Wikipedia talk:Tools/Navigation popups/About fixing redirects

So why is it even possible?

I'm going to ask the obvious question here and wonder why, if this is a bad idea (i.e. frowned upon) to do: why is it a feature? — THOR ^=/\= 06:50, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Another question, related to the first: Is the point here that using popups to fix redirects is bad from a cost/benefit standpoint, but there's nothing wrong with doing it manually, especially if you're making other edits to the article? | Klaw ¡digame! 16:28, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with doing it when you're editing the article anyway. But you shouldn't do it indiscriminately; in many cases redirects are used for topics that could be potential future articles. You shouldn't change such redirects; leaving them alone future-proofs the link for the day when the redirect is changed into an actual article. --TreyHarris 07:21, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

What about newbies' test edits then?

And one last question, unrelated to the first two: If it takes roughly 10,000 reads to equate or justify one write, then shouldn't we be more worried about new users signing up and then creating nonsense pages that will be deleted immediately? - CorbinSimpson 09:52, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

The 1:10,000 ratio

The value of popups is greatly reduced when the links point to redirects. Once the redirect has been fixed then the popup shows the actual content as it would be displayed if the link were followed. This is useful, and likely what people expect to happen with popups. It may be 'expensive' to fix a redirect, but I believe the benefits are worth the cost. What is the actual cost of 10000 SQL queries, anyway? I'll bet not more that $1, either CAD or USD. --Bob 06:56, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Not only do I agree, but I think this ratio only justifies not fixing redirects in small wikis. But this is the English Wikipedia we're talking about! It's the biggest wiki of them all. So while you may cause 10,000 queries by fixing one (let's assume plainly unjustified) redirection, if this is a popular article, 10,000 read hits may come within hours if not minutes or even seconds, if it's really popular. -Lwc4life (talk) 21:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The future of redirects in Popups

Popups are not (yet at least) a standard feature of Wikipedia, and only a tiny fraction of us use it, so changing redirects with an aim to making popups more useful isn't really justified. Popups could be changed to follow redirects, anyway. --TreyHarris 07:21, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

A bug?

Why is the popup behaviour different for various redirect links? For example, the popup follows the redirect for morphosyntactical but does not follow the redirect for morphosyntax. Why? I've copied this to the User_talk:Lupin#Different_redirect_behaviour page. --Bob 20:56, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Value of fixing redirects

Y'know, fixing popups has a non-performance justification. It can be very valuable to see where a link is "actually" bringing a person; say I'm editting a Star Wars article, and I notice a redirect someone else fixed. To my astonishment, I see that when I go (for the sake of argument) [[Luke Skywalker]], it is actually going to [[Luke skywalker]]. Now I know that there's a seriously messed up article out there in need of my attention. And of course, there aren't just naming problems- seeing a fixed redirect can also alert editors that a disambig or redirect should be made, or an article split out from another, or an article merged... &etc. --maru (talk) contribs 05:58, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

That's an argument for locating bad redirects, and then fixing them in the course of making other edits—which we all agree is perfectly fine behavior. If you mechanistically fix the redirects without fixing the other problems, then you would "bless" the article into being one not in need of more attention. --TreyHarris 07:40, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Extensibility?

I was just thinking, isn't it actually a better idea to leave redirects alone? My reasoning is as follows: let's say there is a wikilink in article A that links to article B, but article B redirects to article C because the name of article B is something minor related to article C (I'm sure we've all seen this kind of redirect). If someone were later to write a full article on B, would it not be better for said links to still point to B, in order to be more specific? — flamingspinach | (talk) 18:28, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely. The example I've used is, "Reza Aslan fled Iran during the 1979 Iranian Revolution". Even though 1979 Iranian Revolution is a redirect to Iranian Revolution, if there were a another revolution next year, using that link future-proofs the link—if there's another revolution, he certainly won't have fled during each. (Not that I'm wishing or expecting a revolution to happen....) --TreyHarris 01:25, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

That is why there is {{Redirect with possibilities}}. Rich Farmbrough, 13:52, 27 October 2010 (UTC).

Multiple Terms for one thing is NOT future-proofing

I think this article needs to be revised to have a significantly less-severe tone, and use some better examples, like the ones provided here in the discussion. The example in the article for example, is one that I believe would be better off not using a redirect. As TreyHarris has pointed out, there is a value to fixing redirect links, and I think this value is not given proper attention in the article. Not only is it less disorienting for users when redirects are not used (they go where they expect to go); but also, the habitual use of redirects for any purpose increases the risks associated with them, for example double redirects may be inadvertently created. It seems to me that if a reference within a document is actually intended to (always) lead to a certain page, then it should do just that.

This brings me to the example of morphosyntactical in the article. Although I know nothing about the article in question, it seems clear to me that both of these terms are actually synonymous with the target article, Morphology (linguistics), at least in the context of the sentence in which it is used. When such redirects are created, they are not intended to be referenced as content articles, now or in the near future, and simply exist to aid users in locating what Wikipedia's authors have deemed the best or most specific article title. Similar to an acronym, the most popular current use of this term, or the most accurate meaning of this term in the context of the article, is the page which the redirect targets. So what if that meaning changes? Well then the article--written at a time when Morphology (linguistics) was the intended target of the link--would reference something that it was not created for. That is NOT future-proofing. In fact, any case of referencing a less-specific, or generalized term that redirects to a more-specific and intended term, cannot be considered future-proofing an article, and would have the direct opposite effect.

I would say that a vast majority of the redirects used on Wikipedia are to correct mispellings or misnomers. Thus, the correction of references to such mistakes in other articles would be a very valid fix. In fact, the only reason that I appreciate for not fixing redirects is future-proofing or avoiding generalizations (same thing). The example referenced by TreyHarris is a perfect one, because the article that is redirected to is a generalization of the more specific term, 1979 Iranian Revolution. In fact, I would argue that in most cases, specific aticle names should take precidence over general ones, as a more effective means of future-proofing entire articles. So, in such a case, the editor might want to consider moving the article name in question.

Another element of the article that I take issue with is that it discourages users from making use of the redirect popup tool due to its inefficiency. If the tool were so inneficient that it were not worth using, then it should either be 'fixed', or simply not used. However, I would also point out that one important aim of Wikipedia is for it to be easy to use, and easy to maintain. This popup tool is just that... a tool which may encourage users, even if they may be technically savvy users, to contribute to Wikipedia. This is in fact, why I recently installed the popup. If the 'fix redirect' feature of the popup saves me time and effort, then that is of value to Wikipedia because I will be more inclined to do so. If it is an error, it should be fixed. --Inarius 00:42, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

It is not the tool which is claimed to be inefficient but the server software. And even that is based on a very old benchmark of unknown provenance. Essentially the page is self defeating, because it says that it is a performance hit to fix redirects, then says don't worry about performance. Some redirects are just plain confusing and should be fixed, for example links to spelling redirects, most piped links to redirects. But changing the text of an article to fix a redirect is not likely to be a good thing, unless the text reads as well or better (preferably better). Similarly adding a pipe to bypass a redirect is generally not a good idea, as the wikicode becomes harder to read. Rich Farmbrough, 09:43, 22 December 2010 (UTC).

Is this still a feature?

I don't see it in my popup when I hover over the relevant link in this article. Has it been removed from the popup feature? TheHYPO 04:24, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Press the green redirect link. MC10 | Sign here! 21:18, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

What green redirect link? Rich Farmbrough, 02:02, 11 January 2011 (UTC).

OK this feature is disabled by default, as long ago as 2006 (maybe before). Rich Farmbrough, 02:51, 11 January 2011 (UTC).

It is disabled in Popups. However wikEd has a "fix redirect" button that does the same thing, so this article applies to users of wikEd as well.The myoclonic jerk (talk) 22:24, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

It is not totally disabled; it's only disabled by default. Install window.popupFixRedirs = true; in your vector.js to activate. That green link is just too subtle, and surrounded by too many more obvious links that are dead-ends for this purpose. See Wikipedia talk:Tools/Navigation popups#Fixing redirects - does it work? wbm1058 (talk) 12:46, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Link to the discussion that prompted creation of this page

• See Wikipedia talk:Tools/Navigation popups/Archive 1 § "Fixing" misspelling redirects, from January 2006. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:21, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

"Fixing" misspelling redirects (revisited)

In the beginning of 2006, there was some discussion of how popups handles resolving redirects that are misspellings -- there was never a resolution.

Is it possible to revisit this? It would seem to be very handy to be able to fix a redirect link to not only point to the correct page, but also resolve the misspelling at the same time. -- BullWikiWinkle 20:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Ten years later, we are revisiting this at Wikipedia talk:Tools/Navigation popups#Fixing redirects - does it work? wbm1058 (talk) 12:36, 29 November 2016 (UTC)