GuildWiki talk:Redirect

Vote

 * The vote results have been archived to Old_votes

Vote results: No change to redirect usage

Discussion
I would like to (re?)open discussion on where redirects should be used on the site. In particular, I am for significantly increasing the usage of redirects to cover the following:
 * Synonyms (Hall of heroes -> The Hall of Heroes)
 * Plurals (Weapons -> Weapon)
 * Mixed-capitalization workaround (Amulet of the mists -> Amulet of the Mists)
 * Note: The MediaWiki behavior for case-sensitivty makes it so titles with mixed caps are case-sensitive when using the "Go" box. Having one (1) of the above type of redirect, from the all-lowercase version, works around that limitation. It is not'' necessary to construct every possible capitalization variant. Nor do titles without mixed caps need a redirect of this type.

My arguments for this change are:
 * Redirects help users get to their destinations faster
 * Redirects reduce server load by lowering the number of search queries
 * Redirects themselves take essentially zero server resources, in space or time
 * Redirects are "self-justifying" -- the only time a user will see a redirect is if they type that form of the term. Thus, a redirect is only seen by those users for which it is useful, and harmless to everyone else.

For reference; Wikipedia uses a very wide variety of redirects, for mainly the above reasons.

-- 66.92.33.187 15:18, 19 June 2006 (CDT)


 * In our case, I believe our policy is:
 * Acronyms: GvG --> Guild versus Guild
 * Synonyms: leaver --> quitter
 * Very common misnomers: Silver Armor --> Sliver Armor (this might even be disputed)
 * Common name to official name: Amnoon Oasis --> The Amnoon Oasis
 * Different capitalizations of Acronyms: gvg --> Guild Versus Guild
 * We do not by policy redirect plurals to singluars. That's unnecessary as you can link with the "s" outisde most of the time and searching for the plural is uncommon and will lead you to the single article most likely. On the flip side, maintaining a plural redirect for every single noun in this wiki is ridiculous.
 * Did I get everything? --Karlos 16:42, 19 June 2006 (CDT)


 * Maybe I was unclear; I was not suggesting that anyone go through and add all possible instances of these redirects; only that if someone wanted to add a particular instance of one of them, they should be allowed. At the moment, they seem to be deleted without discussion. I have added notes to the vote categories to clarify.
 * Also, note that plural/singular redirects are already used for a number of articles, including among others: Weapon to Weapons; Henchman to Henchmen; Runes to Rune; Command to Commands; Weapon upgrades to Weapon upgrade. These redirects seem to be useful, so I don't see the point of having a policy against them.
 * Lastly; it seems odd to allow acronym caps correction (gvg) but not other caps correction (amulet of the mists).
 * -- 66.92.33.187 20:13, 19 June 2006 (CDT)


 * Heh, most (if not all) if these plural->singular redirects are actually moved pages. --Karlos 02:51, 20 June 2006 (CDT)


 * I would vote here, but I think what I really want to say is this:
 * I don't think it should be GuildWiki policy to add redirects for plurals or obvious mistakes, but equally I don't think it should be our policy to remove them unless they are incorrect. &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 01:39, 27 June 2006 (CDT)


 * I agree that more redirects would be good for the listed reasons. --Vindexus 06:57, 24 July 2006 (CDT)


 * If a relevent/sensible search comes up with the article then I don't see why a redirect is useful. --Xasxas256 07:01, 24 July 2006 (CDT)


 * I'm ambivalent about the kind of redirects mentioned above (plurals, mixed cases, synonyms), but for "PvP shorthand" names like "boon prot" or "SB/infuse" I'd rather see a page with a short explanation and links to builds that would qualify as such a build than a redirect to one build. --68.142.14.19 07:27, 24 July 2006 (CDT)

Vote Status
This vote has been open for over a month. I believe that's more than long enough, it's time to close the vote. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:31, 25 July 2006 (CDT)
 * It's a real problem when a vote is called but no closing date is specified. The latest round of discussion and voting seems to have finished, 1 month is long enough, I agree should be closed. Unless someone objects I'll try to remember to come back and close this within the next hour or two. --Xasxas256 19:17, 25 July 2006 (CDT)

Plural redirects
Discussion moved from User talk:Panther

your effort is apprecated, but in general, we don't redirect for plurals, it's a technical issue. by the way, welcome to the wiki. --Honorable Sarah 11:17, 3 August 2006 (CDT)
 * So are you saying stop? Personally I find it quite annoying to have to redo my searchs because I typed a plural and there's no redirect.  As I'm sure others do as well.  Panther 11:25, 3 August 2006 (CDT)
 * It's not really a technical issue. It's more because in most cases it is so easy to create the plural by adding an s at the end. For example Pets will be displayed as Pets. So there is really no need to create a plural redirect for every article. We'd end up with several thousand additional unnecessary redirects. --[[Image:TurningL sml.gif|Tetris L]] 11:25, 3 August 2006 (CDT)
 * the technical issue i was talking about is the database load for several thousand redirects. --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 11:27, 3 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Yes, I agree that it's easy to create the pluralized links the way you suggest, but that only applies to links in articles. It doesn't work for search.  And even that wouldn't be so bad if Pet was at the top of the possible matches when one searchs for Pets but generally it doesn't work out that way.
 * Also, I think the "several thousand" extra redirects is a bit overstated since it's unlikely you'd end up with a plural for every article. For example, people are unlikely to search for Vampiric Bow Strings since they don't stack in the game and are only ever displayed as Vampiric Bow String (which I now see is also lacking a redirect).  However stackables like the few dozen crafting materials and collectables are much more likely to be displayed as plurals and thus searched for that way.  Panther 11:42, 3 August 2006 (CDT)

copied from Talk:Putrid Cysts to preserve the discussion This page should not be deleted because:
 * 1) A limited number of game items are likely to be searched for as plurals as they usually appear that way in the game: i.e. stackable items such as materials and collectables.
 * 2) Plural redirects are more load efficient than forcing multiple searches when searches for plurals fail.
 * 3) It does not meet deletion criteria as listed in the deletion policy. Furthermore, it does meet the criteria to NOT be deleted as a plural redirect is "useful information".
 * 4) There is no policy that states plural redirects are unacceptable.
 * -Panther
 * yes game items stack, but plurality is a language construct, not a game construct. by definition, redirects can contain no information beyond the title, and the fact that Putrid Cysts means Putrid Cyst is only useful to a non-English audience, who would derive no benefit from the English page it is redirected to. i'd agree with your reasons if redirects were free from a processing time perspective, but there is a small cost in terms of indexing and processing power, and that cost can quickly multiply. these are the same reason i oppose the WOH, woh, WoH, wOh redirects as well. --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 13:38, 3 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Unfortunately I see that logic as flawed on both counts. The fact that Putrid Cysts means Putrid Cyst is not only useful to a non-English audience.  I have on many occasions searched for information on collectable items using the plural term only to find no match and have to look down through the possible matches or re-run my search using the singular form.  If the plural had simply redirected, I would have spent less time looking for the information I wanted.  Hence the fact that Putrid Cysts means Putrid Cyst is in fact useful to an English audience.  It seems reasonable to assume others have had a similar experience.
 * On the point about the overhead, I think we need to make the proper comparison. Adding plural redirects certainly adds more overhead than nothing at all, but when a search for a plural fails "nothing at all" is not what happens.  What does happen is the Wiki has to look all through its indices and make decisions about what the user might have been looking for and present these.  This is a far more expensive activity than that associated with having the redirect in there.
 * -Panther
 * might have been looking for? i don't see anything like that. Special:Search/Krickette returns a blank page, same as Special:Search/Surik, which should bring up rurik if there were any context checking. --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 14:46, 3 August 2006 (CDT)
 * And what does Special:Search/Bleached or Bone Charms return? (Sorry for the external link; couldn't get the internal search link to work with two words). Just because there are searches where it can't find entries that are similar enough to present, doesn't mean it isn't consuming the processing cycles to look.
 * -Panther

A page should be marked for deletion if: A page should NOT be marked for deletion if:
 * "The page improperly named and a properly named article exists ("Roknar's Forge" versus "Droknar's Forge")" - check. A redirect is no longer a page.  It has no contents because whatever contents it would have had is in the article that is properly named (the article name with the singluar form).
 * "A page was merged or moved and no longer contains information" - check. Redirects do not contain information.  Redirects don't implicitly mean the article being redirected to is equivalent to what it is redirected from.  Redirects might be used if relavent information is just in a sub-section of the destination article.  Additionally, the destination article does NOT explain "Blahs is the plural form of Blah".  If there was a page with actual information but used plural article name, it would've be merged or moved with the singluar and will no longer contain information.
 * "The page's content is unique or useful" - Again redirects do not have any content.
 * "Anything needs to be done to the page before it's ready for deletion." - Typically this refers to moving useful information to other articles, or fixing links pointing to the article so they point elsewhere that has the info (or are no longer links)

Thus, per policy, I see absolutely zero reason to keep the plural redirects you have created. - 15:54, 3 August 2006 (CDT)


 * The argument over whether a redirect is a page is a hair splitting operation I'm not interested in getting into and is effectively irrelevant to this discussion. As far as being "improperly named", there's a significant difference between "Roknar's Forge" versus "Droknar's Forge" and "Putrid Cysts" versus "Putrid Cyst".  I would argue that pages like Shield of Judgement are far less useful than plural redirects.  A Guild Wars player is probably much more interested in finding Shield of Judgment than having their spelling corrected.  Please don't forget that We are not Wikipedia.
 * Whether redirects contain content or information is yet another hair splitting operation. It seems to me that if someone is looking up "Putrid Cysts", the fact that they need to go to the "Putrid Cyst" page is information.  Whether the target article explains "Blahs is the plural form of Blah" is also irrelevant in the context of this Wiki.
 * Again, even if you don't want to call redirects pages or what's in them contents, they are useful because they reduce the amount of time people spend looking for real information.
 * Could someone please explain to me why there's such opposition to a simple little thing that can increase the usability of the Wiki and reduce the server load? There's no downside to using these redirects so what's the problem?
 * -Panther


 * This has been brought up multiple times in the short history of the Wiki; the most recent discussion within the last few months resulted in a community vote. The end result being no change in our policy of not using redirects for cap or plural variations. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:02, 3 August 2006 (CDT)
 * Yes, I'm aware of that discussion although I'm not sure eight people consitutes a large enough portion of GuildWiki users to represent a quorum. Perhaps existence of the discussion was not widely known.
 * Also I'd like to point out that I believe your summary deletion of the redirect pages I created was a violation of your own Don't immediately delete policy as 1) Hardly any time passed; and 2) There is a dissenting opinion.
 * -Panther


 * The articles were deleted per the decision from that discussion. As a vote had taken place on using redirects for caps and plurals already, there was no reason not to do an immediate delete.  The discussion was flagged on Category:Votes for over a month prior to closing the vote.  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:48, 3 August 2006 (CDT)


 * In terms of policy, Barek did not violate any policy. You created articles against wiki policy (which you state you were aware they are), he deleted them preserving policy. You are saying there is a discussion about them, but there was a discussion about them like a month ago. So, two weeks from now you can just hop in and recreate them again and then tell him he can't delete them because you are having a discussion about them?
 * The search concern is a valid one for the sake of new users. However, if you are as aware of things around here (even quoting policies) as you seem to be then I do not buy your claim that you search for things in plural form and fail to find them. Especially if you read that discussion and kept on using plurals to find things. But for the sake of new users who may not be as well-versed as you seem to be, I added the singular clause to the search tips. Hope that works. --Karlos 22:15, 3 August 2006 (CDT)

New Discussion
Ok, have a look at the draft and let people know what should be changed. I don't think we should re-open proposals that were just turned down a week ago, but any new ideas are welcome.

I suggest we remove #5 (different capitalizations of acronyms) as that no longer seems to be a problem. It used to be that searching for "gvg" and "pbaoe" and "kiTE" would not even show any results. Now the search engine is searching in case insensitive and so even if the page does not show up right away, you'll see in the results, the word highlighted in red and how it is capitalized. So, based on this I don't think we need such redirects any more. Just remove them as you come across them. --Karlos 20:46, 4 August 2006 (CDT)
 * On #1 and #5, another user was doing some testing this week (I'll need to search when when and who), and posted that he found that if the redirect was GvG, then the search only went straight to the article if you searched for GvG, if you tried GVG or gvg it popped up the search results. But, if the redirect article was set as GVG, then the search would go directly to the article regardless of if you searched for Gvg, GVG, gvg, gVg, etc.
 * I think we should try for some confirmation on that, and if true, insist on all accronymn redirects to be all uppercase. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:46, 4 August 2006 (CDT)
 * I favor the removal of #5, since all other types of incorrect capitalization are not required to have a redirect anyways. &mdash; Rapta  [[image:Rapta_Icon1.gif|19px]] (talk|contribs) 22:21, 4 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Raxous was probably the user you're talking about. He posted some notes Talk:Main Page/editcopy. Anyway this is what I found. (Actually it was intended as a reply on that talk page but I didn't finish it before I knocked off work yesterday).


 * When I Search for "oop" I don't get anything, when I use the Go button then I get redirected to Order of Pain via the OOP redirect. Is that what you mean? Using the Go button is different to the search button. Also if you type in the search term and then press enter, this is the same as hitting Go. I believe Go just automatically opens the best article title match otherwise it just displays text matches. A search won't go to an article automatically, it will just display title and text matches. I suppose the go button is either case insensitive or tries multiple cases. If you type "woh" and click go you'll go to WOH. If you type "woH" you'll go to WoH, it appears to just go to nearest title match. More examples are "pvp" goes to PvP and "orO" go "Oro". Sorry this is a bit untidy, I don't have much time at the moment hopefully it make sense --Xasxas256 22:28, 4 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Just to clarify: In the above examples I was using Enter (i.e. Go) not "Search." I think they are both searching however.
 * Also, capitalization of acronyms was VERY important because it was not perceived that users would EVER search for "GvG" but will always type "gvg." And if the user can't find ANYTHING when he searches for "gvg" or "aoe" he will think we REALLY stink as a wiki. At least now it returns results. This is different than searching for "kiTE" or "PRince ruRIK." --Karlos 00:41, 5 August 2006 (CDT)


 * I was indeed the user doing the testing and this is what I found;
 * 1. The "Go" button is NOT case sensitive, whilst the "Search" button IS case sensitive.
 * 2. The "Go" button always attempts to return you directly to a page (rather than a set of matching results).
 * 3. If you hit a string dead on (exact match for article name) when using the Search button you are taken directly to a page (like using "Go").
 * Based on the above I understand the reason why there are both buttons, but I think for clarity there should be either;
 * A) A small explanation of their funtionality below the buttons, OR
 * B) Just one button (Search?).
 * Having said all that I would also definately support ALL abbreviationss being entered in UPPERCASE when creating them as this would at least mitigate the accronym problem regradless of the "button" situation.
 * --Raxous 09:24, 5 August 2006 (CDT)
 * Okay, I did some testing to confirm. We had an article for "SoJ".  I keyed some terms and alternately pressed go or hit enter (which seems to be the equivalent of go).  It failed to take me to the correct article for searches under soj or SOJ.  So, I moved the article to be named "SOJ" and deleted the original "SoJ".  Now, keying any variation seems to always take me to the article when I press go or hit enter; I've tried "SoJ", "soj", "SOJ", even "sOj".  If the accronymn is in all caps, then it works for any caps variant; but if the accronymn is mixed caps, the functioning seems much more limited.  Note: pressing "Search" failed to return any terms in either case, as it seems the wiki search engine does not index terms of three letters or less. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 09:43, 5 August 2006 (CDT)

Friggin' Unix-based junk! --Karlos 19:40, 5 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Cute, but since Mediawiki is mySQL based, it'd be case-sensitive regardless. :)


 * Somewhat more seriously, it seems like the ideal fix here would be to ask Gravewit to mess with the Search function to make it more appropriate for us. &mdash;Tanaric 20:30, 5 August 2006 (CDT)


 * While it doesn't explain the behaviour of the "go" button, the reason pressing "search" will not find any results for "SoJ" or its variants is because MySQL will not fulltext index words of under four letters.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 06:22, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * When I try being brief, it just doesn't quite work. Let me try this again.


 * Add the following to the go/search behavior:


 * if (input.length > mySQL.MIN_LENGTH_TO_INDEX)
 * input = input.toLowerCase;
 * if (input.endsWith("s"))
 * input = input.substring(0, input.lastIndexOf("s"));
 * MediaWiki.doSearch(input);


 * If the search function is modified in this way, the only particularily useful redirects (of the ones in consideration) are ones that take an all-lower-case abbreviation and link it to the proper article (gvg --->> Guild versus Guild). The modified search will automatically take care of the plural issues and any other case issues we have. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I think that could be tweaked into a solution that doesn't involve us creating a boatload of mostly useless articles. &mdash;Tanaric 07:49, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Agreed, anyway that unnecessary entries can be avoided is a bonus. I also feel strongly that simplicity is a must for the user. Too complicated and they will give up. I would suggest removing the 'Go' button entirely and modifying the 'Search' button as above. I also think that whilst cutting down the need for multiple entries is a good thing, in some cases re-directs are VERY useful. (For instance; I added a redirect called "Abbreviations" because when I searched for this phrase previously I did not get any direct matches, and yet there is a category called "Abbreviations"!!! So I created the entry to jump straight to the Abbreviations page when that word is searched for, but now someone has deleted it! Don't know if parts of category titles are being searched, as opposed to entire titles, but that might be worth looking at too.) Lastly it might be worth thinking about stripping "the" and /or "a" etc from the front of a search.
 * Raxous 17:29, 6 August 2006 (CDT)

Redirection and bandwidth
I have recently been considering our redirect policy. Before I start I just want to clarify that I am not posting this as a call for a change to the redirection policy, rather simply to ask your opinion on the matter.

When I first started contributing we didn't have any policy on whether to use title case or singular/plural names for articles, and so the wiki was a bit of a mess. It wasn't long before policies were defined and we started altering all those articles that no longer measured up. While doing this it was decided that we would also start removing those redirect pages in order to clean up the wiki and this behaviour has carried on until today: we only use redirects where necessary and we tried to avoid them where we can.

Imagine this situation: You have never used GuildWiki before and you want to find some information about "Obisidian Shards". You go to the Main Page and type "Obisidian Shards" into the search box and press enter. result. Obsidian Shard is the 5th result, so you click on it and you get all the info you want.

If Obsidian Shards were redirected to Obsidian Shard wouldn't this save bandwidth? I'm not sure if redirection makes use of HTTP redirection or if mediawiki simply substitutes the content, but, either way, instead of having to send the full page twice (once for the search results and again for the actual information page) we would only have to send the full page once.

So I suppose my real question is, are we right in being conservative with redirection? Is the saving we would make in bandwidth (and therefore the smoothe running of the wiki) worth the extra administration of potentially hundreds of redirection pages?

If this has already been considered and I've missed it, please feel free to give me a slap :)  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 06:37, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * I think an interesting point to this question would be, what does Wikipedia do about it. I am sure they are VERY concerned about performance. So, I would bet they have studied this issue thoroughly. --Karlos 11:19, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Wikipedia uses redirects for capitalization, plurals, and spelling. &mdash;Tanaric 14:27, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * The performance hit of having more redirects is almost minimal. The only reasonable argument against them is clutter, and... well, honestly, we have 9000 articles anyway, so any special page indexing pages is too big to be readily usable at this point anyway. &mdash;Tanaric 14:29, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * What kind of maintenance do we need to carry out on redirects in general?  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 15:24, 6 August 2006 (CDT)
 * The main annoyance to me on redirects is the accumulation of articles that must then be fixed when a page name is changed (due to standards development etc over time). You must either fix each individual one, or live with double (or more) redirects.  To me, the better solution is to fix the search to (A) not be case sensitive, and (B) to automatically search for both the word requested, or if not found and the word requested has a trailing "s", to search for that as well.  I realize, however, that itme B could quite possibly result in a heavier load on the server, so I could easilly be convinced to allow plural redirects - although case sensitive ones should be fixed at the search engine level regardless and should not be permitted as redirects.  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:30, 6 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Allowing plural redirects does not obligate any of us to maintain them. Through the magic of wiki, they'll get changed&mdash;people will notice them and fix them, and some crazy editor will start patrolling Special:Doubleredirects. &mdash;Tanaric 09:54, 7 August 2006 (CDT)


 * (90% of this is a copy from the above discussion "New Discussion") Agreed,having said that anyway that unnecessary entries can be avoided is a bonus. I also feel strongly that simplicity is a must for the user. Too complicated and they will give up. I would suggest removing the 'Go' button entirely and modifying the 'Search' button / funtion to include plural intelligence / common pre-fix stripping (strip ending 's' & starting "the" and "a" etc). I also think that whilst cutting down the need for multiple entries is a good thing, in some cases re-directs are VERY useful. (For instance; I added a redirect called "Abbreviations" because when I searched for this phrase previously I did not get any direct matches, and yet there is a category called "Abbreviations"!!! So I created the entry to jump straight to the Abbreviations page when that word is searched for, but now someone has deleted it! Don't know if parts of category titles are being searched, as opposed to entire titles, but that might be worth looking at too.)#Raxous 09:05, 9 August 2006 (CDT)

Hacking the search function is impractical. I can't see that ever happening, and the "Go" button saves a lot of bandwidth. It goes to the article with the name matching the search term entered, and if that article doesn't exist it goes to the search page for that term.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 11:48, 9 August 2006 (CDT)
 * I would have to disagree with Tanaric saying "The performance hit of having more redirects is almost minimal". This I say since this is a very readable algorithm of how the wiki is doing searches:

if the go-button was clicked; if there is a page with the exact name; go to that page; if there isn't, look for a similar page and if one is found; go to that page; if neither of them exists; do a full search of the term; if the search-button was clicked; convert the search query into a valid database search query query the database for titles containing the search query convert the search query into a valid database search query query the database for pages containing the query
 * As seen, it depends. If the article does exist with a redirect, performance is gained. If the page in question is in-existant, it takes more performance instead. Also, letting php compare titles is way faster than letting the database handle the searching.


 * About the question if the wiki substitues the content as a result of a redirect, or if it redirects you. It does substitute the contents. The browser doesn't even know you got redirected. &mdash; Galil  12:54, 9 August 2006 (CDT)


 * I don't think you can analyse performance meaningfully with that level of granularity, since you have no idea what caching systems are in place. I know that PHP has nothing to do with title handling, since the DBMS is in charge of all article names.


 * That said, I think we both are saying the same general thing about redirect performance. The number of articles in general increases the cost of a database query slightly. It's significantly faster for the DBMS to return an article via "Go"&mdash;redirect or otherwise&mdash;than it is for it to do a title/fulltext search, though the speed hit drops extremely significantly, to almost nothing, when proper caching systems are in place.


 * In any case, I can no longer support a "no plural redirects" policy, as they're clearly user-friendly with a negligible performance hit. &mdash;Tanaric 21:23, 9 August 2006 (CDT)