Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:04:38 UTC
I would LOVE to have a way for admins to see, at the top or bottom of each page, a simple list of pages which redirect to the current page. Just like Special:Whatlinkshere, but listing ONLY the redirects, and appearing on the same page as the content (if the user is an admin) separated by an <hr> so I don't have to click through to it. I would also love to have a few text fields below the list of redirects where I could add multiple NEW redirects quickly. This would help in my projects immensely.
First, why would we want the redirects listed on the content page? It's not part of content, they're meta-data. Also, why only for admins?
Having such a list on the page itself seems like a poor idea. Viewing *just* the pages that redirect to a given page is covered under bug 6934. A special page which lists all redirects of a page and allows mass-creation of redirects is doable as an extension. Closing this as WONTFIX for now.
(In reply to comment #1) > First, why would we want the redirects listed on the content page? It's not > part of content, they're meta-data. Also, why only for admins? First, just to make it easier to for "power editors" (not necessarily admins, I suppose) to see and edit them. If I have to click through to another page, I'm less likely to do it that if I have it right there in front of me. Also, it's nice to have it on the same page so I can look at the content of the page while deciding what redirects to it might be useful. For example, let's say I'm editing the Banana page. At the bottom of the article, separated by an <hr>, or perhaps more properly in the sidebar, would be the list of pages which redirect to Banana: Bananas, Bananna, Bannanas. In looking at this list, I notice that "Banananas" would be a good addition, since I'm always mistyping it that way for some reason and I think other people do too. The last item in the list reads "Add new redirect", which reveals a text input box when clicked. I type "Banananas" into this box and hit Go. Ideally, the script would use Ajax to contact the server and find out if Banananas already existed. If it did, it would tell me and give me a link to the page. If Banananas didn't exist, it would create the page as #REDIRECT [[Banana]] in the background, and then add Banananas to the list of redirects. Perhaps this whole thing could be done with a script added to my user.js. That way I could add the feature for myself and normal readers wouldn't see it. I would create this myself, but I just don't have the skillz.
In response to my request on [[Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)]], [[User:Sparkla]] created a script which fetches the list of redirects and displays them at the top of the page. This already seems to be a very useful feature; I hope more people can contribute to it and help this idea grow! [[User:Splarka/fetchredirects.js]]
Just as to generalize the idea a bit. Admins/power users want less klicks, may be doing lots of different things, want to be able to do them quickly, and therefore want various data "just at hand" when performing their tasks for the wiki community. We could make an extension that allows them to store two pieces of wikitext in their preferences. If present and enabled, one is rendered before, the other is rendered after each page. (Maybe one wikitext suffices, the pieces of which are shoved around by CSS means) So, one can have a list of includable special pages that they want, e.g. {{Special:Whatlinkshere/{{PAGENAME}}}} coming close to the above. (Un)commenting parts of the wikitext would allow them to pretty easily switch tasks. Possibly, length and selectiveness of includable special pages need better adjustment than we currently have, which, I assume, is being taken care of by the upcoming Reporting. Normal users would not, and should not, usually use this feature. It is indeed likely to add to server load and therefore might be restriced to those who really benefit from it, or creating added value for the wiki/community (other than using it for fun play) Feel free to open a bug based on this idea. If you do, kindly put me on its watchlist, please.
An excellent idea, Purodha. I think that this would open up considerable possibilities for new features. For example, it could be useful to have some statistical information about the current page, such as: "This page has been edited 29 times in the last month, 118 times in the past year, and 214 times since its creation on 2005-04-12." or "This page is orphaned." or perhaps display the last diff.
Suggest WONTFIX per Rob above. The other ideas mentioned would be best as extensions/userscripts.
Many people might want something like that, but all of them want something different, that fits themselves. If we continue down this road, page content will be completely invisible under piles of "useful" links such as redirects, backlinks, external links, word usage stats, text complexity index, Google Translate, hell knows what else. This will bring us nowhere. Use userscripts, Luke.
