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 retarget to Nehorai. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:34, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Rabbi Nehorai → Eleazar ben Arach  (talk · links · history · stats)     [ Closure: keep/retarget/delete ] 

The identification of Nehorai with Eleazar ben Arach is questionable. See, for example, this article at the Jewish Virtual Library. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 22:32, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect to Nehorai which discusses it in the context of the Talmud - the name is mentioned three times there, and refers to a rabbi. The redirect to Eleazar ben Arach was recently created, and is a speculation that Nehorai could refer to Eleazar. [1] But it is not certain, so go to the general article. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 19:58, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. 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) 18:40, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Raseshwari Devi → Raseshwari Rajya Laxmi  (talk · links · history · stats)     [ Closure: keep/retarget/delete ] 

Following a page move: Google returns no sources associating the person who is the subject of the target article with the name "Raseshwari Devi". A Google search for "Rasheshwari Devi" mostly turns up someone named Poojniya Raseshwari Devi. Largoplazo (talk) 17:19, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per nom. The target article was created two days ago and moved on the same day, so there's no history that would provide a good reason to keep this. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 12:56, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. 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 retarget to Cunt#Radio. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:42, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Jeremy Cunt → Jeremy Hunt  (talk · links · history · stats)     [ Closure: keep/retarget/delete ] 

Do I need to spell it out? Yes, lots of people hate Jeremy Hunt. Yes, people have "accidentally" called him this (or at least according to the official line, it was accidental) but are people really not going to be able to find his article unless they put in the "unpleasant" version of his name first? I suspect most people using this redirect will be of the "a wonder if this exists" variety. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:45, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ritchie333, WP:G10 I think for this one Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:47, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly; the only thing making me pause is that it is documented in reliable sources. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:48, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, there's previous coverage over the years. Passes GNG with sustained coverage, let's create an article on "Media mispronunciations of Jeremy Hunt's name" and redirect this there /joke, obvious delete per WP:BLP Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:56, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Retarget to Recurring in-jokes in Private Eye#Names intentionally misspelled or misstated (or create an anchor there) where there is content on the subject, i.e. Jeremy Hunt, the current Conservative Health Secretary has his surname misstated as "Cunt", and is sometimes called "Mr Cunt" after Radio 4 presenter James Naughtie accidentally introduced him as Jeremy Cunt rather than Hunt. It also refers to how Hunt is often described at protests opposing his healthcare reforms, per WP:RNEUTRAL. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 19:17, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I removed that content per WP:BLP - currently unsourced and obviously the kind of material to be removed quickly if unsourced; can't find any sourcing about Hunt in the context of Private Eye Galobtter (pingó mió)

• Speedy Delete Seems to be an attack and violates WP:BLP. AmericanAir88^(talk) 03:09, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak keep There have been a number of funny gaffs on English news over the years where presenters have spoonerised Mr Hunt's name rather unfortunately (see https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jun/25/jeremy-hunt-name-curse-strikes-again-at-bbc https://www.nme.com/news/tv/watch-two-newsreaders-accident-refer-jeremy-hunt-jeremy-ct-2087358 http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/301107) so I wonder if there is actually some reason to keep this page. JZCL 14:24, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak keep WP:RNEUTRAL probably applies here, as it is a name not uncommonly used to refer to him (accidentally and deliberately) and this is readily sourceable. If we have content about this anywhere, then (a) it absolutely needs to be sourced per WP:BLP, and (b) WP:RNEUTRAL definitely will apply. The redirect should be retargetted to added content about this, if it is added somewhere other than his biography. I don't think speedy deletion is appropriate regardless. Thryduulf (talk) 15:20, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 'Retarget per Arms & Hearts below, good find. Thryduulf (talk) 18:19, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Retarget to Cunt#Radio, where instances of Hunt being called this are described (and reliable sources are cited). I think someone searching for this is more likely to be looking for information about those instances than they are to be looking for Hunt's biography; if they are looking the latter it's linked from that section. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 12:35, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Retarget to Cunt#Radio, where there is content on the subject, per WP:RNEUTRAL. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 15:59, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. 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 keep. TIL Tavix changed his signature and in 2018 reddit Markdown can't handle links properly. At any rate, without clear compelling evidence of the source of this, I'll admit to thinking the soft redirect option to be quite interesting. The visitation behavior is interesting, and it would be neat to figure it out (certainly seems consistent with a reddit link?). Still, it's rather unorthodox, and as noted below, just means more work for anyone interested without much gain on our side. I'm not convinced that there's reason to overturn the consensus from 3.5 years ago, and the arguments for keeping it seem quite strong.

On a different note, Ivanvector, aside from being hilarious, had a good suggestion, which might be worth pursuing. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:34, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Genie (feral child → Genie (feral child)  (talk · links · history · stats)     [ Closure: keep/retarget/delete ] 

WP:RDAB. Precedents: Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 December 12#HAZ (disambiguation)), Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 December 19#Jupiter(planet), Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 January 16#Plo Koon (Jedi Master, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 February 22#Ramp (Disambiguation), Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 March 27#X(wrestler), Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 May 25#Cannabis(drug), Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 June 15#Jellyfishing(Hobby), Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 May 30#Silence(film), & Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 August 14#Ball (baseball. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 08:38, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I created redirect page Genie (feral child on 06:48, 25 August 2013‎ (redirecting to Genie (feral child)) because it was in a list of nonexistent Wikipedia pages that were often looked for from outside Wikipedia. It may have started as a mistype in an outside web page that someone set up somewhere. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:12, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Very strong keep for the same reasons as in the previous RfD - this is getting massive amounts of traffic (9,569 hits in the last 30 days, 19,886 hits this year - even more use than last time it was discussed). This simply does not happen without an external link from somewhere (last time it was believed to be Reddit, and I don't have any reason to doubt that). And yes, we can be absolutely certain that everyone using this link is getting to the article they want to read - not only is any other target exceedingly implausible, but there is a rough correlation between the peak views of the redirect and peak views of the article (it's not perfect of course as the redirect is not the only source of traffic). So, yes, we will really be inconveniencing real people if we delete this (sometimes over 100 in a day), and no we will not get any benefits from doing so - we will just be increasing link rot - something that as responsible citizens of the internet we should always strive to avoid doing. Thryduulf (talk) 11:11, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but (mild) inconvenience is also a driving force for improvement. Perhaps we should change this into a soft redirect, so that visitors can still reach the target article easily (with just one more mouse click) but sooner or later someone will stand up and contact the owner of the site issuing this bad link in order to have it corrected. As it stands, that site owner probably isn't even aware of the issue.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:57, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Soft redirects are not used in the mainspace for local targets. I would only find that agreeable with a time limit (e.g. 3 months). — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 12:51, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot agree to an artificial time limit - of whatever duration. The redirect (soft or hard, preferably the latter) needs to exist as long as its still being used. Thryduulf (talk) 13:05, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The page views are odd. It got 8,500 views on Sept. 12 while most days are ~ under 20 (with a couple at ~ 150 and one a while back at ~ 500). — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 12:57, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) If you can find the source of the link, then go ahead, but the comments from the last discussion indicated that a couple of people tried and failed. What actual benefits though would a soft redirect bring to either us or the people using this link? What harm is its existence doing (other than having to spend a week or so every couple of years discussing whether or not we should harm the encyclopaedia for no benefit)? As for the inconvenience from deletion - as almost everybody will be following a link they will arrive at a page telling them that a previous page here had been deleted and inviting them to search and/or create a new page (depending on several factors) - they wont be taken directly to search results, and there is no guarantee that they will attempt to search and no guarantee that the search engine will show them the content they are looking for if they do (it should but it can't be guaranteed). This is not "slight inconvenience" this is making it significantly harder - off-puttingly harder in some cases. This is of course directly contrary Wikipedia's ultimate mission to increase access to knowledge. Thryduulf (talk) 13:03, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's why I propose a soft redirect, which is only a mild inconvenience and encourages the visitors (who obviously know where they are coming from) to inform the site owner to fix the link, so that the redirect becomes obsolete over time (a year, perhaps?). We could even leave a note on the soft redirect telling the visitors to inform us on the article's talk page where they were coming from, so that we can contact the site owner. That could help fixing the issue at the root in short time.

It's not a huge problem, but it sort of bugs me that such "junk" redirects (after all, it's not an obvious typo) seem to have to be maintained forever...

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:30, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Pinging participants of the last discussion @Anthony Appleyard, BDD, Ivanvector, Mattiaspaul, and Tavix: (excluding an IP user and Si Trew who is indefinitely blocked). Thryduulf (talk) 11:13, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  and re-pinging @Matthiaspaul: because I apparently can't type. Thryduulf (talk) 11:14, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per nom. Page views are unreliable and cannot be used to determine whether or not a redirect is useful or not. Look through WP:TOPRED (where this was at one point), and there is a lot of unexplainable noise, this redirect being one of them. -- Tavix ^(talk) 13:57, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do you have any evidence for your assertion that page view statistics are unreliable? Do you want to explain this time (having failed every other time) how deleting this benefits the encyclopaedia or its readers? Thryduulf (talk) 16:47, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Aww, you guys, I missed the RfD infighting! :) Keep per Thryduulf and all the past discussions. Let's make a ((R from external link)) for this. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 20:45, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Soft redirect per what I wrote in comments already. Not our usual solution, but if there's a chance to get a grip at the problem and fix it at the root we should WP:IAR and go for it. We only know if it will work by trying. If it doesn't help, we can still switch back to the hard redirect with ((R from misspelling)) in a couple of months.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:30, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Soft redirect as above to help root cause this one. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 20:03, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. I think it's very likely that a link (or multiple links) from Reddit is responsible for most of the hits – their variant of Markdown involves placing urls in parentheses, so a closing parenthesis that's part of a url is read instead as part of the code, and the link sends the reader to a url lacking the closing parenthesis. But this only affects links in comments, not in post titles (such as this one), so I imagine it would be hard to find the specific link or links responsible. (All this was said at the previous RfD but it strikes me as worth recapitulating. We also shouldn't underestimate the power of Reddit's "Today I Learned" board to generate hits: see, for example, pageviews for Lincoln and Darwin, which jumped to over 3,000 hits over two days but has rarely topped 10 a day since.) Given this situation, and the fact that the redirect differs from the target by only one character and could not plausibly refer to anything else, I see no benefit in deleting this and much potential harm. I wouldn't support any solution involving a soft redirect – it seems at best a solution in search of a problem, and unsupported by any policy or guideline, and at worst a proposal that would needlessly obstruct and inconvenience lots of readers. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 12:02, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We are talking about a single click for a single very specific incoming link - hardly an inconvenience. And if the hits are caused by actual visitors, not some kind of bots, and those visitors report on the article's talk page, it should be easy to identify the exact cause very soon.

Our guidelines cover the normal cases, not the exceptions. Without some room for experimentation (always striving for a better solution), there would be no progress. A soft redirect isn't meant to be a permanent solution. Either it helps us to identify the cause of the problem and fix it at the root, thereby making the soft redirect obsolete afterwards, or it doesn't help (either because we still can't identify the source or because it is not fixable at the source) and we can switch back to the hard redirect - in either case we gain insight into the problem, which will help us dealing with this and other similar cases in the future.

In fact, if we'd find this to be a more common problem, we could even implement a general "fix" for it at Apache's mod_rewrite layer (or similar) to automatically forward all incoming links with a missing closing parenthesis to an existing article with parenthetical extension. Thereby we would no longer need this specific link but still handle all such cases, even those for which no redirect was created so far. That would be convenient for even more visistors, without causing inconvenience for others.

This is far better than to simply bend over to a problem without even knowing if it would have been solvable properly.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 19:46, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Be extremely careful with automatically redirecting anything as there are pretty much always going to be exceptions. In the case of an opening but no closing parenthesis we have -( and likely others. It might also make it harder to find internal links that need fixing. As for the soft redirect suggestion - yes every click adds inconvenience (just ask any web designer) for no benefit at all to the user (and the chances of anybody engaging on the talk page are extremely slim - popup surveys (which will be more prominent than anything we could put on a soft redirect page) get a click-through rate of between about 1%-3%. Experience from the Article Feedback Tool was not positive regarding free-form messages left by readers. Finally - why do we need to spend time and effort investigating the source of the error and trying to get it fixed when a hard redirect means the link works for everybody without inconveniencing either them or us? What benefit does changing the status quo bring to either party? Thryduulf (talk) 21:20, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We do not have to spend time on this (but we already are doing it by participating in this discussion), but I think it would be wise as this is not the first time this has been brought up, and it won't be the last time unless either the cause is eliminated or it is known not to be fixable.

So far, we do not have any actual insight into the cause, so our discussion is based only on assumptions - which is never a good base for decisions.

I think it is not particularly wise to masquerade a problem without knowing the actual nature of the problem. Yes, it might be completely harmless, but there could also be more to it:

If Arms' assumption that it is caused by Reddit markup is true, why should it only affect this particular link? There could be ten-thousands of similar cases for which we would have to create similar redirects as well (no!), and we would be constantly inconveniencing thousands of visitors coming from this or similar sites without even knowing it.

On the other hand, if those hit figures are actually caused by humans, we should be able to get feedback on the article's talk page very soon even at a "success rate" of 1:100 or less. And if those hits are caused by bots, we won't get feedback at all and can safely conclude that the problem is bogus - we could delete the redirect without harming any humans. Also, by not cleaning out "junk" redirects, we are inconveniencing users who use reverse lookup through "what links here" as well as editors working in maintenance. A single such redirect certainly doesn't harm, but if our general attitude would be to not clean up "junk", Wikipedia would become unusable in a decade.

Temporarily creating a soft redirect is no effort and trying to work with a site owner to fix a problem probably won't cost more than a couple of hours - less time than what we (collectively) have spent in this discussion already. #-|

-( could be ruled out easily because there is no text following the opening parenthesis. There might be a few more exceptions more difficult to detect, but mind that a generic fix would be a reasonable solution only if the problem would turn out to be common. If cases like "Genie (feral child" are almost singular they can be dealt with at individual level.

My point is that we will never know unless we try. And since we have the opportunity to try and gain insight, and possibly solve the problem with little effort, I have difficulties trying to understand why we should not give it a try.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 22:54, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The page view statistics already filter out bots, so the figures quoted above are humans. Your assumption that no feedback = bots is completely flawed for exactly the reasons I gave in my previous comment - remember a 1% response rate is optimistic and even if we got that it would be unrepresentative of the majority of people using the link (and it's possible there is more than 1). And there are already many other redirects like this - 1656 titles in the database dump dated 3 September have an opening but no closing parenthesis, 379 have a closing but no opening parenthesis (I can't say how many are redirects, or how often these pages are visited without looking individually though). We must never fall make things easy for editors at the expense of readers - one or two fewer entries in a "what links here" is not a price worth paying for something that inconveniences readers. Junk is regularly cleared out, but even if it wasn't why do you think it would make Wikipedia unusable? Finally you talk about the effort - the only effort needed is for someone to see that this has been nominated previously, see that nothing has changed since then and move on - nothing more. Thryduulf (talk) 23:32, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, I even agree with your good motives, but I think you are seeing this a bit too dogmatic - a mild inconvenience for a limited time is acceptable if it helps to gain more insight and thereby improve Wikipedia in the end. In fact, we are already "inconveniencing" visitors by the RfD template - right now the redirect has been effectively degraded to a soft redirect and nobody is screaming...

Regarding bots, many bots intentionally do not identify themselves. Unless you can track them for some while across sites and conduct some AI-assisted behavioral analysis you will have a hard time trying to distinguish them from humans. Are our filters up to this?

However, assuming that some visitors are actual humans, it should still be possible to use the HTTP referer to identify the source of the request for this redirect. While it is trivial to fake this there should still be enough visistors providing proper info. Are our hit statistics not providing this data for privacy reasons?

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 00:48, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea how the page view statistics filter bots from humans, but in August the stats show that there were 476 hits from humans, 88 from spiders and 0 from other bots for this redirect. Compare that to a redirect that really is unused Health Forecasting (UCLA( - from 1 January to 16 September 2018: 6 users, 34 spiders, 0 other bots. So if there are any bots being misidentified as human it is significantly less than 1% of the views identified as humans. Data about user agent strings across the project is available as one of the reports, but not (publicly) at the level of an individual page - I don't know if this is for privacy or other reasons (only checkusers can see the user agent used by an individual editor). I don't think that http referrers are made public at all - whether that is for privacy, as an anti-spammer measure or some other reason I don't know. Thryduulf (talk) 10:33, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment In order to take advantage of the time this discussion lasts (I hope it will go another round given the unclear picture so far), I added a special comment at the start of the redirect page asking visitors to tell us where they found the link to this redirect. This won't inconvenience visitors in any way as the RfD template is changing the page into a soft redirect anyway. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 00:48, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Thryduulf. It's not really a great mystery why these titles get hits: some sites, most notably Reddit break links with trailing parentheses. I would also support creating Ivanvector's RCAT. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 16:58, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Can you provide an example of a link to a page with trailing parentheses where this actually happened?

I'm asking because so far I found about 10 links to our article at Reddit, but they all correctly pointed to "Genie (feral child)" directly, not to the redirect under discussion.

Further up, Arms & Hearts mentioned that the problem would only affect links in comments, not those in article titles. But it does not seem to affect links in comments either, see, for example, these two links here: https://www.reddit.com/r/teenagers/comments/7r3t1l/if_anyone_has_seen_this_documentary_on_netflix_or/

For as long as I don't see an actual example where this happens, I'm unconvinced that the problem is really down to Reddit. However, if there were actually such examples, the problem would probably also affect many other Wikipedia articles using a similar naming scheme - in this case we might even look into a more general solution to further improve the user experience.

Ivanvector's RCAT above is a good suggestion, I think it would be useful independent of the outcome of this discussion.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 19:22, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I can't provide an example directly, but I use Reddit more than I should, and have seen it happen multiple times. It's so common, that Reddit itself highlights this issue with Wikipedia links as a common formatting issue on the website. [2], and multiple posts and formatting guides on subreddits also mention this problem and how to circumvent it. [3][4][5] In short, because Wikipedia uses parenthetic disambiguation in titles, the parentheses show up in URLs and will occasionally break those links on certain websites. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 20:14, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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