Last modified: 2005-03-26 23:11:04 UTC
A link to a redirect page appears blue rather than red even when the redirect page's target does not exist. A red link would call attention to the article's non-existence and therefore cause an expert who sees it to write a good new article. Pre-emptive redirect pages are important and I've put a lot of work into them. I am alarmed to discover that [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax/redirect-target-000.txt]] and its sister pages exist in their present form, in which they incite vandalism in the form of wholesale deletion of pre-emptive redirect pages. But someone argued in favor of wholesale deletion of redirect pages when their targets don't exist and no pages link to them, by pointing out those blue links. So it is necessary, if at all possible, to make links to redirect pages appear red rather than blue when the redirect page's target does not exist. -- Mike Hardy
redirects to an empty page are considered faulty. The way to fix them is either: - delete it. - create the destination article. There is a maintenance page (brokenredirect) to track such incorrect redirects.
It is very important to abolish what appears to have been considered by some to be a policy, of calling redirects "broken" merely because their target does not exist. That "maintenance" page that was created to track such allegedly "incorrect" redirects incites vandalism. Pre-emptive redirects are important to Wikipedia. I have edited far more Wikipedia pages than all but a few others (tens of thousands), and some of those have been pre-emtpive redirects. Here's the bug I'm trying to report. When a link points to a redirect whose target does not exist, it appears blue, thereby creating a false impression that the article exists, and THAT ENCOURAGES THE REMOVAL OF REDIRECTS WHOSE TARGET DOES NOT EXIST for no better reason than that their target does not exist. It incites vandalism. A really obvious case of a valuable pre-emptive redirect is "complex societies" redirecting to "complex society". To treat that as a "broken" redirect page and delete it simply because the article titled "complex society" has not yet been written is obviously destructive, and can result in two article appearing whose authors don't suspect each other's existence, so that cannot work together. A more subtle case is a redirect from a misnomer to a correct title. In SOME cases, a misnomer may be more appropriate; in others it may merely represent a popular misunderstanding. So the question of whether a particular pre-emptive redirect is valuable may be subtle and require discussion, including input from experts. To delete such pages without such discussion is destructive. Making links to redirect pages whose targets do not yet exist appear blue rather than red encourages these destructive practices.
Without comment on the usefulness of the feature requested, I would like to STRONGLY urge that more care be taken in the use of the word "Vandalism". A change (or delete) done in good faith, even if misguided and wrong, is NOT vandalism.
Closing as duplicate of bug 378. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 378 ***
