Category talk:Redirects

Do we need so many subcats of redirects?

Do we really need so many different subcategories of redirects? I don't see how that level of classification would be useful to anyone... —Dr Ishmael 16:44, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Need? No. Can we use them to our advantage? Yes.

The tags are useful for determining when to delete a redirect or allow use of the redirect in favor of the main article.

• Common plurals shouldn't be maintained (they clutter predictive search), but uncommon plurals should remain.
• Misspellings and variants tags help us remember why we need to maintain the redirect.
• And common terms (which bundle GWW/Gwiki's general, specific, ...) and abbreviations are tags that suggest that we might want to use the redirect instead of spelling out the full name, e.g. [[NPC]] is easier to parse when editing than [[Non-player character|NPC]]. (We shouldn't have double-redirects, but there's no real reason we should overwrite useful shortcuts with full-spelling.)

Is it absolutely essential to the smooth operation of a community wiki to have so many or be precise? No, but it can make things easier (as long as we use them in the spirit intended). – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:55, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Back when we first revisited the category tree (Guild_Wars_2_Wiki:Projects/Category_reorganization), we felt that there was an unnecessary amount of categories for redirects. I still feel that way, so I'm going to also disagree with this change.

That said, it is high time we revisit this project now that we have a lot more information about the actual game that will aide us with categorization on this wiki. So I'd rather we continue the discussion here on the project's talk page. - Infinite - talk 12:09, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure that "we felt" is a fair characterization of the discussion: only two people participated in that convo and it took place over a year ago (before any beta testing and before there were many people here). I think it's a worthy idea, but I don't think we should take it as an expression of community consensus.

I don' think we need any subcats of redirects unless we treat different types differently. In particular,

• Do we need them at all in the wiki? (vs should they be removed to make predictive search more useful)
• Should we allow them to be used in articles? (vs should we bypass the redirect).
• Is it official (vs slang or shorthand).

Categories named after those ideas are likely to be unintuitive; the ones I added allow us to apply the considerations above easily.

Put another way, if we don't track plurals, misspellings, and common terms...then I think we should (for consistency) drop all subcats of redirects. That makes this a question of how we handle redirects, not how we reorganize categories in general. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 15:24, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

To rekindle this discussion, some clarification is in order on the previous "consensus." The project stems from the discussion over at Category_talk:Root, whereafter it was turned into a project. This project mostly flooded the RC for a rather long time and certain changes were contested (they were few). The consensus basically spawned from the fact that a) we proposed a change, discussed it, and later on started implementing (at which point there were three active users—one behind the scenes during the time of that particular discussion—involved with the actual project, which basically meant a big portion of the active userbase at the time, unfortunately); and b) it wasn't contested until May this year (by yourself (and then subsequently contested by Ishmael)). After all, consensus stands until a new consensus is formed, which is what we're attempting now.

Then, the actual discussion here.

We currently have 6 sub-categories here;

• Abbreviation redirects
• Common misspelling redirects
• Common term redirects
• Icon redirects
• Plural redirects
• Variant spelling redirects

I'm wondering if we could make them more concise;

• Abbreviation redirects are going to be widely used, it should stay one way or another.
• Common misspelling redirects and Variant spelling redirects are essentially the same thing (yes, I am aware I was originally the one to propose having them both around; I changed my mind). Variant spelling is not wrong in terms of English, per say. However, it is a misspelling of the actual term. Keeping them both in one (Variant spelling redirects) should not lose any valuable classifications. In fact, many American users would claim "judgement" is spelled incorrectly. It isn't spelled that way for American English (which we use here), so using "judgement" is essentially incorrect on this wiki. Variant spelling is a global thing, whether the differently spelled words are actual words or just typos.
• Common term redirects are basically an extension of abbreviation redirects. In Guild Wars we have Urgoz's Warren, which is most commonly shortened to "Urgoz." It's not an abbreviation in the sense that you'd type "UW" (Underworld, eh), but it's still basically the same principle; shortening the full name into something shorter to be more convenient. Maybe we should contract Common term redirects and abbreviation redirects into one; Common term redirects.
• Icon redirects can go; we no longer redirect icons.
• Plural redirects could stay, though we'd end up having a plural redirect for basically every article that has a plural version of itself. It doesn't sound like a worthy category candidate.

So ultimately, I'd propose something akin to this:

• Common term redirects (both abbreviations and shorter terms to refer to something)
• Variant spelling redirects (any redirect that is a different spelling of the intended term)

Of which I feel encompasses any plausible (and current) redirect perfectly. It also compliments the nature of categories; not all-encompassing or indexical but efficient and technically accurate. - Infinite - talk 14:39, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Common term redirects → Shorthand redirects. Win. —Dr Ishmael 14:45, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

It requires additional maintenance to distinguish types of redirects. Accordingly, unless we treat those in different subcats differently, I don't see a reason for multiple types. In my opinion, the two most important considerations are:

1. Do we override the redirect?
   • Example A: If we want [[Medals of Honor]] converted into [[Medal of Honor|Medals of Honor]] → tag as "plural redirect" because we convert it.
   • Example B: If we do not convert [[NPC]] into [[Non-player character|NPC]] → tag as "common term" because we do not override it
2. Is it an unnecessary redirect, i.e. one that we should delete?
   • Example C: do we want to keep [[Humans]] even though it complicates predictive search.?
     • Example C1: If not, we we just delete such redirects and then use "plural redirect" for those that we keep, to remind us why we keep it.
     • Example C2: If yes, then then there's no need to label it other than "redirect," since it's treated the same.

In particular, I don't see any difference between "common term" and "shorthand"...unless we override one but not the other. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:45, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

No, there's no difference between "common term" and "shorthand" - I was proposing to use "shorthand" instead of "common term" because it's... well, shorthand. —Dr Ishmael 17:06, 8 June 2012 (UTC)