You mean this really IS the case? I don't understand this position.
Guy A: Oh, I see that a redirect exists to take me to the proper location, so I'll just link to that location directly instead of the redirect.
Guy B: NO, YOU CAN'T! YOU MUST LINK TO THE REDIRECT!!!11
I mean, really, where do you draw the line? Should editors check to make sure a redirect points to a given article to ensure they link to a redirect??
I think you're misunderstanding my position. Smiley I'm content with the proposed consensus, but since Guy asked, I'll try to explain by way of some examples. It's a longish explanation, so feel free to skip if you're not interested because it has no bearing on the seeking of consensus.
Over the course of time, articles for inf have evolved on the wiki as such:
* Separate articles for "Influence" and "Infamy" existed. "Inf" was a disambig (or possibly a definition) article.
* The two articles merged into "Influence and Infamy". "Influence", "Infamy", and "Inf" all redirected to it.
* The article was renamed to "Inf". "Influence", "Infamy", "Information" and "Influence and Infamy" all redirected to it
.
Now, suppose that at some random point in the wiki's history, I decided I wanted to include this line in an article:
This piece of salvage can be sold to a vendor for 1000 influence.
I might then wiki link it as follows:
This piece of [[salvage]] can be sold to a [[vendor]] for 1000 [[influence]].
Then when I hit preview, I'd see that "salvage" and "influence" were valid links and "vendor" probably wasn't (or who knows, maybe it is? but let's assume it's not).
Depending on how ambitious I felt, I might try to find a more appropriate link for vendor, or I might just unlink it. Or I might leave it as a redlink in hopes that the article will appear later. All three choices are valid. I don't think we should obsessively avoid or eliminate redlinks for the sake of avoiding redlinks, though I also don't think we should create them willy-nilly either. This is another topic entirely and not one I care to provoke discussion over, but it ties into my fundamental point (further below).
"Salvage", meanwhile, is clearly a general term and likely leads to a disambiguation article. I might realize that at the time and go find a more specific article to link to, changing the line to perhaps the following:
This piece of [[Base Salvage]] can be sold to a vendor for 1000 [[influence]].
Then again, maybe I won't realize that and the article will end up pointing to "salvage". Is that really a big deal though? I encounter this all the time on wikipedia and it's rarely an issue. I skim through the disambig list and click on my merry way. If I have time, I'll even go back and fix the link to avoid the disambiguation so that future users can skip that step; but if I don't, someone else eventually will. For disambiguations, I do think the links should eventually get updated to point to the appropriate article, but I don't think it's a big deal for such links to exist. But as above, this is yet another topic entirely, I'm not looking to start a discussion on it, but it does tie into my fundamental point (again, further below).
"Influence", on the other hand, is a very concrete topic. It's unlikely to be a disambiguation page. So I would probably leave that link in place. As it happens, it's a redirect to "Inf", which is absolutely fine. When you click on "influence" you get to the article you want. There's no need to change it.
Now, you could change it to "[[inf]]". But if I'm talking in a hero-specific context, I may well want to keep it as "Influence" because it's more specific. If "influence" is the better word, why change it to "inf" just to avoid a redirect? That's silly. (And admittedly, in this respect, this example is silly. I would probably change that to inf. It illustrates the point though.)
However, the history of inf gives a strong reason to not be anal about avoiding redirects. To avoid redirects, we would have had to update tons of articles twice in that series of changes: once to go from [[Influence]]/[[Infamy]] to [[Influence and Infamy]], then again to go to [[Inf]]. That's a lot of work and for what? So that the end user doesn't see a subtle redirect line under the article title?
If I simply link to [[influence]], I can be reasonably certain that the link will always work. When we moved [[Influence and Infamy]] to [[Inf]], we just had to update that one redirect and suddenly all those articles pointing to [[Influence]] are now up-to-date. That's elegant, simple, and clean.
I could also then go to the redirect page for Influence and click "What links here?" to see which articles are referring to the concept in terms of "Influence" as opposed to "Information" or "Infamy" or the generic "Inf". Unfortunately, since we're so averse to redirects, all of our links are either just [[inf]] or are something along the lines of [[inf|influence]]. So, we've cheated ourselves of a potential resource. (Not to mention that links like [[inf|influence]] are just plain absurd. "inf" and "influence" go to the same spot, it's absolutely silly and inelegant to pipe one over the other.)
Easy linking is one of the fundamental characteristics of a wiki. It's the major reason why they came into being. The point is that you should be able to write content and easily link to articles without having to worry about the specifics of linking. This is as opposed to using raw HTML hyperlink code each link, which requires: 1. you go find the proper URL in question and 2. you format it with the right HTML boilerplate. The wiki eliminates both of those factors. You don't need to go find the URL -- you just link the term and it works. In making the effort to avoid redirects, you're effectively undermining one of the fundamental premises of what a wiki is.
So, I'm not saying "If a redirect exists YOU MUST USE IT." That'd be just plain dumb. I'm saying that we shouldn't be discouraging people from using one of the wiki's keys features. We should encourage people to link terms, and if the link shows up as a valid link, don't worry about it any further.
I'm also saying that if an article happens to be linking to a redirect, we should just leave it be. There's nothing broken to fix. Fixing it is a waste of time and effort. Agge claims that all of ParagonWiki is a waste of time. I disagree. Most of the edits people make contribute something useful -- new content, clearer content, better formatting. That's not a waste. Avoiding redirects, however, is a waste, because it doesn't actually improve anything. I'd rather see that time spent on something that does yield an improvement. Or, failing that, I'd rather see that time spent off the wiki doing something else the person enjoys. Tongue
Like I said above, I am content with the proposed consensus. The above is meant to explain my stance since I was asked, not to argue with anyone. There's not really any "right" or "wrong" answers here, just opinions. I'm content to respectfully disagree and leave it at that. If you don't feel it's a waste, then I'm happy you feel productive. In the greater scope of things, it's really not that big of a deal. Carry on.
I butchered Sekoia's post with MODIFY instead of QUOTE, but managed to salvage it with the back button! yay firefox ---Agge
