Forum:Concerning Redirects...

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While editing and overall browsing, I have noticed that several articles link to a redirect that essentially redirects to another redirect that redirects back to the same page. What is the point of such an unnecessary run-around? If it links to the same article, why have it linked at all? Supreme Dalek, Dalek Supreme, and Black Dalek are notorious for this unnecessary redirection loop. I was going to unlink their respective links in that article, but I first would like to know why this was decided in the first place. If the seperate articles were deleted, then forgo the redirection loop and just unlink the unnecessary linked portions. Having redirects over redirects that circle the reader back to where they started seems rather inefficient and pointless. =/ Trak Nar ^{Ramble on} 04:45, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be a lot of over lap of information as well. What those three pages need is a full re-write and re-ogranisation, at some point along the way it seems with the various re-directs someone has tried to consolidate the various bits of information.

I think there should probably be a page dedicated for specific Dalek Supremes, the one from Journey's End is specifically named as such. --Tangerineduel 10:09, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

It probably comes from people being unable to decide on a correct name, and people not fixing redirects when the page is moved. Jack's the man - 10:21, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• • Looks like a project to work on some time. Well, I was looking for something to do for my first major contribution rather than the minor grammar edits and such... Trak Nar ^{Ramble on} 07:43, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Archivist's notes

Not sure whether the original poster was trying to make a broader point about redirects, but the thread became about the specific case he mentioned, which is now a bit of an out of date condition. Tangerineduel got his wish that various Supreme Daleks got their own page. In a more general sense, redirects to redirects are left around because people move a redirect and don't realise they've left behind what's a "double redirect". It's basic wikia policy — much less tardis policy — that redirects be eliminated. If a user doesn't like "the runaround", as Trak Nar put it, they only have to take the intermediary redirect locations out of the loop.

For instance, if Supreme Dalek redirected to Dalek Supreme which linked to Dalek Supreme (disambiguation), just make Supreme Dalek link to Dalek Supreme (disambiguation). Sure, it's not a "major contribution', but it's an extremely useful one.

I think Trak Nar makes the fundamental error of believing "redirect runaround" was policy, when in fact it was just the detritus of page moving.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 11:01:14 Sat 28 May 2011