should soft redirects be added to disambiguation pages? I am developing Navibot, which adds entries to DABs, and it wanted to add jelly roll (slang) to the DAB page jelly roll. The bot can easily filter these out by the presence of the template, but I'm not sure whether it should—in general I try to have it do what human editors do. Thanks for any insights. —johndburger 18:40, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Soft redirects to Commons in main namespace
I'm involved in a discussion with another editor about whether or not we should have soft redirects to Wikimedia Commons out of the main namespace. I'd also like to take this opportunity to reopen the previously inconclusive discussion about soft redirects to non-Wikimedia GFDL wikis. As it stands right now, we have many soft redirects to Commons, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and even Wikia. Does anyone have any thoughts as to whether or not any of these are helpful? -- Explodicle (T/C) 20:38, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I explained my actions at my talk page (permalink), so there is not much to add to it. I doubt we need articles where the only content consists of a soft redirect to another project...it does not help the readers very much when trying to understand the topic. It might be useful for dictionary definitions which do not merit an article of their own but surely not for links to images like on Commons. We delete pages with only images or external links (as A3), so I do not see why we should handle it differently in such cases. Regards  So Why  21:42, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * A3 only applies to articles, not redirects or soft redirects. However, I'd rather ignore all rules and focus on the goal of useful redirects. If someone types "Chinese proverb" into the search box, they aren't looking for information about China, or what proverbs are... they are probably looking for actual Chinese proverbs and should be directed to Wikiquote (unless we write an article about the actual topic). Likewise, if they type in "The Wikipedia Quality Survey", we should send them to the actual survey results on Meta unless we write an article on the survey itself. We should be giving people what they're asking for. -- Explodicle (T/C) 16:41, 4 November 2008 (UTC)


 * A large number of Wiktionary soft redirects are for terms that we regularly get short dictionary-style articles. Internet slang is particularly bad for this.  For many of these there is really nothing on WP to which these could be redirected.  If we had nothing at the spot, we would either need to be constantly deleting simple dictionary definitions, or to WP:SALT the titles.  Neither is a great solution, IMHO.  Instead, we have soft redirects to the appropriate definitions over on Wiktionary.  These redirects can be easily restored each time they are replaced with dictionary definitions, they serve (I hope) to forstall a number of the dicdefs, they serve to point people looking up the term to the proper place to go for a definition, and occasionally they get replaced with useful articles that are more than dicdefs, though this last is by far the minority of occurrances.
 * Soft redirects are now expressly excluded from A3 deletions. They function like redirects, and are supposed to be deleted by the redirect deletion mechanisms, not the article mechanisms.  A3 deletion, in particular, is a problem.  If soft redirects were subject to it, then every soft redirect would by nature be subject to it.  If a consensous forms to stop using them, so be it, but until/unless that happens they are a functioning part of the project, and should not be subject to deletion for something that is fundamental to their nature. - TexasAndroid (talk) 16:57, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Redirects to foreign language Wikipedias
Although soft redirects to Wikipedias in other languages are possible, they seem quite undesirable due to the unlikelihood that English speakers will be able to benefit from them. This recently came up at Redirects for discussion/Log/2008 November 22. I suggest that this page include advice not to create such a soft redirect unless there is a really good reason to do so. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 09:23, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * We don't need to specify the "unless there is a really good reason" part on the guideline, since that's already covered by WP:IAR. Otherwise I agree - it's unreasonable for us to expect someone searching the English Wikipedia to be able to read (insert language here). -- Explodicle (T/C) 15:31, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Geez, lots of people these days can read more than one language. It's not a question of whether we should "expect" people to read another language. Rather, we should make it possible for those people who do to see an article in another language that is not on English-language Wikipedia. Why deny them that functionality? And why do we allow interline interlanguage links but prohibit redirects to foreign language Wikipedias? Tennis expert (talk) 01:07, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm worried that might get confusing. Maybe instead of the soft redirect template, we should make a template that says "this article does not exist on the English Wikipedia, but is available in these other languages"? -- Explodicle (T/C) 16:26, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

"That tells" - It does?
This page says that the soft redirect tells the reader to go elsewhere. It doesn't, though. It prints an arrow pointing to an external link. The only thing it explicitly says is "Hi, I'm a soft redirect!" Soft redirects should be much more clear, containing reader/newb-friendly text like "This page is hosted on another Wikimedia project, found here" or something like it. Honestly, though, I'm not at all sure I see the point to forcing even that much down the user's throat, when it should be perfectly acceptable to do an actual honest-to-God-redirect when another Wikimedia Foundation page is the target. MrZaius talk  07:20, 14 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm a little bit worried that it could confuse the reader if they don't notice they've been sent to another wiki. -- Explodicle (T/C) 18:34, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Still, it could be made more userfriendly with additional prose and, if we want to go that direction, a nice little "You will be automatically redirected in 5,4,3,2,1" type thing in Javascript. Ie, there's no reason you couldn't warn them before moving them offsite. Small caveat: As this tool would have pretty obvious ramifications vis a vis vandals, you might want to limit the utility of this presumably fully-protected-out-of-the-box redirect tool to sister Wikimedia projects. MrZaius  talk  03:09, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Better support for transwiki
I to Kemonomimi some time ago and asked on the template's talk page to get better support for transwiki so that the soft link can be more  asetically pleasing. However, I've not gotten a response in some time. 陣 内 Jinnai 01:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Soft redirect to www.mediawiki.org
LiquidThreads currently soft redirects to LiquidThreads which soft redirects again to http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:LiquidThreads.

Is it possible to soft redirect directly to the mediawiki site? I notice there's no magic word for it like there is for Meta (m:). -- &oelig; &trade; 21:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I just fixed it. For future reference here's the list of InterWikimedia links. -- Explodicle (T/C) 15:12, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh so there was one after all, I wasn't aware of that page. Thank you. -- &oelig; &trade; 19:40, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Soft redirects to other Free wikis
I've seen this idea floated around before, but there hasn't been much interest or a clear consensus against it. Here's what I'd like to add right under the templateslist (not in a quote box):

Original proposal Amended proposal, 20:41, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

The main objections I've seen are:
 * There could be multiple target wikis for a specific subject.
 * In which case we redirect to the "best" target article, to be determined by consensus like everything else. Unresolved disputes go to centralized discussion.


 * This would be supporting for-profit ventures like Wikia.
 * We already have plenty of external links all over Wikipedia; this involves external organizations just as much.

I think this would improve the usefulness of Wikipedia, reduce the creation of non-notable topics, cut down the number of AfDs, and keep us from biting newcomers. -- Explodicle (T/C) 17:59, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I do not have a specific objection to this change, but I think that it needs a lot more visible discussion before it can move forward. This page is extremely obscure to the general WP population.  A discussion here, with 2-3 people (if we even see that many), could still easily run into problems if these redirects start popping up all over.  I could easily see this change used to justify a lot of soft redirects to pop culture topics on other wikis.  Again, I do not have an immediate objection.  But I could see others getting riled up at piles of Pokemon or Star Wars redirect to obscure characters on other Wikis, for instance.  So I think we need to get more visibility on this discussion than it is likely to get without some effort.
 * I think one of the Village Pumps is the place to start. Either move the discussion there, or more likely post a notice there to get people to jump over and join in the discussion here.  Village pump (policy) likely.  If you do not want to craft and post such an announcement, I can do so.  I just think that, if we do not get a wider audience into this discussion now, we are setting up for trouble and resistance later. - TexasAndroid (talk) 18:17, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Good idea. I'd rather discuss this here, so I posted invites over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect and Village pump (policy). -- Explodicle (T/C) 18:53, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Hesitant Support, worth discussing. It would definitely need some highly-critical scrutiny of which sites to use, as linking to other sites carries an implicit endorsement - using the entire interwiki map seems much too wide, as we probably don't want thousands of new redirects to Urban Dictionary (for example) to be created. We'd need a lot of example cases, to make any kind of decent determination. E.g. For AFGNCAAP, do we keep the current redirect at AFGNCAAP, or change the link to the (arguably) more informative TVtropes:AFGNCAAP, or ? So: I'd request many examples for further discussion - some obvious positive examples, and some tough-choice examples. However, this, or something like it, might greatly help with moving content that isn't appropriate here to a better location (instead of just deleting it), which is an overwhelmingly positive direction to move in. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:45, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't link to any examples on Wikipedia because (to the best of my knowledge) soft redirects like these currently get deleted. I imagine the best candidates would be stuff like minor Star Wars characters, Gentoo Linux programs, and other stuff that fails WP:N. Would you be willing to compromise on allowing only soft redirects to freely licensed (GFDL or Creative Commons) wikis, instead of proprietary non-wikis like Urban Dictionary? -- Explodicle (T/C) 20:23, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * You may not be able to link to examples, but you could give pairs to show how these soft redirectscould be. One red WP link to the theoretical WP soft redirect name, and a external link to where it would/could be pointed.  Pairs like these would serve just fine as examples of what could/would be done under this idea, at least for the scope of this discussion.  - TexasAndroid (talk) 20:31, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I've added them in a new section below. -- Explodicle (T/C) 21:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I like the other examples, but would dispute the WikiHow one; Wikipedia isn't a how-to site. Your other examples are at least in encyclopedic form. --Cyber cobra (talk) 00:40, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd say that every one of those entries are something that doesn't belong on Wikipedia for one reason or another. Wikipedia isn't a dictionary either, so we frequently soft redirect to Wiktionary. -- Explodicle (T/C) 13:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I just find how-tos to be a bridge too far. I conceptualized your proposal as a way to "waive" notability while keeping such non-notable encyclopedia articles out of Wikipedia-proper. I don't think the Wiktionary soft-redirects are a good analogy. --Cyber cobra (talk) 18:41, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, I amended the proposal to better reflect your opinion. I have to admit I think how-to redirects would be useful, but I guess we could just try this and see how it goes, leaving the how-to thing for another day. -- Explodicle (T/C) 20:41, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Support - This seems like a reasonable proposal. Many people come to Wikipedia looking for information on obscure topics, and since we do not include articles on those topics, we can be helpful by redirecting to a site that does.  --Cerebellum (talk) 03:13, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Tentative Support Until someone presents a decent "Con" argument. We'd need to come up with guidelines on eligible wikis though; but I think this is a quite solvable detail. --Cyber cobra (talk) 08:33, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose, Wikipedia is not a linkfarm. Let's say we have something that doesn't meet notability. To avoid being a linkfarm flooded with redirects we need to have some guideline. The guideline has to be something like "one or several sentence about the subject in Wikipedia" (next step below notability). Such a guideline then better suits as external links, then a soft redirect. I see there is "no gap" between WP:N and WP:EL that can be filled with the proposed soft redirects. --Kslotte (talk) 19:04, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ever since we adopted nofollow for external links, the risk of Wikipedia being exploited as a link farm has been very low. I believe WP:LINKFARM is trying to avoid information pollution by too many links for one subject, not too many subjects with a single useful link each. Just to be sure, I've invited readers of Wikipedia talk:External links to comment here as well. -- Explodicle (T/C) 19:57, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Interwikis are NOT nofollowed -- compare 1 with 2 by viewing the HTML source of this page. MER-C 10:50, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That invalidates this whole proposal. Thanks for the heads-up. -- Explodicle (T/C) 13:15, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * "Wikipedia is not ... a repository of links" may better suits the policy that are in conflict. --Kslotte (talk) 20:33, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There is also policy NOTDIRECTORY. --Kslotte (talk) 21:15, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:NOTDIRECTORY links to other outlets - what I'm proposing is that we steer editors towards these outlets to prevent unacceptable entries. -- Explodicle (T/C) 21:38, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose because sending readers to non-Wikipedia/non-WMF websites doesn't help Wikipedia. We want our readers to stay here. Wikipedia is not a repository of links, even if those links are to unrelated wikis.  Also, we can safely assume that readers are smart enough to ask their Favorite Web Search Engine for more information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:35, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * When people search for a non-notable subject and get nothing, one of two things will happen:
 * Someone creates the article, and it gets deleted.
 * Someone tries to create the article, but it's salted. They either give up or create it under a different title which also gets deleted.
 * Either way, the user gets mad and says "screw Wikipedia, I've had enough of these bureaucrats". We get zero editing and financial support from what would have been a contributor. If we want to help Wikipedia, we should gently deflect these misguided efforts without alienating editors. -- Explodicle (T/C) 21:38, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment, I rather see a Template:See for interwikis something like: Further information: List of foos on WoWWiki, a Warcraft wiki . This way get a short introduction in Wikipedia and can get more information from a specific interwiki. --Kslotte (talk) 21:04, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Where would we put this for topics that aren't covered by Wikipedia? -- Explodicle (T/C) 21:38, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * My comment proposal above is only one solution (of many possible) making Wikipedia more interwiki friendly. --Kslotte (talk) 22:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment. I see we need a bit altered approach if the main idea is to avoid biting newcomers. What about adding a message instead of deleting: This article has been classified as non-encyclopedic. The information intended for this article may better fit in article FOO or Darkmoon Faire (WoWWiki, a Warcraft wiki). --Kslotte (talk) 22:20, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The message could be left for a few weeks before it is finally deleted. --Kslotte (talk) 22:24, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Having an expiration date seems silly; someone else might very well recreate it later. --Cyber cobra (talk) 23:11, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose. IMHO, the policies regarding interwikis is already very liberal, and there have in the past (and very recent) been severe problems with spamming using interwikis.  There is no significant gain from this, they should either be templated, or, preferably, follow our normal external link rules (which (via WP:ELNO), specifically, discourages linking to other wikis which are not sufficiently stable, or don't have a large number of editors; note that also WP:ELNO and the intro of WP:EL is often applicable; they do not provide more info, or that info can simply be incorporated into the article).  I would even go so far, that if a wiki does not comply with our external links guidelines (i.e., if it, generally, should not be an external link), then it should also not be allowed to be on the interwiki map for wikimedia software.  We are writing an encyclopedia here, not a linkfarm, &c. &c.  I hope this explains.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:11, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment - MER-C made an excellent point above, which basically invalidates the whole premise of this proposal. Unless someone thinks of a good way around the nofollow problem, consider this proposal withdrawn. -- Explodicle (T/C) 13:15, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that this specific proposal isn't going to work. It would be useful to keep mulling over ways to use Alternative outlets more efficiently. I'd suggest making any new proposals at that essay's talkpage, or at the Village pump (proposals). -- Quiddity (talk) 19:33, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Examples

 * Koro Ziil -> Koro Ziil (today's FA)
 * Wycliffe Bible Translators International -> Wycliffe Bible Translators International redirected to existing article
 * Darkmoon Faire -> Darkmoon Faire
 * Last Exit on Brooklyn -> Last Exit on Brooklyn
 * How to travel in China by train safely -> How to Travel in China by Train Safely

Internal vs external use
I just went on a clean up spree, and converted the few soft redirects I found that were pointed internally into hard redirects. I've been reverted on a couple, with the edit comments of "Soft redirects may be used internally within the Wiki. See the guideline + common sense in this case." and "I've just reread the soft redirect editing guidelines and this page seems to follow them just nicely. There is nothing on that page telling editors not to use soft redirects internally as you claimed." So the claim is, I guess, that soft redirects are fine as substitutes for hard redirects? I'm not sure. I'll make sure to invite the reverter in here to this discussion so that we can get his/her true interpretation.

But for me, soft redirects have always been intended for external links, and (almost) exclusively for external links. There's one small paragraph on the page about a single possible internal use, but otherwise the entire page is geared towards them being for external use. For internal use there is a much better and more proper tool, hard redirects. But soft redirects have come into use because hard redirects cannot work externally. So they are intended for use where hard redirects cannot function. But where hard redirects *can* function, I see no benefit from using them over hard redirects.

I wanted to get a discussion going here, to see if anyone else agrees and/or disagrees with my assumptions about their intended and desired usage. - TexasAndroid (talk) 21:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The soft redirects in question are OpenFT and Gnucleus. The guideline seems clear to me "Soft redirects t o non-English language editions of Wikipedia should be avoided because they will generally be unhelpful to English-language readers." Yoenit (talk) 22:28, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Umm. Those are soft redirects to pages in Wikipedia itself.  Not sure what the line about non-English editions has to do with the situation.
 * And to clarify a little, I converted around a dozen internally linking soft redirects to hard redirects, and was reverted on two of those, the ones mentioned just above. But the reverts raised a key issue, and I wanted to see if what I did with the conversions was proper/improper, and/or if the reverts were proper/improper.  Or somewhere in the middle. :) - TexasAndroid (talk) 22:45, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Why are soft redirects used for those two links instead of hard redirects? I quote from OpenFT: "to select the other language versions of the article"'. I suppose you could call it a language disambiguation page instead of a soft redirect, but those are not allowed either (WP:DABNOT, sister project redirect section). Yoenit (talk) 11:36, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * They seem a reasonable solution to a problem. I suppose the alternative would be a hatnote at the redirect target section, saying something like "for foreign-language Wikipedia articles on..., see the list at [link to one of the foreign articles]". We don't usually do this sort of thing, but we probably should.--Kotniski (talk) 13:43, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The person who reverted me has not yet joined the discussion. They were invited.  They (User:Old Death) will need to be the one to present the reasons for a soft redirect over a hard one.  Old Death reverted with the two edit notes in my first post in this section, citing this guideline and common sense as the reasons for using soft redirects over hard redirects in those two cases.  - TexasAndroid (talk) 14:07, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, seems I am a bit late to this discussion. Before merging the two named articles into the one about GnucDNA, I did some research about how to deal with the situation the best way possible. I thought about listing the available languages directly within the merged article - but to be true, that didn't seem a clean solution to me. Using the soft redirect pages to inform Wikipedia users about there being other language articles on the same subject seemed to be the best possible approach for doing so. However, if you do think there is a better way (without loosing that easy language selection choice for the user), feel free to suggest one and I will happily use it if the situation occurs again. Note however, that I do speak 4 languages and I often read articles in more than one language about a subject (better for getting a more neutral perspective etc.), so at least for me, getting rid of the possibility to find the other language versions of an article in an easy and intuitive way is not really an option I'd like to be the end result.
 * mfg, OldDeath - 18:23, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I think we should sometimes use soft redirects for cross-namespace redirects; however, I don't think redirects within the main namespace of the English Wikipedia should be using soft redirects.  McLerristarr &#124;  Mclay1  03:40, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, maybe for cross-namespace redirects occasionally (like NPOV, I suppose), but in any case we should redesign the soft redirect template, or just replace it with appropriate explanatory text on each occasion - it doesn't help people to be presented with a page of meaningless symbols and jargon like they get with the current template. (I suggested a slight improvement a while ago at Template talk:Soft redirect, but even this came up against resistance - not sure if the editor in question was ever convinced by my usability arguments.)--Kotniski (talk) 06:55, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Support for what both of you said. I think there should be something either specifically designed for this kind of purpose or the current template should be altered to match this purpose additionally to what it currently does.
 * mfg, OldDeath - 18:26, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I know that pages with historical value can be internally soft-redirected, such as Village pump (assistance). -- &oelig; &trade; 16:29, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, that seems an appropriate use, though franmkly the actual soft redirect template on that page seems redundant - there's already a good explanation as to what happened and where readers might wish to go to find what they were expecting to find under that title - the large link and the statement that "this is a soft redirect" just clutters the page without adding anything.--Kotniski (talk) 17:10, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * At least it's not as bad as some other suggestions, lol! ;P -- &oelig; &trade; 17:29, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

This issue keeps coming up now and then, so I have added a new section to try to expressly detail the limited situations where it is OK to use soft redirects for internal links. I encourage others to edit my wording and/or add additional reasonings. - TexasAndroid (talk) 15:07, 23 March 2012 (UTC)


 * »There are times when a hard redirect is too subtle, and a message expressly explaining the redirection is needed. Cross namespace redirection and preserving historical value are examples of this type of situation.«
 * This is exactly what I had in mind when using the Soft Redirect template within the OpenFT article. I'd like to thank you for adding this to the editing guideline, as it might help reducing confusion/unclearness in the future.
 * mfg, OldDeath - 21:56, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Nah, not having this. We're not making some new exception to the consensus that we don't use soft redirects internally on the say-so of one editor in one particular domain. I've reverted these soft redirects to hard ones and removed the language on this page which suggests that there are general exceptions which support the use of internal soft redirects (there aren't). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:17, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

stub categorization of soft redirects
Should soft redirects be stub-tagged? My instinct is that they should not, but I see, for instance, Carlos Mendoza Davis, which is currently tagged with "stub". Should it, or pages like it, be stub-sorted, or should the stub tag be removed?--Opus 113 (talk) 02:47, 18 March 2011 (UTC)


 * No, they should not. And it was incorrect to soft-redirect an article to another language Wikipedia. The proper thing to do would be a translation, which I've gone ahead and done. -- &oelig; &trade; 08:13, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Message in italian wikrionary
I sent to Krenair you a message on Italian Wiktionary. Please read mit. My nickname in Italian wikriuonary is Ulisse — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.58.116.123 (talk) 16:15, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Can there be multiple redirects on a soft redirect page?
Can there, I wonder? Are there any examples?--Worst regards, ''Greek Fellows". Visit ma talk page and ma contributions. 04:22, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Proposal needing input
User:AnomieBOT III will currently convert attempted interwiki redirects into soft redirects. It has been proposed that the bot also apply prod to such redirects in article space, as WP:Soft redirect discourages these. Please comment at WP:VPR. Thanks. Anomie⚔ 13:13, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Question/discussion at Template talk:Soft redirect
I have asked a question regarding the use of Template:Soft redirect that watchers of this page may be able to assist. The discussion can be found at Template talk:Soft redirect. Steel1943 (talk) 21:45, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

What is this? Tayevans77 (talk) 20:25, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Could someone please explain, ..
.. this passage:

"(Reasons: they could not be easily edited without hand-crafting the correct URL, since clicking on a link to the redirect page would take you straight to the redirect's target and there would be no "Redirected from foo" message to click, so it would be difficult to return to the redirect page itself; there would also be infinite-loop security considerations.)"

I do not understand the "easily edited without hand-crafting ..." argument.

Also, to return to the original page, shouldn't one usually be able to use the browser's "back-button" functionality?

And what actually is an "infinite-loop security consideratin"?

And what does this mean? " A soft redirect can be useful if one wants to link to it from its target, as an invitation to create a page, like a red link. Just as a red link looks different from an ordinary link, a link to a soft redirect can look different using the link>Help:Link#Stub feature|stub link feature (this can be activated by setting a "Threshold for stub link formatting" under "Advanced options" on the "Appearance" tab of the user preferences)."

Would it acutally make sense to link to a soft redirect from its target? Why and how would that work?

And do have enough people activated the "stub link feature" for it to make sense mentioning it here at all?

I quote again: " Another situation where soft redirects are used is when the intended target is a special page, and the system automatically "softens" attempted hard redirects to special pages. For example, en:Wikipedia:List of tags redirects to en:Special:Tags."

Why does the system "soften attempted hard redirects to special pages" ?

thanks for elaborating, --KaiKemmann (talk) 22:44, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Wikispecies redirect
Template:Wikispecies redirect has been nominated for deletion. Interested editors may participate at the template's entry at templates for discussion. — Godsy (TALK CONT ) 05:35, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

45,000 soft redirects indexed by Google
I was surprised to find Googling (or Binging) "Category Lodhi dynasty" returning, as the first Wikipedia result, the soft-redirected Category:Lodhi dynasty. Googling category "should be empty" finds 45,000 redirected categories (or 1,280,000 on Bing, doh!) Hard redirects don't get indexed, for example searching for Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging gets Gauteng as first WP result.

Is such indexing desirable? I would have thought avoiding it was better.

I suspect it's all about the  at the top of the generated html. Google's advice is here. (I do understand that the WikiMedia internals for soft and hard redirects are quite different.) Batternut (talk) 00:08, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Triple soft category redirect
There once was Category:Articles needing translation from Frisian Wikipedia. It was deleted because there are three Wikipedias that applies to: West Frisian, North Frisian, and Saterland Frisian. There are categories for all three:


 * Category:Articles needing translation from Western Frisian Wikipedia
 * Category:Articles needing translation from North Frisian Wikipedia
 * Category:Articles needing translation from Saterland Frisian Wikipedia

This needs a soft redirect from that page, to all three. We have double soft redirects, and we have category redirects, but we don't have triple soft category redirects.

Could someone with more experience at Wikipedia editing than me make Template:Triple soft category redirect, please?

I’ve added links to the other categories on the page, but this is a bad, temporary solution.

thanks,

DemonDays64 | Tell me if I'm doing something wrong :P 21:21, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Soft redirects to non-enwikis
The current guideline requires that soft redirects to non-English language editions of Wikipedia should be avoided, on the basis that they are generally unhelpful to English-language readers. That seems both: This guideline was brought to my attention in a recent RfD, where it was argued that allowing soft redirects to non-enwikis would produce "a billion redirects to subjects that wouldn't qualify under enwiki's inclusion criteria." Not only soft redirects, wherever they redirect to, remain subject to enwiki's inclusion criteria, but also a non-enwiki soft redirect would only be created for subjects without an article on enwiki, but covered in a non-enwiki (e.g. German Wine Fund).— Guarapiranga ☎ 02:10, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * unrealistic as 3/4 of English speakers are non-native, and thus at least that also read other languages; and
 * outdated at this day and age of ubiquitous automated webpage translation tools (that rule was introduced over 13 years ago!).
 * The guideline is reasonable. I would not like to click a bluelink only to find out I have to go to another language wiki to read about it. It is an annoying tease. H:FOREIGNLINK serves the purpose of informing the reader that while we dont have an enwiki article yet, a corresponding foreign article is available (with the language abbreviation mentioned). Soft redirects should be for titles that do not have a scope for an enwiki article. Jay (talk) 03:05, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Right! Withdrawn. I didn't know that page. I've proposed a clarification to that effect in the guideline.$[1]$ Please feel free to revert or correct it, if need be. — Guarapiranga ☎ 23:16, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Wikt redirects
Which is preferred, using a wiktlink (e.g. pomosexual) or a soft redirect wikilink (e.g. pomosexual)? — Tazuco  ✉️ 15:43, 2 August 2022 (UTC)


 * In most cases, I think articles should use standard wikilinks over Wiktionary links. That way, if the page with the soft redirect becomes something else (an article, a regular redirect, etc.), no further action needs to be taken. - Eureka Lott 00:37, 3 August 2022 (UTC)