User:Tom (LT)/sandbox/WikiProject redirects interview draft/PamD

OK I'll have a go:

• What motivated you to become involved with WikiProject Redirect?
  • I'm not very involved with the WikiProject, but am quite a Redirect-Gnome. Or perhaps Redirect-Geek. I create them, for articles I start, those I stub-sort, and others I come across, especially through the Women in Red WikiProject.
• Why have a WikiProject on redirects? What are the benefits to the encyclopedia of the focus on redirects?
  • Redirects are important. They help the reader find the article they want; they also reduce the chance of an enthusiastic editor accidentally creating a duplicate article at "Jane Xyz" because they didn't find the existing one at "Jane Mary Xyz". The Redirects Wikiproject provides a venue where people can ask questions about redirects and discuss them with other interested editors. I don't get much involved in the creation and maintenance of the comprehensive set of categories for redirects, though I do nowadays always add a categorisation template (eg {{R from long name}}) when creating a redirect, partly to save seeing it pop up on my watchlist later when someone else categorises it.
• The WikiProject has millions of redirects that could be potentially influenced by discussions. How do you and your project cope with this enormous scope? What are the roles that automated and semi-automated tools play in conjunction with your project?
  • I don't myself use any automated tools in connection with redirects, nor get much involved in discussions.
• What do you see as some of the biggest achievements of WikiProject redirects, and are there any contributions you are particularly proud of?
  • My contributions are more on an individual level, where it's satisfying to find that a long-standing red link in, say, a list of prizewinners, is resolved when I create a redirect from that form of the person's name to an existing article.
• What do you find are the areas of greatest consensus and contention in your WikiProjects' scope?
  • ...
• What do you see as the greatest area of need for your WikiProject and its articles, and how can a new editor contribute?
  • Need for the project? Somewhere for Redirect enthusiasts to find each other and discuss redirects. How to contribute? When you see an alternative form of someone's name used in the lead of their article, or in any of the sources, make a redirect. If it's a place where the article is at "Someplace, State", then make sure that "Someplace" is a redirect. If there's a bolded abbreviation or expansion of the article title in the lead, make a redirect. (Or, in each case, it might need a disambiguation page entry, or a hatnote, rather than a redirect). Just do it, and you are improving the encyclopedia. But do a "What links here" afterwards, to check that there aren't unexpected linkages, perhaps from a 1920s tennis player to your 2020 politician, where a bit more disambiguation work is needed.
• Is there anything else you'd like to add?
  • A newly created article isn't complete and as useful as it could be until you've made sure that the reader can find it from likely alternative titles. Redirects also reduce the chance of an enthusiastic future editor accidentally creating a duplicate article at "Jane Xyz" because they didn't find the existing one at "Jane Mary Xyz". Let alone the variations she used when marrying two different husbands and choosing to call herself Mary rather than Jane in some of her writings... that sort of thing.