UESPWiki:Archive/CP Redirect Madness

Redirect Madness

Over the last week there have been a few changes to the wiki software.  Among other things, the changes mean that redirects are now a much more useful tool, in particular shortcut-type redirects.  To take full advantage of this new capability, I'd like to start creating literally thousands of redirects.  This will make it easier for editors to create links and it will make it easier for readers to find the article that they're looking for.

Up until now, to create a Spider Daedra link, for example, an editor would have had to type    .  That was the only way to create a link that would take a reader to the correct section of the Daedra page.  The upgrade to wiki version 1.10 earlier this week simplified things substantially: now the Spider Daedra redirect page can be used in a link and will take readers to the correct place.  In other words, editors can simply type     and it works exactly the same as the much more complicated orginal link.  Some additional changes were implemented earlier today that make things even simpler: now an editor can just type    .  In other words, by adding just 4 characters to the existing text a word can be turned into a link, instead of the 35 extra characters required by the original link.  It's not just easier to type, it's also much less error-prone.

Also, I'm hoping that readers will start to use the "go" feature in the search bar a lot more often because basically it now works, whereas it used to never work unless you understood UESP's namespaces.  So any reader who types "Spider Daedra" into the search box while reading an Oblivion page (not while reading a UESPWiki page like the community portal) will end up being directed straight to the article they're looking for.

Both of these features only work, however, if pages with those names exist... and that means there need to be a lot of redirect pages.  Try doing the same thing with "Dread Zombie", for example, and it fails because there's no redirect page for Dread Zombies.  So what I'd like to do is use NepheleBot to start going through and creating redirects, basically for nearly any topic that is likely to be linked to or searched for.  I'll start with creatures and items in each of the namespaces, and then add other categories as necessary.
These will be redirects within a given namespace (from one Oblivion article to another, for example), not redirects from the main namespace.  In other words, they will work within the existing organizational system of the namespaces instead of trying to bypass the system.  The transparent namespaces should hopefully have eliminated the need to create redirects in the main namespace.  
The redirects will be always be singular rather than plural.  I know right now our articles aren't too consistent on singular/plural.  However, consistency will be important if editors are going to be able to easily create links, especially with so many new possible links.  And overall, singular redirects seem easier to use than plural ones: it's easier to change a singular into a plural (e.g.,  ) than the reverse ( ).
I'll add categories to the redirects such as   or  .  This will provide another way for readers to find an item that they're looking for (especially with items such as swords, where it's never clear whether to check , , , etc.).  Also it will allow search engines such as google to index the redirect pages, basically making it easier for readers to get directed to the best page right away.

Finally, I think overall we should start actively using redirects when creating links instead of avoiding them.  Not only are the redirects easier to use, they're also better for long-term organization of the site.  If at some later time there's a decision to break up a page, then the redirect pages just need to be turned into articles; there's no need to search out all the links to the original article and update them (like I'm facing doing right now for  and the new ingredient pages).

So any objections or recommendations?  BTW, I think this will be my last crazy, over-ambitious proposal for now... getting all of these ideas implemented should keep me busy for a while :) --Nephele  02:03, 21 May 2007 (EDT)

:No objections to you doing a heck of a lot of work. Cheers... --Wrye 15:33, 21 May 2007 (EDT)

:This sounds great! It will make our lives (and edits) much easier. --DrPhoton 03:08, 22 May 2007 (EDT)

:Well, if everyone is in favor of it, I guess go ahead with it. My only really worry is about the massive number of new pages that this system will create.--Ratwar 17:13, 24 May 2007 (EDT)

::I've gone ahead and added a pretty complete list of redirects to the Oblivion namespace, including a whole bunch of new categories to list all these pages.  Other than a few more links to advertise the categories, I think Oblivion's redirects are mostly done.
::Before expanding to another namespaces, I was thinking of waiting a couple weeks to see if Daveh notices any impact on the server from this round of new pages.  It's hard for me to guess how the redirects should affect server performance.  It's a large increase in page count (at least the total count on , not the "legitimate" page count), but not really a significant change in the database size since they're all small pages.  And if the redirects really help readers to find pages more easily, it could decrease the server's workload (fewer time-consuming searches through the whole database, fewer extra page views from readers pulling up a bunch of incorrect pages).  But the server is currently near its capacity, so I don't want to be doing anything that worsens performance.  If after a couple weeks Daveh doesn't see any signs of trouble, I'll start moving ahead with other namespaces.  If on the other hand the redirects do seem to be problematic for the server, I'll hold off until Daveh makes a decision about possibly upgrading the server.  --Nephele  12:21, 2 June 2007 (EDT)