Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/Early/cleanup/double redirects/20051009

Redirects to itself

If an article redirects to itself, let Triddle or I know and we can delete the article. There is absolutely no reason to keep articles that redirect to themselves. I did see one tonight that someone claimed was redirected to itself but one was Timeline of Golf History 1945-1999 and the other was (1945-1999). Not the same. :) So you have to be careful on that. --Woohookitty 08:43, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

• Actually, it was a redirect that redirected to and article that got redirected to itself. I got the undelete people to undelete the artcle, it was a botched move--Rayc 01:25, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Useful double redirects

At the danger of making myself very impopular, have you considered that some double redirects might actually be useful? For instance all misspellings of a word should redirect to the correct spelling, even if that word itself redirects somewhere else. Plurals should likewise always redirect to their singular form, even if that singular form is itself a redirect. This is their correct target and I don't think it makes sense to alter them according to where their target redirects whenever that changes. Otherwise redirects aren't cheap any more. --MarSch 11:09, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

• They could be useful if the software worked so that when you clicked on the misspelled word, you actually got to the double-redirected target. But it doesn't, and you don't. I can't see any valid reason for leaving redirects that don't work. --Russ Blau (talk) 20:14, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Redirects with other text on the line

Someone edited KODAK DX6440 ZOOM DIGITAL CAMERA, removed a template that was on the same line as the redirect, and left an edit comment pointing to this project. The template in question was {{R from EXIF}}, marking it as a redirect from automatically generated links in image descriptions created from EXIF information in the image file.

Perhaps the script that generated these pages assumed that nothing would be on the same line but the redirect itself? Anyway, be careful about doing things like that. —Morven 16:43, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Its a human that did it - the script only builds a list of double redirects, the human editors fix them, completely by hand. I've created no tool to assist in that. I'm not clear on exactly what behavior should change. It doesn't seem to me that anything needs to be changed in software but instead that some better instructions should be put up on the project page. Can you confirm? Do the instructions just need to say that one should only update the double redirect, leave all the other information in the redirect page alone? Triddle 16:52, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

The "double redirects" caused by the template were listed at Special:DoubleRedirects, not here. Specifically, it's listed as KODAK DX6440 ZOOM DIGITAL CAMERA redirects to EXIF which redirects to Exchangeable image file format. The only way to de-list it is to remove the template. I wasn't sure why people would need an explanation as to why certain redirects existed (especially since being a redirect, they won't see the template), so I just removed the template. Is there a way for the system to not mark them as double redirects? --Kbdank71 17:59, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Robots

Aren't there bots which do this, or assist humans when doing this? If there are, shouldn't that be mentioned on the page? -R. S. Shaw 21:12, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

• User:Kakashi Bot is doing this, I think assuming that changing A->B->C to A->C, B->C is always correct. What do people here think about that? Theoretically, if that was OK, the bot could do most of the work for this project. -- Beland 00:09, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Subsections

Becareful when moving the redirect, don't just copy the name of the link, check it first. Some larger articles have redirects that goto subsections. If you just move the redirect to the artle, it looses it's subsection pointer.--Rayc 01:31, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Rayc, I'm not sure I follow. Here's a scenario -- is this what you mean?

A redirects to B, and B redirects to C#subsection

So, to fix A, it is important to change A so that

A redirects to C#subsection

is that it?
--GraemeMcRae^talk 04:53, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

• • Yey, but I was just copying the link off page B and pasting it into page A. The subsection isn't visable unless you click on edit page B, or hover your mouse over the link on page B, like: Mesophyll cell has Leaf#Mesophyll on it, but on the redirect, you can only see Leaf

Mesophyll cell redirects to [[Leaf#Mesophyll]], but when I click this link: Mesophyll cell, it takes me to the top of the page. If I click this link, on the other hand: Leaf#Mesophyll, it brings me to the proper section. For this reason, I question the value of (1) using subsections in redirects at all, and also of (2) retaining the subsections in the manner you are suggesting.

Moreover, Wikipedia:Redirect tells us

Please note that you can only redirect to articles, not sections in them; although the syntax allows them, e.g.

#REDIRECT [[University of Cambridge#History]]

they don't work.

and we learn from Help:Redirect that

A redirect to an anchor
An example of this:

#REDIRECT [[definitions#G]]

This is not possible. You will still be redirected to [[definitions]] but you will not be sent to the #G anchor. This feature will probably not be implemented in the future: reportedly it is difficult to implement in a satisfactory way, see bugzilla:218. (Note: if you view the redirecting article itself, where the redirect appears as a link (definitions#G), the link does work to redirect to the correct anchor.)

If an article has a link to a redirect to a subsection, e.g. Mesophyll cell, then that link should be changed to the direct link (i.e. a link that doesn't "pass through" a redirect), to wit: Leaf#Mesophyll. Do you agree?
--GraemeMcRae^talk 17:04, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, it doesn't work. I'll just not worry about it then.--Rayc 23:04, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I wish it did work, but it doesn't. Still, I am heeding your advice to retain the subsection in the links I "disdoubleredirect" (I just made up that word) because as people discover articles that link to redirects, they should "disredirect" them, linking them instead directly to the article. When they do that, the subsection pointer does work, so that's why they should be retained intact, if at all possible.
--GraemeMcRae^talk 01:28, 22 October 2005 (UTC)