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Am I reading the guideline wrong? At the The Star Beast (Doctor Who), editors have been reverting my attempts to avoid the redirects in hatnotes, despite my insistence that this is the very first basic rule of hatnotes! Would appreciate any comments at Talk:The Star Beast (Doctor Who)#Hatnotes. --woodensuperman 11:39, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There can be exceptions: Linking to redirects is typically not preferred, although of course exceptions can occur. It's a matter or consensus if a given situation warrants an exception. This is basically WP:IAR codified for a specific case.—Bagumba (talk) 09:20, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The linked discussion needs more input to determine what the consensus is. Thryduulf (talk) 13:44, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

More aptly, I would say it's a reminder of WP:P&G: "Guidelines are sets of best practices supported by consensus. Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." It's not IAR if a rule isn't being ignored. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:17, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why we have this clause in this guideline, when it can be at odds with MOS:DABREDIR. --Joy (talk) 13:12, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed the only talk page discussion that seems to relate to this that I could find was Wikipedia talk:Hatnote/Archive 2#Redirected links in hatnotes from 14 years ago where people were actually saying we should follow the same guidelines about redirect linking as WP:D. We should replace this vague sentence with a reference to that. --Joy (talk) 13:17, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This text appears to have been added in this 2015 edit about "four basic rules", and there's no specific discussion about that. I actually found that someone else noticed this in 2016 in Wikipedia talk:Hatnote/Archive 6#Combining hatnotes onto a single line, and there was never an actual followup discussion on that. So, out it goes. --Joy (talk) 13:22, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of the newly-added link to Wikipedia:Disambiguation,[1] there seems to be more relevant guidance on redirects at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages § Where redirecting may be appropriate—Bagumba (talk) 07:44, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Bagumba I think pointing from one guideline to the other makes more sense than to try to short-circuit to the other guideline's manual of style. We generally want whoever is following these instructions to be aware of the entire context. --Joy (talk) 11:02, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There really isn't much relevant at Wikipedia:Disambiguation w.r.t. redirects and hatnotes. TLDR is the danger. The risk is readers not having the wherewithal to find their way over to the relevant MOS subsection. —Bagumba (talk) 11:14, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose that could be a risk, but there's a whole section named "Hatnotes", which explains the listed " (disambiguation)" topic and a lot of other stuff. Maybe the real question is why do we split this information in two separate guidelines and a section of the manual of style in the first place :) --Joy (talk) 16:00, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The previous discussion was automatically archived to Wikipedia talk:Hatnote/Archive 8#NAMB not being 'prescribed by the guideline', but we didn't conclude much other than we should probably discuss this further. One thing that I don't see any argument about is that the previous edits to the guideline about this were not actually proper, so I'm going to undo these now. --Joy (talk) 19:53, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Please note has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. PleaseStand (talk) 23:04, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]