Commons:Requests for comment/Hard category redirects REDIRECT

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Discussion closed by Zhuyifei1999 (2013-06-20). –Be..anyone (talk) 11:57, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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This discussion was started at Commons:Administrators' noticeboard and moved here.

See also: Bugzilla:5346 - "make category redirects appear as italics or different colored links."

See also: en:Wikipedia:Hard category redirects and en:Wikipedia talk:Hard category redirects.

Why aren't we using simple category redirects? #REDIRECT edit

Return to top. Why aren't we using simple category redirects? #REDIRECT

Commons:Rename a category says:
"Note that #REDIRECT [[:Category:new name]] should never be used for categories, because it does not work as expected (see bugzilla:3311)."

That bug does not stop us from using simple category redirects.

And we have Cat-a-lot (see Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot) for moving files to the new category.

Not using simple category redirects causes so many problems for the hundreds of Wikipedias in various languages. They have to manually change links to categories on the commons. For example; the many links via en:Template:Commons category (commonscat) on English Wikipedia. "This template is used on 290,000+ pages."

If we used simple category redirects (#REDIRECT) then no links would have to be changed on the hundreds of Wikipedias. See also: meta:Don't delete redirects. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:44, 26 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We use {{Category redirect}} here on Commons. Bots will handle any files which are placed in the redirected category on a regular basis. russavia (talk) 10:18, 26 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but it is a bad idea. Because people are actively discouraged from using {{Category redirect}}. See this non-guideline: Commons:Only use category redirects where necessary. So many interwiki links to categories on the Commons are broken on many wikipedias. Links from outside Wikimedia are broken too. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:14, 26 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As you state, that is only a proposed guideline. IMO, category redirects are cheap. We have them available for a reason so we should be utilising them. And yes, I know many commonscat links from other projects are broken and this can be put down some of the time to us not using common sense when renaming categories, etc. russavia (talk) 16:38, 26 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Then we need to encourage, not discourage, simple category redirects (hard redirects via #REDIRECT). See also:

User talk:RussBot#Hard redirects of category names

R'n'B writes: "If there were a consensus to use hard redirects, the bot could handle that (with some work to adapt it)." R'n'B is talking about RussBot. That page says "This bot will periodically clean out Category:Non-empty category redirects by moving the contents of redirected categories into their corresponding new categories." --Timeshifter (talk) 17:01, 26 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(unindent). See also Bugzilla:5346 and the talk section below: #Category redirect links will be in italics. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:05, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear, it is correct as stated above that RussBot could be modified to expect hard category redirects, rather than soft redirects, and to move pages to the target categories accordingly. However, it would take some coordination, since I would have to modify some of the bot code. Furthermore, doing this would cause the bot to edit over 71,000 category redirect pages, and obviously that is not something I want to do unless there is a very clear consensus in favor of it. So I need to know (a) if there is a consensus to do this and (b) when it is to be implemented, so that I can implement it properly. Otherwise, if users start going around changing between hard and soft redirects on their own, the bot is going to start reverting them, and it's going to be a mess. --R'n'B (talk) 15:03, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Template {{Category redirect}} can only be removed when hard redirects are extensively tested with all tools, especially with items "hanging" in redirected categories. A special Category:Non-empty category redirects for such cases and Category:Broken category redirects will be needed. --Foroa (talk) 18:13, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are special pages for hard redirects:

Special:DoubleRedirects

Special:BrokenRedirects

Special:ListRedirects

R'n'B says a bot can take care of moving items out of redirected categories using hard redirects.

Another bot could convert soft category redirects to hard ones, and put all hard redirects in Category:Category redirects. Anything in that category would say whether it is "empty" or not. Same as now. I assume that is done via some variation of mw:Extension:CategoryTree.

There would no longer be a need for Category:Broken category redirects since there is Special:BrokenRedirects for hard redirects of all kinds. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:40, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a "Commons" contributor initially, I'm from Wikisource - about redirections, I only discovered the {{Category redirect}} accidentally, after manually putting hard redirects in files and categories, like I used to do on all other wikis... and I never noticed that those redirects did not work…

do you really mean a bug from 2005 is still not fixed ? that seems totally absurd

and if it's been fixed, that template does not have any justification any more - moreover, that template only works for Commons files, but not for links from other wikis… It is effectively very problematic to other wikis who point on redirected categories, with wrong links, that they cannot know as "wrong".

my advice is, whatever the work needed, if the "hard" redirect now works on categories, then let's change the redirects, beginning with files in categories that have been redirected… --Hsarrazin (talk) 23:34, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Category redirect links will be in italics edit

Return to top.

Note: See related discussion: #Why aren't we using simple category redirects? #REDIRECT.

See Bugzilla:5346 - "make category redirects appear as italics or different colored links." It seems that the problem has been solved, and redirects will now be in italics. Read the comments at the bottom of the bug thread. It talks about Gerrit change #40781. I don't know how long it will take for that to show up here on the Commons though.

This helps with a major problem on the Commons. With millions of files the Commons needs all the help it can get in categorization, especially from the initial uploaders. Italics let people know they are categorizing in a redirect, and not in an actual category.

Files are constantly being categorized in redirected categories. Because of this people often categorize poorly, and use the most general category instead of looking deeper for subcategories.

Those people doing this currently have no easy way of knowing that they have done this. The redirected category link at the bottom of the file page looks blue, and uses the same font as regular category links.

If people knew they were categorizing incorrectly they would search for a more apt category. This would help the Commons tremendously because most categorization is done at the initial upload.

As the Commons gets bigger and bigger it necessarily uses more and more category redirects. We are not trying to get rid of redirects. On the contrary, we need a lot more. Redirects are essential. See meta:Don't delete redirects.

Redirects make categorization easier. When people use search or HotCat they see redirects too, and thus are able to categorize even if their English comprehension is not at the level of a native speaker. But people need to know when they are done that they are using a redirect, and may want to look further for a better category, subcategory, etc.. Italics let people know they are categorizing in a redirect, and not in an actual category.

As for HotCat it shows redirects along with the actual category names. This is a good thing. But HotCat automatically resolves the redirect to the correct category name upon saving the category addition. See Help:Gadget-HotCat. But that does not help most people in the initial categorization since most people doing uploads do not use HotCat. I have suggested on the HotCat talk page that it also should use italics for the many redirects showing up in its suggestions.

There are bots that help with some automatic moving of files from redirected categories to the correct category. But that does not help get deeper, better initial categorization into better categories, subcategories, etc.. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:21, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

meta:Don't delete redirects is not concerning category redirects. Before introducing massive category redirects, one has to consider the bad user training and possible saturation of lists from Hotcat and cat-a-lot. --Foroa (talk) 18:36, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

meta:Don't delete redirects does not say anything about excluding categories from redirects. If it did, that would not make sense. I, and many others, link to Commons categories from other web sites, forums, comments, etc.. I do not want those links to go bad. Those links are scattered all over the web, and many of them can not be edited later to update broken links. Also, people do not have time to update those links that can be updated. And there may be a long lag time between discovery of bad links, and fixing them.

HotCat and Cat-lot are easier to use due to redirects. People are more likely to find what they are looking for when there are more, not less, redirects. HotCat uses an actual category in the end. From Help:Gadget-HotCat: "HotCat tries to automatically resolve redirects between categories when the 'OK'-button is clicked (or when a suggestion is double-clicked). If the selected category X is a redirect to another category Y, HotCat will automatically add the category Y instead of X."

I don't see how there is bad user training. HotCat uses actual categories in the end. Italics make accidental use of redirects visible at the bottom of file pages. Users will soon see why they are in italics. Then they are better trained. Right now they are badly trained since redirects are not in italics, and so users don't know they are using incorrect categories.

Bawolff (Brian Wolff) in Bugzilla:5346 points out: "Note, even with hard redirects, you can still add explanatory templates underneath if you so desire."

So if automatic categorization of hard redirects is needed it can be accomplished with the explanatory template. See for example, the wikicode in Template:Category redirect. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:40, 30 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.