Commons talk:Only use category redirects where necessary

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HotCat[edit]

Hi,

It probably possible to modify Hotcat in order to not detecte the Category redirects, is-it ?

Cheers--Bapti ✉ 10:49, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly. I don't know how it can be done. Right now it can't even filter out regular redirects. Rocket000(talk) 15:31, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The best way is to ask it... ;) --Bapti ✉ 16:19, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I was thinking about doing that. :) Thanks! Rocket000(talk) 16:29, 24 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Very useful summary - thanks.[edit]

It would be even better if you would you expand it a little for the uninitiated:

  • Why is 2015 significant?
  • What is "The template method which fills Category:Non-empty category redirects", why is it "slow" and in what way is it "unpredictable"?
  • In what way can "The redirect bot ... easily be abused" and can this not be fixed?
  • "Soft redirected categories ... completely ruin our category maintenance reports." In what way? Does it really matter?

Many thanks,

-Arb. (talk) 21:15, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • 2015 isn't significant. That's just my sense of humor. I picked a random year in future. (That would be my estimate, though.)
  • The template method uses {{PAGESINCAT:}} to determine if the category is empty or not. If it's not, it sends it to the category. It's slow because that's how the MediaWiki software works. See User talk:Rocket000/Archive 4#Question about template code for a more thorough answer. It's unpredictable because it doesn't always work the same way. Sometimes it updates by itself, sometimes it won't do anything until someone edits the category (how long we have to wait for an non-assisted update is currently being tested on en.wp; my guess is 30 days (cache cycle) or until the software itself gets updated).
  • In what way can "The redirect bot ... easily be abused" People can use it to recategorize 100s of images in a very short time simply be applying a template to a category. An random IP would have the same power that is currently restricted to admins (i.e. giving commands to SieBot). Commons doesn't have the constant RC watchers, other projects have. Plus the bot would be flagged so it's edits wouldn't even show up on the recent changes (by default).
  • They ruin our maintenance reports because they are empty categories. It makes no difference if we don't see them like that, the software does. Categories weren't designed to be treated like mainspace pages. Does it really matter? Not to people who don't do any cleanup work in this area. Rocket000(talk) 01:23, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the answers. They make things much clearer. -Arb. (talk) 16:19, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Changes needed to turn this into a guideline[edit]

Please add to the llist below. Please see Commons:Undeletion_requests/Archive/2011-01#Various_categories for a discussion related to this. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:16, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  1. Update bot discussion.
  2. Rename — the current title is too informal, I think. "Avoid category redirects" or "Category redirects discouraged" may be better.
  3. Copyedit for clarity and flow.
  4. How restrictive should this guideline be?

I don't think it should be a guideline since I think the premise is flawed. If it is to be renamed, it should be to something more neutral like "Category redirect guideline". I am finding dozens or hundreds of broken links from en.wp to Commons. We need to do whatever we can to make sure casual readers can successfully get from the Wikipedias to the galleries at Commons. I see no reason to discourage category redirects. Can someone remind me why we can't just use the regular #REDIRECT notation instead? If there are problems with bots or tools not handling them, then the bots need to be updated. Wknight94 talk 17:29, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The title of the essay, besides being informal, is misleading. I was short of becoming ashamed of myself for using redirects here so often, when I finally got to the part when they say that it's hard redirects that are bad, while soft redirects are actually good. So "category redirects" don't suck after all, and even are the solution, according to that very essay.-- Darwin Ahoy! 17:36, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Since the conclusion of the essay is "only use category redirects where necessary", I renamed it to that for now. Wknight94, the essay says that better software is planned, but not until 2015. It would be helpful to know more about those changes. Where are they described/discussed? Walter Siegmund (talk) 19:13, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I assumed the "2015" comment was facetious - i.e. there are no plans and, even if there were, they wouldn't be done for years. Wknight94 talk 20:05, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think the best part about this is "Things are changing. Parts of this may no longer be relevant.".
BTW, in the meantime one can create hard redirect in category namespace. For those that haven't done so yet, just try, wait a couple of days and see what happens. --  Docu  at 04:25, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Rather than that, it would be more constructive to turn this into a guideline. Foroa, Martin H and Rocket000 have good intentions, but may not have broad support for their actions. I suspect that there are parts of this essay with which you agree. Do you support the creation of hard redirects in category namespace? Walter Siegmund (talk) 05:03, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should avoid speculating about people's intentions here. At least, it's clear that Rocket000 understands that this page may be outdated.
Before discussing any changes, I think everybody should still try my experiment. --  Docu  at 05:51, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We are heading for more than 2 million categories in the coming year. Do we accept a category redirect for all the spelling variations, naming rule variations and downright spelling and capitalisation stupidities? That means that we are allowed to start a bot that creates redirects for all the spelling variations in the 270 languages Commons support. Or is it only allowed for variations in English ? Within 1 or 2 years, HotCat will become saturated (only used by 15 % of categorisation anyway); the more we create redirects, the quicker it will become useless. We have only 1000 + cats that start with "American ..." (whatever its means), En:wikipedia has 5000 or so, you want a couple of tens of thousands ? And who will maintain those redirects. I am deleting 100 broken redirects per week and creating a comparable amount of useful redirects (alternate names, names in other languages) per week. Once you have millions of them, who will maintain them ?
Hotcat is only used for 10 to 20 % of the categorisations, so the document is not outdated whatsoever, as been acknowledged by Rocket000. --Foroa (talk) 13:33, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My big issue is incoming links. If any of the Wikipedias have broken links to Commons, it needs to be fixed. If it's a ridiculous spelling mistake, then I fix on the Wikipedia side. Otherwise, it is a plausible redirect and I create it here. If it just a variation on the naming guidelines here, then why not create a redirect? What do you mean by "HotCat will become saturated"? Is there any real evidence of that? What do you mean by "who will maintain those redirects"? What sort of maintenance do they need? Deleting broken redirects? That is bot work and we have very good bot writers here. Docu could probably write a bot in no time that would find all broken redirects. He could even categorize them by date found, and the oldest could be autodeleted in minutes.
@Docu, rather than wait a few days, what is the result if you create a hard redirect in category space? Wknight94 talk 15:18, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Docu, it is a widely accepted guideline to assume that other people's intentions are good. It is a barrier to communication to think otherwise. In this case, I think the essence of the discussion is the following. Some think that hard and soft category redirects are a maintenance problem because files are added to them by bots and human uploaders and categorizers. There they are "lost" because users will not normally find them by means of the category structure. Others think that hard and soft category redirects are helpful and not a maintenance problem because bots can move files to the proper category. I haven't seen anyone argue for "creating redirects for all the spelling variations in the 270 languages Commons support", or "downright spelling and capitalisation stupidities", but I think I understand the point that the project would not benefit from such. Perhaps we can agree that this point that has broad support? I think I understand some of the advantages of soft category redirects, as discussed in this proposed guideline. Docu, I don't understand how the project benefits from hard category redirects. Can you explain, or direct me to the relevant discussion, please? Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:08, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you don't already know the answer, I think you should try the experiment. It's called "learning by doing". To make it as beneficial as possible, pick a red category on Special:Categories/English and redirect it to a sensible target. --  Docu  at 17:21, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oy. Okay, I created Category:English Bands as a hard redirect. What is going to happen in a few days? Wknight94 talk 17:36, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Let's observe. I bookmarked the category and File:Kookslogo.png as well. I suppose I have to revert Foroa's edit to File:Kookslogo.png otherwise the experiment wont work. --  Docu  at 18:44, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I hard-redirected two other categories too. Wknight94 talk 18:50, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Spoiler
RussBot (talk · contribs) or Sz-iwbot (talk · contribs) will convert the category into a {{Category redirect}}, this will end up in Category:Non-empty category redirects and an editor will move the file into the target category. --Martin H. (talk) 18:56, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry that I don't have time or strength to do more than glance through this whole discussion, so I'll just offer an opinion, more or less out of the blue.

  • Category redirects are good when used to try to avoid parallel categories -- the extra overhead in having them around is better than having users create parallel cats.
  • In the middle are Category redirects where our policy is clear, but the average user may not be familiar with it. I would probably keep the cat redirect Category:Italian painters, but probably not Category:Bolivian painters, simply because of the difference in numbers of potential errors.
  • Category redirects are not necessary for misspelling or other cats that are simply wrong.      Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 02:16, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So it looks like Martin H. is right: the hard redirects are automatically turned into {{Category redirect}}'s by a bot. Is there some reason they can't be left as hard redirects? Wknight94 talk 04:26, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually Martin H. is only partially right. It seems he didn't read the category description of Category:Non-empty category redirects that he keeps linking. You will have to wait a week for the next step though. --  Docu  at 06:53, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Didnt know that it is only one week. Too short, if it is only one week no one will possibly recognize it and we can enable User:CommonsDelinker/commands directly too anyone so that anyone can move categories via bot quickly. Why dont we do it and why did we protected that interface? Becaue it opens a big window for abuse. Furthermore you may think of the scope of Commons. Is this a database for translations? Where do the wrong categories come from? No, this is not such a database. The wrong categories come from copy&pasting of Wikipedia categories. So prevent this problem to happen and dont only think how to remove the worst symptomes of the problem. Create better interwikis in Wikipedia, instruct people better, dont give anyone the notice after 1 hour that a file is not categorized but wait for one week untill the user is more familiar with Commons (and recognizes that this is not Wikipedia but a separate project) or untill a bot did the categorization - today based on interwikis bots start with a better categorization than most new users. You may consider to create not only Category:Italian painters but also Category:Italienische Maler, Category:Maler aus Italien, of course its Italian, its French, its Polish, Spanish, Portuguese... and so on equivalents, see en:List of languages by name. And all x2 for the singular forms. Will the future of Wikimedia Commons be a collection of redirects? --Martin H. (talk) 08:34, 31 January 2011 (UTC) p.s.: And of course I did read the category comment, I assume that I understood the process before you even cared about it, otherwise I cant understand your lazyness to categorise one file wrong and create a category redirect for your wrong categorization instead of simply adding the correct category too the file directly. --Martin H. (talk) 08:44, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Other languages is a different issue - and I can agree with you there. But Docu and I are getting into fights over whether English variants are even allowed. Foroa just deleted Darrell K Royal Texas Memorial Stadium, a gallery-space redirect, thereby leaving a broken link on en.wp. Explain that one to me! It doesn't have the same issue where people could mistakenly put images in it. It doesn't even need to be a soft redirect - gallery-space to category-space redirects are always hard redirects. Wknight94 talk 13:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I just deleted Darrell K Royal Texas Memorial Stadium because it generates an entry in category:Broken category redirects in which I am clearing ten to 40 items per week.. I tranformed already hundreds of such faulty category redirects in the correct format such as #REDIRECT[[:category:Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium]], but obviously, the same error is made again and again, so I don't longer bother to correct. --Foroa (talk) 13:23, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I accidentally used {{Category redirect}} instead of "#REDIRECT". So again, why delete it instead of fix it? Or tell me to fix it. I only created because it was a broken link from en.wp - more thousands of people who say, "Oh, I'd like to see more pictures of this", click on a link, get nothing, and say, "Ugh, what a bunch of idiots", and never click on it again. And let's get a bot genius to fix wrong gallery-namespace redirects like I made. That shouldn't take long. Docu? Wknight94 talk 13:34, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And could someone clarify this "ZOMG, so many redirects!!!" fear that I've heard a couple times now? Are you finding that you are constantly running into redirects? Martin H. fears "a collection of redirects" and Foroa says "HotCat will become saturated". What do those mean? What is really going to happen if we have four redirects for each category? Look at en.wp - w:Los Angeles has over 50 redirects! And I've never heard anyone even notice, much less complain. The only reason anyone even notices here is because the category redirects are themselves categorized, so you look at that category and say "ZOMG, 40,810!!!!" but, in reality that's not that many. Compare to w:Category:Unprintworthy redirects with 814,069 and w:Category:Redirects from titles without diacritics with 306,077 ---- and no one cares. Basically, "redirect abuse" doesn't exist - redirects can only be helpful to navigation. And redirects are cheap. Let's just make them all hard redirects and reprogram the bots to quickly find and fix misplaced images. If we're worried about people starting redirect/bot move wars, then use the abuse filter to lock out IPs and new users, and just use block and protect to stop autoconfirmed users. We're making the whole huge reading population suffer because a small number of users may start redirect wars sometime in the future. Silly. Wknight94 talk 13:19, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
For me its a question of maintenance on one hand and the identity of this project on the other hand. The Commons category shema is a grown concept, it is consensus that we use Painters from Italy and not Italian painters - maybe a bad example because I wont contest the category redirect category:Italian painters because it exist so long, but I will keep this example. If we however start to redirect anything just because one new user made it wrong it is questionable if this project has an identity, if this project can even stand for its own consensus and identity or if it has to redirect anything because one other wiki makes it different and we have to slavishly follow this project. As I said: This is different for existing or established redirects, they are of technical nature and maybe have outside links or wrong commonscat links in Wikipedia, this argument however can not count for botlike creation of new redirects for no purpose. The other sollution is to simply move our whole category tree to the en.wp names, judging by the creation of redirects the different naming on Commons is the real troublemaker. --Martin H. (talk) 13:36, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And why you think en:Category:Wikipedia category redirects has only 10500 items, while in Category:Category redirects we have 41000 ? Maybe comparing apples with apples. --Foroa (talk) 13:47, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, like it or not, this is a meta project of sorts. I am more interested in casual readers having an easy time navigating than whether we have an established "identity". The millions of readers of Wikipedia and viewers of the images here outnumber us editors thousands-to-one (or more). They're not going to care about our identity hangups or the number of redirects. @Foroa, that really isn't apples to apples - Wikipedia doesn't rely as much on categories as we do. Their articles have hundreds or thousands of words that can be searched on. Frankly, I wish their category system disappeared entirely. But for us, categories are vital because image descriptions are always poor so we can't rely on search. Categories are our method of searching. I'm surprised there are any category redirects in en.wp. Wknight94 talk 16:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There actually IS a drawback to redirects, which is annoying me occasionally and compelling me to do some garbage cleaning on those century-old redirects which are completely superfluous, such as upper case/lower case variations: It gets in the way of HotCat categorization. For instance, for something as simple as "Coats of arms of Valencia", it would display a list with "Coats of arms of Valencia", "Coats of arms of Valencia, Spain", "Coats of arms of València", "Coats of Arms of Valencia", "Coats of Arms of València", etc., which is quite confusing. The upper case/ lower case variants here are completely superfluous. I suspect that even the diacritic variant is superfluous, here, as someone looking for "Something of València" would see "Something of Valencia" without any need for the redirect.-- Darwin Ahoy! 18:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But the result of choosing any of those is that the correct category is selected, right? That's the way HotCat used to work anyway. Again, I would hate to sacrifice the general readers' experience with broken links just so the few HotCat users aren't inconvenienced. Would it be better if redirects didn't show in HotCat? I bet that could be programmed in somehow... Wknight94 talk 19:32, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The result is, most of the time, that the right category appears and everything is ok, but not always - the redirect may be wrong, and you end up categorizing in something that you didn't intended to, or it may redirect to a desambig, and in that case you will be categorizing in the desambig without knowing it. Anyway, that's not what annoys me. What is really annoying and hinders hotcat is that the bunch of superfluous results which include some upper/lower case variants and diacritics whose necessity here is quite arguable, gets in the way of what I'm looking for. And I believe this problem is not limited to HotCat, I seem to recall it happening as well in the search feature and in the Magnus bot uploading from Flickr. As with everything, what is in excess does more harm than good.
As for taking the redirects out of HotCat, please no! They are very useful and I use them a lot. I can't remember most of the time if it's "Vineyards of France" or "Vineyards from France" or "Vineyards in France", and including those common variants when a redirect is available in HotCat really helps a lot.
BTW, I have doubts on those figures of "10% of edits are made by hotcat". It's understated, at best. Taking me as an example, most of my edits actually are made by cat-a-lot or with the assistance of AWB, but I usually prepare them using HotCat first, thus it's importance goes far beyond the actual edits made with HotCat.-- Darwin Ahoy! 19:52, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My big issue is broken links. If people who deleted category redirects at least checked other projects to see if they broke any links, I would complain less - but quite a few of the examples in this very partial list shows that no such checks are being done. Wknight94 talk 21:26, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
On that I tend to agree with you. If there's a link from the cat to an Wikipedia article, either the redirect should be kept or the link in the article corrected, and in some cases both.-- Darwin Ahoy! 21:48, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Examples like this are baffling. Deleting this left broken links at en.wp, fr.wp, mk.wp and ru.wp - and all just to needlessly add a disambiguator! Even though none of the wp pages have a disambiguator. The original wasn't even replaced with a disambiguation category - it just left four difficult-to-find cross-project broken links. How is that beneficial? Wknight94 talk 02:13, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Changes needed to turn this into a guideline - part 2[edit]

I will respond more extensively later, but in the mean time:

It doesn't make a lot of difference if an outside user falls in a category redirect or in a deletion summary where he can click to the right category.
As I stated already several times: outside links should be connected to gallery name space: there, redirects work properly, have no limits in numbers of redirects and can accomodate all the languages of the world. I once requested a SieBot extension to correct references in category and gallery name space when moving categories, but I got no support whatsoever.
I am concerned about navigation, but this has not to be mixed with categorisation. Gallery space is ideal for navigation, categorisation is the internal Commons core business;
The list in User:Wknight94/EnwpAll seems tendentious: many categories never existed, some of them have been deleted by Wknight94 without leaving a redirect. One can generate lists like that are containing millions of items for the various wikipedia projects in 270 languages we do support; probably more references than categories.
One cannot state: other languages are a different issue: en:wikipedia concerns only 20 to 25 % of our customers. We need global approaches and solutions. --Foroa (talk) 07:11, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It does make a difference because the deletion page - where the new category may or may not be hidden at the end of a deletion summary - is not as clear as the category redirect page - where the category is in bold big font in the first line of a multi-lingual page. Older deletion summaries didn't show the new category at all - just a note that it was moved somewhere - I've had to search to find where it was moved to.
I would love for outside links to be to gallery redirects, but I've had other admins batch-delete those in the distant past too (although I don't recall when and I'm not looking for them now). That would require a massive cross-project bot effort, but I would support it. But, then again, I still haven't heard why we can't use hard category redirects instead of soft. A bot automatically changes them to soft redirects, but why? If abuse is the issue, we should use the abuse filter and, for example, prevent non-admins from changing existing categories into redirects. Then no cooldown period would be needed...
The list in User:Wknight94/EnwpAll is tendentious - it is the tendency for broken Commons links to exist in en.wp. I am not claiming they are all pertinent in this discussion. I am also cleaning up numerous links in en.wp which were probably copied from other articles. And yes a few of them were poorly deleted by me, back when I was a newer admin and following the wrong examples set by other admins. I've had enough people yell at me that I stopped doing that. And I've followed discussions since then that show the practice has very flimsy reason behind it. (This discussion is no exception).
As for other languages, my program and computer are very slow, reading the entire HTML of every page in the project. I will slowly generate similar lists for the other projects immediately after.
Wknight94 talk 11:12, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Template talk:Category redirect for the logic of category redirects and the bug from 2005.
What is better: a proper redirect on which one has to click or a deletion summary on which you can click too? The advantage of the latter is that people might be more inclined to adapt the place where the link is referenced. At some moment in time, there have been talks to run bots on the wikipedia's that would adapt articles to replace redirected or deleted categories by the right one. So, basically we are wasting tremendous energy for things that could be easily done by bots. --Foroa (talk) 13:07, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I don't see discussion of a 2005 bug. That talk page wasn't created until 2006. Which section specifically?
If you know of a bot being actively worked on, fantastic. Otherwise, I never underestimate how slowly improvements can happen here. Wknight94 talk 14:42, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Don't count on it as it is a design issue that is next to impossible to correct without changing most "objects" manipulated by the system:
When clicking on a redirected gallery/article/... the software has to replace the destination with the redirected item on the fly, which is easy enough.
When allocating a category to a redirected category, the software has to replace in the object at hand all occurrences of all redirected categories by the destination categories. It is getting even more complex when those categories are introduced by nested templates. --Foroa (talk) 18:36, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I know you all discussed it before, but I would like to stress it: Please restrict the number of cats. We cannot cover every possible query, hence questions like whether or not a proper redirect on which one has to click or a deletion summary on which you can click too are going in the wrong direction. Is it really so bad to use the "Did you mean" option? The more cats we have the more the system becomes bulky. --Yikrazuul (talk) 18:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't follow the last couple msgs. @Foroa, do you mean something crashes if you click on a hard-redirected category? @Yikrazuul, what "Did you mean" option are you referring to? Wknight94 talk 19:37, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
@Wknight94: For example: if someone is looking for (the category) photosynthesis, but mispelling it (photosyntheiis), the "Did you mean" option is appearing. A redirect or an extra cat wouldn't be required. --Yikrazuul (talk) 19:24, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hard redirects[edit]

The first line is currently: "Hard redirects (#REDIRECT) work the same way on category pages as they do on any other page. However, if content is placed in that redirected category, it will stay there. It will not magically move from the redirect to the target category. So in this sense, hard category redirects do not work." But if content is placed in soft redirects, they don't "magically" move to the target category - a bot moves them to the target. Why can't bots do the same for hard redirects? Wknight94 talk 02:03, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I provided the wrong link, it should have been en:Template_talk:Category_redirect. Not sure indeed why bots could not move from such redirects, but bots can only move a certain percentage of objects (for most template generated categories and protected objects, it does not work). Maybe user:RussBot has a more complete answer. --Foroa (talk) 07:10, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A solution[edit]

I found a solution that I like. I created two categories, Category:User:Wknight94/Redirect and Category:User:Wknight94/Non-empty Redirect. They each have both hard-redirect and soft-redirect code. When you click on either link, Category:User:Wknight94/Redirect or Category:User:Wknight94/Non-empty Redirect, they both hard-redirect to the target. But Category:User:Wknight94/Non-empty Redirect has a misplaced gallery (User:Wknight94/Misplaced gallery‎) in it, so it appears in Category:Non-empty category redirects. Therefore, a bot can be summoned to address the misplaced content. Best of both worlds. Did I miss anything? Is there a better way? This would presumably require a change to Sz-iwbot (talk · contribs), but probably not to RussBot (talk · contribs). I will leave notes for both. Wknight94 talk 13:54, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct in presuming that RussBot (talk · contribs) operates on all categories that contain a (soft) category redirect template, whether they are hard redirects or not, so this change would not affect the bot's operations. Beyond that, I have no opinion about it. --R'n'B (talk) 14:07, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Might work. To test it properly, you have to stop bots doing this. Maybe one can stop them by using {{Nobots}} in it or protect it. You might as well propose the same idea on en:wikipedia as there are more system people overthere. --Foroa (talk) 16:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I thought Sz-iwbot did that, and RussBot moved the misplaced content. But I guess both Sz-iwbot and RussBot convert the hard redirects to soft so they would both need to change. Wknight94 talk 16:58, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Both do both. RussBot seems regular (automatic system schedule), it looks like Sz-iwbot is fired by hand from time-to-time. I suggest to insert {{nobots}} in your redirected test categories. I guess that the {{Category redirect}} could be changed to include the hard redirect, which might avoid bot changes. --Foroa (talk) 17:50, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Strong disapproval[edit]

I stronly disagree this essay which evidently underestimates and ignores good functioning of redirects and exaggerates hypothetical or real problems with them - most of such "problems" are not real problems but useful features actually. We can seek some equilibrium but this proposal is too one-sided and too wrongly focused.

I strongly support the current policy that every redirect which can help to find the real category is very useful and should be supported. Especially important are redirects:

  • from simple intuitive names to more complicated or compound real names
  • from common known synonymes, original or official proper names, well-known exonymes or endonymes etc.
  • from old names of moved categories (old names are mostly linked from the outside or remain in retention of many users)

I noticed that some very active user(s) deleted old categories which should be redirected repeatedly and systematically, despite of all current rules and principles and warnings. I'm sure, we should not be defeated by such coercion.

I'm sure, the current explanation Should the old category be deleted? is very well-balanced and reasoned. We can it more develop but its basic principle should be confirmed and acknowledged, not challenged and corrupted. --ŠJů (talk) 06:10, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree! -- Basilicofresco (msg) 11:26, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Sju as well. It's like a state of permanent Cold War trying to keep useful category redirects up. It boggles my mind why some users are so motivated to delete them.-- Darwin Ahoy! 18:25, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Also agree with Sju. I don't see any reason we're so quick to delete category redirects. Wknight94 talk 23:53, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. The more category redirects the better, as far as I am concerned. I have yet to find a good reason not to have more. It would solve the problem of all the broken interwiki category links on the hundreds of local Wikipedias. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:38, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've marked the guideline in its present form as rejected - there is clearly a lack of consensus for it in its present form.--Nilfanion (talk) 09:30, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree. The people that agree on its content don't necessarily show up. On many wikipedias, category redirects are very much restricted or even forbidden. Look for example the interwiki's of Category:Category redirects and their contents. --Foroa (talk) 09:38, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This page is either a valid guideline with consensus (marked as a {{Guideline}}) or its not (marked as {{Rejected}}). The comments above indication strong disapproval by a number of users, so there is no evidence of consensus support and guideline status is inappropriate. Its not a "proposed" guideline either as the fact is its not been touched in ages, and is clearly outdated. The practical effect of proposed/rejected is minimal, neither should be quoted as a guideline.
If you, I, or anyone else is actually going to work on this - for instance to try and action the hard redirect in #A solution - then {{Proposed}} would be an appropriate tag.
I agree category redirects have their problems, but there is no consensus for this as a guideline, and in its present form there never will be. Noone can seriously say a page that starts "Things are changing. Parts of this may no longer be relevant." is the ideal form of that page.--Nilfanion (talk) 09:48, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rework[edit]

What's missing from the page is practical advice on when, exactly, category redirects are OK, when they are not, and where the grey areas are. I'd suggest following basic structure:

  1. Why we can't use hard redirects
  2. Why soft redirects are useful
  3. Why soft redirects aren't perfect
  4. Appropriate usage
  5. Inappropriate usage

Because cat redirects are not perfect, the list of appropriate tasks is going to be shorter than that for normal redirects on a Wikipedia. For instance, there's no need for redirects from plausible mis-spellings. I'd be tempted to add a section on when to delete redirects too (never if useful).--Nilfanion (talk) 10:10, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The page is too much of an essay to make it to guideline status without radical rewriting. It's probably best to just mark it as {{Rejected}} or {{Historical}}, or better as {{Essay}}, and to start Commons:Category redirects as a new draft focussed on when to use and when not to use soft redirects (with only a brief mention of hard redirects - it's not necessary to go into detail). Rd232 (talk) 13:33, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that seems the way forward. There's a lot of opinion in this page that would need to be thrown out and the title isn't right either. However, if this is marked as an essay then I think a guideline elsewhere to define "necessary" will be needed. The role of this page would then by either background info, or a supporting/dissenting essay, but has nothing to do with the actual guidance.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:06, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've created a draft at Commons:Category redirects - input requested, which should result in a community-backed guideline.--Nilfanion (talk) 10:45, 3 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bugzilla bug 3311 and Summer of Code 2013[edit]

See bugzilla:3311. "Automatic category redirects ". It currently has 54 votes; a lot of votes. It needs more. Please login to Bugzilla and vote for it. Anybody can create an account at Bugzilla. For more info see: en:Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests

Bug 3311 may get worked on as part of Google Summer of Code. See more info at: mw:Summer of Code 2013#Automatic category redirects --Timeshifter (talk) 00:20, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"we can't wait until 2015"[edit]

Especially because waiting for the past is fruitless.

Does someone want to reword this? - Jmabel ! talk 03:56, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on section "The real solution"[edit]

Moved from project page

How about using both hard and soft redirects on the same redirected category? Would that help? Vzeebjtf (talk) 21:10, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

End moved from project page - Jmabel ! talk 05:32, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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