Last modified: 2012-12-20 13:21:05 UTC
Often, I've done something like type in Special:Userlist . . . wait, doesn't exist. Special:Listuser . . . nope. Oh, wait, it must be Special:Listusers. Redirects are extremely useful in proper namespaces, and would be a handy (although much less critical) in Special:, the only one to lack them. I just saw someone link to Special:Recent changes, which is hardly helpful to newbies. Anyway, I'm guessing this would likely be a substantial amount of work for less-than-huge benefit, so I've stuck this at Lowest. Maybe someday a dev will feel like writing this, or maybe not--just throwing this out there.
We can create "alias" redirects to simple pages existing in that namespace now. I've added one from Special:Userlist to Special:Listusers in SVN trunk, r14083. The special namespace, of course, doesn't exist as the others do. It might not be *too* difficult to allow user-customisable redirects in that namespace, but then things become a little disorganised, since the code relies somewhat on things behaving in a specific manner. On the other side of the coin, we don't want to be overwhelmed with thousands of requests for redirects from vast permutations, and we don't want to clog up SpecialPage.php with said redirects.
(In reply to comment #0) > Often, I've done something like type in Special:Userlist . . . wait, doesn't > exist. Special:Listuser . . . nope. Oh, wait, it must be Special:Listusers. The same exact thing happens to me. This feature would be awesome. There could possibly be an edit button for, say, admins on each non-existant special page. That way admins could make redirections themselves. Or, better yet, there could be a new interface for admins to choose which special page should redirect to which other special page.
(In reply to comment #1) > On the other side of the coin, we don't want to be overwhelmed with thousands of > requests for redirects from vast permutations, and we don't want to clog up > SpecialPage.php with said redirects. It would seem logical to have them in the database somewhere, like existing redirect pages, and creatable by users (I don't see any harm that could come from letting anyone create them, since at worst you'd just be redirected to the wrong Special page). That way there would be no problem of devs being deluged with requests. Of course, if a mechanism for alternate names is already in the code, it would almost certainly be easier to just declare all requested permutations as some kind of constant variable (not familiar enough with PHP to know what the exact implementation would be), thus avoiding the problem of cluttered code. A list of requested redirects could be maintained on a Meta page, and just copy-pasted (after a cursory glance to make sure nothing's fishy with it) into the builds by a dev whenever a software update is about to be installed at Wikimedia.
There are aliases.
