Help:How to use redirect pages
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How to make a redirect
To redirect a page (1) to a different page (2), enter on the top of page 1:
#REDIRECT [[NAME OF PAGE 2]]
For example, to redirect the NPoV page to the Neutral point of view page, edit the NPoV page and enter:
#REDIRECT [[Neutral point of view]]
Everything after the redirect line will be blanked when you save the page. Any text on the same line as the redirect will stay, but will not be visible unless someone edits the page.
More examples are included below:
What do we use redirects for?
- Misspellings: Condoleeza Rice redirects to Condoleezza Rice (samples)
- Aiding writing: planet Mars redirects to Mars (planet) (samples)
- Other spellings: colour redirects to color (samples)
- Other punctuation: Al-Jazeera redirects to Al Jazeera
- Other capitalisations: Natural Selection redirects to Natural selection (samples).
- To enable case-insensitive searching: Adding a redirect for articles with mixed case titles allows searches for these articles to be case-insensitive. For example, without the redirect Isle of wight a search for any capitalization other than exactly 'Isle of Wight' would not find the article Isle of Wight. These search related redirects are needed only if the article title has more than two words and words following the first have different capitalizations.
- Other names: Wellie throwing redirects to Wellie wanging (samples)
- Pseudonyms, nicknames: Butcher of Kurdistan redirects to Ali Hassan al-Majid, Rev. Fred Phelps redirects to Fred Phelps
- Synonyms: Linear operator redirects to Linear transformation
- Other languages: The Abduction from the Seraglio redirects to Die Entführung aus dem Serail (samples)
- Accents: Kurt Goedel and Kurt Godel redirect to Kurt Gödel (samples)
- Plurals, tenses, etc.: greenhouse gases redirects to greenhouse gas, etc.
- Note that [[greenhouse gas]]es shows up as greenhouse gases, so it is not usually necessary to redirect plurals
- Related words: Symbiont redirects to Symbiosis
- Sub-topics or closely related topics that should be explained within the text: Distributed denial of service redirects to Denial of service
- Facilitate disambiguation: America (disambiguation) redirects to America (samples)
- To track statements that date quickly: As of 2003 redirects to 2003 (samples)
- See Wikipedia:As of for more info.
- Avoiding broken links (see below)
- Minor but notable topics
Sub-topic redirects are often temporary, eventually being replaced by fully fledged articles on the sub-topic in question. Be conservative when creating sub-topic redirects — they can sometimes be counter-productive, because they disguise the absence of a proper article from editors. Sub-topic redirects should only be used where the main article has a section on the sub-topic. For example, denial of service has a section on distributed denial of service. Sub-topics should be boldfaced on their first appearance in the section, to indicate that they are in fact alternate titles or sub-titles.
In accordance with Help:naming conventions it's best to have an article at a well-defined, unambiguous term, with redirects from looser colloquial terms, rather than vice versa.
Renamings and merges
We try to avoid broken links, because they annoy visitors. Therefore, if we change the layout of some section of Cacheopedia, or we merge two duplicate articles, we always leave redirects in the old location to point to the new location. Search engines and visitors will probably have linked to that page at that url. If the page is deleted, potential new visitors from search engines will be greeted with an edit window. The same is true for anyone who previously bookmarked that page, and so on.
On a small scale, this applies to cases where we had duplicate articles on some subject, or lots of twisty little stubs on different aspects of the same overall subject. On a larger scale, we've had a few fairly major reorganisations:
- Moving away from Wikipedia:CamelCase article names
- Moving away from having homepages in the article namespace
- Moving away from using subpages in the article namespace
When should we delete a redirect?
To delete a redirect without replacing it with a new article, list it on redirects for deletion. See deletion policy for details on how to nominate pages for deletion.
This isn't necessary if you just want to replace a redirect with an article: see How do I change a redirect? for instructions on how to do this. If you want to swap a redirect and an article, but are not able to move the article to the location of the redirect please use Cacheopedia:Requested moves to request help from an admin in doing that.
{{Wikipedia:Redirect/DeletionReasons}}
What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects?
We follow the "principle of least astonishment" — after following a redirect, the readers's first question is likely to be: "hang on ... I wanted to read about this. Why has the link taken me to that?". Make it clear to the reader that they have arrived in the right place.
Normally, we try to make sure that all "inbound redirects" are mentioned in the first couple of paragraphs of the article. For example:
- Longships were boats used by the Vikings...
- longship, redirect from viking ship
- Mario Party is a video game series...
- Mario Party, redirect from Mario Party 2
- Edvard Munch (1863–1944) was ... The broadest collection of his works is at on display at the Munch Museum at...
- Edvard Munch, redirect from Munch Museum
Don't cause a secondary redirect. They don't work like a primary redirect; same with tertiary redirects.
Self-links, duplicate links
Avoid self-links, including self-links through redirects ("loop links"). Also, avoid having two links that go to the same place. These can confuse readers, and cause them to unnecessarily load the same page twice.
Related topics
- How to edit a page
- How to rename (move) a page
- Redirects for deletion
- Redirects with possibilities
- Practice editing pages in our Sandbox!
