Forum:Redirects and Other Link Issues

In the Manual of Style forum, a conversation came up concerning the use of redirects over the use of pipe links. For those of you unfamiliar with the matter, redirects are things like, while pipe links are like this. I'm not as familiar with this, so for a bit of background, see the MoS forum.

Recently, I have also noticed a bit of a dispute between the use of possessive links (Ace's vs. Ace's). While the first example is certainly less coding, I personally think that it looks better to have the entire word linked instead of part of it. Correct if I'm wrong, but I think that once the 's is added, it becomes part of the word, and I think it looks bad to have part of the word linked. However, there are people who think differently, as I learned when I discussed this matter with SeaTerror.

If there are any other problems that may fit under the umbrella of this blog, please add them. I thought it would be better to split this forum into two separate parts since I brought up two issues (however, I felt they were somewhat related, so I only made one forum). Thanks. 14:41, August 19, 2012 (UTC)

Redirects vs. Pipe Links
Before anything else, I'd like to say that the laziness criteria (less coding is good) is not the best way to go, with this I mean you can choose to use a way instead of another one because it's faster and/or simpler, but that's not a reason to make it a rule. It's our problem as editor to use the correct way (if there is one) rather then the faster way.

About redirects: the redirect is technically not this: Luffy (the link), but rather this: Luffy (the page) which is a page that redirect the viewer to another one.

Learn what laziness is. If we were lazy then we would leave the redirects alone. SeaTerror (talk) 17:20, August 19, 2012 (UTC)

There shouldn't be any rule how to set links on an article. Other wikias may have either a less restrictive rule or leave it completely open to the author who adds content. But what is completely useless is to do minor edits (or even edit wars) on switching from piped to redirect and vice versa only as per "Do not fix unbroken code." -- [ defchris ] · [ Diskussion ] · 17:33, August 19, 2012 (UTC)

I agree with DefChris. I don't think we really need a rule on this, as long as we have a rule against editing to change them. Like I said in the MoS page, we should have these fall under the rule of "Do not fix unbroken source code" and have people who break these rules be warned and told that it can become a ban-worthy offense. Additionally, we should make the undoing of those edits of unbroken code just as bad, if not a worse offense then editing them to begin with. That way, people can write the links how they want, and we can stop the edit wars. 01:49, August 20, 2012 (UTC)

I also agree that normally there shouldn't be the need of such rules and more then a rule, I'd prefer a style model which is preferable to follow, rather than a formal guideline. However I honestly don't understand really much the "Do not fix unbroken code" rule: does that mean that I cannot fix, for example, the infoboxes that usually are all messy in the pages? And what if I edit an article/paragraph for other reason but together with my other changes I edit some "unbroken code" to "my tastes"? What about editing unbroken code with a bot then? And the most important, what will you do if someone actually does it? Because acting like the anti-useless edits guardian reverting everything is stupid in my opinion.

Anyway I'll repost my opinion on redirects:
 * Fixing not canon name redirects is a good thing, for example something like "Jimbe → Jinbe".
 * Fixing short-name or nickname redirects is irrelevant, I don't see it as a task to do, but I don't see a reason to undo it. Some example "Luffy → Monkey D. Luffy" or "Whitebeard → Edward Newgate", just a note some people may prefer to see the actual name in the tooltip instead of a nickname (Whitebeard vs Whitebeard) (and technically the short-name case is a little different from the nickname case, because fixing the latter is more reasonable in my opinion).
 * Fixing redirect to merged pages as well different topic pages is a bad thing, for example "Gear Second → Gomu Gomu no Mi/Gear Second Techniques" or "Shandian Village → Skypiea#Shandian Village". This is because in these cases the redirect works as an anchor for a concept or a topic different from the page which is redirecting to, this is useful because if in future we decide to make the Gear Second tab a page on its own, we don't have to fix the links.
 * About "there is a reason why redirects exist", the main reason the redirects are used is to work as anchor link for merged articles or synonymous. And as Defchris said in the other forum, by purposely using redirects over correct links you cannot check where are the links pointing to an article with WhatLinksHere and you increase the chances of creating broken or double redirects, this is a big cons in my opinion.

Concerning the "unbroken source code" proposal.....could we reword that to say "Redirects and piped links are both acceptable methods; whenever one is found, please leave it the way it is. Editing or reverting edits of this matter could be subject for a ban." or "Do not fix fix unbroken source code in links" or something along those lines. I would prefer a concrete, one-or-the-other decision, but I think it would certainly be possible to just leave them be. 11:49, August 20, 2012 (UTC)

That's reasonable, I like the "Redirects and piped links are both acceptable methods" (but only for different names links, since using wrong-name redirects or fixing merged articles redirects is wrong in my opinion as I said in the post above). However this should be limited to the specific case of an edit with the only purpose to change the link, if you edit the link while rewording a sentence or a paragraph it should be fine (otherwise we will basically set a rule that nobody can change a link format on a article, which is absurd).

Yeah, wording is a little tricky, but that sounds good to me. The purpose of this is to prevent people having edit wars over one or two words which are linked in a way they don't like. How about this: "Redirects and pipe links are both acceptable linking methods. Do not go out of your way to use one method or the other, as editing or reverting over a redirect vs. pipe link case may result in a ban. However, fixing wrong-name redirects and merged articles is acceptable and may be done freely." We don't have to decide on the exact wording anyways, just on a policy so it can be implemented. 12:18, August 20, 2012 (UTC)

The most common name should be used. Whitebeard has only been called Newgate twice in the series. Once in the introduction infobox and once in the chapter where he died during the flashback. SeaTerror (talk) 17:15, August 20, 2012 (UTC)

Bump. And anyways, the most common name isn't really the issue. The page name is Edward Newgate, and most pages refer to him as Whitebeard anyways. The method of linking the two is the problem. If everyone feels like discussion is over, then we can do a poll or simply go along with the "don't fix unbroken code in redirects" rule. 17:36, August 26, 2012 (UTC)

Though you shouldn't confuse the name displayed with the name linked: the choice of using "Whitebeard" over "Edward Newgate" doesn't imply to use  over. I don't understand why some users are fixed on using redirects, the redirect works by relying on another page, the two syntax are not equivalent. That's why I personally prefer using correct links, the cons of using redirects are: we cannot check which pages actually link to the subject, increase the chance of creating double or broken redirects and the user get a redirect notice (this is trivial); on the other hand pipe links have no cons that I can think of. As I said before generally there is no a real correct way, but then it's up the editor choice. So to avoid edit wars like before, we can say that we should not purposely edit only links, but remember there are also tools meant to correct redirects, so it's not so strange like many think to use correct links. In the end we should just let the editors do what they want and simply avoiding edit war like before.

Possessive Links
Most of you probably think that this isn't that big of an issue, but I think that we can afford to be a little more black-and-white here. As I stated above, I think that possessive links (Ace's) should be written they way I just wrote them; the whole word, 's and all, is linked. To the best of my knowledge, when the 's is added, the word is changed into a new form, like adding -ing to a verb. My justification is that linking only part of a word looks sloppy to me, but as I saw in the last blog, some people disagreed. One person I talked to said "we just don't do it that way". Oh, here is a site I found explaining possessive forms (no, I haven't read through the whole thing). 02:02, August 22, 2012 (UTC)