View source for How to create a redirect page on MediaWiki sites

To redirect a page (1) to a different page (2), enter on the top of page 1:

'''<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[NAME OF PAGE 2]]</nowiki>'''

For example, to redirect the [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Cambridge University|redirect=no}} Cambridge University] page to the [[University of Cambridge]] page, [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Cambridge University|action=edit}} edit] the Cambridge University page and enter:

'''<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[University of Cambridge]]</nowiki>'''

Please note that you can only redirect to articles, not sections in them; although the [[syntax]] allows them, e.g.

'''<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[University of Cambridge#History]]</nowiki>'''

they [[Meta:Help:Redirect#A redirect to an anchor|don't work]].

Everything after the redirect line will be blanked when you save the page. Any text on the same line as the redirect will stay, but will not be visible unless someone edits the page.

To go back and '''edit your redirect after it's working,''' add '''&redirect=no''' to the end of the URL for your redirect. To ''add a reason'', select one of the tags from the Tag column below and add it one space after and on the same line as <nowiki>#REDIRECT [[Wherever]]</nowiki>. E.g. for the redirect page [[University of Cambridge]],

'''<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[University of Cambridge]] {{R for alternate capitalization}} </nowiki>'''

That will also add the redirect to the category listed in the Category column below.

<!--
It's possible to add a text in the same line after the #REDIRECT to describe why it had been created. There is a [[Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages|list of Redirect message templates]] (with titles starting with "R_") in the Template namespace that may be used for this, e.g. <nowiki>{</nowiki>{R_to_sort_name}} displays [[Template:R_to_sort_name]], e.g. on
[{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Aasen, Ivar Andreas|redirect=no}} Aasen,_Ivar_Andreas] ''(if you click this link, you won't be redirected. When you click 'Edit this page' there, you will see how it can be used)''. '''Note: This feature is broken right now. See the [[MediaZilla:927|bug report]].'''
-->

More examples are included below:

== What do we use redirects for? ==
{| class="wikitable"
!Reason
!Usage notes, and text that will be shown
!Tag
!Category to find articles so tagged
|-
|Abbreviations
|{{R from abbreviation}}
*[[DSM-IV]] redirects to [[Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders]]
|{{tl|R from abbreviation}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from abbreviation]]
|-
|Misspellings
|{{R from misspelling}}
*[[Condoleeza Rice]] redirects to [[Condoleezza Rice]]
|{{tl|R from misspelling}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from misspellings]]
|-
|Other spellings, other punctuation
|{{R from alternate spelling}}
*[[colour]] redirects to [[color]]
* [[Al-Jazeera]] redirects to [[Al Jazeera]]
|{{tl|R from alternate spelling}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from alternate spellings]]
|-
|Other capitalizations, for use in links
|{{R for alternate capitalization}}
*[[Natural Selection]] redirects to [[Natural selection]]
|{{tl|R for alternate capitalization}}
|[[:Category:Redirects for alternative capitalization]]
|-
|Other capitalizations, to ensure that "Go" to a mixed-capitalization article title is case-insensitive
|{{R for alternate capitalization}}

Adding a redirect for '''mixed-capitalization article titles''' (e.g., Isle of Wight) allows "Go" to these articles to be case-insensitive. For example, without the redirect [[Isle of wight]] a "Go" for "Isle Of wight" or any capitalization other than exactly 'Isle of Wight' would not find the article [[Isle of Wight]].

'''Why''': Articles whose titles contain mixed-capitalization words (not all initial caps, or not all lower case except the first word) are found via "Go" only by an exact case match. (Articles, including redirects, whose titles are either all initial caps or only first word capitalized are found via "Go" using a case-insensitive match.)

Note: "Go" related redirects are needed '''only if''' the article title has more than two words and words following the first have different capitalizations. They are not needed, for example, for proper names which are all initial caps.

Examples:
*Redirect [[Vice chancellor of Austria]] to [[Vice Chancellor of Austria]] is needed because the Go search is case-sensitive for mixed-caps titles.  Adding this redirect allows the article to be found when a user enters "vice chancellor of Austria" or "vice chancellor of Austria" as a Go search.
*No redirect to [[Francis Ford Coppola]] is needed because the "Go" command is case-insensitive for an article whose title is all initial caps. Any capitalization (e.g. "France fOrD CoPPola") entered as a "Go" will find the article.
|{{tl|R for alternate capitalization}}
|[[:Category:Redirects for alternative capitalization]]
|-
|Other names, pseudonyms, nicknames, and synonyms
|{{R from alternate name}}
*[[Wellie throwing]] redirects to [[Wellie wanging]]
*[[Butcher of Kurdistan]] redirects to [[Ali Hassan al-Majid]]
*[[Rev. Fred Phelps]] redirects to [[Fred Phelps]]
*[[Linear operator]] redirects to [[Linear transformation]]
|{{tl|R from alternate name}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from alternate names]]
|-
|Scientific names
|{{R from scientific name}}
*[[Heosemys depressa]] redirects to [[Arakan Forest Turtle]]
*[[Deuterium oxide]] redirects to [[Heavy water]]
*[[1P/Halley]] redirects to [[Comet Halley]]
|{{tl|R from scientific name}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from scientific names]]
|-
|Other languages
|{{R from alternate language}}
*[[The Abduction from the Seraglio]]  redirects to [[Die Entführung aus dem Serail]]
|{{tl|R from alternate language}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from alternate languages]]
|-
|Accents
|{{R from ASCII}}
*[[Kurt Goedel]] and [[Kurt Godel]] redirect to [[Kurt Gödel]]
|{{tl|R from ASCII}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from titles with ASCII]]
|-
|Plurals, tenses, etc.
|{{R from plural}}
*[[greenhouse gases]] redirects to [[greenhouse gas]], etc.
Note that <nowiki>[[greenhouse gas]]es</nowiki> shows up as [[greenhouse gas]]es, so it is not usually necessary to redirect plurals.  However third-party websites started adding automatic links to Wikipedia from their topics (see, e.g., [http://www.spikemagazine.com/free-new-books/2005/12/explorion-free-travel-books.php]). Many of them follow the opposite naming convention, i.e., topics are named in plural, and the link to Wikipedia may land into an empty page, if there is no redirect. <!-- fixed a couple myself -->
|{{tl|R from plural}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from plurals]]
|-
|Related words
|{{R from related word}}
*[[Symbiont]] redirects to [[Symbiosis]]
|{{tl|R from related word}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from related words]]
|-
|Sub-topics or closely related topics that should be explained within the text
|{{R with possibilities}}
*[[Distributed denial of service]] redirects to [[Denial of service]]
|{{tl|R with possibilities}}
|[[:Category:Redirects with possibilities]]
|-
|Facilitate disambiguation
|{{R to disambiguation page}}
*[[America (disambiguation)]] redirects to [[America]]
|{{tl|R to disambiguation page}}
|[[:Category:Redirects to disambiguation pages]]
|-
|To track statements that date quickly
|{{R for as of}}
*[[As of 2003]] redirects to [[2003]]
*See [[Wikipedia:As of]] for more info.
|{{tl|R for as of}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from "As of"]]
|-
|To redirect to decade article
|{{R to decade}}
*[[1003 BC]] redirects to [[1000s BC]]
|{{tl|R to decade}}
|[[:Category:Redirects to decade]]
|-
|To redirect from a shortcut
|{{R from shortcut}}
*[[WP:CAT]] redirects to [[Wikipedia:Category]]
|{{tl|R from shortcut}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from shortcut]]
|-
|Oldstyle CamelCase links
|{{R from CamelCase}}
*[[DemocracY]] redirects to [[Democracy]]
|{{tl|R from CamelCase}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from CamelCase]]
|-
|links autogenerated from EXIF information
|{{R from EXIF}}
*[[Adobe Photoshop CS Windows]] redirects to [[Adobe Photoshop]]
|{{tl|R from EXIF}}
|[[:Category:Redirects from EXIF information]]
|-
|From school microstub to merge location
|{{R from school}}
*[[Culler Middle School]] redirects to [[Lincoln Public Schools]]
|{{tl|R from school}}
|[[:Category: Redirects from school articles]]
|}
* Avoiding broken links (see [[#Renamings and merges|below]])

* Minor but notable topics

[[Template:R with possibilities|Sub-topic redirects]] are often temporary, eventually being replaced by fully fledged articles on the sub-topic in question. Be conservative when creating sub-topic redirects &mdash; they can sometimes be counter-productive, because they disguise the absence of a proper article from editors. Sub-topic redirects should only be used where the main article has a section on the sub-topic. For example, [[denial of service]] has a section on distributed denial of service. Sub-topics should be '''boldfaced''' on their first appearance in the section, to indicate that they are in fact alternate titles or sub-titles.

In accordance with [[wikipedia:naming conventions (precision)]] it's best to have an article at a well-defined, unambiguous term, with redirects from looser colloquial terms, rather than vice versa.

Some editors prefer to avoid redirects and link directly to the target article, as it is reported that redirects lower search engine rankings.

'''''See also''': [[Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages]] which contains a somewhat longer list of available redirect templates''

=== Renamings and merges ===
We try to avoid broken links, because they annoy visitors. Therefore, if we change the layout of some section of Wikipedia, or we merge two [[wikipedia:duplicate articles|duplicate articles]], we always leave redirects in the old location to point to the new location. Search engines and visitors will probably have linked to ''that'' page at ''that'' url. If the page is deleted, potential new visitors from search engines will be greeted with an edit window. The same is true for anyone who previously bookmarked ''that'' page, and so on.

On a small scale, this applies to cases where we had duplicate articles on some subject, or lots of twisty little stubs on different aspects of the same overall subject. On a larger scale, we've had a few fairly major reorganizations:

* Moving away from [[CamelCase]] article names
* Moving away from having homepages in the article namespace (see [[User:Tim Starling/Redirects from : to User:]] for a partial list)
* Moving away from using [[wikipedia:subpages|subpages]] in the article namespace

== When should we delete a redirect? ==

To delete a redirect '''without replacing it with a new article''', list it on [[wikipedia:redirects for deletion|redirects for deletion]]. See [[wikipedia:deletion policy|deletion policy]] for details on how to nominate pages for deletion.

This isn't necessary if you just want to replace a redirect with an article, or change where it points: see [[meta:redirect#How do I change a redirect?|How do I change a redirect?]] for instructions on how to do this. If you want to ''swap'' a redirect and an article, but are not able to move the article to the location of the redirect please use [[Wikipedia:Requested moves]] to request help from an [[Wikipedia:Administrators|admin]] in doing that.

<!-- If you modify this list, do the same to the copy at [[WP:RfD]]. -->
<!-- Apparently this is too complex for some people to follow. Let's try it this way, then. -->
{{Wikipedia:Redirect/DeletionReasons}}

== What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects? ==
We follow the "[[Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles#Principle of least astonishment|principle of least astonishment]]" &mdash; after following a redirect, the reader's first question is likely to be: "hang on ... I wanted to read about ''this''. Why has the link taken me to ''that''?". Make it clear to the reader that they ''have'' arrived in the right place.

Normally, we try to make sure that all "inbound redirects" are mentioned in the first couple of paragraphs of the article. For example:

* '''Longships''' were boats used by the Vikings...
** [[longship]], redirect from [[viking ship]]
* '''Edvard Munch''' ([[1863]]&ndash;[[1944]]) was ... The broadest collection of his works is at on display at the Munch Museum at...
** [[Edvard Munch]], redirect from [[Munch Museum]]

Don't cause a [[Wikipedia:Double redirects|secondary redirect]].  They don't work like a primary redirect; same with tertiary redirects.

== Self-links, duplicate links ==
Avoid [[Wikipedia:Self link|self-links]], including self-links through redirects ("loop links"). Also, avoid having two links that go to the same place. These can confuse readers, and cause them to unnecessarily load the same page twice.

== Don't fix redirects that aren't broken ==
Some editors are tempted, upon finding links using a legitimate redirect target, to edit the page to "fix" the redirect so that it points "straight" at the "correct" page.  Unless the link ''displays'' incorrectly—for instance, if the link is to a misspelling or if the hint that appears when you hover over the link is misleading—there is no need to edit the link.  Most especially, there should ''never'' be a need to replace <nowiki>[[redirect]] with [[direct|redirect]]</nowiki>.

Some editors are under the mistaken impression that fixing such links improves the capacity of the Wikipedia servers.  But because editing a page is ''thousands'' of times more expensive for the servers than following a redirect, the opposite is actually true.
==Credits==
This page has been adapted from
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirect<div id="wikia-credits">

<small>From [http://howto.wikia.com HowTo Wiki], a [http://www.wikia.com Wikia] wiki.</small></div>



[[Category:Howto]]