The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more redirects. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was delete. While I'm sympathetic to the keep arguments that this a logical search and isn't an entirely implausible search, the delete arguments are persuasive in showing that any real use cases of this would be edge cases, especially given that District (Austria) is not about an actual place. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 04:59, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• History of District (Austria) → District (Austria)#History  (talk · links · history · stats)     [ Closure: keep/retarget/delete ] 

Propose deletion. Redirect name is word salad and is neither a likely typo nor a likely search term. Redirect has no incoming links and no valuable edit history. Damvile (talk) 00:52, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Given that our article is at District (Austria) it is entirely logical for people to search for the history of the topic at this title - indeed if the history section is ever split out (which given how much of the article it comprises is not implausible) it will almost certainly be at this title. Page views show that a few people (15 so far this year) do look for content here, so it would unnecessarily inconvenience them while conferring no benefit to the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 11:13, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. Perhaps it would make sense if this was a single place name, but it's not. It was created as part of an ill-advised AWB run, so no real thought went into its creation. -- Tavix ^(talk) 13:35, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Thryduulf. This is a plausible search term and couldn't refer to anything other than the current target. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 16:03, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Question How is "History of District (Austria)" a likely search term? Bear with me, I'm an RFD noob. District is not a proper noun so the capitalization is off. The grammar is off too; if you wanted to learn about the history of Austrian districts you'd probably use the plural form. The title ends with a parenthetical; who ever uses those in a search box? You don't type "District (Austria)" into a search box unless you already know the target article isn't called e.g. "Austrian district" or "districts in Austria". I can see "History of Dornbirn" or suchlike being a likely search term, but "History of District (Austria)"? If I'm just wrong about how people use the search box I'll gladly withdraw the proposal. Damvile (talk) 18:39, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think redirects need to be likely search terms, just plausible ones. Redirects are cheap, so there's no harm done by keeping redirects which are plausibly useful, if not necessarily likely to be, so long as there's no risk that they'll cause confusion (of course, others disagree). – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:23, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I, for one, completely agree with you, Damvile. -- Tavix ^(talk) 20:07, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Arms & Hearts explains the threshold well. In terms of how people use the search box (which, incidentally, is far from the only method people use to find Wikipedia articles) there are a great many ways and not everybody will use the same search term for the same article - this is one of the reasons redirects exist. In this case if someone knows the main article about the subject is titled "District (Austria)" then looking for the history of the subject at "History of District (Austria)" strikes me as extremely plausible. The page view statistics show that people do actually use this - and there is no question that they are arriving at the content they are looking for, so it's not incorrect, it's not misleading and it's not otherwise harmful. That other search terms are possible is not relevant, that they might be more logical and/or better used than this one is also completely irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 00:10, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks everybody for your replies! I think I understand the threshold better now but I still don't believe that "History of District (Austria)" meets it. It's not just not likely, it's not even merely plausible. I just can't imagine this exact string, weirdo title case and parentheses and all, being typed into a search box more than once every couple years, meaning it's organically useful to basically no one ever. In my book this is a textbook example of a redirect that's not worth the clutter it adds.

(@Thryduulf: Respectfully, I don't get it. If you know that the main article is titled "District (Austria)" then you know that the article has a History section and that the History section does start with a ((main article)) link, correctly suggesting that no dedicated History article exists. A "History of" redirect that just leads back to the History section provides no insight that the absence of said redirect wouldn't provide as well: it confirms what you already suspected and that's it. It does not carry one bit of additional information. Or maybe I'm just slightly denser than usual today, never mind.) Damvile (talk) 20:11, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You can think whatever you like about the likelihood of it being used, but the stats are hard evidence that you are wrong - it has been used 15 times so far this year. The second part of your comment is simply wrong - most of the people who use this will not be those that know there isn't a separate history article wont use this (but they might), but think also about those who don't know whether there is or isn't a separate article - this takes people who use it directly to the content they are looking for regardless of where it is (and note that the internal search box and some other methods of searching are case insensitive). WP:COSTLY is an essay with only limited support (it's wrongly invoked almost every time its used) - WP:CHEAP is what matters here. You need to show some benefit to the encyclopaedia from deleting this, and you have completely failed to do so - but despite this you still want to inconvenience readers. Thryduulf (talk) 21:39, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen you claim a redirect is plausible from some pretty microscopic page views, but this one takes the cake. You're claiming that a redirect that gets 0.06 page views per day is plausible—which is absolutely laughable. It's clear from analyzing the page view stats that people are not actively using the redirect. Whatever hits the redirect gets are not from people actively searching using this term (for example, I'm sure Damvile didn't stumble upon the redirect because they decided to find out the history of Austrian districts using this string), so claiming that deletion of this redirect will inconvenience readers is 100% false. An average of 21 people per day find the article just fine without it; those redirected to District (Austria) from this redirect are negligible. -- Tavix ^(talk) 03:19, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Tavix: I know about the redirect because I wrote (most of) the District article and looked at what was linking to it.

@Thryduulf: The redirect was linked to from my todo list for about 4 years. I used to click around on that list quite a bit. I'd bet money that half of this year's 15 hits come from me, and the remaining half came from other active editors reading this very discussion. Damvile (talk) 07:31, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Tavix: The problem with this reasoning, in my view, is that we have a vast number of articles, on notable topics, about which you could make the exact same argument. This is apparent from clicking Special:Random a few times and looking at the page views for what you get: I got, for example, Serixia buruensis, which hasn't been looked at by more than two people on any given day in the last four months, and Tora Garm-Fex, which hasn't had more than four views a day since March. If a redirect that no one ever uses is useless, these articles must be useless too, and if redirects are costly, then articles are only more so—yet these are notable topics that would be worthy of articles even if no one ever looked at them, and there must be tens or hundreds of thousands of them. This is why I don't countenance arguments about page views as good reasons either to delete redirects or to keep them. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 21:29, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, page views should not be used as an argument for keeping or deleting redirects. You can see all the problems using page views has caused in this discussion, the key being that page views simply do not and cannot definitely prove whether or not a redirect is useful. But so long as Thryduulf continues to use page views fallaciously as an argument to keep redirects, I will continue to counter with my reasoning why that's a poor argument. To that end, User:Andrewa/The Problem With Page Views is a good essay on the topic that is based on RM discussions. I've been wanting to tailor that essay for redirects for some time, but thankfully it hasn't been problematic enough here to motivate me enough to write it. -- Tavix ^(talk) 00:46, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Arms & Hearts: I think you're comparing apples and oranges. On the pragmatic level, an article has value even if nobody ever looks at it, assuming the usual notability criteria are met, If it's there, it reassures users that Wikipedia has the resources and the diligence to cover offbeat or specialist topics. If it isn't, readers will ask themselves why. The article will take up time and mental space through not being there. On the philosophical level, judging the merit of a topic from its popularity would be completely anthithetical to everything Wikipedia is and does. The suggestion that Mystique is a worthier and more important subject that Shulamith Firestone because it gets 16 times as many pages views would be so ludicrious that literally nobody ever ventures to make it. But none of this applies to redirects. Redirect are not content. Redirects are technical devices. Redirects are user interface. A redirect nobody uses really is completely worthless. The attention and maintenance work it soaks up is just lost. The continuous rain of double redirect fixes gunking up edit histories and watch lists is 100% heat and 0% light. The damage done by any one particular redirect is trivial, of course, but a line has to be drawn somewhere. The number of clicks that a redirect gets may not be a perfect measure but it's probably a decent heuristic. Damvile (talk) 02:24, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The number of views a redirect gets is not "fallacious" in the slightest (otherwise why would they be so prominently linked in nominations?) - they are a useful point of data to consider along with other factors to determine if a redirect is useful - for example they show that Untied States was useful on 73 occasions in July alone and have shown in the past that various other typo redirects are not used. This redirect is obviously not in the same league, but we do have evidence of use (and even with their significantly revised estimates the nominator is not claiming responsibility for every visit) and there is no question that if someone did use this redirect they would get to the content they are looking for. This means the redirect is useful. It doesn't matter really whether a redirect is useful to a small number of people occasionally or to many people every day - deletion is harmful to the encyclopaedia. Sometimes that harm is outweighed by other benefits (such as described at WP:REDLINK or where the redirect is misleading to more people than it is useful for) but that is not what we have here - deletion of this redirect will not bring any benefits at all. The "maintenance requirements" argument has never been very strong (obscure redirects get single digit numbers of edits per decade) and now such changes produce tags they are even easier to identify - the ongoing maintenance workload for editors is therefore identical whether the redirect is kept or deleted and so completely irrelevant. Yet despite multiple requests over many discussions no other alleged benefit to deletion has ever been identified (let alone shown to be actually beneficial). Thryduulf (talk) 08:59, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as a word salad per nom and Tavix - For a redirect to be plausible, it must be likely in some way or another. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 02:17, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The stats show this is both plausible and likely. Thryduulf (talk) 21:39, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Likely because the search engine pulls it up and people click it, not because they would input that. District(s) (Austria), Austrian district(s), Districts in Austria, History of districts in Austria, and History of Austrian districts are and would be reasonable redirects. This is not. That aside, even if those aware of District (Austria) input "History of District (Austria)" for some reason as you describe above, they have likely already checked District (Austria) and are in search of more content elsewhere. If this pointed to a separate article, I could see that argument a bit better. However, History of X (disambiguation) is either appropriate for all similar pages or none (i.e. the old affinity argument I plan to eventually essay-ize), and I think the latter. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 01:50, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Thryduulf: I seems to me that the stats show the exact opposite. How many of those 15 clicks did not come from people involved in this here ongoing debate? Damvile (talk) 07:31, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Damvile, Tavix, and Godsy: The 15 hits all occurred before this discussion started, so none were the result of it. It is not possible to know where the hits came from. I've fully debunked Tavix's argument about "microscopic" page views previously, but to summarise: It is irrelevant how many people use a redirect like this - what matters is that some people do and inconveniencing them when absolutely no benefit will arise to anybody from doing so is actively harmful to Wikipedia's mission. As for the "all or none" argument - for exactly the same reason why this redirect is plausible, other "History of X (disambiguation)" redirects are - we had many titled in this manner in the database dump I downloaded on 3 June (over 1800 in total but that includes articles like "History of X (date range)"). For example History of Babek (city), History of County of Carnarvon (South Australia), etc. Thryduulf (talk) 11:20, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • I've fully debunked Tavix's argument about "microscopic" page views previously. Quite the opposite. In fact, Danvile debunked your argument above by confirming where the page views are coming from. It is irrelevant how many people use a redirect like this. If the amount of people using a redirect is irrelevant, perhaps you should stop using page views in a futile attempt to polish junk redirects? It worsens your argument, and now you just sound hypocritical with statements like that. -- Tavix ^(talk) 13:46, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • Well done for, once again, taking statements out of context and ignoring the actual arguments. What matters is that real people are using this redirect (Danville has guessed that some of the uses are his) - Iff all the uses are from a now-removed link to a to-do list (which seems rather unlikely to me) then this will be apparent in the future and the redirect can be reconsidered then. Until that time we should not inconvenience users of the encyclopaedia (who are after all the entire reason any of us should be doing anything on Wikipedia) without some clear benefit - you have (like in several previous nominations) repeatedly failed to identify any potential benefits to deletion, let alone any actual ones. Thryduulf (talk) 14:20, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
            • real people are using this redirect False, see your page view analysis and Danvile's comments above. the redirect can be reconsidered then. We are here now, don't kick the can down the road. we should not inconvenience users of the encyclopaedia This redirect is not being used in this manner. Ignoring the disambiguator, you can't use "History of District" in a grammatically correct sentence in this context. failed to identify any potential benefits to deletion. "Novel or very obscure" redirects are to be deleted per the redirect policy. Deletion also has maintenance benefits when a redirect has no purpose. -- Tavix ^(talk) 14:43, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • History of Babek (city) and History of County of Carnarvon (South Australia) make sense, so those examples are a false equivalencies. Keeping this legitimizes the creation of other nonsense redirects like e.g. History of State (X) or History of Car (X) (bad capitalization included). — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 21:02, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Thryduulf: I'm 80% (90%) positive that all (almost all) these hits are me aimlessly clicking around on my pointless to do list, which was something I used to do every now and then. I feel everything else that is worth saying has been said. Damvile (talk) 00:28, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. (I almost made this a close, but let's play it safe:) There are two arguments for keeping this redirect, both of which have been effectively refuted by the delete voters. There is indeed a "Foo : History of Foo" relationship here, but since the latter is not a separate article, it is indeed difficult to credit, as the nominator put it, that a reader would be familiar enough with this article and still try to access a particular section of it this way. And while page view counts can certainly be subjective, 15 views does not necessarily mean 15 readers, and given that the nominator accounts for at least some of them, the constituency for this redirect seems quite small indeed. I'm confident that if they indeed exist, these readers will still find what they're looking for. --BDD (talk) 21:11, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Nonsense redirect that has no value. —Xezbeth (talk) 12:07, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. A redirect created as part of a careless AWB run that makes District sound like a specific place in Austria. feminist (talk) 06:59, 30 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more redirects. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was procedural close - this is actually a move request. I'll start There is an RM discussion at talk:Sweetener (album). Thryduulf (talk) 11:15, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Sweetener → Sugar substitute  (talk · links · history · stats)     [ Closure: keep/retarget/delete ] 

I propose that this redirect be re-targeted to Sweetener (album) in order to avoid surprising users. Since creation of Sweetener (album), it has been getting several times more pageviews daily than the current target, Sugar substitute. I believe re-targeting this redirect will improve navigation for users. For analytics since May, please see [1] (I recommend using log scale). — bieχχ (talk) 20:50, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Close WP:MALPLACED, this should be a WP:RM to put Sweetener (album) at the base title. 59.149.124.29 (talk) 00:59, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• A technical move request was contested, so I have created a requested move: Talk:Sweetener (album)#Requested move 22 August 2018. I invite you to discuss that proposal on the talk page. Please feel free to close this. Thank you — bieχχ (talk) 11:14, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more redirects. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was withdrawn. -- Tavix ^(talk) 20:12, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Naureen → Mohammad Azharuddin  (talk · links · history · stats)     [ Closure: keep/retarget/delete ] 

Redirecting an unsupported, non-notable in the slightest BLP (family member) to another BLP that mentions the name but isn't even mentioned once in the sources is bad practice and violates every BLP policy known to Wikipedia. CHRISSYMAD ❯❯❯¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 15:50, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Anthroponymize. There are a couple notable people with the name, so I have drafted a SIA under the redirect. -- Tavix ^(talk) 20:09, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tavix In that case I'll gladly withdraw this if we just make it a dab/name list. Feel free to close. CHRISSYMAD ❯❯❯¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 20:11, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more redirects. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was speedy delete per WP:CSD#G6 - the edit history makes it clear this was created in error. Thryduulf (talk) 11:25, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikipedia:WikiProjec Professional wrestling/Collaboration of the week → Wikipedia:WikiProject Professional wrestling/Collaboration  (talk · links · history · stats)     [ Closure: keep/retarget/delete ] 

This is an obvious implausible typo that can be safely deleted. However, WP:CSD#R3 doesn't apply as this redirect was not recently created. Pkbwcgs (talk) 09:17, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is the only redirect with the incorrect spelling of WikiProject. There are no more redirects that follow this same style. Pkbwcgs (talk) 09:20, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more redirects. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was delete. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:32, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Mohamed Chabani → fr:Mohamed Chabani  (talk · links · history · stats)     [ Closure: keep/retarget/delete ] 

Sending readers to non-English content is not helpful. No other plain soft redirects exist in the mainspace. I could not find a good local target. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 02:26, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete to encourage article creation --Lenticel ^(talk) 03:44, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom and Lenticel. I'm sure we have a guideline against these but I can't immediately find it. Thryduulf (talk) 11:29, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 15:50, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as a valid WP:REDLINK--DBigXrayᗙ 22:07, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more redirects. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was withdrawn (WP:WITHDRAW). (non-admin closure) — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 06:31, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Perspectives on Psychological Science (journal) → Perspectives on Psychological Science  (talk · links · history · stats)     [ Closure: keep/retarget/delete ] 

This redirect is a remnant of a page move to "Perspectives on Psychological Science". I eliminated the last two inbound links from articles, so I believe there is no reason to keep this now. Also, if the title "Perspectives on Psychological Science" ever turns out to be ambiguous, we'll want "Perspectives on Psychological Science (journal)" to be available. Ringbang (talk) 01:50, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per WP:RFD#KEEP point #4. The article was at the (journal) title for six four years before being moved, meaning incoming external links are highly likely. We generally only delete redirects like this if they're erroneous, which this one is not. If the article needs to be moved back in the future, WP:RM/TR will handle it. 59.149.124.29 (talk) 06:47, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Even without having been the article's for so long, this is an acceptable redirect as an ((R from unnecessary disambiguation)). – Uanfala (talk) 12:36, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment The way forward seems clear. I retract the nomination. —Ringbang (talk) 04:16, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.