Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Precedents

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Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump.

This is an archive of a few past RFD discussions, listed here because they illustrate a precedent.

These discussions are no longer active; please do not edit them.

Precedents

Should extremely rare typo redirects be kept?

No.

Should plural redirects with no links from the article space be kept?

Yes.

Kept: Orcs → Orc.

Should ancient CamelCase redirects be kept?

For those who don't know what this is about: In the very early days of Wikipedia, they didn't have the [[ ]] syntax for links - instead, any word in CamelCase was a link. Article names were all in CamelCase so the links could find them. When they switched to the new syntax, all the articles were renamed, but redirects were left behind for e.g. offsite links. If deleted, make sure to check to see if the redirect includes the edit history of the article. (See also Template:R from CamelCase).

Yes, in general. (This is particularly true if the redirect includes the edit history of the article.)

No, if Google can find no links to it.

Deleted: SurJection → Surjection.
Deleted: SocceR → Soccer.

Should redirects from city names in other languages be kept?

Yes, if they are either i) forms that were ever commonly used in English, or ii) forms in the native language(s) of the city.

Should redirects from lengthy full names be kept?

Yes.

Kept: John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute → John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute.

Should redirects to other spaces be kept?

There appears to be no hard and fast rule for redirects from one namespace to another, although they are often inherently suspect. In general, they are kept if there is enough support/usage for them, but short a high level of usage, they are often deleted.

Redirects from the main article namespace to other namespaces (Wikipedia:, Meta:, all Talk:, etc) are particularly problematic, as Wikipedia:Avoid self-references explains, since many sites take only a copy of the Wikipedia article content, without taking the rest of the system. A good initial filter is that redirects from the article namespace to other namespaces should only exist if there's no usage outside Wikipedia for the term. (Use of the {{Selfref}} template may also be appropriate.)

Yes.

(Note: This precedent is out of date; The last (Wikipedia: to Meta:) redirect has been kept, but all the others have been retargeted to the article namespace or deleted.)

No.

Should insulting nickname redirects be kept?

The general rule of thumb is that if there is evidence that they are widely used, they are kept (although they may be redirected to a relevant article about nicknames, rather than left pointing directly to the subject), but failing that, they are often deleted.

Yes.

Kept: Dumbya → George W. Bush (left pointing to List of U.S. Presidential nicknames)
Kept: Slick Willy → Bill Clinton (ditto)
Kept: Algore → Al Gore
Kept: Butcher of Baghdad → Saddam Hussein
Kept: Smirking Chimp → George W. Bush (turned into a stub about the website of that name)

No.