The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

For a while now WP:RFD has been flooded with nominations for redirects that a missing a space between the term and the opening parenthesis of a disambiguator (e.g. Constantine(video game) and Scaramouche(1952 film)), see for example sections 17 to 35 at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 31, sections 17 to 57 at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 February 1, and similar in the days leading up to them. These discussions invariably end up being deleted uncontroversially, and the number of discussions is causing issues for RfD (see e.g. Wikipedia talk:Redirects for discussion#Can we reduce the number of RfDs transcluded on this page?). Accordingly I propose a new speedy deletion criterion R5:
Redirects with no space before a parenthetical term, e.g. "Foo(bar)", "Joe Smith(disambiguation)". This does not apply to terms that will correctly or plausibly be searched for without spaces, e.g. 501(c)(3)

• Before nominating a redirect under this criterion:
  • Create the correctly spaced version as a redirect to the same target if it would make a good redirect but does not exist
  • Adjust any incoming internal links to point to the correctly spaced version.
• This criterion does not apply if the redirect is the result of page move made less than 30 days ago, but criteria R3 and/or G6 may apply.

The rationale for the last bullet is to allow time for mirrors, etc. to catch up. If the page was moved and then immediately moved again, or created at this title then quickly moved then this title was obviously created in error and G6 applies. Thryduulf (talk) 13:34, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

• I'd support this. As you said, it's been an ongoing issue and the discussions end the same way every time. It's adding unnecessary bureaucracy when the outcome is clear from the beginning. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:39, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support – these are among the most straightforward closes I regularly encounter at RfD, and they aren't adequately covered by R3 and G6. ^Complex/_Rational 13:54, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support. I would also support coverage of other obvious typographical errors, such as disambiguators missing a closing paren. BD2412 T 15:26, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  The most recent large discussion I found about missing closing parentheses was very controversial as they were working around an external link problem. I can't remember what the outcome was in the end but it was relisted a couple of times, so not at all suitable for speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 15:30, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  I've started trying to track past nominations such as these and I have 3 bulk nomination links saved in my notes for these types of redirects. They're for February, 2019, April, 2019, and October, 2022, the most recent of which was contentious. I'm sure you already know Thryduulf, but I thought I'd share the links for reference. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:28, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:11, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support but I would title it "Redirects with no space before a parenthetical disambiguator" to define the scope. If not then things like 501(c)(3) absolutely will be carelessly tagged and deleted. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:36, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  Good suggestion. I think that's a good differentiation to make. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:32, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

• Why aren't these R3's? Is it just that we're only now working through a backlog of very old ones that nobody noticed before? What happens when those are gone? And would a database report to detect new ones help? —Cryptic 17:07, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  Some of the ones that have been nominated recently have been around for over a decade. I guess a database report wouldn't harm. Thryduulf (talk) 17:10, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  Very preliminary version at quarry:query/80153. Very many false positives still, chemical names in particular, and it's not immediately obvious how to filter them out without introducing false negatives. I'd hope that most wouldn't be interpreted as a disambiguator, but I'm sure someone would eventually carelessly speedy ones like Chromium(III), and I wouldn't be entirely surprised to find ones of the much-more-common sort like Dysprosium(III) nitride tagged db-r5 either.

  What I'm not seeing are recently-created ones. The current most recent is Deportivo Toluca F.C.(women) from January 13, and the next most recent is Fletcher Ladd(justice) from December 14. Unless RFD has been very diligent about deleting recently-created ones in particular recently - has it? - this suggests to me a backlog we can hope to eventually clear rather than an ongoing and permanent problem. —Cryptic 17:55, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  I tweaked your query to just filter out the articles, which got the total down to 12.2k. If it helps, Dcirovic seems to have created 900+ of the redirects that appear in the query. I expect that they're legit ones which could be removed. I also noticed that your list is including redirects that contain "-(", which could be something to look at to trim it a bit. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:22, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  Filtering out non-redirects is good if you're looking for more to bring to RFD, or potentially speedy. It's not so good in the context of this discussion (since it also filters out redirects currently at RFD, since they're not technically redirects while tagged) or in an ongoing database report (we'd want to see pages created at or moved to titles like these as soon as they happen, not just after someone else happens to notice them, moves them back, and doesn't deal with the redirect).

  You can reasonably go further than just eliminating -( by looking specifically for a letter- or digit-like character before the paren, as in quarry:query/80157. Again, if I were watching a date-ordered report, I'd rather see them show up than risk missing a false negative - it misses Deportivo Toluca F.C.(women) from above, for example. —Cryptic 20:59, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  Even just removing '-(' is going to filter out redirects we should deal with, like Hurdling-(horse race). —Cryptic 21:28, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  I don't know the flavor of SQL being used here and I don't have Quarry access but could it stand to have something along the lines of AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT 'X' FROM page otherpage WHERE otherpage.page_title = REPLACE(page.page_title, '(', ' (')? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Largoplazo (talk • contribs) 20:56, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

  WMF-run wikis are backed by MariaDB, a MySQL fork. You (and anyone else with a registered account) do have Quarry access, if you care; click "Login" from the upper right and it'll bounce you through meta. And, again, that sort of refinement is going to result in many false negatives - this time, it'll find pages that haven't been partially dealt with (by someone creating the properly-disambiguated title), but miss cases where someone saw a page at Acme(widget manufacturer) and moved it to Acme (widget manufacturer) without dealing with the leftover redirect. —Cryptic 20:38, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  That right there is one of the largest groups of false positives I've found: Valid chemistry-related titles with parentheses without spacing before/after parentheses. Thus .. my reservations about making this a CSD. Steel1943 (talk) 19:59, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  (For what it's worth, here's the regex query I've developed over time that reduces the amount of chemistry-related false positives: [^ 0-9:\-\)]\([^0-9\-\)][^\)]. (Search using this regex [takes a bit to load]) However, it also doesn't allow any numbers directly after a "(" which will make "bad" disambiguators that start with years not appear in the list either.) Steel1943 (talk) 20:09, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  (Well, I just tried my own regex a few times, and even that list on 20 titles has like 2–3 false positives. Over the years, trying to write the perfect regex to reduce false positives has been rather difficult.) Steel1943 (talk) 20:15, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  @Steel1943 What we could do is tag chemistry redirects with a proper redirect category and then exclude the redirect template or category from the query. This way future editors will also know that these aren't fit for speedy deletions. Gonnym (talk) 20:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support it seems to pass most of the NEWCSD requirements, objective, as noted all discussions seem to today result in deletion with most people agreeing, uncontestable, there is a clear consensus today to delete these, frequent, although it may become less frequent if newer ones are caught and deleted under R3 other namespaces and if future ones get missed (and some in other namespaces not yet checked as all from what I can remember have been namespace redirects but there will probably be such redirects in other namespaces) will be needed, nonredundant, as noted while many newer ones can be deleted under R3 older ones can't and although it could already be argued these can be deleted under G6 it would probably be more sensible for the same reason G14 was split to have a separate criteria. In terms of consensus etc in previous years such redirects were kept often per WP:CHEAP, see Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2013 December 26#Burn (Scotland but in more recent years such as Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 October 27#Redirects with disambiguators missing ")" the consensus has changed namely that such redirects are WP:COSTLY. I would put one condition here, that the redirect doesn't have any article content history currently at the title (as opposed to from a move) Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 30#Montblanc(ffta) for example was an article so as a sub topic the history should probably be moved to Montblanc (ffta) (and the resulting redirect could then be deleted under R5) and Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 29#Musa(name) which has significant history. When it comes to such redirects they should in some cases be moved to the correct title, in some cases should be restored and sent to AFD and in some cases are simply duplicates which means that if they only contain nonsense etc or don't contain any significant content not in the target they don't need to be kept and could have been deleted as A10 if they hadn't been redirected.
• I also think we should cover "(Disambiguation)" redirects like London (Disambiguation) per Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 August 24#"Title (Disambiguation)" redirects to disambiguation pages. I would also support incorrectly capitalized qualifiers like Morbius (Film), see Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 13#Morbius (Film) but the consensus seems to be weaker. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:17, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  Excluding redirects that have history as an article would seem best as there aren't so many of them that RfD would be overwhelmed and the best course of action is not always the same. As for "improperly" capitalised disambiguators, the consensus that these are bad is weak and (from my biased perspective) getting weaker so they definitely shouldn't be speedily deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 22:25, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  I'm surprised those capitalizations were deleted. I don't personally support that as alternative capitalizations are typically valid redirects. Hey man im josh (talk) 22:33, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  I don't think capitalization redirects with incorrect qualifiers are useful as users are very unlikely to use incorrect Wikipedia qualifiers, see WP:UNNATURAL and for internal searchers they would get to the correct place anyway. These redirects do inconvenience editors though.

  @Thryduulf: Would something like This criteria does not apply to any redirect that has non-redirect content (such as being a separate article or template etc) at the current title's history unless the page would qualify for speedy deletion (such as A10 or G1) if restored. If the page was redirected more than a month ago then the page can be moved to the correct title without redirect or the resulting redirect deleted immediately under this criteria. This would clarify that redirects like Montblanc(ffta) could not be deleted by this criteria but because it was redirected ages ago it could be moved to Montblanc (ffta) without redirect or the redirect speedily deleted. While I don't really agree with you that article content can't be deleted at RFD I don't think article content should be speedily deleted under R5. And cases like say Musa(name) that have history that can't easily be moved would still go to RFD but as you say there aren't many of these case so shouldn't be a problem. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:06, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

  I think I agree with the concept in your second paragraph, but the wording isn't the clearest (I had to read it multiple times to be clear about what you mean). I've not got time right now to improve it though. Your first paragraph is almost completely backwards - they do help and don't hinder - (UNNATURAL is a mix of correct, debatable and incorrect) but as this is something good faith editors disagree about it fails the uncontroversial requirement for speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 22:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

• I am wondering if this would make more sense as X3. Recently created redirects which match the description of the proposed R5 fall under R3; once the "backlog" has been cleared this would seem redundant (NEWCSD#4). I think RfD can handle the occasional term(dab) that makes it past NPR without getting nominated for R3. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 08:14, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

  I strongly support X3 and oppose weakly support R5. Once the backlog is cleared, it will be redundant (i.e. fail WP:NEWCSD4) to R3; RfD will be able to handle the occasional redirect that makes it through the R3 window. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 03:03, 23 February 2024 (UTC) EDITED 00:20, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support per my previous discussion with Thryduulf. As I noted there, RfD has continued to be inundated with RDAB redirects, so I do think a CSD criterion is warranted. I would also support expanding the scope to cover the other types of errors mentioned at RDAB (I can live with capitalization differences being exempted, if others agree with Thryduulf that they are not uncontroversial), including (disambiguation, ((disambiguation), (disambiguation) (disambiguation), etc. InfiniteNexus (talk) 18:17, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

  Missing closing parentheses were controversial last time they were discussed en mass so are not suitable for speedy deletion. I don't recall seeing any of the others at RfD recently. Ø (Disambiguation) (disambiguation) is the only page I can find "(disambiguation) (disambiguation)", and that's a ((R from merge)) so likely needs to be kept. As of the 21 November dump of page titles (the most recent I have downloaded) there were no instances of "((disambiguation" or "disambiguation))". Thryduulf (talk) 10:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 20#Andrew Sinclair (privy councellor and etc., Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 20#Bonaparte's Retreat (Disambiguation), Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 20#Islamic Resistance in Iraq (Disambiguation ), Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 21#Terminal value (philosophy/, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 21#Chen Mingyi (Taiwan）, etc. You can easily find more cases of RDAB via regex search, e.g. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:53, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose while I like the idea; I don't think this will reduce the load on RfD. Maybe what is needed is a proposed deletion process. I think we can expand WP:PROD to include redirects. Awesome Aasim 19:07, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

  Please also see User_talk:176.33.241.125#Can you group all your misspaced parentheses RfDs into one nomination? where I give a kind request for all the similar redirects to be in one nomination to make discussion easier to follow. Awesome Aasim 19:08, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

  From memory, a PROD for redirects has been rejected previously and I oppose it now. PROD only works for pages that are reasonably well watched, but very few redirects are watched other than by their creators (and not even always then) so PRODed redirects are unlikely to be seen. Thryduulf (talk) 10:38, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  Do you think extending the PROD duration and maybe having a bot update the list of PRODded redirects periodically would solve this problem? Awesome Aasim 17:53, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  Also I disagree that PROD won't work for pages not well watched; we have maintenance categories where people can review PRODs and reject them if they disagree. Awesome Aasim 18:00, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  PROD only works for pages that are reasonably well watched: it was my impression that PROD is used largely by new page patrol, so that wouldn't be the case. No? Largoplazo (talk) 20:45, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  I personally think PROD should be available to all types of pages but that's a different discussion. In any case these redirects shouldn't be left to clutter the search etc for 7 days. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:06, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support. These RfD end the same and are basically just a waste of editorial time and take time away from the other nominations. Gonnym (talk) 13:21, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
• @Utopes just sent another batch of redirects to RfD today, so pinging them here. Also pinging @Steel1943, who previously nominated several RDAB redirects, and notifying 176.33.241.125 on their talk page. InfiniteNexus (talk) 18:10, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for the tip! I didn't even realize this was a discussion taking place when I sent those, will leave a comment now. 👍 Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 20:31, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

• Neutral. I'm concerned drive-by admins will delete redirects that look like disambiguation issues when the title is actually valid (false positives). Examples: BSc(Hons) (currently nominated at RFD) and JANET(UK) (apparently, a valid alternative/former name for its target [see its edit history for my back-and-forth edits on this].) Yeah, given my level of participation in these redirects, one would think I would be supporting this ... but not so much since I'm concerned administrators may not get it right the first time when enforcing such a speedy deletion criterion, which has a potential to cause harm to the encyclopedia. Steel1943 (talk) 19:47, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  Create a temporary criterion "X3" until the numbers get low enough to where it can be reasonably appealed. Thinking about this, turns out I'm okay if this is the chosen path, given that I think "X" criteria tend to make admins do a double take and research the redirect's history prior to deleting the redirect. Seems like such a situation could appease all parties. Steel1943 (talk) 23:28, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

• I've stuffed the (full, unfiltered) results into subpages of User:Cryptic/Improper disambiguation redirects, and am going to spend a few hours classifying them - maybe all of them, but at least the first subpage which has the thousand most recent. Yes, even the relatively-easy-to-detect chemical ones. A problematic case with two examples has already jumped out at me (maybe the same sort as Steel1943's above, I haven't looked at them) - CPUSA(PW)/CPUSA(P) and PCd'I(ml). Would the advocates of this criterion speedy those? And if not, how are they excluded by this wording? —Cryptic 20:42, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  The first two should be excluded as they "will [be] correctly or plausibly be searched for without spaces" - determined by them being listed in bold in the target article without spaces. PCd'I(ml) does not appear to be correct - the article uses the acronym spaced and every unspaced google hit seems to relate to this redirect, so would be correctly speedily deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 22:08, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

• No confidence that some heathen who thinks there should be a space before the param list of function prototypes won't use this as an excuse to speedy int main(void). —Cryptic 21:38, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support if I create the list, and improper disambiguation does not affect some titles like 501(c)(3) and chemical names like Cadmium(I). 176.33.241.125 (talk) 01:54, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support: Such redirects are almost invariably getting deleted at RfD – I haven't found a single nomination in the last 30 days that closed as anything other than "delete", though BSc(Hons) seems headed to "keep". – This proposal will probably reduce the backlog and editor workload considerably. My only issues are the potential misuse/careless use of the criterion, hence why I would additionally support a listing of major exceptions (chemical names come to my mind but there are others). Dsuke1998AEOS (talk) 02:49, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
• Neutral, but would love to support a criteria that can be used to clean these. From what I've seen, while these titles might look the same, the backgrounds for all can be vastly different. As an example based on my personal experiences, I set out to find the total number of film redirects that were exactly: Foo(film). There were 172 of these, yet their histories were always varied. (I found it useful to display these titles in a Massviews chart). There are some pages that were recently created, and could qualify for R3 (although not usually). Sometimes, these were intentionally created with the lack-of-space, but most of the time these titles came about as left-behind from moves. Sometimes these were created at a bad title with extensive histories before being BLAR'd into the version that already exists, or may contain convoluted reversions between two titles that only differ in their spacing. In some of these cases though, G6 is likely to apply under the stipulation that they're "redirect(s) left over from moving a page that was obviously created at the wrong title." (which directly comes from Template:Db-error). The reason I'm neutral is because while I agree that these titles should be ridden of, I don't know if there is a clear-cut description would lead to deletion at this stage, more than what we already have described in G6 and R3. I agree something needs to be done, but investigating the histories seems to be an absolute requirement here, which cancels out a lot of these situations I'd think. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 20:47, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

  As a question to this, would Shock(film) be eligible for CSD under this criteria, with its history? What about Rockers(film), which survived RfD? Brij Bhoomi(film) has 173 pageviews this month (due to its multiple incoming links), but would it also be CSD-able under this criteria despite it getting 17 views a day? At RfD I'd !vote to delete all of these for sure, but what I don't know is whether CSD makes the deletions too hasty, and whether there is value in investigating their histories and circumstances for existence. These are just the (film) redirects, and I don't know how complicated the other titles could be. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 20:56, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

  @Utopes: "...there is value in investigating [the redirects'] histories and circumstances for existence..." There always is, which is one of the reasons I cannot sway my opinion one way or another to codify these redirects as eligible for CSD. Steel1943 (talk) 22:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

  As more and more examples get brought up, I'm becoming less and less certain that speedy deletion beyond R3 and G6 is possible in a way that is not too narrow to be useful and not too broad so as to catch things that shouldn't be deleted. I need to think more. Thryduulf (talk) 22:25, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

  (edit conflict)I agree with that, yes. This is my concern as well. When looking through these titles, the backgrounds can be vastly different. When putting the Foo(film) RfD together, I was skipping over pages in history, because those would need to be checked on a case-by-case basis, presumably. It was unclear to me whether this new CSD criteria puts weight into histories, and if so, by how much? If we take away the pages with history, we're left with a decently smaller number of applicable pages, and the question becomes whether a whole criterion is necessary for the [X] number of cases that are safe to outright delete. I don't know how much that number is. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 22:32, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

  I guess my follow-up would be to find a comparison. How are histories dealt with other R CSD criteria? I feel like I've seen situations where a page (and its history) are replaced with a redirect (I think it was to Draftspace, but I can't recall), which was then tagged as R2'd by someone who followed up with the page. How "valuable" is the page history there? I'd presume it's checked every time, so doing it here might not be that unconventional. The question becomes what constitutes a "valuable history" that makes CSD a safe action for redirects that meet R5. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 22:44, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

  It should be checked every time, as with all other speedy criteria. I have no confidence that it is. —Cryptic 02:59, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

• So, I've finished sorting the most recent 2000 and least-recent 1100ish page titles containing an open-paren not preceded by a space at User:Cryptic/Improper disambiguation redirects (I was never going to get through all of them, and had only been fooled into thinking I could because SDZeroBot initially only gave me about a third of the results). The conclusions I'm drawing from that are:
  • We should make it explicit that this only applies to disambiguators per se, not parenthesized text that's part of the redirect subject's proper name, even if it's misspaced or misspelled. (This sounds obvious to me when it's put like that, but nobody's brought it up as the general case, even though more specific subcases like chemicals and section names have been.) So It's On(Dr.Dre)187um Killa and INS Talwar(F40) and Cheeses...(of Nazereth) wouldn't be speedyable, but restatements of the proper name or redundant parenthesized names like in King Edward Medical university(KEMU) and SsangYong Rodius(Stavic) could be. "Plausibly be searched for without spaces" is too vague, fails NEWCSD#1, and will be abused.
  • Section names like 501(c)(3) aren't common. Chemical names and processes are very, very common, and I didn't notice any incorrectly-formed disambiguators in chemistry-related redirects. If we're mentioning broad classes of counterexamples, that should be the first. I further think we should specifically exclude the entire subject area even if the disambiguator of a chemistry-related redirect is ill-formed and it would otherwise qualify.
  • These aren't frequent. There are a lot of extant cases, but we only see a handful of new ones a month. This seems to be a recurring theme at RFD - someone finds some broad new class of malformed redirects that have been accumulating since 2001, starts nominating them at RFD - sometimes properly in batches, sometimes individually! - and then it finds its way here, even though new ones aren't being rapidly created, and those that are fall under existing criteria.
  I've commented multiple times above, so I'll bold a position here: I oppose this as a permanent criterion, for being infrequent, redundant to R3, and error-prone; I'm neutral on a temporary X- series criterion until the old ones are dealt with. —Cryptic 03:26, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

  We can't delete anything under R3 unless it was created recently. It would make more sense to expand the scope of WP:G14, which already includes (disambiguation) redirects. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:41, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

  Well, yes, R3 is recent only. Quite obviously. As I mentioned above. But there's a finite, relatively small, number of non-recent ones: roughly 5000, based on the sample I analyzed, and that's assuming a vanishingly-small number of redirects with non-redirect history (which I didn't check for). As soon as they're gone - and that'll happen quickly, the admins vying for topspot at the awful WP:ADMINSTATS scoreboard query for speedy candidates like these and feed them into Twinkle - it'll be entirely redundant. —Cryptic 03:02, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

  admins vying for topspot at the awful WP:ADMINSTATS scoreboard - surely not: the top admin there is behind the second-top admin by 400,000 deletions and so 5000 entries would be trivial. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:09, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

  I hadn't realized about these all time lists. It's just as I've always suspected, there's just no keeping up with Explicit. Hey man im josh (talk) 04:05, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support as a useful tool. Even if the current situation looks temporary, forcing repeated discussions isn't a good use of anyone's time. Also, there's no way of knowing it won't flare up again at some point, since redirects aren't necessarily closely watched and these sorts of mistakes can steadily build up unnoticed; hell, this discussion is going on now because it already happened once. I don't buy the arguments that admins should be assumed to be total rubes, it doesn't actually take a PhD to recognize scientific nomenclatures and other idiosyncratic spellings aren't the same as Wikipedia disambiguators. If there's that much concern, just create a Category:Redirects with unspaced parentheticals or something similar; don't force people to murder untold numbers of characters and minutes of their lives they're not getting back. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:23, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
• @Thryduulf:, what I think could be helpful would be if we can identify which / how many of these qualify for G6 or R3 already, and use those existing criteria where appropriate. Once all of the G6/R3 candidates are addressed, maybe we can take a look at what remains, and the commonalities between them? If I had to guess, maybe 50% of these were unambiguously created in error and currently actionable?((cn)) which might allow us to compartmentalize this block bit by bit. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 20:27, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose these redirects are entirely harmless. We may as well have them since they likely bring a small net benefit to the encyclopedia. The do no damage. Readers don't know our guidelines on how to format the disambiguator, and readers are our priority, not top-down decisions based on overly-finicky guidelines.🌺 Cremastra (talk) 13:22, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
• Would they qualify under WP:G6? — Qwerfjkltalk 21:17, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  The very fact that this is controversial indicates it isn't a G6. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:25, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  The ones that were very obviously created by or when fixing a mistake (most commonly this is evidenced by being moved to and from this title by the same person in quick succession) do qualify as G6, but this only applies to some of the redirects that would fall under this criterion (either because they were created deliberately or because it isn't obvious whether creation was intentional or not). Thryduulf (talk) 21:55, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support. Agree with editor Cremastra that these are harmless and possibly a bit helpful as ((R from typo))s; however, the issue is that they are being deleted anyway and clogging RfD, which begs for a solution. And this solution does the trick as long as care is taken not to delete needed redirects that just look like the bad guys. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 22:43, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
• Comment: I'm worried that, as worded, the proposed criterion doesn't take into account page history that (a) may be required to be kept for attribution in the case of redirects from merges (which might lead to accidental breaches of licensing requirements), or (b) is otherwise useful; both of which are listed in the redirect guideline's reasons for keeping redirects. I'm also worried that it doesn't take into account the age of these redirects - some may have existed for a significant length of time and/or may be redirects with old history, which are listed in the guideline as redirects that should not normally be deleted without good reason & that should be left alone. I also share Cremastra's view about these redirects being harmless - in RfD discussions I've seen where such redirects have been nominated, I sometimes see WP:RDAB being cited; however, that shortcut links to an essay that doesn't explain why such redirects are costly enough as to warrant deletion (as opposed to being cheap). With the greatest respect to Paine Ellsworth,^/gen I'm very hesitant to think we should be creating a new CSD criterion for redirects that may be being deleted at RfD when (arguably) they should be being kept, especially when they are possibly...helpful (which is another reason in the guideline for keeping them). Only a comment for now while things are still mulling around in my head, but I think I'll add a bolded !vote at some point relatively soon. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 01:59, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

  Strong oppose per my comments above. I am heavily unconvinced that these redirects are costly enough to warrant deletion in the first place. To take a few recent RfD examples ([6] [7], [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]), often in such discussions the only reason given for deleting them is per WP:RDAB - but, as I mentioned above, that essay section doesn't explain why these redirects are at all costly and/or problematic (and so, arguably, isn't a valid rationale for deletion - especially when considering that redirects are cheap is one of the guiding principles of RfD). I'm concerned that a local consensus may have formed at RfD to delete these redirects, and I wouldn't want to create a speedy deletion criterion that further embeds this. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 18:09, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

• Comment Considering many RfD participants don't watch this page or subscribe to FRS, is it reasonable to advertise this RfC via an editnotice at RfD? InfiniteNexus (talk) 16:07, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
• Create a temporary criterion per Steel and Cryptic. These redirects are a countable list and will go away in some time. Hence I would not prefer a "R5" as this becomes redundant once the backlog is gone. Also, we need the updated wordings incorporating Crouch Swale's suggestions about page history, which was also A Smart Kitten's concern. Jay 💬 06:32, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

  The problem with making it temporary is that this backlog already built up once, so removing it once this current issue is resolved allows it to build up again. The other two temporary criteria were to deal with issues that definitively weren't going to recur, which is not the case with this; people will still inevitably create these bad redirects. Why take away a useful tool? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:47, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  My understanding behind the suggestions for a temporary criterion is that once the backlog is cleared, the combination of a report, R3 and G6 would mean there aren't enough redirects to meet NEWCSD criterion 3 (frequent). Of course there is nothing stopping us enacting a temporary criterion and then making it permanent later if the issue remains ongoing. Thryduulf (talk) 20:04, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  If there's a choice, I'd definitely take a temporary criterion over nothing at all. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:48, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support with caveat that it excludes redirects with a substantial non-redirect history. That situation is rare enough to be worth discussing; and there could easily be situations where eg. an article was turned into a redirect that fits this description, which nobody noticed, and is then listed under this CSD - it wouldn't even have to have been done maliciously (although ofc it could be.) And if there is a history, whether due to a merge or whatever, this CSD would usually be the wrong approach anyway - in that case you'd want to move the redirect to preserve history and attribution, rather than create a new one that lacks them. --Aquillion (talk) 19:16, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:CHEAP. -- Tavix ^(talk) 03:06, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Should X3 (redirects with no space before a parenthetical disambiguation) be enacted as a temporary CSD? 17:34, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposed text:

• Support as proposer. These are all redirects which are errors in the act of disambiguation, and thus has no natural affinity with the article in question. I will also add that in the above discussion people have explained why this is A Good Thing; I will let them explain their own reasoning rather than attempt to filter it through my voice. I will note that this is supposed to be a temporary criterion per WP:NEWCSD criterion 4, as once the "backlog" has been cleared it will be redundant to WP:R3. (For transparency, this comment includes a hidden ping to everyone who commented above. I have opted for a hidden ping to avoid the distraction of a bunch of usernames.) ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 17:34, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support per HouseBlaster and my comments in the preceding section (tldr; when nominated at RfD these redirects are inevitably deleted). Although it is very likely that once the backlog is cleared the combination of R3 and G6 will make the need for this redundant we can discuss making it permanent if that turns out not to be the case. Thryduulf (talk) 17:57, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support it may be better to make it permanent because some redirects will likely later get missed and then becoming too old for R3 but its better than nothing. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:16, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
• Strong oppose, per my comments in the previous RfC. Although this proposed criterion takes into account page history, it doesn't factor in redirects' ages - which may lead to redirects that have existed for some time (including potentially redirects with old history) being deleted; despite the Redirect guideline stating that these should be left alone. Furthermore, and most importantly, the essay cited as the deletion rationale (WP:RDAB, part of WP:COSTLY) doesn't explain why these redirects are harmful enough to warrant deletion at all - simply stating that, in the opinion of the essayist, there is no need to redirect from them. As far as I can see, these redirects are entirely harmless. As I said in the previous discussion:

  I am heavily unconvinced that these redirects are costly enough to warrant deletion in the first place. To take a few recent RfD examples ([14] [15], [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21]), often in such discussions the only reason given for deleting them is per WP:RDAB - but, as I mentioned above, that essay section doesn't explain why these redirects are at all costly and/or problematic (and so, arguably, isn't a valid rationale for deletion - especially when considering that redirects are cheap is one of the guiding principles of RfD). I'm concerned that a local consensus may have formed at RfD to delete these redirects, and I wouldn't want to create a speedy deletion criterion that further embeds this.

  All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 18:18, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

  Redirects with significant history, including old history, are excluded from this criterion. That doesn't invalidate the rest of your comment though. Thryduulf (talk) 18:36, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

  For clarity, when I used the phrase redirects with old history, I was referring to redirects with entries in the page history from previous versions of Wikipedia - i.e., those that ((R with old history)) would be applied to. I read the phrase substantive page history in the proposed criterion as referring to an article (instead of just a redirect) being present in the history - therefore, my understanding was that redirects with old history are not necessarily excluded from this criterion. All the best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 18:50, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

  I meant substantive page history to mean something like page history with something more than adding/removing rcats/fixing double redirects/etc. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 19:25, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

  Why not just add this to the "e.g." parenthetical above? I think that would avoid further confusion. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:36, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• Notified Wikipedia talk:Redirect & Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect of this discussion. ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 18:18, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
• Neutral If there seriously is a problem with these kinds of redirects then sure, go ahead. But I am failing to see how these can just all be nominated in one big RfD with consensus to delete. Are there too many of them? I know the IP that was doing the nomination of them failed to group the redirects appropriately together in a single nomination. Awesome Aasim 18:20, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

  Grouping up nominations more often then not leads to a failed nomination as editors just can't handle a large amount. Gonnym (talk) 16:15, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:CHEAP. I fail to see what harm these redirects are causing and would recommend instead to just leave them alone. -- Tavix ^(talk) 18:28, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
• Neutral What is the problem that needs to be solved? The Banner talk 18:35, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support, this is a convention that affects a quite-literally-"random" selection of pages that happened to have issues. While it is good to create redirects for reasonable typos based on different way that search terms can be spelled, errors in the act of disambiguation are not useful or plausible typos to keep. Out of the millions of pages that have parenthesis in their titles, there is not a single time when I, nor you, nor anyone would expect that the Foo(bar) version exists for the same title. Basically, if you were to purposely leave off this space when searching for a title, there is a 0.1% chance that the redirect would exist (as it's a group of thousands among a pool of millions). It's totally unreliable, will never be intentionally typed, and all-in-all exist as clutter among incoming links with the potential to drown out and dilute the actually likely typos. To quote WP:COSTLY, redirects also need looking after. While they may not take up a lot of bandwidth on their own, these faulty titles have been a WP:PANDORA's box cracked wide open, which has led to a surplus of unexpected corners where edits can go undetected. Out of the thousands of affected redirects, I'll estimate that 10%(?) have substantial history, as duplicate pages left unincorporated for anywhere up to a decade and beyond in some cases. That's still hundreds of titles with histories! Of course these such cases wouldn't apply under this new CSD criterion, but by removing the titles that have no reason to exist, a higher focus can be placed on the titles that ARE distinguished by their complicated histories, most of which haven't seen the light of day from their peculiar, isolated locations.

All in all, an uncontrolled surplus of these titles makes it difficult to monitor new content, harder for editors to track changes and split histories, adds unnecessary and unlikely filler to redirect lists, maintains a faulty narrative that it's okay to move a title to "Foo(bar)" if "Foo (bar)" is salted for whatever reason, or that it's okay to have these unlikely parenthetical errors in titles (which always get ejected to new titles per the MOS anyway), and just all-in-all makes navigation less consistent to randomly account for an implausible typo redirect that exists 0.1% of the time. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 20:02, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Based on my comment below, I am moving to oppose the current version. I would hypothetically support a permanent R5 that does not include the bullet points, which puts the onus unnecessarily on new page patrollers to continuously be jumping through hoops to follow these. As it stands there is a very high reliance on the idea that "once these are deleted then we will start catching everything with R3/G6/RfD" which is exactly what is going on right now, with very little success. This is plucking the flower without detaching the root of the issue. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 02:40, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support since I suggested it above. Steel1943 (talk) 20:21, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

  Blarg, my own comment further down in the discussion concerns me. Steel1943 (talk) 22:45, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose per Tavix and my comments above. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:44, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support per Hey man im josh below. Preferably without the two bullet points, and preferably permanently. In regards to deleting the two bullet points, CSDs should be simple. We should not be putting the burden of checking other pages, editing other pages, etc in order to place a CSD on patrollers and administrators. I'd prefer to keep CSDs simple, without a bunch of little gotchas and caveats. The complexity of NPP workflows is a big problem, slowing down review times and leading to NPP burnout. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:46, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

  "...We should not be putting the burden of checking other pages, editing other pages, etc in order to place a CSD on patrollers and administrators." For what it's worth, such actions have to be taken in some cases, such as for WP:R4 and most of WP:G8, and for good reasons; thus, that quoted claim cannot be applied across the board. Steel1943 (talk) 22:17, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

  G14, A2 and A10 all require checking the existence and/or content of other pages too. G12 requires checking for external sources. Thryduulf (talk) 23:33, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

  It seems that this RFC's wording says that the CSD is temporary, but lists no expiration date. Is this really a temporary X criteria if this CSD has no expiration date? Perhaps it would make more sense to have this as a permanent R criteria, then use an RFC to repeal it later. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:12, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

  Changing to Oppose. This proposed criteria is too complicated because of the two bullets. I do not like the idea of a CSD where patrollers and admins are required to do a bunch of cleanup steps before placing or executing the CSD. The two bullet points put a lot of burden on the patroller and deleting admin. Are these bullets required when filing RFDs or closing RFDs? This is more cleanup burden than the status quo, if I'm understanding things correctly. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:17, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

  Replying to both your comments in order: neither X1 nor X2 had built-in expiration dates; they were just repealed when the cleanup was done. And this is complicated because it is temporary: there are people (e.g. me) who are volunteering to complete the steps required by the two bullet points to clean up the backlog of incorrectly spaced disambiguations. Put differently, this is not meant for e.g. NPPers (though they are welcome to use it), instead it is meant for people who volunteer to help with this backlog. If you (generic you) wish to use RFD, nobody will stop you; this is a shortcut for the people who feel like it is a shortcut. But a discussion takes volunteer time; I think it is easier to check Special:WhatLinksHere and potentially create a redirect (both of which could be linked from the CSD template for ease of use) than have a weeklong discussion. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 17:59, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

• Comment Support (summoned by bot). I’m supportive in principle, but the discussion above highlighted some instructive examples, such as the chemistry false positives, and the film examples where each case seemed to warrant individual investigation, so I’m a little hesitant on whether this change might reduce due diligence that would have caught false positives. Then again, if that happens, just recreate them? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 22:31, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

  The Chemistry examples would not be in scope because the text in the parentheses is not a disambiguator, similarly anything that is correctly rendered without a space cannot be deleted by this. The concern with the film redirects was almost entirely that some have substantial history, such redirects are explicitly excluded from this this criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 23:37, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

  Fair enough, I have upgraded my comment to a Support. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 20:04, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Comment/Question (probably primarily to those "support"-ing this proposal): Does anybody recall why the texts at WP:UNNATURAL and WP:RDAB were written? I've ... unfortunately slept since they were added to Wikipedia:Redirects are costly, and the comments above by The Banner and Barnards.tar.gz seem to validate that without quick-to-find context, this proposal may be a bit confusing to understand regarding what problem it is trying to solve, especially for those who do not visit WP:RFD regularly. If anyone recalls the reasons and/or precedents, it may need to be added to Wikipedia:Redirects are costly or even Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Common outcomes since I just realized that ... I don't see this as an example at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Common outcomes, and I would have expected to have found it there. Steel1943 (talk) 22:39, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support the exceptions have been well thought out, the risk of unintended consequences seems low. – Teratix ₵ 05:06, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support per Utopes. While these redirects are cheap, the effort wasted on individually judging their deletion is not. Without this proposal, it is apparent that editors unfamiliar with this discussion will continue to flood RfD with uncontroversial deletion requests. BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 05:22, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support per my comments in the previous discussion – individual nominations have invariably resulted in a clear consensus to delete. I trust that the reviewing admins would catch most false positives. Perhaps this could then be incorporated into R3 after the current round of cleanup is complete, if a standalone criterion would be redundant. ^Complex/_Rational 15:27, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  The only reason these aren't included in R3 at the moment is the recency requirement of that criterion (which is there for good reason). Thryduulf (talk) 15:39, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support: The outcome of these types of redirects being sent to RfD is extremely predictable and it would save everybody involved some time. Hey man im josh (talk) 15:42, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
• Weak support (Invited by the bot) "Weak" because I have less expertise on this than the other respondents above. Everything has a cost (including retained redirects) and IMO folks who calculate that based on what the hard drive cost are mistaken. Also, if these are already all getting uncontroversially deleted, then IMO that refutes the argument that some need to be kept. North8000 (talk) 19:17, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support. As in the above closed discussion, my support for this action is resumed. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 20:11, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support well thought-through proposal and supported by an apparent consensus across multiple RfDs on the topic. I don't see a large benefit to delaying the cleanup by requiring all of these go through RfD; if it's obvious just let sysops delete it and avoid the busywork and bureaucracy, that's the whole point of CSDs. — Wug·a·po·des 20:57, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support per my previous comment. My support is primarily because of the RfD nominations, which almost always result in deletion and are an unnecessary waste of time, but secondarily because of the unnatural aspect of the typos (as Utopes said above). Personally, I would be even more restrictive: for example, I'm never going to speedy a redirect that has had hundreds (or, heck, even just tens) of pageviews in the last month, but I understand that pageviews are rarely a consideration for redirects nominated at RfD, and this proposal is obviously better than nothing. Dsuke1998AEOS (talk) 02:41, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
• I'd really be happier if this spelled out "non-redirect history" rather than the vague "substantial". (The only other thing it could mean - pages tagged ((R with old history)) - isn't a concern; no page with a matching title is tagged with the template, and the oldest, Road Warriors (Atlantic League)(version 2), postdates modern MediaWiki and has an article in the history besides.) —Cryptic 03:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support from a maintenance perspective. Redirects need maintenance to ensure they're categorized appropriately, link to Wikidata items, etc. With the sheer amount of redirects on enwiki, it's not going to make a huge difference, but it's nice to do housekeeping. SWinxy (talk) 18:59, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support per my previous comments. RfD has been constantly overwhelmed in recent days. InfiniteNexus (talk)
• Support: uncontroversial maintenance work supported by previous consensus. — Bilorv (talk) 16:39, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
• Comment. Now that I've thought about what this would entail, I do want to add: while I support the addition of a CSD to cover these, there is nothing about the group of affected pages that signals it into the X category. Under the pretense that a CSD will be created for this, I oppose X3 and support R5. There are other supporters above who also prefer something permanent, which is my lean as well, and there has not been a spot to cover how this would be categorized. R5 was the original suggestion, but was changed to X3 by HouseBlaster when starting this RfC. As a refresher on the precedent for X criterion, which has only been enacted once ever (X1/X2 occurred simultaneously), both of these affected a limited number of titles which was impossible to grow in scope, due to the finite bounds, and will 100% never be a problem again when the target set of titles gets dealt with. This was due to the clearly defined and permanent bounds of the X1 and X2 sets.

X1 was created to deal with redirects meeting one criteria: "created by Neelix". After Neelix's ban, that group of 50,000 eventually would basically disappear, and cannot possibly grow in size due to the finite nature of a single banned user's page creations. X2 was a bit more nuanced, but was created to deal with faulty pages created by the content translator tool, specifically before the configuration error described at WP:CXT was fixed in 27 July 2016. This set too, would disappear in number, in part due to the full draftification of remaining pages.

The list of redirects applicable under X3: "Redirects with no space before a parenthetical disambiguation", is totally unlike X1 and X2, in the sense that Foo(bar) can be created by anyone, at any time, for all time. Based on the hundreds of recent RfDs, there is consensus that these titles can go. There's thousands of these pages at the moment, and this mistake was equally as common 12 years ago just as it was common 2 years ago. It's because of this that the temporary aspect I don't think holds up; there needs to be a long term solution that doesn't involve hawking NPP eternally for R3 candidates. In the opening, HouseBlaster states that: "this is supposed to be a temporary criterion per WP:NEWCSD criterion 4, as once the "backlog" has been cleared it will be redundant to WP:R3." This is only the case if every single Foo(bar) title is caught within a month of creation forever, i.e. within the window where R3 applies. While many of these titles are quite old, this quarry shows many (but not all) of the 100+ Foo(bar) redirects created within the last two years, the key takeaway being that "they exist" and haven't been RfD'd or R3'd yet. If we delete all the Foo(bar) titles and end up with another 100+ of these two years from now, now we're back where we started with the overflow. From my point of view, this should be a permanent CSD until the consensus is that this shouldn't be a permanent CSD any longer. These titles will always pop up and calling this X3 implies that there will never be a surplus of these ever again, which cannot be known. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 22:29, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

If these get created at such a rate that those which are not caught by the combination of R3 and G6 gets to a point that RfD gets overwhelmed again or it looks like it wouldn't if X3 didn't exist we can easily convert it to R5 at that time because we will have evidence that it is needed permanently. We don't have that evidence now. Although I suspect it wasn't your intent, the wording of your comment implies that the change from R5 to X3 was a unilateral decision by HouseBlaster, but it was a decision taken based on comments in the first discussion and discussion of the way forward following it. Thryduulf (talk) 00:42, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Apologies, it looks like I didn't see the other parts of the discussion where the temporary aspect was being talked about. HouseBlaster was the person saying X3 in the first RfC, whereas the other mentions were of whether or not to make a "temporary criteria" without necessarily saying "X3". It was then proposed as X3 a day before the new RfC began, with the sign-off being mainly for the proposed text and in my eyes wasn't necessarily about the X3 vs R5 decision.

Something that has been brought up previously is that this is redundant to R3 and G6, when this is not the case. (Side note: The last R3 deletion was 4 days ago, on Solar eclipse of 2024-04-28, not super important though, just a fun thing). R3 is its own entity entirely and is completely time-sensitive for recent redirect creations. This is impossible to be a failsafe alone. Redirects will be missed, or mistakenly patrolled, and based on the sheer number of recently-created Foo(bar) pages from the last year or so that still exist untouched, they definitely escape eyes. The criteria that has more pertinence is G6, which is reserved for errors, and most of these are errors! The (unanswered) question I asked in the first RfC was whether we should go through and delete the errors right now, and see how many intentional creations remain. Who knows! Maybe we won't need to make a temporary CSD in the first place if the CSD is just going to go away once we temporarily clear the backlog. Contrarily to what you say, this is fundamentally an ongoing issue if we have Burek(song), Poison ivy(plant), and KP Oli Cup(cricket) all created days ago in Feb/March 2024, and all marked as new-page-patrolled too, preventing anyone from possibly spotting these in time to R3. These aren't even necessarily G6-able either, and if we start picking up several a month to RfD (despite overwhelming consensus being to always delete regardless of time spent at title), this backlog will never be fully cleared. Because of the continuous nature that these redirects get created, this should be R5, in my eyes. There's no evidence to suggest this is temporary, as we have pages that meet this criteria from 2002 through 2024. Starting at X3 and moving to R5 is unprecedented to occupy a temporary X CSD first, and there is a need to get it right the first time to avoid occupying more CSD names than we have to. If there are titles here that are G6-able as unambiguous errors, I say let them be G6ed if they can. If it's a permanent thing, let it be permanent! I'm in support of the speedy deletion of all of these pages, but I think the idea that the Foo(bar) group is a temporary and countable problem is just not the case. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 02:20, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Everything is unprecedented until it's needed for the first time, that's not a reason to support or oppose anything. Everybody supporting a temporary criterion was supporting the creation of a criterion numbered X3 even if they didn't use that explicitly (temporary criteria are numbered in the X series, the next one available is 3) in the same way that everyone supporting a new permanent criterion for redirects only is supporting a criterion numbered R5 and everyone supporting a new permanent criterion for articles is supporting a criterion numbered A12, regardless of whether they use those names or not.

Some of the titles are G6-able, some aren't, but the point is that once the backlog has been cleared the combination of R3 and G6 means that the few not eligible under either criterion will not overload RfD to the point a new criterion is needed, as best we can predict based on the data we have now. If that changes then there is no harm at all (number exhaustion is not a thing) in changing X3 to R5. Thryduulf (talk) 16:47, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

That's a very useful query but let's not limit ourselves strictly to its output. Other redirects should also go, such as "Joe Smith(disambiguation)" mentioned in the proposal (excluded because of the space) and 10,000 Summers(No Devotion song), which also has a space in the qualifier. (The database Quarry uses represents spaces as underscores.) Certes (talk) 21:43, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose X3, although I could support a CSD for one-character typo disambiguation redirects. Temporary criteria are there to help fix issues created by specific users or specific software tools; this one has no business being temporary. —Kusma (talk) 07:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Kusma: The point is such typos are already covered by R3 if recently created. Once a cleanup is done under X3, the ability to speedily delete longstanding typo redirects is no longer needed. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:26, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

  Why would plausible typos like omission of a single space be covered by R3? These are being generated quite frequently, which shows they are not freak occurrences, but plausible typos. I can't see R3 being applicable. —Kusma (talk) 16:38, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

• R5 as first choice, X3 as second per my reasoning earlier in this discussion and Utopes above. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:42, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support X3 first choice, R5 second choice - This is most cleanly X3. However, we should dump the quarry query onto a page somewhere, and state that X3 applies only to these redirects. This is appropriate as X3 because the backlog is disproportionate to the creation rate. Tazerdadog (talk) 21:17, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support. These redirects are not useful, given that we have the correct versions, and simply clutter search results and the database. ((Database report)) is good at dumping quarry queries onto a page. Certes (talk) 21:07, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose as there are so many correct redirects without a space before (. It would lead to too many erroneous deletions. More care and consideration is required than a speedy delete. R3 can be used if creation is recent. Suppress redirect on move policy would also need to match. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:32, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

  Not specific to you, but I see a lot of discussions on this page (to borrow my earlier wording) act as if in this area admins are also total rubes. Admins are by definition experienced enough to distinguish obvious errors in Wikipedia disambiguators, even unfamiliar ones, from idiosyncratic spelling conventions such as chemical nomenclature or artwork titles. As an example, even someone unacquainted with chemistry can click the redirect Fe(III) oxide and, within two paragraphs, see ample evidence that it's part of a nomenclature. By contrast, if someone were to somehow create Isaac Brock(longevity claimant), no one experienced enough to be an admin would think that the disambiguator (longevity claimant) is unique among disambiguators in lacking spaces; even without its existence, if you get as far as typing in "Isaac Brock(" you'll see the result you're looking for in the dropdown search results. And on top of that, if there's a mistake it's also entirely reversible. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:02, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

  This is all well and good so long as the admin bothers to read the page title and comprehend what they are doing before pressing delete. Doesn't sound especially difficult of course, but CSD definitely attracts the type who are intent on speed over anything else. J947 ‡ ^edits 07:05, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

• R5 as first choice, X3 as second. There are ways to handle some of the false positives, including using ((R from chemical formula)) on chemistry redirects. The fact is that there are just a very large amount of these and this ongoing clean up has been going on for years. Even using twinkle to send to RfD is time consuming as some editors want these grouped up (which is understandable), but the template at RfD is expanded (for whatever reason) so it isn't a smooth and easy copy/paste. Then we also come into a problem of batch nominations where time and time again it has proven that editors just don't like these and these fail for no other reason other than that. So we end up with clean up editors needing to decide each time what amount is the correct amount to batch up... which is just a waste of time. To the above concern about admins not doing their job correctly. If the that happens, the problem isn't with this but with the admin themselves and the proper channels should handle that. --Gonnym (talk) 08:13, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
• Comment - I originated (and have expanded as necessary over time as more examples arise) the content contained at WP:RDAB. I did so because it is easier to reference the sentiment expressed there with a quick shortcut rather than repeating myself over and over again at redirects for discussion. However, on similar grounds, I oppose this as a temporary remedy because such redirect archetypes arise and populate the venue so often. I am also unsure if I would support such a criterion if it were proposed as permanent. I would have to put a lot more thought into the matter than I have at the moment. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 09:36, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Steel1943: A partial answer to your question posed much above (i.e "does anybody recall why the texts at WP:UNNATURAL and WP:RDAB were written?") is contained in my comment right above this. Let me know if elaborating further on any particular point would be of help. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 09:55, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support There seems to be agreement that these should be deleted at RfD, and that is what ultimately controls. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:14, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support per NOTBURO; this solely enforces a longstanding consensus, even if I disagree with the longstanding consensus. First hand experience, this is also putting a huge burden on RfD. Queen of Hearts ^she/_they^talk/_stalk 20:39, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support per WP:NOTBURO, I have no opinion on the underlying arguments, but if there is general consensus that a) these redirects are not needed and b) going through all of them at RfD manually will take a huge amount of time, there is no real reason to not do this. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:32, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support without bullet points -- this is a good proposed CSD, but needs to be made as simple as possible, and there should be no requirement for a CSD editor to subsequently go through and do additional cleanup of links, or create new pages. The whole point of CSDs are that they should be *speedy*. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 17:13, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support they always get deleted so let's speed it up. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:53, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support R5, weak support X3. Fine, let's just get this done. (I've already commented a few times in this discussion, so I've already elaborated my stance.) Steel1943 (talk) 14:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support R5 There is no reason for this rule to be temporary, although we do need manual check for false-positive matches such as Iron(II) → Ferrous. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 23:32, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
• Support don't care whether temp or perm. Yes, there could be false positives, but I assume editors are smart enough to make the right judgements. Toadspike (talk) 10:11, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
• Support as such redirects are often implausible and unlikely a search term. R5 would be suitabile for this; it is unlikely for people to type titles without space between the ambiguous term and the disambiguator. Toadette ^{(Let's talk together!)} 10:21, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
• Comment to prevent archiving before this is closed. It's been listed at WP:ANRFC since 30 March. Thryduulf (talk) 14:14, 25 April 2024 (UTC)