Warhammer - The Old World - Lexicanum:Redirecting

A Redirect is a tool that when included on a wiki page automatically sends the reader to another page (or a section thereof). If you have been sent to another page via a Redirect this is displayed under the name of the page you were sent to.

Why use Redirects?

Redirects are useful when you have multiple names for the same article. This is especially obvious when the name has more than one word in it. The way in which the MediaWiki software works is that all variations in a name can lead to a new article. A number of examples follow:

• Dog, Dogs, DoGs, DOgs, DoGS etc.
• Cats and Dogs, Cats and dogs, Cats And Dogs, Cat and Dogs, Cats and Dog, Dogs and Cats etc.

As you can see plurality and capitalisation are the two most important things to think about in an article name and here redirects help.

The Lexicanum Search function cannot automatically correct the singular and plural of a search term, nor account for numerous possible spelling variations. If somebody were, for example, looking for information on the (made-up for demonstration purposes) 5th Magritta Lancers he might use a variety of search terms such as "5th Magritta", "Fifth Magrida", "5th Estalian Lancers" and a quite large number of other permutations. Another example would be problems with special characters, like the difference between “&” and “and”.

Since Games Workshop itself does not have stringent naming conventions and the Lexicanum names the corresponding pages exactly as they are written in the sources this often leads to somewhat messy situations. The situation gets even worse when the proofreaders at Games Workshop fail to spot spelling mistakes or because there was no standardization for specific names. Last but not least there are certain terms that many users will consistently (and persistently) misspell.

When to use Redirects

All these messy situations are resolved by using Redirects. When you encounter anything like a situation described above it’s good practice to create a Redirect or two. It takes only a small amount of effort to create them but can greatly lessen the frustration of users trying to find a page. And after all, you want other people to read what you’ve created!

A special case are automatically generated Redirects as a consequence of a page move. When a page is moved to a new name a Redirect is automatically put in place by the Mediawiki system. This can unfortunately sometimes have unintended consequences, for example Double Redirects (see below).

You can also categorize redirect pages in the usual way and they will appear in the category list, though a visitor won't know they are a redirect until they click on the link!

Policy

The policy of the Lexicanum is as follows:

• Articles should always try to be in the singular
• Articles should always have the correct capitalisation and follow the spellings as produced by Games Workshop

How to use Redirects

To include a Redirect on a page you have to include the code #redirect[[Target pagename]] on the chosen page.

For example:
If you want to redirect to the page entitled "5th Magritta Lancers":

Code:

#redirect[[5th Magritta Lancers]]

You can also redirect to a specific section of a page instead of to the page as such. For example if you want to redirect from a page to a section of another page (which must exist of course!) you have to include the code #redirect[[Target pagename#Section name]] on the chosen page.

For example:
If you want to redirect to the section entitled "Equipment" which is a section on the page "5th Magritta Lancers":

Code:

#redirect[[5th Magritta Lancers#Equipment]]

Double redirects

A Double redirect is a Redirect sending the reader to yet another Redirect. Such constructions should be avoided at all costs and replaced by "normal" Redirects that point directly to the intended target page. The reason for this is simple: the Mediawiki software used by the Lexicanum does not support this. In other words: It will not send you further than to the first target page (which only displays a redirect instruction.

In this imagined Double redirect example there is a Redirect from "Magritta Lancer" to "Magritta Lancers" that in turn redirects to "5th Magritta Lancers". A reader entering "Magritta Lancer" into the search box or clicking on the link "Magritta Lancer" gets stuck on the page "Magritta Lancers" instead of ending up on the page "5th Magritta Lancers" as intended. Therefore the Redirect on the page "Magritta Lancer" would have to be fixed to point directly to "5th Magritta Lancers" instead of to "Magritta Lancers" as in this example.

An automatically generated list of Double redirects that need fixing is available at Special:DoubleRedirects. The reasons for the existence of such Double redirects most often are unforeseen consequences of a page move.

See also

More on the Redirect Wikimedia tool can be found here.