Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Template redirects/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Other namspaces

Is it possible to add other namespaces in? McLerristarr / Mclay1 13:55, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

We'll see about that a at a later date. Rjwilmsi 15:58, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Also, does mainspace include category namespace? McLerristarr / Mclay1 14:38, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Genfixes are applied on category naespace too, I've updated the documentation. Rjwilmsi 15:58, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
According to WP:Pseudo-namespace, their are a few namespaces that aren't real namespaces. Are they all included in Gen Fixes? McLerristarr / Mclay1 17:30, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Bolding

The bolding of just some of the templates looks a little strange. Would it be better to bold all the target templates? Perhaps it's possible to re-arrange the list so the target is first followed by its redirects. If we're bolding, there should be a note explaining why some of them are bolded. McLerristarr / Mclay1 13:57, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Maybe better to bold them all for consistency, doesn't matter that much though. Rjwilmsi 14:07, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Capitalisation

Althought the first letter of the new name is meant to be case sensitive, this edit {{commons category}} with a small C despite being capitalised here. McLerristarr / Mclay1 17:09, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh, it's been changed to first letter case insensitive now. Not sure why but that explains the edit. McLerristarr / Mclay1 17:13, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Because of the complains on the capitalisation. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:27, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

My list

Will be at User:Rich Farmbrough/temp104 presently. Rich Farmbrough, 19:41, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

Has been there for some time. Rich Farmbrough, 09:24, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

Hmms.

  • Disambiguation to Disambig
  • Redirect to... to R to

Both of these are more cryptic. And I know I should RM them. <grin> Rich Farmbrough, 22:36, 25 October 2010 (UTC).

"R to..." is a well-established series or names. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I am aware.... I don't mean it's cryptic to us. Rich Farmbrough, 09:24, 26 October 2010 (UTC).

Templates starting with acronyms in upper case

This section is about the issue identified and discussed in a handful of different places over AWB's handling of bypassing redirects to templates that have an upper case acronym at the start. An example is {{imdb}} --> {{iMDB name}}. In this case the rule that leads to the conversion is: {{tl|imdb}} --> {{tl|IMDB name}}. In order to maintain the first letter casing, AWB will convert {{imdb}} --> {{iMDB name}} and {{Imdb}} --> {{IMDB name}}. A number of editors have commented that this is sub-optimal, and {{IMDB name}} would be preferred in all cases. The origin of the AWB logic is simply that following earlier discussions over template case I configured AWB to keep the first letter case of the redirect. It did not occur to me (or anybody else as far as I'm aware) that this would be sub-optimal for templates with acronyms at the start. I would like to maintain generic support in AWB, so don't want to have special rules for "IMDB" etc. Therefore I propose to amend the logic to be: "keep the first letter casing of the redirect, except when the first word of the template is all in upper case (where the word is two or more A-Z characters) always convert to first letter upper case". I am asking for those involved to comment on whether this is a suitable amendment. Thanks Rjwilmsi 20:06, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely sensible improvement. (Note: BTW that the template is currently at IMDb... but should probably be at IMDB... per Mos on mixed case trademarks.) Rich Farmbrough, 20:17, 1 November 2010 (UTC).
My preference would be {{imdb}}→{{imdb name}} as this creates the least diff noise. The aim should be to preserve as much commonality between the before and after strings as possible. —Sladen (talk) 20:20, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
Support - Rj's prposal makes sense to me too with comments though. The problem I have with your idea Sladen is this. WP will not allow the first letter of a template to be lower case and will treat the template the same way regardless of whether the first letter is upper or lower case. Templates like this are different though in my opinion for 3 reasons. They are abreviations and abbreviations should be all caps, its not the first letter thats caps its the 2nd to X letters so the first letter rule regarding templates doesnt really apply and we should reflect what is displayed on the site it sources. This differs a bit from RJ and Riche's comment above but in my opinion we should reflect what the source site reflects. In the case of the IMDb link the site has it as IMDb so that, in my opinion, is how it should be displayed on WP as well. --Kumioko (talk) 20:28, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
It is not displayed on Wikipedia. It is only seen in the source code by poor unfortunate editors reviewing their watchlists or debugging some article history. The less noise the better. If people are suggesting variable case macro names then lowercase is definitely the way to go when creating new templates. If the case changes anywhere in a word it creates diff noise; if regular article text (which is displayed on Wikipedia), this kind of edit is not allowed unless it was clearly wrong in the first place. Here, the case is not clearly wrong and so should ideally be preserved. —Sladen (talk) 20:33, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
If its visible in WP then its displayed and its not just the source code. The link is visible to anyone who views the article (unless its commented out of course). I think the opposite and prefer the first letter in upper case. It just makes the links look messy when some are upper some are lower, some articles are one way and others are another and I don't like starting a line, whether a sentence, reference or simple link with a lower case letter. Its too much like laziness and bad grammer to me. And preserving it too me is like ignoring a typo or grammer issue. I understand that we all have different preferences though and I dont want to turn this into another months long debate rehashing all the same arguments again so I guess well just have to agree to disagree and live with whatever the outcome is after we have voiced our opinions. --Kumioko (talk) 20:49, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
The case of the template invocations in This at IMDb are not visible to the reader and I think it's misguided to consider lowercase template innvocations (generally prevalent thoughout Wikipedia) a typo. Changing wikicode for the sake of it—that makes no difference to the rendered page detracts from the useful work that AWB can do and the reputation of those who choose to use it. —Sladen (talk) 08:35, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Support because I find iMDB a bit silly but I am tired. I don't want to hear anything on the matter anymore. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:43, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm opposed to changing template redirects to their targets, but if this is done, the result should never be something ugly like iMDb or iMDB. In such cases, either change them to imdb name or to IMDB name (or in this specific case IMDb name), but not to some "invented" name. I have seen the same with bLP as well: please, either blp or BLP, but not something inbetween. Fram (talk) 07:58, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose Support a change, just not the one suggested (with caveats in last paragraph), because of the specific ugly example of "iMDb". Alternatives, in decreasing order of my personal preference:

  1. Don't change at all, unless the template in question needs a fix, then use "correct" name (e.g., IMDb name or URL).
  2. Always change to "correct" name (e.g., IMDb name or URL) if the template is already mixed case, but only when something else on the page needs changing.
  3. Don't change at all, unless the template in question needs a fix, then use all lower case.
  4. Don't change at all, unless the template in question needs a fix, then use initial uppercase, rest lowercase.
  5. Don't change at all, unless the template in question needs a fix, then use all uppercase for IMDB, URL, BLP, etc.
  6. Always change to "correct" name (e.g., IMDb name or URL) if the template is already mixed case.

My first draft had numbers 2 and 6 up at positions 1 and 2, but I thought about how much I hate to see some bot edit that's only deleted some spaces in an infobox or something, so I demoted them.

No. 3 is apparently quite different from the current and historical implementation (I often see "reflist" get corrected to "Reflist"), so I've offered no. 4 as a fallback. No. 5 would look "better" than no. 3, IMO, but it requires keeping a list of acronym/initialism templates, which you didn't want to do.

Not at all on my list of preferences: the Apple-flavored iMDb currently implemented.

Having said all that, I have to admit that it's still not clear to me why it's useful to "maintain the first letter casing". If that were the case (heh), "reflist" would remain "reflist". So I have to confess that I'm not clear on all the problem constraints facing us. Sorry about that, but I hope my input is of some value anyway. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 10:08, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with {{reflist}} remaining {{reflist}}.
The proposal by Rjwilmsi seems preferable to {{iMDB name}}, objections about whether AWB should even bother redirect bypassing notwithstanding (that probably belongs at Wikipedia talk:REDIRECT#Template redirects and WP:NOTBROKEN). –xenotalk 12:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
In this particular case its because AWB is changing IMDb to IMDb name to calrify what its there for. Not just changing the casing. BTW your oppose is saying you prefer it to stay the way it is with the ugly lower case first letter. If you want to to change you should have said you Support a change but with exception. By the way I prefer it in uppercase/Natural caps so the editors comments about the poor editors that have to see the code is unnecessary because there are some of us "poor editors" that have to see it too and I like in in natural caps. If I was only doing 20 edits a day it wouldnt be a big deal but its easier to read when your doing 500 to a 1000 edits a day like I am. They stand out more. --Kumioko (talk) 13:34, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure I follow. I agree with Rjwilmsi that {{IMDB name}} is preferred than {{iMDB name}} (and now I'm realizing there is a further complication in that the actual template is {{IMDb name}}!). However, I do not agree that {{Reflist}} is better than {{reflist}} - that's personal preference and reasonable arguments can be made for both, so it should just be left alone. –xenotalk 13:43, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Just to be clear on my mention of Reflist/reflist: I'm not saying either way is better, or advocating changing it or leaving it; I've just noticed it being changed during bot edits (may not have been AWB, I guess) and the unexpected nature of the change caught my attention. I've come to understand capitalizing these things is something that's supposed to be done, which is the (only) reason a bot does it. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 19:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Support - Rjwilmsi's proposal. Agree also to #1 from JohnFromPinckney about the use the "correct" name. I don't know if this is realistic(if it's not don't worry), but ideally {{imdb}} --> {{IMDb}} and {{iPhone}} is left alone. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 21:59, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Resolution

General case rev 7362 Enforce first letter uppercase for acronym templates (template name starts with three uppercase letters). Rjwilmsi 22:22, 2 November 2010 (UTC)


IMDb specific case (I am assuming an ultimate use of IMDb rather than IMDB, though the same solution is true of either) With the above general solution AWB can support {{IMDb}} or {{imdb}} --> {{IMDb name}} by a rule of {{tl|IMDb}}, {{tl|imdb}} → {{tl|IMDb name}}, OR it can support {{IMDb}} --> {{IMDb name}} and {{imdb}} --> {{imdb name}} by two rules of

{{tl|IMDb}} → {{tl|IMDb name}}
{{tl|imdb}} → {{tl|imdb name}}. Which of those is preferable is not for me to decide. Rjwilmsi 22:22, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
So we've ended up with two special cases, rather than just coding an simplification of the algorithm that attempted to preserve as much of the existing sub-string case as possible (preferring minimum change) and which would have covered all requirements? —Sladen (talk) 21:05, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
You'd better contact me directly on my talk page as we're clearly not understanding each other. Rjwilmsi 23:42, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

{{bLP sources}} → {{BLP sources}}

I added {{bLP sources}} → {{BLP sources}} so that AWB would automatically merge it into {{multiple issues}}. Please don't revert this addition unless you first change the AWB code to merge {{bLP sources}} into {{multiple issues}}. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:17, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

You're right, but I thought adding this to this Template Redirects page was easier than making yet another change to the AWB code. GoingBatty (talk) 06:24, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

RfC

An RfC on this is started at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#RfC on Template redirects. Fram (talk) 09:10, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

This issue was disposed of Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Template_redirects#Consensus here, although a later comment was not answered properly. Rich Farmbrough, 11:32, 1 December 2011 (UTC).
Um, no, it was never answered there. Please indicate in that discussion where the consensus to have AWB replace these was achieved? Fram (talk) 11:35, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
Where everyone disagrees with you except Xeno who sits on the fence. Rich Farmbrough, 11:40, 1 December 2011 (UTC).
So, like I said, nowhere in that discussion was indicated where consensus for these AWB replaements was found. No link to any previous discussion about this AWB functionality and how it would be decided was given. So everyone is free to add whatever he likes to the replacements page, without any discussion, but removing one is apparently not accepted[1]. Fram (talk) 11:48, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
Actually even Xeno disagreed with you. That's called consensus. Except by you. There is however consensus that there is consensus. Although you may disagree. But there will still be consensus that there is consensus that there is consensus. Rich Farmbrough, 22:39, 4 December 2011 (UTC).

Consensus

Where can I find the discussion that established that these kinds of chanegs have any sort of consensus? As far as I was aware, the consensus has always been to leave redirects well alone, apart from when they are actually broken or deleted. Mainly, they seem to change things for no good reason, like changing Infobox Album to Infobox album or Citation Needed to Citation needed. Fram (talk) 10:11, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Thats the rule for article redirects but the rules for templates are different. --Kumioko (talk) 11:30, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
Template redirects are allowed. WP:REDIRECT states "Redirects for templates can cause confusion and make updating template calls more complicated." But there is no indication that the rules for not changing redirects outlined above on that page, don't apply to template redirects, which are not listed on that page. Changing e.g. Citantion Needed to Citation needed will have few benefits, and according to Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups/About fixing redirects, "A recent benchmark showed that fixing a redirect is approximately ten thousand times more expensive for the server than following that redirect." Many people get annoyed when you change something that works to something that has exactly the same effect. Building this into AWB gives the impression that these changes are mandatory, and that the template redirects are wrong, which is incorrect on both accounts. Fram (talk) 12:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
I agree this is a murky area at best. I tried to seek some opinions at Wikipedia talk:Redirect#Template redirects and WP:NOTBROKEN but as yet no one except myself and Mag have commented. Feel free to slap an RFCtag on it. –xenotalk 12:46, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
I thought all the discussion over template first letter casing had established that bypassing template redirects is a reasonable thing to do provided it is not the sole purpose of the edit (with exceptions for a specific TfD-type task) and provided that the first letter casing is retained. Rjwilmsi 13:00, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps, but it would be nice to have a pointer to where this was indeed actually established. I don't agree that it is the best thing to do, but if I am shown that consensus is actually different from my opinion, then so be it. But so far, all I have seen is some editors acting as if there is consensus, without really establishing said consensus. Considering that this goes against more general rules, both the one about not replacing redirects with their targets, and the one of not changing things which aren't broken, I believe that this actually does need clear consensus before it was implemented in AWB. Fram (talk) 13:08, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I'm not so sure that the lengthy and often hard-to-follow discussions about template capitalization can be used to establish a consensus that bypassing redirects is always appropriate (...as long as something substantive is being done). That being said, I'm not opposed to bypassing redirects (alongside substantive edits), but I think there's another meta-issue here in that one or a few editors have in the last year or two moved a great many templates to a "Title case with spacing" style (to align with prose) instead of a typical run-together style (as usually found in coding) ({{Talk header}} instead of {{talkheader}}, {{Other uses}} instead of {{otheruses}}, etc.). Clear consensus didn't seem to have been established. But that horse has long left the barn, and is probably in the next county by now. But the upshot is there are a great many templates that would be subject to redirect bypassing as a result, and we're into diff-bloating territory again (and possibly people objecting because they prefer coding style for templates as opposed to prose style). Is there a setting to turn off the redirect bypassing? (There should be if not...) –xenotalk 13:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
I haven't added that setting, and I don't see the point as it would not address the potential concern you've outlined. Rjwilmsi 13:38, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
It was kind of a tangential question; it would allow users to opt-out of redirect bypassing without having to turn off general fixes. –xenotalk 13:45, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
In reply to some of the coments above and as I have said before. Some template redirects have undesired effects on other things outside WP such as Facebook, Wikibooks, printing to PDF and the various sister wiki projects. The first one that comes to mind is {{S-start}} and {{S-end}}. --Kumioko (talk) 14:59, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
In addition to what I said earlier though. I do believe it should be done as a minor edit only when other, more substantial edits are being done. Which I believe is currently the case. I believe that was also part of the analysis that if done as a minor edit alone was more of a drain on resources but if done as part of more substantial edits it would be beneficial. --Kumioko (talk) 16:47, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Where can I find the discussion that established that these kinds of chanegs have any sort of consensus? Fram (talk) 08:12, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion the consensus exists from a series of feature requests and bug reports to bypass template redirects, the most recent one being Infobox automobile..., and the existing functionality that AWB had over redirects of maintenance tags and disambiguation links. If there's no consensus to change a particular redirect then we should drop it from the rules list. Rjwilmsi 08:37, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
Someone asks for it, AWB programmers implement it, and that's the consensus? So, actually, as far as you know, there was no discussion about this, no agreement that replacing template redirects with template targets was wanted by the community and serves any purpose except making the lives of some bot editors more simple? Fram (talk) 08:47, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
I expected that the editors who requested it had gained consensus within the relevant wiki project/area before making the request and that the request was for good reasons like making the template name comprehensible and increasing consistency of naming. Rjwilmsi 08:57, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
Redirecting Infobox Album to Infobox album (and the like) does of course nothing to make it more comprehensible. Consistency for consistency's sake is never a good reason for changing things, consistency must serve a purpose. And I wa more talking about a general consensus that such changes are desirable, not local consensusses for individual instances of this, assuming that there are indeed any discussions about these instances... Fram (talk) 09:11, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
OK ... imagine you are a newbie and you see loads of "Infobox Xxxxx" and "Infobox xxxxxx" ... you are writing an article and you remember there's an inofbox for canals but you are not sure if it's Infobox Canal or Infobox canal. You either have to try it out or go and check. Both are a waste of time. For this reason having a naming standard is good - it is virtually certain that "Infobox canal" is where this lives, and if you know that (as a newbie won't) you don't have the problem. Also strange capitalisation has an off putting effect - if you don't remember seeing your first page of Fortran, algol or severe camelCasedCode the full effect may be lost to you. Third reason: we have naming standards, yet people are constantly creating new infoboxes "by example": it is these cases that make it only "virtually certain" - someone then needs to move the template. Fourth reason people try to use an infobox not matching existing capitalisation and get a redlink. They create it and we now have a template fork, again potentially a huge resource drain (there are hundreds of templates differing by capitalisation only - see the list at database reports.) Fifthly encouraging template creation contrary to naming rules increases template moves, template moves are not safe: if a template explicitly refers to a sub-page the second move will break it - therefore avoiding that first move is a good thing. HTH. Rich Farmbrough, 13:38, 27 October 2010 (UTC).
Your reasons seem to contradict one another. If you could list what would be good for newbies, what wuold be good for experienced editors, what would be good for bots, and what wouldn't be good, then perhaps I could understand any of it. Now it seems as if you believe that a standard naming convention would be good for newbies, even though they woudn't be aware of such convention, and that you are arguing for and against the creation of redirects to infoboxes at the same time (if you redirect a different capitalisation to an actual template, then it won't be created as a template fork: you can't use both arguments at the same time). And if you wouldn't try to impose needlessly strict naming rules on templates, then no moves are necessary. The template moves you describe are only necessary if you have such naming rules, meaning that the rules create more moves, not less. Fram (talk) 13:57, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
Just because house-fires aren't good, doesn't mean we ban fire-extinguishers. Rich Farmbrough, 14:28, 27 October 2010 (UTC).
And that was helpful or even relevant... how? Fram (talk) 14:35, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
Nvm. Rich Farmbrough, 14:49, 27 October 2010 (UTC).
The thing is arguing that the moves are created by the rules and therefore the rule should go could be applied to - rules of spelling? If we throw out our dictionaries, no more typo fixing! Yay! Rich Farmbrough, 14:52, 27 October 2010 (UTC).

Lets lay this out simply: Templates get moved and redirected for reasons other than case or naming convention. Merges, change of use, expansion of scope, typos, collisions to name but a few.

With that out of the way you raised some other queries - here are the answers with examples:

  • What's good for newbies
    • Consistency - in this example they should not be faced with a bewildering array of name formats, especially for the same template
    • Simplicity - no more templates than needed,
    • Familiarity - Sentence case, words not abbreviations, spaces between words not virgules, underscores or dashes, common words not jargon (EG "BB" for battleship)
  • What's good for experienced editors
    • Consistency - it's always "Infobox blah" never "Blah infobox" - the same casing is used (i.e. once you are used to it it doesn't matter which it is.)
    • Simplicity - no fancy category generators, no surprises, no need to enter long numbers with/without commas, not being forced to use USA instead of US etc...
    • Familiarity - template naming follows the same rules sentence layout, title naming and section naming - looks like a win to me.
  • What's good for bots.
    • Consistency - all infoboxen can be recognised, all project cats are on the page, years are almost never spelled out and so forth.
    • Simplicity - minimal nesting of templates (it is, I understand, not possible to reg-ex arbitary nested delimiters).
    • Familiarity - templates stay stable for most of the time - example: SmackBot checks the redirects it knows about most days, when it was monthly it caused issues a couple of times a year.

Simple isn't it (also consistent, and I hope by now familiar)? Rich Farmbrough, 14:47, 27 October 2010 (UTC).

But of course, there are no more templates than needed, the others are redirects, so that argument is invalid. And "familiarity"? Editors remember template names vaguely, not exactly. Was it "needs citation" or "citation needed"? Who cares, both work! Much easier. So familiarity isn't a good reason either. Basically, apart from bots, all your arguments are starting from the premisse that we only have templates, not template redirects. But that is not what we are discussing here. The discussion is about the redirects, which don't have anything to do with "fancy category generators" or having "all projects cat on the page". Your arguments are about a discussion to promote a limited number of templates, and a certain standardisation of them. Fine, but not relevant. Fram (talk) 19:03, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
"there are no more templates than needed" ok that's complete drivel for starters - read, think then comment. The rest of what you say is similar nonsense. Rich Farmbrough, 06:09, 9 December 2010 (UTC).

The reason we are discussing so much about redirects is that this years we standarised the names in an almost unified way. This of course leaded to some willing editors to start massively bypassing redirects, sometimes without a certain point. The phenomenon will decrease as the majority will get the standard name. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:23, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Consensus again

Bringing this up again. I see "a lot" of AWB users editing bypasses for {{Fact|}} and friends. This should be clearly unnecessary. {{Cn}} and {{Fact}} are clearly documented as canonical alternatives to {{Citation Needed}}. As long as the date attribute is present there should be no change - it screws up diff counts, and {{Fact}} is not even a double redirect! Cowbert (talk) 10:03, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

What do double redirects have to do with anything? This feature just makes everything more consistent and look "nice" by eliminating template redirects. It's less confusing for new editors if there aren't multiple names for the same thing flying around. McLerristarr | Mclay1 13:39, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
Because it is listed as such in the AWB rule list (under examples of double redirects). Now, if you want to strive for consistency then why mention its full support in the template documentation? Obviously the template maintainers choose to support all 3 methods of invoking the template. Otherwise they would "bury" mention of the redirects somewhere that only archivists might find interesting. To me, an AWB edit that only achieves to bypass something fully supported like {{Fact|}} still counts as an unconstructive edit. Cowbert (talk) 18:39, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
No, the list does not refer to double redirects, merely redirects. The template "Fact" was moved to "Citation needed" as a less bitey way of saying the same thing, and for that reason absolutely should be replaced, more than any other template redirect. {{cn}} is a short-cut, advantages to shortcuts, saves editors time, disadvantage makes for harder reading. Short cuts should ideally be replaced on page save by the pre-save transform, but replacing then en passent is also pretty good. On your last point you are entirely correct, that an edit only replacing redirects, in general, would be considered a "trivial edit" and should not be made unless other changes are being made at the same time. Rich Farmbrough, 11:39, 1 December 2011 (UTC).

I think there is one point that Fram and a couple of others are missing here. They keep saying there isn't consensus because they don't like it. But 2 editors arguing against a thing does not mean that thing lacks consensus. Clearly there are at least 5 that think we should do them or are at least indifferent to doing them. Also answering another comment made above. We have 'dozens if not hundreds of unnecessary tempaltes not counting the redirects to them. Again on the issue of redirects I have a couple comments to add here too. If we go way way back to the beginning of WP redirects were needed partially because we had no built in spellchecker and no search function. So it was very difficult to determine some things if they weren't redirected. Now that isn't an issue any more but we still have all these redirects for no good reason. As I have stated before with this and many other things. If someone wants to use Fact or Cn or whatever thats ok. A bot can come along later and clean it up. Its no big deal, its not the end of the editing world like some others have made it out to be. We are really expending far more energy and attention on this than really necessary. It really is a minority of editors who don't like the cleansing of redirects. The 99% either don't care either way or want to clean them up. So there is no reason to continue to hold editors hostage with statements that this doesn't have consensus. Its the same 3 editors who always cry about the same issue. If it truly lacked consensus there would be a lot more people screaming. --Kumioko (talk) 00:53, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

If it truly had consensus there would be a lot more people supporting, and all redirects would be added a long time ago. I don't see people running to AWB asking for their redirects to be added, I only see the same three or four editors expanding the list again and again, without any actual good reason for doing so. AWB is for most editors a closed, far off world, and when they see AWB edits, they assume that it has consensus, even if they don't agree with it. These edits are not the end of the world, no one has "made it out to be" like that, but some editors seem hell-bent to make these edits, even if they are not needed and not supported by anytihng resembling a broad consensus. Anyway, there is now an RfC about this, so it seems more logical to have the discussion there, not here. Fram (talk) 09:03, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

FUR/Image licensing updates

Request for :

  • {{album cover fur}} -> {{Non-free use rationale album cover}} by appropriate means
  • {{logo fur}} -> {{Non-free use rationale logo}} by appropriate means.

00:46, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Redirects to Cite journal

I understand that "magazines, papers, and documents are not journals, they just use the same template". Since {{cite magazine}}, {{cite paper}}, {{cite document}}, etc. all redirect to {{cite journal}}, I added those here so that incorrect template parameters could be fixed via the functionality in WP:AWB/RTP, but my edit was reverted. Is there a reason why adding the redirect here would be detrimental to Wikipedia? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:08, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

If we ever make a different template for {{cite magazine}} in the future, the pages that already use it will be ready. But if we bypass it then we lose that piece of semantic information. This is, in general, one reason that we don't treat redirects as broken. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:20, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Makes sense - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:38, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
I have traced back the suspect additions to the edits [2] and [3]. It is worrying that these entries have been present in this page for so long (20 September 2010), as these entries will have caused damage to many articles edited using AWB. What can be done to reverse this damage? Lmatt (talk) 04:58, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Not sure "damage" is the right term, page rendering won't have changed, though I broadly agree that the idea of this template redirects page was to redirect similar/equivalent/typo redirects such as "cit journal" and "c journal", rather than bypass potentially useful variations such as "cite magazine" (unless of course for a specific template there's a specific reason to bypass other redirects), so that's why in my edit you linked to I only added the paper/journal redirects not the magazine/document ones. One point is that, for this case, the semantic information that may be useful won't have been lost if the magazine parameter was used. Rjwilmsi 13:36, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

various additions

I recently took all the redirect targets in this script and found all redirects pointing to them. I already added the ones that fit onto already existing lines, however the following redirects weren't there. As per "Before adding a rule here you must ensure that there is consensus in favour of the template renaming." I'm collecting thoughts from others.

–meiskam (talk•contrib) 11:29, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Support for the additions to Cleanup-laundry, Inappropriate person, Plot, POV-check, Review, and Travel guide, as I'm presuming adding them will then allow AWB to merge them into {{Multiple issues}} when appropriate. (Note that I'm not objecting to the others.) GoingBatty (talk) 01:47, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Added these five maintenance templates to the list. Thanks for suggesting these! GoingBatty (talk) 01:17, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

NFUR templates

I'm listing these here first because there is no appropriate subheading for the File namespace, and this is my first time doing this so I don't want to mess anything up:

How does it look? LegoKontribsTalkM 07:36, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

The format is correct. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:00, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

So am I free to add them in? And should I create a new heading for the file namespace? LegoKontribsTalkM 08:02, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
We'll need to modify the code to make it work. We don't replace redirects in non-mainspace. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:04, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
Ok, for the time being I've created User:Legoktm/AWB/TR where I'll add more and once AWB has support for them, that list can be copied over. LegoKontribsTalkM 08:10, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Changing from one redirect to another

A few of the templates in the list change from one redirect for another, (I think) all of the examples of this are

Is there a specific reason that any of these don't change to the actual template or can/should they all be added to the list and changed appropriately? Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 10:36, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

My guess is that they were added to the list and then moved - you can check the history of the pages to confirm. I suggest you be bold and update the list as you find them. Thanks for pointing this out! GoingBatty (talk) 00:11, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 Done - Would it be worth having a Bot maintain this page? It could watch for templates that are listed as the destination being moved and updating the list accordingly. Other useful functions could be a one off check to ensure no redirects are missed for templates currently listed and then after that watching for creation of new redirects to listed templates. This would mean that AWB is always changing to the most up to date template and that no redirects get missed. It would also make adding a new template to the list quicker as the user would only have to specify the template and a redirect and the bot would populate with all the others. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 14:06, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Template for easy adding and changing

Could a template be made, similar to {{AWB rename template parameter}} to layout redirects in the correct format more easily. For example; {{Commons cat}}, {{Commonscat}} → {{Commons category}} could be produced with {{AWB template redirect|Commons category|Commonscat|Commons cat}}. This would make adding/changing items in the list easier and would avoid lots of accidental errors in the syntax. Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 16:26, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I've made a template that can take 9 parameters, the first being the 'main template' the subsequent ones being the redirects. It can be found at Jamesmcmahon0/AWBTemplateRedirect. With the input {{User:Jamesmcmahon0/AWBTemplateRedirect|Cite web|Cite blog|Cite website}} it produces:
{{Cite blog}}, {{Cite website}} → {{Cite web}}.
If you want to use it, it should be substituted; {{subst:User:Jamesmcmahon0/AWBTemplateRedirect|MainTemplate|Redirect1|Redirect2|etc...}}. If there are no objections I'll move it to an appropriate place in the template space.

Maintenance BOT

Would someone be able to build a bot to maintain this page. As a first task a think it should perform edits such as this; adding redirects that have been missed from the list for some reason. For a human it's a fairly boring task of comparing the list from Rdcheck against what is on the page. I'm sure a bot could automate this, ensuring that all redirects were being changed and not just an arbitrary sub-section of them. Any thoughts on the feasibility, need or implementation of such a bot? Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 21:43, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

There is nothing to say that every redirect "should" be bypassed just because it's a redirect. The purpose of this list is that editors choose which redirects are suitable for automatic bypassing. Rjwilmsi 10:12, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Could you point to an example where it is appropriate to change one redirect of a template and not another? Jamesmcmahon0 (talk) 16:35, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
@Jamesmcmahon0: - For example, I would add redirects to this page when AWB's general fixes may potentially do something further with the template but not the redirect. I wouldn't bother adding every infobox redirect just for the sake of adding them. GoingBatty (talk) 04:50, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

When to add here or change in small number of pages

Adding a template redirect rule here basically means that AWB will be looking for that template forever. The longer this list gets the more time that AWB spends looking for template redirect changes in every single page edit that is made with general fixes. While processing is cheap, the time of editors waiting for AWB to present pages to them for editing is not a resource that should be spent without considering alternatives.

Recently there appeared to be a number of redirects added to the list. The most recent set appears to be due to a naming scheme change within a project, or templates which did not conform to a already existing scheme. I only checked one, but it appeared to have a very low transclusion count. The one template redirect I checked was {{AllenOH-geo-stub}}. It has a total of 8 transclusions, only 2 of which are in mainspace. Would it not be more appropriate to actually go and change these? Perhaps even then remove the redirect?

While this particular set of additions happened to be what got me to check and ask the question, I do not intend to single out this set of changes.

If it is the case that it would be better to just go and make the changes in the articles, we would need to determine a ballpark transclusion count as to when it is more appropriate to make changes in pages rather than adding the rule here. This would probably also depend on the reason that the template was moved, or is redirected. — Makyen (talk) 20:48, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Cite magazine > Cite journal, again

I've removed {{Cite magazine}} again. It was removed in 2012 but it crept back again in 2013. There's a discussion about it in this page's archive and a current discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 8#Question about CS1 maint: Extra text - scroll down a bit to see the comments by Redrose64 (talk · contribs) and myself. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:28, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Would anyone object to changing this entry?

Change

To

I see a lot of pages that use {{-}} for simplicity. Replacing a dozen instances of these on a page consistent with the shorthand isn't disruptive per se, but seems unnecessary. — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 07:39, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

@Bgwhite: who added it in July 2015. — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 07:45, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Andy M. Wang Keep it. {{-}} isn't being used for simplicity. {{-}} and {{clr}} were actually different things. {{-}} used <br> (which caused two line spaces) and {{clr}} used <div>. In June 2015, there was a discussion to redirect {{-}} to {{clear}}. So, {{-}} is being used more out of habit. I also don't like how {{-}} tells nothing on what it does. After adding it to the list, a side effect has been to easily spot using both templates in infoboxes as a way to separate items in a list. I never would have guessed people were doing that. Bgwhite (talk) 08:53, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Emptied

I have removed all but the stub templates from this page. Many / most of these are needless changes which on their own definitely violate the cosmetic-only changes, and have caused the block of multiple editors and bots (the latest being Magioladitis and Yobot). If some of these are truly needed for some reason, then feel free to list the reasons here and readd them (and then consider deleting the redirect afterwards, if it is really that problematic). But otherwise it may be better to simply leave this alone. Fram (talk) 11:43, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fram: Responsible AWB bot operators have written their bots to rely upon some of these template redirects to occur before general fixes or their own find and replace rules, per Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Order of procedures. I have restored the hatnote redirects, maintenance templates, and the birth/age templates because many of these are hard coded in AWB's general fixes, but the redirects are not. GoingBatty (talk) 03:24, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
OK, thanks! Fram (talk) 05:28, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fram and GoingBatty: Thanks both for looking into it. The redirect templates sections is related to the redirects tagger. In fact it does not affect Yobot at all since Yobot does not work with redirects. The section is only useful for manual editing. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:56, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Infobox:MP discussion

This talk page doesn't seem to be widely used, but fwiw, there's a discussion going on concerning the replacement of Template:Infobox MP at Template talk:Infobox officeholder. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:03, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

OldWorldwarbler-stub

This stub redirect is orphaned. Normally I would just remove it, but looks like I better get consensus before I do anything!

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:25, 10 September 2019 (UTC).

AAN

Someone may wish to add the following

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:21, 12 January 2020 (UTC).

USCensusPop

In 2010 User:MSGJ moved the following template. Currently there are 30,000 uses at the new name, and some 400 at the old. It would be good to add this rule to the list. I note that the above suggestions for addition and deletion have not been taken up, though they are still useful.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough (the apparently calm and reasonable) 21:42, 13 March 2020 (UTC).

DYA

Please add {{Dya}} → {{Death year and age}} MB 16:59, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

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