Wikipedia talk:Redirects are costly

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This page was nominated for deletion on 25 March 2012. The result of the discussion was userfy.

Sorry, but really? If monitoring pages for possible vandalism means we need to delete pages that help users find information then we might as well delete the whole project. Redirects are vital. DiverScout (talk) 06:56, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am not suggesting that we delete redirects that are useful. I happen to be the proud creator of quite a few redirect. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:22, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This page is subject of a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines#Problematic essay. In my view, this page contradicts policy, as seen by the unanimous keep votes on the redirects you want deleted based on this page. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 17:57, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I propose to delete Barack obama and all other incorrectly capitalized words which will silently redirect to the right place anyway. Please comment at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion#Barack_obama Siuenti (씨유엔티) 22:24, 6 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My favorite section is "if a redirect is retained it remains a burden on the Wikipedia community forever, or until it is finally deleted." We could solve that problem by deleting the rest of Wikipedia, relieving a similar burden forever. Or we could accomplish the same objective with fewer deletion discussions. Art LaPella (talk) 19:08, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Art LaPella, I cleaned up the formatting a bit, and I wonder whether you might like to take a crack at improving this page. There is a good argument for some redirects being costly or potentially harmful, but that line sounds like a joke. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:53, 21 May 2019 (UTC)[reply] For one thing, I'm a copyeditor. I don't remember the last time I actually wrote an article. For another, I'm not convinced by any of these reasons to delete a redirect. Vandalism, for instance, isn't reduced by reducing the number of obscure redirects to vandalize, because that doesn't account for how a vandal is motivated. Why did the vandal choose something like foo ( disambiguation) (with an extra space) to vandalize? He found it by clicking random page, or from What Links Here. If that redirect didn't exist, he couldn't vandalize it, but he would have found and vandalized something else instead. Or he found it by Googling the word "foo". But if that redirect helped a vandal find "foo", it would also help a legitimate user in the same way. Even if he happened to type in the deleted redirect phrase and gotten a search page instead, he would have happily vandalized something on the list instead of something nobody uses (actually, he would be far more likely to vandalize the redirect's target, not the redirect itself, and vandalism is a bad reason for making that article harder to find.) It adds one item to the redirect creator's watchlist, but that's harmless; it won't bother him again if nobody ever edits it, and no editing time is lost. You could argue that as Wikipedia becomes bigger and more well-known it attracts more vandals, but it won't be more well-known unless it's more useful, and cutting Wikipedia's usefulness is a bad way to fight vandals. Art LaPella (talk) 03:16, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply] Your explanation sounds very rational to me, so I've removed that. A vandal is unlikely to seek out redirects, and even if no redirects existed at all, that wouldn't materially stop the vandal from finding something to vandalize. And these are even easier to catch than usual, because they get tagged and picked up by NPPers. How else could we improve this page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:57, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply] The removed text doesn't seem very pertinent at face value, but the crux was in the footnote. One situation is the creation of POV forks by non-autoconfimed users: such users could easily do that over a redirect, and this may or may not get picked up by NPP. In these cases we tend to rely on the redirects being watched by some of the people who edit the article, so it makes sense to stick to the minimum set of established and necessary redirects, rather than create less plausible ones that are not going to be on people's watchlists and that stand some chance of disruption. – Uanfala (talk) 10:30, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply] I would think the most likely person to have a redirect on his watchlist would be the redirect's creator, not target article editors. When he adds the redirect, he would have to uncheck the "Watch this page" field to avoid watchlisting it. And he would have little reason to un-watchlist it unless somebody edits it. Admittedly, that editing can be a bot edit resulting from a target article move. Art LaPella (talk) 14:27, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply] Uanfala, I'm pretty certain that if a new editor turns a redirect into a regular article, then it gets dumped into the New Page Patroller's queue immediately. Insertcleverphrasehere, are you able to tell us whether NPPers are likely to overlook the creation of a POV fork in a former redirect? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm seeing increasingly many references to WP:PANDORA, a recently added section of this page, as if it were an establish policy or guideline with consensus behind it. In reality it is recently added by user:The Man in Question without any apparent discussion anywhere, and directly contradicts the long-standing practice that RfD does not work on precedent, that WP:OTHERSTUFF is not a valid argument for or against the existence of a redirect, and that the existence of one redirect does not endorse or encourage the creation of similar redirects.

I propose to remove this section entirely for these reasons. I will leave a note of this discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect. Pinging also Steel1943 who expressed similar concerns on my talk page recently. Thryduulf (talk) 11:22, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Support removal. This page may be an essay, but the "Pandora's Box" section has been cited recently like it was a policy, which it is not. My concerns with this section are that it has been leading to what I consider the deletion of completely plausible and longstanding misspelled redirects that were almost always "keep"s in the past when they were nominated for WP:RFD, many recent examples including Roman numerals where the first numeral is capitalized, but the rest are not. In an essence, this whole section encourages deleting rather harmless redirects, and the whole concept of "WP:COSTLY" does not apply to these redirects anyways, so it does not make sense for this section to be listed here. Steel1943 (talk) 12:12, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Support removal, PANDORA is written under the premise that routinely nominating certain types of title modifications for deletion will stop those types of redirects from being created. In practice, most of those redirects are created by editors who are not aware of the deletion process at all, and nominating these articles for deletion does not appear to be putting an end to this behavior in the slights. It is far more costly to continue having RfDs for these types of redirects than it is to just leave them be. signed, Rosguill talk 16:11, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Support removal. Redirects can and should be discussed on their own merits, not due to some hypothetical that WP:OTHERSTUFF may be created. If, for whatever reason, other stuff is created due to the existence of a certain redirect, those redirects should be discussed on their own merits in accordance with WP:RDELETE. -- Tavix (talk) 16:39, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• I definitely agree with the opinions above. However, there is a somewhat similar point to make: even though redirects stand or fall on their own merits, they often do pattern together. Taking account of the bigger picture is important: readers who come across a certain redirect will have the expectation that another redirect of the same type will work. But I guess the best place to make this point is not this page, which is effectively a deletion supplement, but the guide for the creation of better redirects (why don't we have one yet?). – Uanfala (talk) 21:55, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Support removal. While I agree that "Cl0ck" and mixed-Cyrillic-script redirects aren't helpful, "Pandora's box" doesn't really explain why redirects aren't helpful (and why similar ones shouldn't be created). As with articles, redirects are primarily there for readers who probably aren't involved in editing. Therefore, if we really want to prevent similar redirects from being created, one could argue that a good way of doing that is to avoid nominating them for deletion (and thus drawing editors' attention to them) in the first place. –Sonicwave talk 23:38, 6 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose removal While the section should not be necessary, I've found editors will engage in OTHERSTUFF arguments regardless. Because most redirects are not protected, they remain vulnerable to hijack and for that reason I prefer anything that causes fewer redirects. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:32, 12 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Why not keep (and improve) instead of delete? I think Pandora's box is a good argument - I use it a few times. I landed I really already don't know how, but just after using it in my previous two edits! - If you have a redirect that fits in some pattern that would also include (millions of) millions of similar redirects, you probably do not want that. Off course, that is a *opinion* of *some* editors, sure. That is why this is a essay. If editors are using an essay as if it was policy, you teach them the difference, you do not go and forbid the opinion. Instead you probably should refute it at Wikipedia:Redirects are cheap. - Nabla (talk) 16:31, 18 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Nabla: Because it isn't just poorly worded, it is fundamentally the opposite of established consensus (of at least a decade and probably more) that redirects are judged on their own merits and is actively misleading people and has the potential to harm the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 20:39, 18 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Thryduulf: If it is established consensus that this is a poor argument, how come people are using it?... Also, how do you judge the merits of a redirect (or an article, or a template, or...) without thinking about the big picture, i.e. how can you judge about a redirect (or whatever) if you do not have any reference at all?

This argument is simply one of many such references. A notion that "redirects are cheep" is another, also a general concept, it does not relate to the "own merits" of any redirect. This "pandora's box" argument is not against the consensus (with which I agree) to assess the redirect on its merits, it is one of the angles in which to asses a redirect's merits. Anyway, even if it were against consensus, editors are allowed to express their opinions, in essays as is the case, even if against consensus (otherwise, how could anything ever change?), and deleting opinions just because they are minoritary is a very poor idea. - Nabla (talk) 20:37, 20 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - I recognise this is a stale discussion, but I think the WP:PANDORA-generated expectations created from one redirect existing is a reason at least not for creating naother redirect, even if it won't necessarily be a reason for deleting it. FOARP (talk) 10:47, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep yes redirects may up to a point be considered on their own merits but often when this is cited and argued against it consists of redirects that go to targets of the same type, see Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 24#Absolutely every malformed disambiguation without parentheses and Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 August 24#"Title (Disambiguation)" redirects to disambiguation pages where there is often (apart from sometimes shortly being at the title years ago) no more reason to have a redirect to a particular DAB or article than any other eg if we created London (Disambiguation)>London (disambiguation) then why not have Paris (Disambiguation)>Paris (disambiguation). Both redirects will usually have the same merits namely a "(disambiguation)" qualifier capitalized which isn't any more useful to have at one DAB than any other. Similarly some redirects are so implausible that it does make sense to just delete them to avoid precedent to create similar. With other types of redirects which as from sub topics or alternate names etc it is useful to consider them on their own merits where you may have different outcomes such as one sub topic or similar name being used by sources and one not but with DAB redirects unless there is substantial history or the DAB was linked to using the incorrect capitalization externally there is not normally any merits to consider differently. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:51, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Support removal or rewrite. I don't think we should keep WP:PANDORA-- however, the alternate name for this, WP:UNHELPFUL, carries perhaps a hint of potential. I propose that we swap out the reason given as to deletion-- namely, that we should delete redirects that aren't useful to the reader, because the reader is already led to the article's location via the first or second result of the Search function. (Or something along the lines of that. I'm not adding it because I'm slightly afraid that wording it that way will hit redirects that I don't intend lol. Trying to target "Who was the first president of the United States?" without hitting "United States President".) Lunamann 🌙🌙🌙 The Moooooooniest (talk) 03:53, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply] I will note that I have, since making this comment, written an entire article on the problems with PANDORA. See WP:BACKINBOX. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 01:44, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• To editor The Man in Question: Why did you add the "UNHELPFUL/PANDORA" section without discussion? This essay argues against creating redirects and your content furthers that goal, which I support, but without consensus why do you feel this makes sense? Chris Troutman (talk) 16:57, 22 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just a note: The Man in Question has not edited since 21 July 2019, so there's a chance this discussion may not receive input from them. Steel1943 (talk) 18:47, 25 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • That would be unfortunate. I do intend to leave this discussion open at least a week before taking any action, so hopefully they will comment in the next few days. Thryduulf (talk) 08:43, 26 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Thryduulf: At this point, I think getting a response from the section creator is not happening, given that they edited once on 31 July 2019, and haven't edited since. Steel1943 (talk) 17:28, 12 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Steel1943: I agree. I'm not going to have any time to do anything with this until at least the early part of next week (more likely the middle). If you want to move on before then then please be my guest. Thryduulf (talk) 17:41, 14 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• While I do not support such a change without discussion, and would like to mention that WP:OTHERSTUFF is also not policy even if it is common practice, I believe it is important to establish when a group of unhelpful redirects can be judged and deleted on exactly the same individual merits, e.g. some of the other points in WP:COSTLY that predate this addition. I also understand that there are several specific guidelines such as WP:FORRED that can lead to a better-reasoned batch nomination of a "Pandora's box". However, Uanfala raises an important point above: that a common flaw (pattern) that would lead to the deletion of each redirect individually could mislead readers to believe that similar, flawed redirects exist. I thus am inclined to believe that a guideline discouraging that practice is needed (but not necessarily on this page or as The Man In Question writes it), also to avoid mass creation of redirects that could make searching difficult (WP:RDEL point 1). ComplexRational (talk) 22:16, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, this essay has two sections that describe the costs of a redirect, followed by another section that lists several classes of unneeded redirects. I don't think this latter section belongs here: it doesn't help in any way to elucidate the point of the essay. Wouldn't it make sense to move at least some of those details to Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Common outcomes? – Uanfala (talk) 15:22, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have started Wikipedia:Redirect, DAB entry or hatnote needed which may also be of interest for when redirects work better than search (such as specific things like proper nouns and plurals) and when they don't (such as ambiguous/generic terms) @Amakuru, Dohn joe, In ictu oculi, and Station1:. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:27, 12 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

“Most redirects have few or no watchers at all” - is there a way to know this? I thought watchlists were private. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 17:50, 4 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Individual watchers are anonymous, but pages do keep track of how many watchers are following them. This number can be accessed by going to Pageviews or Page statistics from the View history tab of any page. It appears to be a somewhat inexact estimate: for example, this page lists "unknown" watchers, (possibly because it's a talk page and thus is added to watchlists without being directly watched?) That having been said, I think it's safe to infer that most redirects are watched only by their creator, at least until a dispute arises over the redirect to draw more attention to it. signed, Rosguill talk 18:55, 4 August 2022 (UTC)[reply] It doesn't show the number for pages with fewer than 30 watchers for those privacy reasons. J947 † edits 20:58, 4 August 2022 (UTC)[reply] ​​​I'm aware that this discussion is old, but virtually all redirects with 30 or more watchers "inherit" them from their target pages as a result of page moves. In some exceptional cases though, redirects may accrue 30 watchers on their own; three examples I can think of are Wikipedia talk:MOSWikipedia talk:MOS, Main pageMain page and Recent deathsRecent deaths, which have currently 33, 40 and 128 page watchers, respectively. None of them resulted from moves. Dsuke1998AEOS (talk) 18:31, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen it said repeatedly at AFD that an article should be turned into a redirect in order to "save" the data in the article. Leaving aside the unrealistic idea that someone coming afresh to writing about a topic would pick up the content from a deleted article to use, rather than write an article from scratch, Wikipedia is not storage-space, nor is it a repository of links.Since the data is anyway held in undelete, a redirect is not anyway needed for this purpose.

I propose to add something along these lines to this essay. FOARP (talk) 10:55, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For RDAB, it specifically says "The capitalization and spelling errors portion only applies if (x) is an error variation of "disambiguation")." That means that those pages should not be deleted and should be kept as a redirect, but add }. Abhiramakella (talk) 19:59, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"That means that those pages should not be deleted and should be kept as a redirect..." No, it doesn't. You have attempted a false dilemma argument, and that's not how discussions work. In fact, editors could argue that the capitalization issue is a good reason to delete, and we go by discussion consensus to determine outcomes, even if the consensus may go against established rules. Steel1943 (talk) 22:27, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I read this essay along with WP:CHEAP and wrote a third in response: User:Teratix/Discussions about redirects are costly. I would be interested in any comments. – Teratix ₵ 07:48, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Doubtless true. Removing RfD as we know it and moving it towards discussing categories of redirects rather than redirects themselves is a fairly obvious progression at this point, especially given how outdated the 23-year-old concept of separate redirects is becoming. J947 ‡ edits 06:16, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply] I get the merits for why such a stance exists, but just as there has never been a clean way to categorize pages on Wikipedia, there is not really a way to blanketly categorize the majority of redirects together on Wikipedia in a way that would make sense to bundle them in large group nominations. And yes, I am saying this as someone who has created multiple nominations where more than 100 redirects have been nominated at once; being able to group together redirects in such a matter happens so seldom that trying to do so with every nomination would effectively result in several "Wrong forum" or "Improper nomination" issues that I foresee it effectively allowing bad redirects to run rampant. I guess what I'm getting at is: Trying to modify our RFD in such a manner would most likely result in only discussions that would be RFC-caliber. What I have found is that in most cases, cherry picking redirects to find a bigger issue (not the other way around, nominating what is perceived to be a big issue, and then doing smaller nominations after the big nomination essentially fails as a whole) has been more fruitful than trying to gather all the redirects together as a group, especially since RFD participants may find issues with one redirect, but not others (basically, inevitable WP:TRAINWRECKs). Steel1943 (talk) 16:53, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:PANDORA has become a hotpoint of contention in RfD. Should it be removed, or rewritten? If it should be rewritten, what changes should be made, and what can be salvaged?

I'd like to open by directing everyone's attention to this essay I wrote: WP:BACKINBOX. It was written as a reply to anyone attempting to use WP:PANDORA in good faith, listing the many issues I and many others at RfD have with it. (This was, well, before I was told that doing this might be a good idea.)Scrolling up here on the talk page, you'll also find reference to the fact that this essay, WP:COSTLY, did not originally contain WP:PANDORA-- it was added in 2019, without consensus, by user:The Man in Question, who... as of yet has still not appeared in the talk page to discuss it. It has since been treated as a guideline essay by many a user here in RfD, despite... well, the numerous problems the section has. You'll also find that a discussion on this topic already exists, having been opened back in 2019, with... no resolution. I'm going to go ahead and ping the ones who took part in that discussion, so they might give feedback for the newer one-- user:Thryduulf, user:Steel1943, user:Crouch, Swale, user:Rosguill, user:Tavix, user:Uanfala, user:Sonicwave32, user:Chris troutman, user:Nabla, user:FOARP, user:ComplexRational. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 04:39, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Relevant arguments can be found in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Redirects are costly#Pandora's box, as well as here.

It was me who suggested earlier today to bring this up at RfC. I also offered to help with carefully drafting the RfC half an hour before Lunamann went ahead with it. I think that's unfortunate. I find the options presented in this RfC rather vague (rewrite how exactly?), and the way how it is phrased is skewed towards one side of the argument (what are the arguments to salvage it?). I still think we can benefit from this discussion. Renerpho (talk) 06:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] I will apologize myself, I didn't see your offer to help until after I'd already made this RfC ^^; 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 18:49, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Okay, understood. Please, next time you think about starting an RfC, don't rush it. Renerpho (talk) 22:03, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Rewrite, not remove. There are things to salvage, and WP:PANDORA has its legitimate uses. Crouch, Swale's argument on this talk page from 22:51, 20 February 2024 (yes redirects may up to a point be considered on their own merits but...) is valid. Also, Nabla is right that deleting opinions just because they are minoritary is a very poor idea (20:37, 20 August 2019), so just deleting one opinion/essay for the sake of another shouldn't really be considered. Renerpho (talk) 06:23, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep I think PANDORA is useful as it does deal with redirects that are not likely to be helpful and where we could end up with an infinite number of redirects to each page. The counter essay BACKINBOX also seems fine so keep both. Crouch, Swale (talk) 07:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Replace with a note, on a different page, that explains what it was and why it has been removed. Pandora is nothing more than a combination of WP:CRYSTAL and WP:OTHERSTUFF, frequently also with some WP:IDONTLIKEIT added to the mix. If the problematic aspects were removed we'd be left with nothing more than a statement that redirects with unhelpful titles are sometimes created, which is true but useless. Every redirect that is problematic can be noted as such in other ways that don't rely on fallacies and assumptions. Thryduulf (talk) 07:57, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - Firstly we should not be editing pages that are clearly essays (with well-known counter-essays!) simply because some people think they are policy. An essay is an essay, nothign more nothing less. We have enough problematic PAGs for that to be a better place to start - if you want to create rules favourable for your position (and I think we need stronger rules against random redirect creation) go and do that, don't delete stuff from an essay just because people are citing it to apparent effect.

Secondly, as said in my !vote above, WP:PANDORA is useful, an admonishment not to simply create any redirect just because you theoretically can. The example that brought me here in the first place was a redirect from a single building of no significance whatsoever, which will never be the subject of a stand-alone article, and the name of which means simply "at the top" in Polish (a name that potentially hundreds of buildings throughout Poland have and also the name of a Polish movie), to the village it was located in. This kind of redirection is not a gain for the project, and raises the question as to why we shouldn't redirect all the other named buildings of that village to the village article (i.e., opens Pandora's box). FOARP (talk) 08:29, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] I will note again that WP:PANDORA is not the entirety of WP:COSTLY, it is a paragraph-length addition added well after the fact by someone other than the original creator of the essay. If we're not allowed to edit WP:COSTLY to modify or remove WP:PANDORA, why was The Man in Question 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 18:58, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] ...allowed to add it? (also how did it cut off my comment, ow) 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 18:59, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Because it was added ~5 years ago and appears to be helpful at RFD? There are many, many essays out there, staking contradictory positions. I think all that is really being highlighted here is the lack of proper guidelines/expected outcomes for RFD. FOARP (talk) 20:45, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] It isn't helpful at RfD though, because it adds no value at all and distracts from arguments that are actually relevant to the redirect being discussed. Thryduulf (talk) 22:38, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• (Summoned by bot) But my only takeaway from this thread is that Wikipedia's search engine sure feels out of date if typing "What is the capital of France?" doesn't return "Paris" in the first two hits (and if going to What is the capital of France? has no way to incorporate a search-based suggestion). Instead of dealing with 2008-era problems with 2008-era solutions, put all that energy into petitioning the WMF for better search. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 12:05, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

+1, and to reference something that has come up in one of the pending Admin elections, we do not need to maintain all sort of bizarre and pointless redirects just because somebody maybe, could, theoretically, search for that term and it is good to have an essay to cite against that. I think Neelix was the worst case of this? But other users have also created loads of extremely childish/creepy redirects ("Nudity of the thorax" and "pantlessness" were some of Neelix's, and far from the worst) for no reason I can see other than maybe their own personal amusement? If anything we need to be strengthening protections against this kind of behaviour, not weakening this essay. FOARP (talk) 13:09, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Given that I care so little about this, I'm curious what the reason is for feeling strongly about not wanting trivial redirects. Like, in addition to "how helpful are these, actually", "how harmful are these, actually"? Neelix attracted attention not because of pointless redirects, but because of things like redirecting "titty tumors" to breast cancer and an apparent fixation on synonyms for female anatomy. That a lot of his other redirects were pointless was kind of secondary and if it weren't for the offensive stuff I suspect he'd still be around making pointless redirects. This is all to say, why should anyone care in either direction about the pointless stuff? Why are they worth creating, and why are they worth creating a whole separate discussion to delete? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:18, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] This is less about deleting them, and more about not creating them in the first place. The classic issue is people just not wanting to accept deletion as an outcome for a PAG-failing article and instead suggesting they be turned in to a redirect, which ultimately just causes massive delay in the deletion process as we debate where and the term-that-will-never-be-searched should be redirected to to no gain at all. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harry Oppenheim was a classic example of this - the guy's name wasn't Harry Oppenheim (it was Heinrich Oppenheim), other less non-notable Harry Oppenheims exist, but because someone recorded as "Harry Oppenheim" on a database played a single match for the Austrian football team in 1909, a search for "Harry Oppenheim" redirects to our list of Austrian footballers, a page that contains no listing for Harry Oppenheim. We gain absolutely nothing from this, it's just a waste of everyone's time. The chances of this article ever being recreated are zero - but if it ever was recreated, the recreating editor is highly unlikely to start from the unreferenced stub article hidden under a redirect (I think it was BilledMammal who showed pretty strong evidence suggesting that stubs and redirects don't actually aid expansion/recreation and possibly hinder it). FOARP (talk) 14:48, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Rewrite: I oppose removal entirely. The concerns of Pandora are genuine, and I do generally agree with it. It could be better written, more detailed, and better directed in its statements though. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:39, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - I haven't been following RfD at all so have no knowledge of how WP:PANDORA is being applied nowadays. However, I still don't think it's a particularly good argument on its own due to the points brought up in the previous discussion. Is creating questionable redirects due to the existence of other redirects something that occurs in practice? I also do think that the shortcutting of WP:PANDORA deserves more scrutiny as it can be cited like a guideline without further explaining one's position, although having a counter essay and shortcut might be sufficient.

I do agree that there should be a case for deleting large numbers of "unhelpful" redirects, like this instance of "(Disambiguation)" redirects which readers are unlikely to use. Is there a better way to phrase "The formatting of this redirect is not useful, and large numbers of it may be more detrimental than helpful", without leading to the problem statement that it will result in lots of similar redirects being created? –Sonicwave talk 18:53, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Well, let's unpack what "unhelpfulness" even means when talking about a redirect. An unhelpful redirect:

• Does not catch any searches ("Plausibility")

or

• Does not point to the correct place ("Target")

PANDORA does not argue against the latter; the examples given clearly indicate that it's pointed at the former, meaning this is meant to be a plausibility argument. Existing tools are well-equipped to argue against plausibility; that said, I would like to point out that I don't know what exactly to recommend for the given examples of "literally typing a question into the eearch bar" or "informal abbreviations". 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 20:16, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] For me the worth of PANDORA is avoiding creating redirects simply because theoretically we can create them. A classic example discussed above is redirect the names of a non-notable house to the page about the village they're located in, where that house is not discussed at all and never will be. You might ask why anyone would want to do that, but many AFD discussions end up creating such pointless redirects and it is good to have at least something pointing the other way - that by redirecting the name of a non-notable house to the village we are opening a potential Pandora's box of expectations (i.e., every building should have a redirect). FOARP (talk) 08:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Except it doesn't do that. There is no evidence that these sorts of redirects are created because similar ones exist. Every redirect should be evaluated on its own merits - just because one (or even most) redirect from the name of a building to the village it is located in is bad does not mean that all such redirects are bad. PANDROA says "we must delete this redirect because someone might create a similar redirect in the future" without any explanation why either the current or theoretical future redirect should be deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 10:51, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Except when that non-notable, unmentioned house ends up on RfD, which is where people are actually implementing WP:PANDORA, it's almost certainly going to get deleted anyways, even without WP:PANDORA's help. Not because of its plausibility-- but because of its target. If a redirect points to a place that doesn't have information relevant to it, it needs to be retargeted to a place that does. If no such place exists, it should be deleted as per WP:RETURNTORED, with the argument being that if any relevant information does exist, it's not RfD's job to find it and make an article/section for it, and a redlink is a clearer indicator that no information exists on the wiki compared to a redirect to a place with no information on the subject. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 15:08, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] @FOARP, Lunamann, and Thryduulf: While I don't know if it happens often look at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 November 6#Recently created redirects with a full stop at the end where redirects like Donald Trump. were created with the reason "The redirect "Wikipedia." exists too, so I created this." so while its arguable that such redirects are harmless and many readers/editors won't be affected by them there is evidence similar redirects do encourage such creations. Also as I noted at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 31#Canada. such redirects may lead readers into thinking such terms are abbreviations and similar arguments may be able to be made for other PANDORA redirects. Given we're not wanting to remove KEEP or GETBACKINTHERE I don't see a reason to remove PANDORA. People don't have to agree with it but I think its as valid as the other 2 essays. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:16, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Except it isn't as valid as those others you mention as they are not built entirely upon fallacies. Some redirects with trailing full stops are useful (e.g. search terms that are abbreviations or are otherwise commonly rendered as such) so we need to evaluate each redirect on it's own merits, not assume that just because one redirect is bad (for some unspecified reason) that we must save Wikipedia from people who might (or might not) in future use it to create some similar redirect. If a redirect is bad, it should be deleted because it's bad, not because it might theoretically inspire someone to create a different redirect that might or might not have the same issues. Thryduulf (talk) 19:04, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Some redirects will have an WP:AFFINITY exception such as "Loss" (see Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 September 17#"Loss" where I !voted "weak keep") just like X3 having exceptions like U(BH4)4 which are valid cases where the term is used rather than a error. My point is that such redirects are normally considered to be deletable under PANDORA unless the term is actually used for the target. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:29, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Such redirects are not considered be deleteable under PANDORA. Redirects that lack affinity to their subject are deleted for that lack of affinity, not because someone might create an unrelated redirect that might lack affinity. Thryduulf (talk) 19:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] " If a redirect is bad, it should be deleted because it's bad, not because it might theoretically inspire someone to create a different redirect that might or might not have the same issues." - sounds like you should write an essay to express your views on this? And this is the part I really don't get here: there is a dispute over where the line should be drawn for redirects. Two equally-valid essays - WP:CHEAP and WP:COSTLY - set out alternative views on this. Your solution to the practise at RFD starting to lean towards WP:COSTLY is to try to delete parts of it? Have I got this right? FOARP (talk) 20:38, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] The essays already exist: WP:CRYSTAL, WP:OTHERSTUFF and WP:IDONTLIKEIT. In addition there is the basic principle of Wikipedia that we don't delete pages without some reason to delete that page. I don't have a problem with costly redirects being deleted. I have problem with redirects being deleted not because they are costly but because there is a vague possibility that a different redirect might be costly in the future. Thryduulf (talk) 22:36, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] I mean... as you can plainly see from checking WP:RTYPO, the redirect Wikipedia. now doesn't exist... and if you check the discussion where it was finally deleted, I'm fairly certain that discussion would've ended up going the exact same way without PANDORA's help, thanks to the far more helpful-in-this-case WP:AFFINITY/WP:UNNATURAL. And either way, if you check the discussion you cited, the only time PANDORA was even brought up was near the end where it was tossed at Wikipedia. itself instead of at the redirects actually in that specific RfD discussion. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 04:36, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment and keep/clarify. Unfortunately, I do not recall, these five years later, what specific circumstances were behind me adding WP:PANDORA, but it probably developed out of conversations that were being had at RfD. (Here is an example from before then of the kind of deletion discussion that would have inspired it.) Whatever my intentions may have been, I certainly did not add WP:PANDORA with the intention that no one could challenge or rewrite it; WP:COSTLY is an essay, not a list of policies or guidelines, and it was probably on the principle of "Be bold" that I added it, having noticed that the WP:PANDORA principle was clearly in operation on RfD despite not having been made explicit anywhere. I'm sorry I missed the original discussion about this back then; I have become more sporadic in my Wikipedia presence in latter years, and I never noticed the original discussion.

Nevertheless, reading through WP:BACKINBOX, I conclude that WP:PANDORA still makes sense (and again, this is an an essay, not a policy). Answering the three arguments there: (1) I do not think it seriously contradicts WP:OTHERSTUFF, which is about not trying to apply a single system over everything. Any redirect that makes sense is not a problem, regardless of whether there is precedent for or against it or if it matches others or whatever else; this is about ones that do not make sense. And people really do use the excuse of one redirect existing to make a bunch more like it that are not helpful (as I saw often when I was active in RfD), and that's what's being addressed here. (2) WP:CRYSTAL is not meant to be applied like this at all. Anyway, as mentioned above, WP:PANDORA does not address hypotheticals, but reality: It doesn't exist to address something that might happen, but something that does happen. To this point, I recognize that the original wording, which does use the word "might", is not ideal; that's a product of rhetorical understatement, not an endorsement of hypotheticals. The real meat of WP:PANDORA is in the examples given. (3) "failing to point out what's actually wrong with the redirect in question"—what's wrong with them is that they are not useful or used, and "there should be as many redirects as are needed to guide readers to what they are looking for, but not more than that". And that sentiment is, no doubt, what underpins the whole thing in the first place. All that said, I can believe that people may misuse WP:PANDORA, and I am not opposed to clearer wording. Indeed, I think the author of WP:BACKINBOX has not understood WP:PANDORA, since there it is labeled "whataboutism", which isn't what it is at all; so perhaps the argument of WP:BACKINBOX is not really about WP:PANDORA, but about WP:PANDORA's misuse. And that might be fair, if true. — the Man in Question (in question) 00:05, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] While BACKINTHEBOX might not represent how you originally intended PANDORA to be used, it accurately represents how it actually is used. It's used to argue for the deletion of a redirect solely because someone thinks that it might inspire someone else to possible create a different redirect at some point in the future, regardless of why the redirect being discussed exists, whether it is useful or not (and if not why not) and regardless of whether that hypothetical future redirect that may never exist would or would not be useful for the same or other reasons. There is simply never a reason to cite it - if the current redirect is bad then it should be deleted on it's own merits. If the current redirect is good it should not be deleted. What other redirects do or do not exist because of this redirect are irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 00:15, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] After reading through your comment here, I do think that perhaps this is an issue where PANDORA needs a heavy rewrite, because it doesn't seem like your original intent got through. To whit:

• OTHERSTUFF is about the exact sort of thing Thryduulf is talking about, weighing redirects and articles on their own merits rather than comparing them to other redirects/articles (the idea being that we shouldn't be focused on other stuff.) It's pretty much exactly against PANDORA as written/used.
• I won't argue overmuch about CRYSTAL itself not applying-- I think I was actually trying to use WP:ATA#CRYSTAL, which would be more directly applicable; it's the same sort of thing where people often write WP:REDLINK instead of the more correct WP:RETURNTORED in RfD discussions.
• Focusing in more on the idea that the examples are where the true meat of WP:PANDORA lies... I actually brought that up as a severe problem with WP:PANDORA; it spends next to no time explaining what the true issue with the examples is, in any more exact detail than "it's not useful or used". WHY are they not useful? WHY do they not get used? Compare WP:PANDORA to, for example, WP:RFDO, which goes into expansive length as to what exactly is wrong with each of the redirect issues listed and why they might get deleted. I did TRY to come up with such for your examples-- as an example, for the typos, I brought up WP:RTYPO and WP:MIXEDSCRIPT-- but after running into a wall trying to come up with arguments to use for the other examples, and also engaging in a very ah... non-productive discussion in the talk page for WP:BACKINBOX, I threw up my hands and went "...It's an exercise left to the reader".

If I have not understood PANDORA, that is an issue faced by the wide majority of RfD, not simply just me, and it certainly needs a rewrite to make its true purpose more clear. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 04:12, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Having had a look at the present state of RFD, I've got to say that Pandora is very much needed. The 256-character link to Pi is a classic example of this, as are the dozens of redirects of individual units/characters to computer game articles in which they aren't mentioned. People proposing a re-write of Pandora need to propose their wording, otherwise it just looks like the original request of deleting it entirely is still on the table. FOARP (talk) 08:21, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Honestly, I'm mostly of a mind that it should be deleted-- because I'll flat out state that that 256-character link to Pi, does not need Pandora to be deleted, it already has plenty of consensus that it's very heavily implausible on its own, and other implausible redirects that Pandora constantly gets thrown at are in the same boat. As for characters to computer game articles, building names, et al, that's not even hit by the actual text of Pandora in the first place, check the wording! It's clearly aimed at implausible redirects, not mistargeted/no-info/non-notable redirects!A rewrite of Pandora would need to do the following:

• Probably break it out into its own essay and give it more than a single paragraph, instead of piggybacking off of WP:COSTLY
• Maybe generalize it off of being specifically for implausible redirects, given its actual use doesn't fit that (see: your own argument)
• Somehow, while keeping its spirit, handle the allegations of WP:ATA#CRYSTAL, WP:OTHERSTUFF, and WP:IDONTLIKEIT that get thrown at it every single time (as summarized by WP:BACKINBOX)
• Have actual explanations for WHY the examples given should be deleted

I have no workable ideas for how it would do the third. As for the fourth, I tried to do that already, you can go back into the history of WP:BACKINBOX to see my attempt and into Wikipedia talk:Please, put Pandora back in the box for the headache-inducing discussion that resulted in my attempt getting thrown out and replaced with "an exercise left up to the reader". 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 08:33, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] I'm not sure why you think essays have to agree or take in to account each others arguments. It is quite OK for essays to take diametrically-opposed positions: they are essays. FOARP (talk) 10:02, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• keep I stick 100% by my opinion from before. We do not delete opinions we do not like, that would be a dictatorship. We write new opposing opinions of our own, if we have them. If people are using that argument at RfC it means they agree with the opinion, so all the more reason to keep it, as it is clearly shown that it still is a opinion shared by some.- Nabla (talk) 20:14, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] The issue isn't that people are agreeing the opinion, the issue is that the shortcut is misleading people into thinking that the argument expressed by the shortcut is valid and relevant when in reality it is neither. Thryduulf (talk) 21:02, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] It’s an essay. It’s only as valid as it is persuasive, and if people are finding it persuasive at RFD that is not a problem with it. FOARP (talk) 12:26, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Except part of its persuasiveness is the use of a bad argument that shouldn't be used; see WP:ATA#CRYSTAL and WP:OTHERSTUFF. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 13:14, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] You think it’s bad. Other people think it’s good. FOARP (talk) 19:36, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] It is objectively bad. Thryduulf (talk) 19:52, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] I think it is objectivelly good. Now what? Nabla (talk) 16:04, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply] Well, why do you think so? Especially given the arguments made against it elsewhere in this discussion. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 16:07, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply] @Nabla now you need to explain in objective terms why you think it is objectively good. I've explained why it is objectively bad multiple times in multiple different ways already. Thryduulf (talk) 23:01, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply] Hi Thryduulf! I did so in our conversation from 2019 back up the page, so please refer to that. Don't take me wrong, I just don't think I can add anything more. Note however that it being a good or a bad opinion is irrelevant for keeping it in this essay. We should not delete sentences, books or libraries on the grounds that "it is a bad idea" (well... we might for reaaaally bad, humanity devastating, bad bad bad! ideas, but certainly an inclusion criteria for redirects does not qualify as one) - Nabla (talk) 20:41, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply] PS: And Hi Lunamann too, I apologise for not pinging you too - Nabla (talk) 20:48, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply] Okay, could you please explain why it's a good idea to not just go against, but given they've been brought up multiple times, flout WP:ATA#CRYSTAL and WP:OTHERSTUFF? I've not yet seen a cogent argument against them beyond simply dismissing them out of hand.
  As a quick reminder of what they are:
  WP:ATA#CRYSTAL: Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, and editors should avoid using one when commenting in a deletion discussion. It is difficult to determine precisely what people believe in the present, even more difficult to predict how perceptions will change in the future, and completely unnecessary to even try. In other words: What people do in the future is nigh irrelevant to discussions; what is important is what is right now, in the present.
  WP:OTHERSTUFF: Summarized; because anyone can make anything at any time, the existence or nonexistence of another article/redirect is not a solid method of proving that something should or shouldn't exist on the site; in short, the fallacy of relative privation.
  Compare that to the argument used by PANDORA: ...whose existence might encourage the few readers who stumble upon them to assume that there exist redirects of the same type for other targets as well. That's very much both using the crystal ball and worrying about the other stuff. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 02:44, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] OK. Basically I don’t think Crystal or Otherstuff is talking about the same thing that Pandora is talking about. They are primarily directed to article content, which is a totally different field to Pandora. So, in a discussion about the notability of an article-topic, we shouldn’t try to assert/deny notability simply by comparison to similar article-topics. Similarly, we shouldn’t try to assert that a topic will become notable in the future. For redirects, though, none of these circumstances exist: redirects are detached from notability, verifiably and most of the headings under which articles are deleted at AFD. But let’s be clear here *It wouldn’t matter if Pandora was totally wrong*. It’s an essay. It’s OK for essays to be wrong. FOARP (talk) 09:54, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] That doesn't address any of Lunamann's points about how CRYSTAL and OTHERSTUFF do apply to the redirects. And while essays can be wrong (and PANDORA is in its entirety) people are actively opposing its wrongness being pointed out each time its used. You can't have it both ways - either the essay needs correcting or people need to stop objecting when it is corrected in discussions. Thryduulf (talk) 10:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Where did I object to its “correction”? Is what you want simply not to have anyone argue back that it is valid? FOARP (talk) 16:08, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep because There is no reason to redirect from unhelpful titles whose existence might encourage the few readers who stumble upon them to assume that there exist redirects of the same type for other targets as well. I like to think that Wikipedia has some standards in regards to its redirection practices, and generally doesn't allow unhelpful titles i.e. the nonsense that which WP:PANDORA may be speaking about. Maintaining supposably infinite borderline-to-nonsensical redirects is unreasonable to maintain on a wide scale. Such applicable titles should generally be deleted if they are truly unhelpful, which is often an opinion that the titles that come through RfD are more-often-than-not, the unlikeliest of the unlikely, among the millions upon millions of redirects that exist. This is just my opinion though, and I'm happy to cite it whenever I think the sentence of There is no reason to redirect from unhelpful titles whose existence might encourage the few readers who stumble upon them to assume that there exist redirects of the same type for other targets as well might apply to such a title in a discussion. Lunamann likes to individually respond to every single person who made the mistake of referring to WP:PANDORA (with or without a wikilink) in their presence at RfD, "reminding" people with their counter-user-essay ad nauseum in nearly every discussion as applied. Even within discussions that Lunamann is not actually participating in with a !vote, the opinion essay gets "reminded" to people regardless. But the beauty of an opinion is that it does not need to be shared by everyone, and in my mind it is true that "there is no reason to redirect from unhelpful titles whose existence might encourage the few readers who stumble upon them that there exists redirects of the same type for other targets as well" -Pandora. Any counter to this is generally about the counter of the application of the WP:Pandora opinion in discussions (a location to be sharing opinions about what to do with redirects in an attempt to reach consensus), not that the stance behind WP:Pandora is incorrect (the inverse being that its good to have unhelpful redirects and etc). And to that end, what WP:Pandora says is what WP:Pandora says, and its the reason that people refer to it. There is no reason to edit it, or give disclaimers, or etc etc, as it is an essay, and a generally shared-to-be-agreed-upon at that (i.e. that There is no reason to redirect from unhelpful titles whose existence might encourage the few readers who stumble upon them to assume that there exist redirects of the same type for other targets as well), from my own personal experience. The definition of what makes a redirect "helpful" is often disagreed upon, and that is the core tenet of RfD; discovering the consensus behind those claims to helpfulness. This would be like people linking WP:IAR and expecting it to mean something alone; it's all about the application of such a link, not merely the words on the page in question (which in this case, are wholly sufficient as they currently are, IMO). Utopes (talk / cont) 23:51, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] The point you're missing (repeatedly) is that PANDORA doesn't explain why either the current redirect is unhelpful, nor why any other "similar" (i.e. different) redirects to different targets are necessarily bad. Citing PANDORA on its own is like citing WP:IAR and expecting it to mean something alone. Thryduulf (talk) 00:48, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying, and is exactly what I just said. Citing Pandora on its own IS like citing IAR on its own and expecting it to mean something. But the text of WP:IAR is not obligated, and does not assume to, explain why citing IAR on its own "is not the most helpful contribution on its own". But people still do cite IAR (and PANDORA) on its own. Both are short & sweet, and communicate the message that "yep I elect to IAR on this one", "yep I view this redirect to be unhelpful and indicative of a Pandora's box" or however the circumstance asks. Is that the best thing that could be said? No. Is it questionable? Sure. People also say "per nom", which can be questioned the same way. But do we need to give a forewarning within the text of IAR about "how not to use IAR in discussions"? Absolutely not. And the same is the case here. If someone wanted to explain why a redirect meets the text of PANDORA, anyone is free to do so, just as anyone is free to explain why they would like to enact IAR for its usecases. A typical situation I see is: "WP:PANDORA, it is unhelpful because xyz and should be deleted". "Yep, delete per PANDORA as described by the other person". Rarely, if at all, is a redirect deleted with ONLY Pandora cited as the ONLY justification, with no other participant adding ANY other further information. If there is a case that I missed, then that's a problem with the course of that discussion and its participants, and not a reflection of the text behind the WP:PANDORA shortcut (if not elaborated upon by the person who referred to it). In other words, nothing to change about the text of WP:PANDORA, but about the application of the text, limited to that hypothetical discussion where nothing else was said besides it. And that's not WP:PANDORA's problem. Pandora does not need to explain itself more than what it does in the essay, about the cost of maintaining a surplus of "bad redirects". It's up to users to define, explain, and elaborate anything they wish to beyond that starting point. Utopes (talk / cont) 06:59, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Citing PANDORA alone is a waste of time because it is exactly like citing IDONTLIKEIT or IAR alone - it adds exactly nothing of value to the discussion.
  Citing PANDORA in combination with a reason to delete the redirect under discussion is a waste of time because other redirects that theoretically might exist in the future that might or might not have the same problems as this redirect are completely irrelevant. Putting in terms of articles makes this even clearer. In an AfD about Banana Corporation of Iowa:
  • "Delete per PANDORA" = "delete because someone might create Pear Corporation of New Jersey" This offers no explanation of why the article under discussion should be deleted.
  • "Delete per lack of notability and PANDORA" = "This article is non-notable and its existence might cause someone to create an article about the Pear Corporation of New Jersey" Everything after the "and" is irrelevant, especially as the New Jersey corporation might be notable.
  Thryduulf (talk) 12:44, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Okay, okay. Let's break it down.

• There is no reason to redirect from unhelpful titles...

THIS part is okayish. The issue I have with PANDORA here is that it doesn't define what it means by "unhelpful". I've already stated my theory as to what an unhelpful redirect is-- that an unhelpful redirect either has an unhelpful title (as in, an implausible one that won't catch any searches), or an unhelpful body (i.e. it's targeted to the wrong place, and/or the 'correct' target doesn't even exist). In short, THIS half of Pandora is about as helpful as saying we should delete a redirect "as implausible"-- without anything else, it doesn't tell us WHY you think it's implausible, which... could edge into WP:IDONTLIKEIT territory if cited alone (though admittedly nothing should be used in that manner, see WP:VAGUEWAVE)

• ...whose existence might encourage the few readers who stumble upon them to assume that there exist redirects of the same type for other targets as well

THIS is the majorly problematic part that we're taking issue with. This is where the accusations of WP:ATA#CRYSTAL and WP:OTHERSTUFF are coming from-- this is where PANDORA starts throwing in the idea of worrying about what people MIGHT do in the future and/or worrying about other redirects that MIGHT exist "because" of this one.
Also...

• Lunamann likes to individually respond to every single person who made the mistake of referring to WP:PANDORA (with or without a wikilink) in their presence at RfD, "reminding" people with their counter-user-essay ad nauseum in nearly every discussion as applied. Even within discussions that Lunamann is not actually participating in with a !vote, the opinion essay gets "reminded" to people regardless.

If this is me being disruptive, I'll stop, I'm sorry  Self-trout 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 02:59, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Replying to a !vote that cites an essay that presents no relevant arguments is useful. When it is cited by a non-regular it informs them that their !vote actually contains no/an invalid rationale and that if they want their opinion to count they should add reference to an argument that does have relevance to the redirect being discussed. When it is cited by a regular (who does or should know that it is nothing more than a collection of irrelevancies) it provides the context for subsequent commenters, discouraging them from citing the same actively misleading shortcut in their own !votes. Thryduulf (talk) 12:33, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] I see a lot of “I disagree with Pandora” here, and no real reason for people who don’t disagree with it to see why it should be deleted (or “rewritten” in some nebulous way that no-one feels like defining). FOARP (talk) 09:56, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] No real reason you mean other than the extensive explanations why it is problematic to the point of being actively harmful? Thryduulf (talk) 16:29, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] The point you seem to be missing is that we don’t agree with that. The redirects it is cited against (eg the pi one) are eminently delete-worthy. And again, even flat-out wrong essays are allowed. I totally disagree with WP:Gazetteer. I think the view it espouses is harmful since it leads to the generation of vast numbers of contentless and inaccurate stubs. It never crossed my mind to try to MFD it. Instead I just wrote an essay WP:NOTGAZETTEER espousing the opposite view. FOARP (talk) 05:54, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Setting aside that I disagree the pi redirect should be deleted, the fact that it is cited in discussions about redirects that should be deleted is irrelevant because other redirects are irrelevant to whether the cited redirect should be deleted and the redirect under discussion is irrelevant to whether a different redirect should be deleted. WP:Gazetteer and NOT:GAZETTEER are different in that they are different views on a subjective topic, PANDORA on the other hand is objectively harmful. Thryduulf (talk) 11:30, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Sorry but "unhelpful" and "implausible" headings under which redirects may be deleted are very vague and literally anything that helps further define/clarify what they may apply to is likely to be helpful so long as you agree with the redirects that it brings within/excludes from those headings. All I see here is that you disagree that the things that may fall within "unhelpful" when you take in to account PANDORA should be deleted - which is fine, but please accept that not everyone agrees with you. BTW - this is getting off-topic, but as far as I am concerned WP:GAZ is objectively wrong, since it asserts that Wikipedia is something objectively it is not. FOARP (talk) 14:53, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] The point is that PANDORA does absolutely nothing to define or clarify which redirects are unhelpful or implausible while misleading people into think that it does. As for Gaz, consensus since the very earliest of days of Wikipedia is that it is an encyclopaedia that incorporates features of other types of traditional works, including a gazetteer so saying Wikipedia is a gazetteer is as objectively correct as saying it is an encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 15:22, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] PANDORA definitely helps define what may be unhelpful - something potentially belonging to a larger class of unhelpful redirects. The example of a non-notable building in a village seems pretty apposite here: we've determined that the building is non-notable, so the question of whether to redirect to the village (where the topic also won't be mentioned arises) and an auxiliary argument as to why not is "...and anyway, if we're going to do this, what about every other building in that village?". As for WP:GAZ, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, a very different thing to a gazetteer, which is typically simply an index of names with minimal or no description. It has features of a gazetteer, but it is not one. As you can see in my view it *IS* an objective difference. You may disagree with that, which is fine, I'm not trying to delete (or "rewrite" in some nebulous undefined way) the opposing view here. FOARP (talk) 15:51, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] something potentially belonging to a larger class of unhelpful redirects other redirects are completely and utterly irrelevant to whether this redirect is or is not unhelpful. This redirect is completely and utterly irrelevant to whether other redirects (which may not exist, and which may not ever exist) are unhelpful. If you think other redirects that are similar to this redirect should be deleted, then nominate them for deletion explaining why they are unhelpful. Your argument is that redirect A is unhelpful because of B and B is unhelpful because of A. Even if A and B are unhelpful for the same reason, that doesn't logically follow. PANDORA goes beyond even that, asserting that redirect A should be deleted because redirect might theoretically be created in the future if it isn't, without establishing that either is actually unhelpful let alone why they are unhelpful. Whether Wikipedia should or should not include gazetteer material is a choice, but by consensus it currently includes one. There is no practical difference between an "encyclopaedia that includes features of a gazetteer", "a work that combines features of an encyclopaedia and a gazetteer" and "a work that is both an encyclopaedia and a gazetteer". If want to argue the semantics based on strict definitions of a print gazetteer you also have to go by the strict definitions of a print encyclopaedia, and Wikipedia is not one of those either. Thryduulf (talk) 16:17, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] But we know this does happen at least sometimes such as at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 November 6#Recently created redirects with a full stop at the end. And as far as I can see there weren't any exceptions there and if there were they could have been kept. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:00, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] You've completely missed the point. Those redirects were deleted because they were all unhelpful for the same reason (the trailing full stop), not because other redirects did or did not exist, not even because there were others nominated at the same time. Pluto. would have been deleted completely independently of whether ChatGPT. was also nominated or even existed. Just because there were no exceptions in that set does not mean that exceptions do not and cannot exist, e.g. No. exists. It's existence says nothing about whether Maybe. should or should not exist (and vice versa), does not make the creation of Maybe. more or less likely (and vice versa), etc. In short PANDORA was just as irrelevant to that discussion as it always is. Thryduulf (talk) 19:14, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] They were deleted because they were unhelpful, redirects like No. are helpful and is mentioned in the lead of the target. No one is saying that all redirects with a trailing full stop should be deleted just that they should be deleted unless they are plausable like the No. one. IMO PANDORA was cited correctly there, there was not an exception as to why they should be kept and there was no reason to have such redirects that could be incorrect (due to not being abbreviations) and may encorage the creation or more such redirects. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:24, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] In what way was PANDORA helpful there? The redirects discussed were deleted on their own merits without need to refer to hypothetical other redirects. Similar redirects were not deleted because they were not discussed (PANDORA is irrelevant). Some similar redirects are useful, some are not, they need to be discussed to determine which it is - which is completely independent of what other redirects do, don't, did or might exist. Thryduulf (talk) 20:17, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Because most redirects with trailing full stops should probably not exist unless there is a reason to keep them so citing PANDORA is useful when such exceptions aren't going to be the case. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:22, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Except PANODRA isn't useful, it's pure WP:OTHERSTUFF. The reason the redirects shouldn't exist is because they are not useful, not because of something related to other redirects. If there are exceptions, PANDORA is incorrect. If there aren't it's irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 20:34, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Except most redirects with trailing full stops should probably not exist unless there is a reason to keep them.... so citing WP:AFFINITY is useful when such exceptions aren't going to be the case. (Or, for that matter, WP:RTYPO.)Hell, if you go back to Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 November 6#Recently created redirects with a full stop at the end, the discussion you cited as proof that PANDORA was relevant and helpful, NOBODY EVER CITED PANDORA IN THAT DISCUSSION. The only time PANDORA got brought up, was when Steel1943, well after the discussion had already racked up 12 Delete votes and zero dissenting votes, INCLUDING his own, left a comment about how the creator of said redirect had cited the existence of Wikipedia. as the reason the redirects existed, and mused about how Pandora-y Wikipedia. was.Wikipedia. was not up for discussion. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 08:43, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply] Move to another page and mark historical Should be treated like the Pokemon test but due to its former high usage it should not be completely deleted. I have nothing else to add on why WP:PANDORA sucks that has not already been said. -1ctinus📝🗨 13:35, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply] Remove the section and replace it with an explanation about the shortcut (will elaborate on it later in my comment). WP:PANDORA as it stands seems like applying the broken windows theory to the field of redirects, which I don't find super compelling. Incidents such as Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 November 6#Recently created redirects with a full stop at the end are more likely extreme outliers rather than common editor behaviour. Just to pick a random example, look at Category:Redirects from how-to names. If the Pandora's box premise held true, we would be having hundreds of "How to..." redirects or more, yet it contains only 26 redirects as of now (I had exhaustively searched for page titles starting with "How to" and "How To" to categorize the genuine redirects, some time ago). I think I can understand the underlying feeling behind PANDORA. Redirects like Jupiter'sJupiter's, French langugeFrench languge and Cobra (Disambiguation)Cobra (Disambiguation) are annoying and often unnecessary, yet they are not explicitly covered by Wikipedia:Redirect#Reasons for deleting or Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Common outcomes. Many editors want for those to be deleted, and also something to link to in their rationales. But the solution is not to rubber-stamp their comments with a poorly-argued and speculative rationale. It is to either encourage them to use the existing rationales WP:AFFINITY or WP:UNNATURAL, which will cover the majority of cases anyway, or to simply ignore the redirects if they are not doing any great harm, as there are possibly thousands of such redirects and nominating every single one of them would disrupt the RfD workflow. I would suggest replacing the current PANDORA content with a separate section named 'Deprecated rationale', explaining its premise, the context where the shortcut was previously used and the reasons why its usage is problematic. And then retarget the relevant redirects (WP:PANDORAWP:PANDORA, WP:Pandora's boxWP:Pandora's box and others) to that section. Dsuke1998AEOS (talk) 18:20, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply] Keep. I've written a lot of stuff about this in Wikipedia talk:Please, put Pandora back in the box (and Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 March 21#Time (Magazine)), albeit I've since changed my username and NOTPANDORA has been updated so some of the specifics no longer match (but most of it is still relevant). The basic gist of PANDORA is exactly correct. Unhelpful redirects are bad because of WP:COSTLY#Relevant factors #1 and #2. When a helpful redirect gets vandalised (example from my Watchlist) we can justify the volunteer time to maintain it by appealing to the redirect's utility. The same for when a helpful redirect needs retargeting because the relevant content got moved or merged or whatever else. When it's unhelpful we can't and therefore we should consider deleting. PANDORA highlights an additional hidden cost of a class of unhelpful redirects that pushes the needle far enough to warrant the cost of an RfD. Namely, when an unhelpful redirect has a pattern that can be generalised to create more redirects. This is not a hypothetical. It was already demonstrated that people can and do create redirects this way. NOTPANDORA gets PANDORA wrong by the way. It's not an IDONTLIKEIT argument because we don't use it like that. We don't just assert "this is unhelpful and can be generalised. Delete" without justification. We show that the nominated redirects are unhelpful by appealing to some feature they have and then we show how that feature can be generalised to create more unhelpful redirects. Only then is PANDORA used to justify deletion so people don't say "So what if the redirect is unhelpful. Keep per WP:CHEAP". Warudo (talk) 03:00, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply] On second thought "Keep" is a bad way to summarise my stance because I'm not opposed to a rewrite. It's more like do not remove or deprecate. Warudo (talk) 03:10, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:RDAB is about errors in the act of disambiguation. That doesn't mean we should list every possible way to make a wrong disambiguation under it. WP:CREEP should be our guide here. Just as an example of how bad RDAB got, instructions were added about redirects that are literally impossible to create, and even when they were finally removed, they were added back in a few days later. Warudo (talk) 12:04, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with your change. That said, I think "X (Disambiguation)" may need to be removed or moved to its own explanatory line. If my memory serves me right, the more recent nominations for the "(Disambiguation)" redirects have often been closed as keep or no consensus (I do not have the links now, will search through the logs later).Dsuke1998AEOS (talk) 18:02, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply] It turns out that I was wrong. The batch nomination on 9 January 2025 that closed as keep was an outlier, and since 2023 every nomination for the "X (Disambiguation)" redirects was successfully deleted, albeit with a handful of objections. Dsuke1998AEOS (talk) 18:54, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]