Wikipedia:Redirect/Deletion Reasons

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The major reasons why deletion of redirects is harmful are:

  • a redirect may contain nontrivial edit history;
  • if a redirect is reasonably old, then it is quite possible that its deletion will break links in old, historical versions of some other articles — such an event is very difficult to envision and even detect.

Therefore consider the deletion only of either really harmful redirects or of very recent ones.

[edit] Reasons for deleting

You might want to delete a redirect if one or more of the following conditions is met (but note also the exceptions listed below this list):

  1. The redirect page makes it unreasonably difficult for users to locate similarly named articles via the search engine.
  2. The redirect might cause confusion. For example, if "Adam B. Smith" was redirected to "Andrew B. Smith", because Andrew was accidentally called Adam in one source, this could cause confusion with the article on Adam Smith, so it should be deleted.
  3. The redirect is offensive, such as "Joe Bloggs is a Loser" to "Joe Bloggs", unless "Joe Bloggs is a Loser" is discussed in the article.
  4. The redirect makes no sense, such as redirecting Google to love.
  5. It is a cross-namespace redirect out of article space, such as one pointing into the User or Wikipedia namespace. The major exception to this rule is the "CAT:" shortcut redirects, which technically are in the main article space but in practice form their own "pseudo-namespaces".
  6. If the redirect is broken, meaning it redirects to an article that does not exist or itself, it can be deleted immediately, though you should check that there is not an alternative place it could be appropriately redirected to first.
  7. If the redirect is a novel or very obscure synonym for an article name, it is unlikely to be useful. Implausible typos or misnomers are potential candidates for speedy deletion.

[edit] Reasons for not deleting

However, avoid deleting such redirects if:

  1. They have a potentially useful page history. If the redirect was created by renaming a page with that name, and the page history just mentions the renaming, and for one of the reasons above you want to delete the page, copy the page history to the Talk page of the article it redirects to. The act of renaming is useful page history, and even more so if there has been discussion on the page name.
  2. They would aid accidental linking and make the creation of duplicate articles less likely, whether by redirecting a plural to a singular, by redirecting a frequent misspelling to a correct spelling, by redirecting a misnomer to a correct term, by redirecting to a synonym, etc. In other words, redirects with no incoming links are not candidates for deletion on those grounds because they are of benefit to the browsing user. Some extra vigilance by editors will be required to minimize the occurrence of those frequent misspellings in the article texts because the linkified misspellings will not appear as broken links.
  3. They aid searches on certain terms.
  4. You risk breaking external or internal links by deleting the redirect. Old CamelCase links and old subpage links should be left alone in case there are any existing external links pointing to them.
  5. Someone finds them useful. Hint: If someone says they find a redirect useful, they probably do. You might not find it useful — this is not because the other person is a liar, but because you browse Wikipedia in different ways.
  6. The redirect is to a plural form or to a singular form.

[edit] Neutrality of redirects

Note that redirects are not covered by Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. This covers only article titles, which are required to be neutral (see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Article naming). Perceived lack of neutrality in redirects is therefore not a valid reason for deletion.

Non-neutral redirects are commonly created for three reasons:

  1. Articles that are created using non-neutral titles are routinely moved to a new neutral title, which leaves behind the old non-neutral title as a working redirect (e.g. Dalmatian Kristallnacht → Dalmatian anti-Serb riots of May 1991).
  2. Articles created as POV forks may be deleted and replaced by a redirect pointing towards the article from which the fork originated (e.g. Barack Obama Muslim rumor → deleted and redirected to Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008).
  3. The subject matter of articles may be commonly represented outside Wikipedia by non-neutral terms. Such terms cannot be used as Wikipedia article title, per the words to avoid guidelines and the general neutral point of view policy. For instance, the widely used but non-neutral expression "Attorneygate" is used to redirect to the neutrally titled Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy. The article in question has never used that title, but the redirect was created to provide an alternative means of reaching it.

If a redirect is not an established term and is unlikely to be used by searchers, it is unlikely to be useful and may reasonably be nominated for deletion. However, if a redirect represents an established term that is used in multiple mainstream reliable sources (as defined by Wikipedia:Verifiability#Reliable sources), it should be kept even if non-neutral, as it will facilitate searches on such terms. Non-neutral redirects should point to neutrally titled articles about the subject of the term.

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