Talk:W skills

I believe that this type of redirect should be kept. I've looked through the site policies and guidelines, and these types of redirects are quite clearly permitted.

• I've looked at Guild Wars Wiki:Article retention, which states "Redirects are generally an encouraged means to improve navigation of the wiki. These can assist users who are using the search function to go directly to the article they are trying to find without the need of selecting an entry from a list of search results. See Help:Redirect for information on how to create redirects."
• I've looked at Guild_Wars_Wiki:Deletion_policy#Redirects, and this type of redirect does not fall under R1, R2, or R3 (it's not to/from a user or guild page, it's not a typo, and it's not misleading).
• I've looked at Help:Redirect, and it states "A redirect, or a redirect page, is a page that silently diverts the reader from one article name to another. It is a very useful mechanism for article names that are commonly misspelled or abbreviated." (bolding added by me) The help page even uses abbreviations as an example of some of the permitted types of redirects.

This type of redirect is useful for those who use the "Search" box. Also, redirects use fewer system resources to process compared to forcing the system to generate search results, and redirects take up very little disk space to store on the server. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:06, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I've changed my opinion from before on whether these are "needless" or not - however, in this case I'd still support deletion as "W skills is ambiguous - does the user mean "skills that start with W", or "Warrior skills" - et cetera. It's certainly not a speedy delete qualifier, but I do think that in this case other factors still favor deletion. (Edit: to clarify, I've changed to supporting this type of redirect, but these particular ones lack quite enough information to really make certain what the user is trying to search for.) (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 20:22, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't know about you, but I never search skills by their first letter. Lightblade 20:43, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't change that it's ambiguous - and it's not beyond a reasonable doubt that there are some people who might wish to. For instance, if they were looking for a skill that they could not specifically remember the name for, but remembered 'it started with W'. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 20:52, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. By the same argument, a redirect for W shouldn't be allowed - does it stand for Warrior, or words starting with W? It's the exact same thing, just the ones in question add the word "skills" after it. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:05, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

And? To be honest, I really don't know why we'd allow a redirect from 'W'. Ambiguity definitely applies in that case as well. However, one could say that the difference is that 'W' on its own does not refer to any particular collection that could be organized alphabetically, whereas 'skills' is a category of items which can most certainly be alphabetized and does indeed have a segment thereof which corresponds to 'W'. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 21:07, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

To me, it's because of the context of where these redirects exist. This is a Guild Wars wiki, and the game itself uses "W" and all the other abbreviations in the Party Formation box. In context of the Guild Wars game, all but the newest players know what W, R, Mo, Me, N, E, A, Rt, P, D represent.

More importantly, in the case of these redirects, they are helpful and do get used (I can vouch for that - I use them regularly). For those who do not use them, they do not harm their wiki browsing experience in any way - in fact, because the use of these redirects use less resources than if the system were to generate a search, they a beneficial even to those who don't use them (albeight to an extremely minor degree).

Last, to re-emphasise a point, these redirects fully follow existing policy and guidelines - abbreviations are permitted. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:22, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Abbreviations are permitted, yes, but still within the context of ambiguity. As I mentioned above, there's a case for just the letters on their own, but when you start getting into alphabetizable categories, you run into problems. What happens if someone contributes alphabetical skill lists and begins making redirects to them?

Might I possibly suggest that if this is being used as a "convenience" redirect (as you seem to indicate you use it for), it be changed to "W:skills", and the others likewise, similar to the existing shortcuts (GWW:DP, et cetera)? (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 21:41, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

If it's for convenience, then you shouldn't be using ":". That character still require you to reach for the shift key. May I suggest "." or "/". Lightblade 03:53, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I have no major objection to the change, other than it not being necessary as the current version is, as I stated, fully within policy and guideline.

Out of curiosity, I looked at Wikipedia's policy on deleting redirects. I find their policies are generally well vetted, and can be a good conceptual source for our own policies (although, due to different natures of the two wikis, policies frequently don't port over cleanly). For reference, here's their text:

You might want to delete a redirect if one or more of the following conditions is met (but note also the exceptions listed below this list):

1. The redirect page makes it unreasonably difficult for users to locate similarly named articles via the search engine. (see m:Redirects in search results — proposed software changes for proposals to lessen this impact)
2. The redirect might cause confusion. For example, if "Adam B. Smith" was redirected to "Andrew B. Smith", because Andrew was accidentally called Adam in one source, this could cause confusion with the article on Adam Smith, so it should be deleted.
3. The redirect is offensive, such as "Joe Bloggs is a Loser" to "Joe Bloggs", unless "Joe Bloggs is a Loser" is discussed in the article.
4. The redirect makes no sense, such as redirecting Pink elephants painting daisies to love.
5. It is a cross-space redirect out of article space, such as one pointing into the User or Wikipedia namespace. The major exceptions to this rule are the "WP:" shortcut redirects (like WP:RFD), which technically are in the main article space but in practice form their own "pseudo-namespace". All "articles" beginning with "WP:" are in fact redirects.
6. If the redirect is broken, meaning it redirects to an article that does not exist or itself, it can be deleted immediately, though you should check that there is not an alternative place it could be appropriately redirected to first.

The closest one to your argument is #2 - but that instantly falls flat because there is no article of all skills starting with the letter W. There cannot be confusion with an article that does not exist - and to be honest, likely never will exist as categories perform that function far better - yet the default search configuration omits categories from search results, so there's no existing article for it to be confused against.

(note: further replies will be delayed - I likely won't be on-line again for another 12 or more hours). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:55, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Categories can themselves be essentially articles, depending on the category in question, or at least function in the same purpose. Even if the current search omits categories, should that mean that someone who was hoping to find the category should be directed to an unrelated page instead? While it's unlikely a separate article would exist, would you grant that it'd be within a reasonable possibility that such a category could exist? And, if it were to exist, 'W skills' would be just as valid to refer to it? (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:45, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there a remote and insignificantly slight chance that such an article might possibly be created? Yes.

However, there is no logical reason not to create a redirect for something that is known to be beneficial for some users because of a remote slight chance that maybe at some point there's a chance that an alternate page could be created. Even if an alternate possible destination page were one day created, the more logical solution at that point would be to convert "W skills" and the other related redirects into disambiguation pages at that point - like we have done for other entries when two existing destination pages could conceivably be refered to by the same term or abbreviation. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 14:53, 2 June 2007 (UTC)