Wikipedia talk:PLOT

Target of redirection

pd_THOR (talk · contribs) argues (via reversion here in 2008 and here in 2009) that WP:PLOT is best kept as a redirect to this section within Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, where its been for a while. Following advice from Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion (i.e. "Note: If all you want to do is replace a currently existing, unprotected redirect with an actual article, you do not need to list it here. Turning redirects into fleshed-out encyclopedic articles is wholly encouraged at Wikipedia. Be bold"), I boldly replaced it with a redirect to an existing guideline article about plots (Wikipedia:How to write a plot summary), an article created 7 July 2008. Since Thumperward (talk · contribs) only created the redirect on 9 April 2007, it makes sense (to me) to do the redirect now that a topic-specific WP guideline exists. At pd_THOR's request, I open the discussion to see if a consensus exists. Thanks. 67.100.126.76 (talk) 00:27, 7 August 2009 (UTC).

Since its creation on 2007-04-09 this redirect has been used as a shortcut to Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#PLOT by over three thousand pages. Changing it from a content policy to a style guideline changes the original intent of those 3,000+ previous uses; furthermore, enumerable users already expect WP:PLOT to redirect to WP:NOT#PLOT, and would expect to continue to use it as such. Lastly, the quoted bold suggestion above refers to turning this into an actual article, not changing the target of its redirection to a completely different topic. — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 02:29, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Sadly, I have to agree. The adoption of this shortcut as a general redirect to WP:NOT#PLOT is so widespread that changing it now would break an awful lot of incoming links. My original intention was indeed to have it discuss plot summaries in general, but that's irrelevant now. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 07:37, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

This NEEDS to go to the policy, not some side guideline, especially as the guideline page isn't patrolled as frequently by a wide and diverse group of editors like the policy is, and the guideline sometimes has things in it that directly contradicts or is midleading about the policy. Policies trumps guidelines, and there's been a coordinated effort by people to try to ignore the policy and/or force a change to it, etc. by people who don't care about policies. This needs to stop. DreamGuy (talk) 14:16, 13 August 2009 (UTC)