Help talk:Redirect

Alignment

Resolved

 – previously. Libcub (talk) 23:46, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

On my display (with Firefox 2), the starting text:

See also: Wikipedia:Redirect

A redirect is a page

appears to the left of the shortcuts box, making the page confusing since it appears to start with an incomplete and non-capitalized sentence fragment. --Flex (talk|contribs) 16:46, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Problem

#REDIRECT does not result in an automatic redirect as predicted in the instructions on this page. Instead Wikipedia interprets the octothorpe as the beginning of a numbered list, and prints “1. REDIRECT” followed by the link to the page. Felicity4711 01:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Question

The text is unclear on this: to remove a redirect, it can only be done by admin? Is that correct? Marcia Wright (talk) 06:04, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "remove"?

For most purposes, a redirect is a page like any other. An admin can delete it completely. Any user can edit it.

Does that answer your question? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 16:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes thankyou. Marcia Wright (talk) 20:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Deletion policy

I will add a brief note about the Wikipedia deletion policy to the end of this section. It appears that more and more editors are taking the "easy" way out and are slapping (whatever)fD tags on templates/redirects/categories that they don't like, and they're bypassing due process. Those editors are not in compliance with policy because they pay little or no attention to the alternatives to deletion.

Problem with redirections to sections/anchors

If I create a page named redirection_page and add something like

#REDIRECT [[target_page#section]]

or

#REDIRECT [[target_page#anchor]]

this works fine for as long as I have JavaScript enabled. However, it will only take me to the start of the target_page article, not the section/anchor within, if JavaScript is disabled and I link to [[redirection_page]] in another article or type the name of the redirection_page in the search box. The resulting link displayed in the browser's link bar while viewing

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/target_page

is

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/redirection_page

If I then follow the "Redirected from redirection_page" link at the top of the article, I will be shown the redirection link like target_page#anchor on the redirection_page. Clicked, this link will correctly bring me to the desired anchor/section within the article.

It looks as if the hashed argument would get stripped off at some stage if not using JavaScript. I tried to URL encode the hash-mark using

#REDIRECT [[target_page%23section]]

or HTML encode it as follows:

#REDIRECT [[target_page#section]]

But this does not change anything.

Since the help pages read as if this should not be any problem at all, is this a known behaviour or limitation, perhaps only under certain other conditions? I'm using Firefox 6.0, and JavaScript is typically disabled for security reasons. Before I test more configurations, I would like to know if I can expect this to work at all. Thanks. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 07:21, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I used to use K-meleon as a browser, which allows you to easily switch on and off Java script, and I would be frustrated by Wikipedia’s section redirects. Nowadays I’m more or less stuck with Firefox with Java script always enabled, so I don’t notice the problem as much.

 Anyway, I don’t think you’re going to get a section redirect working properly with the current Media wiki software without using Java script. I think it would theoretically be possible for Media wiki to include the URL fragment of the redirect target when rendering a link to a redirect. For instance, Help:Section link currently redirects to Help:Link#Section linking (anchors). If the link was converted to Help:Section link#Section linking (anchors) it should work without Java script.

 I added a Help:Redirect#Section redirects section under “How it appears”; hopefully that explains what currently happens. Vadmium (talk) 11:02, 2 September 2011 (UTC).

Thanks for your answer. I too think it would be possible for the Mediawiki software to enable this simply by not stripping off the URL fragment from links in the "#redirect[[article#section]]" pre-processor command. It also does not support "#redirect[[article|text]]" in there (which would be of limited value, but anyway). Perhaps the problem is down to the fact that pre-processor commands start with a hash symbol as well, nevertheless, it should be easy to fix this (and if #something cannot be used here for compatibility with future expansions to the parser, another substitute symbol or string could be used instead, for example something like {{#}} as in "#redirect[[article{{#}}section{{!}}text]]"). --Matthiaspaul (talk) 22:14, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

redirect talk based on article redirect

Is there a syntax or template that can be placed on a talk pages that redirects that talk page to the talk page of the article that the article redirects to? I want to edit a reasonable number of talk pages where the articles have redirects. Adding the same text to all would make the task easier. --Traveler100 (talk) 10:19, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I think you want to know if there's a single template that does the redirect job automatically for multiple different pages? There's probably a way to do it with Parser functions, but unless you can figure that out you'd have to type the name of each article title manually and redirect their talk pages as you normally would any other page. -- œ^™ 04:22, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Search engine implications for hard redirects

One of my articles is of such a nature that it was necessary to create a couple of stubs that redirect, as a sort of disambiguation attempt. I'm wondering, though about the search engine (say, Google) implications of this. My main article has no problem coming up in search results, but if I search for variants of the article's name, nothing really comes up. Is there some way (that's not documented here - perhaps it should be) to incorporate a stub's automatic redirect that the search engines can pick up on the stub's content (at least its title)? Perhaps there's some other best practice to achieve the same thing? Nonetheless, I'd like to see this topic addressed in this article, or at least referenced! Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chris.rider81 (talk • contribs) 20:56, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

How to redirect to meta-wiki

So this: Wikipedia:Policy bloat evidently doesn't work. Can it be fixed? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 22:34, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you to Legoktm for the "soft redirect" message to explain. Should this help page have some text regarding soft redirect? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 01:29, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Section of Article Redirect?

Is it possible to create a redirect page that redirects one to a specific section of an article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by KidXap (talk • contribs) 08:50, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, see the second of the examples at Help:Redirect#Syntax. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:39, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Multiple Redirects to the same Page

I have a case where a subject (because of its loose translation to English) is known by different associations of words and their many permutations making it very tedious to create as many Redirect pages as there are possibilities. Is there a way (some Boolean syntax for example) to do this automatically? Thanks! UberNemo (talk) 14:14, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Letter case: UPPERCASE, InitCaps, lowercase?

The case is nearly always uppercase #REDIRECT, but there are a few hundreds of #Redirect or #redirect or even #REDIRECt (on Wikivoyage). Is it useful to convert them to uppercase, even though there is no rule that says "The #REDIRECT keyword should be uppercase" ? Nicolas1981 (talk) 02:59, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

A: The format should really be InitCaps: #Redirect [[Target... to be consistent with these types of things on WP including this article (Help:Redirect). Facts707 (talk) 10:51, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

B: If by good fortune we can reach a consensus on A: above, could someone please write a bot to change them all and also please add a space character after #Redirect if there is isn't one? I have to say #REDIRECT[[Article is quite hard on the eyes... Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 10:51, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

TOC display

Is it just mine, or does the TOC look wrong? I've posted the following at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Help:Redirect_TOC: The TOC at Help:Redirect is being confused by the HTML markup used to emulate what a redirect page looks like. I've tried

• <span class="mw-headline" id=" ">
• closing the <h1> and <h3> tags
• __NOTOC__
• transcluding the <blockquotes>

But nothing fixes it.— CpiralCpiral 01:23, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

How about using {{fake heading}}? The text size of the first line is a little smaller than the real thing, but it does avoid the TOC problem:

Transport

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Transportation)

There's already a revised version waiting at Template:fake heading/sandbox that knows how to format level 1 headings. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:39, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

 Thank you John of Reading— CpiralCpiral 17:04, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Common misspellings

I can see why we might want to redirect to an article from common misspellings. However, the downside is that if editors misspell a word and then link it; superficially it looks okay because the link is blue. So their ignorance is perpetuated, as is the misspelling when readers see it. Is there a way of annotating such redirects so they don't look like an acceptably spelt blue link? If not, shouldn't we consider removing this as a reason to redirect? Let misspellings always show as red links... --Bermicourt (talk) 20:38, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

We want to help readers who enter misspellings in the search box. They can be tagged with {{R from misspelling}} but will still show up as blue. What links here can be used to find pages linking to misspellings. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:04, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

semi-protection

After several apparently independent attempts by new users to create articles here by blanking and then overwriting he content, I've semi-protected the page for three months. I've not been able to find anything obvious that has changed to cause this, but if anyone has any good ideas please speak up. I'm also happy to discuss this semi-protection if anyone feels it is inappropriate for any reason. Thryduulf (talk) 23:46, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

How to force a hard redirect?

I would like for Wikipedia:Icahn to redirect to Education Program:Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai/Wikiproject Medicine (Winter 2015). A soft redirect is being generated, presumably because the "education program" space has some kind of special status, but I am not sure why within English Wikipedia a redirect would ever need to be soft like this. Is there some way that I can force a redirect to be hard? Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:43, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Anomie (talk · contribs) [ping!] may be able to help here, since AnomieBOT III has deleted the redirect as a "broken redirect". -- John of Reading (talk) 07:24, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

See phab:T50406. Or phab:T45975 for a list of other stuff that doesn't work on EducationProgram pages.

Among other things, EducationProgram doesn't populate the "page" table for its pages, which makes things think its pages don't actually exist. Anomie⚔ 11:35, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I now understand what is happening. I really appreciate your finding the bug tracking. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:04, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Redirect to articles that have not been created in that name

Hello I have been updating articles onwards from this article here: List of sovereign states in the 8th century BC when you look at the navbox it goes up to the 11th century BC and then there is one for the 18th century BC however in searching Wikipedia I put in List of sovereign states in the 12th century BC, 13th century BC etc each time it tells me an article already exists by that name and redirects to this article here: Cities of the ancient Near East. The current pages provide global listing's for former states whilst the former article deals with city states in one geographic area only. I want to create more articles going forward based on previous pages I created here: List of Bronze Age states but don't know how to do it or cancel the redirects need some clarity many thanks--Navops47 (talk) 05:05, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Please forgive me, Navops47, if I seem a bit fuzzy-headed, as I had an operation on the 9th. If I understand you correctly, the answer would be just to turn the redirects themselves into articles. You may do that directly, or if you prefer you can write the articles in your user space or in the new-article namespace, and then when ready move the new articles to the redirects in mainspace. You may need help from an admin for that option. Hope this helps, and don't hesitate to ask more questions, either here or on my talk page, if you have them. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 11:30, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Paine for your advice and I hope you recover soon take care.--Navops47 (talk) 17:26, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Pleasure! – Paine 

Wikilinks redirecting to the same page

I've come across an article relating to a very obscure English band, and it is clear that at some point in the past some enthusiastic editor created articles for several of their singles and albums, because they appear as blue Wikilinks in the band's discography on the article page. However, it also appears that they failed WP:N (unsurprisingly) and the said singles and albums have been AfD'd, because clicking on the blue links simply redirects you to the top of the page, the article about the band itself.

What I want to know is, can I simply remove the square brackets to remove the Wikilinks, or is there something else I need to do to avoid screwing up the redirects? There are definitely redirects in place, because you can search for the record titles in the Search box top right. As the albums still "exist" somewhere in the Wikipedia ether, it means they also come up in searches for Category:Album articles by quality and Category:Album articles by importance, when really they shouldn't exist there at all – I'm not sure how to remove them. Any help gratefully received. Richard3120 (talk) 19:16, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Richard3120 – yes, definitely remove the Wikilinks by deleting the brackets around them, which will get rid of self-redirects. Just make sure they are redirects. If clicking on them takes you to the TOP of the band page, then they are redirects (you'll see the small-print redirect link just under the article title). Now, to remove page titles from categories, go to the album title and then to the BOTTOM of the page. You should see its categories listed there. If you click to edit the last section of the page (References, External links, whatever), then you'll see the category names in code at the bottom of the edit screen. Just delete the category(ies) that shouldn't be populated, save your edit and you're done. Joys! – Paine  09:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

@Paine Ellsworth: many thanks for your help. However, since I wrote my query above, I have realised there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of similar links/redirects. I am therefore going to check with WikiProject Albums first to see if it is a good idea to simply get rid of these redirects, as they may feel they help when people type in the name of a particular album and at least get redirected to an artist's page which gives them some information. Thanks anyway. Richard3120 (talk) 22:48, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

If I understood your original query, removing the self-redirected links from an artist's page will not change the fact that the redirect still exists and will still take readers to the artist's page from a search engine. The only good it does to leave those wikilinks where they are is that the album redirects might be turned into articles someday. I personally don't like self-redirects and remove them whereever I find them, because they can be only confusing to many readers. It's up to you, and Best of Everything to You and Yours! – Paine  01:40, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Ah, in that case I probably will remove them, because they almost certainly won't be turned into articles, seeing as the articles have already been removed once. Thanks for all your help! Richard3120 (talk) 05:23, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Pleasure! – Paine

Just to point out that I can't remove the albums from any categories, because clicking on the link for the album title doesn't take me to the album article, it takes me to the redirected page because that title no longer exists, if you follow me. :-/ Richard3120 (talk) 18:16, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Redirects are usually categorized using templates, "rcats", so if you'll give me one of the album names, a link if possible, I'll be happy to look at it and see what is needed. – Paine  00:19, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Redirect to a subsection?

Is it possible to create a redirect to a subsection within a section? If yes, how would the syntax of such a redirect look like? Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 13:03, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

To editor Nsk92: so sorry I missed your post, and thank you for your question! The syntax would be the same for a subsection header as it is for a section header. Example:

Life in the Milky Way Galaxy (article title)
==Earthlings==
===Land dwellers===
===Ocean dwellers===

To redirect to the subsection "Land dwellers", the syntax is as follows:

#REDIRECT [[Life in the Milky Way Galaxy#Land dwellers]]

and {{R to section}} would still be appropriate to categorize the redirect.  Paine Ellsworth  ^u/c 09:52, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

OK, great, thanks! Nsk92 (talk) 13:08, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Is there an automated to tool to scan and article for redirects and automatically replace them?

Hello, I was wondering if there is an automated Wiki tool I could use to scan a certain article for links which link to REDIRECTS. Likewise, I would also like to know if this tool can automatically replace the REDIRECT links with the article they redirect to. Thanks. --Omer Toledano (talk) 16:48, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

This is something that is generally discouraged - see WP:NOTBROKEN for why. Links to redirects are valuable and should very rarely need to be replaced to bypass them. Geraldo Perez (talk) 17:04, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Ways to make a link directly targeting a redirect page itself

Hi, I'm wondering what methods (wikilink modifier, template, etc.) are available to link directly to a redirect page (i.e. to target a redirect page itself without getting forwarded on to its target). The only method I'm currently aware of is by using a URL link with &redirect=no appended – e.g. [https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Foo&redirect=no foo]. --75.188.199.98 (talk) 07:35, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

There is no wikilink. A url with redirect=no is required. {{No redirect}} produces that. {{-r}} is a shortcut. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:48, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Tnx bunches, that has the functionality I'm after. --75.188.199.98 (talk) 05:42, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Cyrillic confusion

I created a redirect from ОТМА to OTMA (try it!; the first is the Cyrillic form of the second) because, well, someone might run into "ОТМА" and want to know what it is. This is all very well, but following the redirect gives a page which appears to say "OTMA, redirected from OTMA". The assumption presumably is that writing this is self-explanatory, which it normally is, but sadly this assumption is false. Ideally there should be a note, something like "Redirected from ОТМА (Cyrillic form)", but there does not seem to be any mechanism to do this. Again, writing "ОТМА redirects here" on the OTMA page would just add extra confusion. Any suggestions? Imaginatorium (talk) 06:37, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Displaying notices on a redirect page

A couple of points.

1. This article does not provide a term, if one exists, for viewing the redirect page itself. The "How it appears to the user" section has "To go to the redirect page itself" and "A redirect page viewed directly ..." Is there a well used term or phrase that covers viewing the redirect page itself?
2. The article does not explain that when a redirect page is viewed directly that the system displays all of the wikitext on that page exactly like a standard page. The only thing that's special is that the #REDIRECT must be the first thing on the page. This can be used to explain why the redirect exists. If this feature is mentioned we'd also need to change the wording of "There is not usually any reason to place any text after the link either."

An example of a redirect page with a notice is the ОТМА redirect mentioned in the previous talk section where the editor explains why ОТМА is redirecting to OTMA. I took advantage of the feature here as there was a redirect for Gone To Pot that was then not mentioned at all on the target page.

I'd go ahead with adding mention of the feature myself but don't know what the community feeling is about displaying content on redirect pages and if WP:MOS should be followed for this content. In my case someone mentioned the movie "Gone To Pot." I went to Wikipedia to learn about the movie, searched for Gone To Pot, clicked, and was taken to an article that did not mention Gone To Pot. I chose to add an informal notice rather than taking the time to create a stub article about a possibly non-notable TV show. --Marc Kupper|talk 00:05, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Re #1, as far as I know there's no commonly used term other than what you already quoted. Re #2, I don't know if we have any actual policy or guideline on the matter but generally the content should be one or more of the redirect templates only. Perhaps that series should be added to List of television programmes broadcast by ITV and the redirect retargeted there.

BTW, it seems this page was never updated after T16323 was fixed in 2014, as it still says additional content won't be displayed. Anomie⚔ 01:50, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Hiding circular redirects

Is there a template or wikisyntax that allows a link that redirects to the same page to be rendered as a redlink? I want this for Civil decorations of Pakistan, where Nishan-e-Quaid-i-Azam was a redirect back to Civil decorations of Pakistan. Clearly this link is of no use to readers and I have removed it, but if an article is created then is would not be linked.

What I would like is something like {{Interlanguage link}} that automatically changes from a red link to a blue link when an article becomes available. Clicking on the red link should lead to the redirect page. Perhaps {{No redirect}} could be extended to support this.

Verbcatcher (talk) 18:45, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Piped link in a redirect?

Does this serve a purpose somewhere or is it user copy / paste laziness? I'm trying to draft a regular expression to check for nonstandard redirects.--Pawngpawng (talk) 19:43, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

What page to I put the redirect tag in?

I don't want to type it because it's code. It includes the word "REDIRECT" followed by the linked page. Do I just create the page to be redirected and then put into it? WorldQuestioneer (talk) 20:58, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Conditional redirect

What I want is <noinclude>#REDIRECT [[X]]</noinclude> then a bunch of content.

Tnen you can include the contents of the page using various mechanisms of transclusion... but if it shows up in a search -- and people go to that page, they get redirected.

That doesnt appear to work, since #R isn't the first thing on the page.

This would be especially valuable for subpages... you can lots of fragments of an article that all direct up to the parent.

The alternative is to do them in a separate namespace for fragments, and have that fragment namespace non-searchable. But that's messier in naming convention/confusion, and sort of defeats the point of a subpage. David Every (talk) 00:16, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

• @David Every: this is not a highly watched page. I recommend you post it again at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) where you will likely get a lot more engagement. Thryduulf (talk) 08:21, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Identify pages in a category which are redirects

I am trying to find redirect pages which are not assessed as redirects for a certain WikiProject, so that I could reassess them as redirects. Is there a way or tool to identify pages (or talk pages) in a certain category which are redirects? How can this be done? Sanglahi86 (talk) 11:14, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

"Wikipedia redirect help" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Wikipedia redirect help and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 2#Wikipedia redirect help until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Pkbwcgs (talk) 21:47, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Redirect from a search question?

An editor recently created a redirect from what appears to be effectively a google search phrase to an article - "Is it legal to 3d print guns" to the article 3D printed firearm#Legal status. This doesn't seem...right? I've never seen a redirect like this before. I could see ten million such redirects existing from random search queries on topics to specific articles or sections of articles. I think a question like that belongs as a google search, and then google directs them to what they're looking for. cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 22:33, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. Questions aren't "alternative titles" (i.e., they're not a possible/incorrect alternative name for a topic), which is the general purpose of redirects. Admittedly, the list of purposes isn't exclusive, but I think the general principle that Wikipedia is an encylopedia, and therefore not a manual, guide etc., would also be relevant in this case. Jr8825 • Talk 02:29, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't think this particular redirect matters much in the scheme of things, not so much that I'd request deletion. It just struck me as 'out of kilter', but 'out of kilter' doesn't mean policy-violating. Since this was the first time I've seen one, it's likely not endemic, so I've already expended more effort talking about it than it's worth... cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 03:24, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Redirects that are linked to Wikidata

After a software change, it's now easy to link redirects on Wikipedia with items on Wikidata. The new policy on Wikidata is described in https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Sitelinks_to_redirects . There are many cases where it's useful create these links to be able to provide interwiki-links between different languages. I propose adding a section to this help page that informs users of Wikipedia about the possibility and usefulness of creating these links. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 15:51, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Lower case page name?

I wanted to create a redirect for z Integrated Information Processor to zIIP (lower case z) using #REDIRECT [[zIIP]], but zIIP displayed in all caps. I tried #REDIRECT [[zIIP|zIIP]], with the same results. I realize that the user does not normally see the redirect page, but if possible I would like it to display with the proper nomenclature. Is the a way to cause the leading z to display in lower case? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:05, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

@Chatul: I don't think that's possible and I'm not sure it should be. The real name of the page is ZIPP. The redirect goes to https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/ZIIP, not https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/zIIP. It would be misleading to say it's zIPP. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:24, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: The page renders the name as zIIP and that's how IBM spells it. I don't like leading lower case in products names, but WP requires writing to what is rather than to what should be. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:03, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

@Chatul: Redirect pages are for editors, not readers. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:18, 5 January 2023 (UTC)