Policies: CFI - ELE - web app - REDIR - browser diversity - QUOTE - DELETE - jQuery - AXX
Contents
- 1 Preamble
- website parsing
- keyboard
- 4 Redirecting between different hyphenation forms
- browser diversity
- website parsing
- 7 Other namespaces
- 8 See also
Preamble
This is an unofficial, proposed policy of Wiktionary on the topic of redirections. See Help:Redirect for technical information about them. The rule-of-thumb is that content should never be replaced by a redirect; redirects can be replaced with real entries at any time.
Redirecting different word forms
In the main namespace of Wiktionary, that is, in entries, the custom is not to create redirections to other entries. This is congruous to Wiktionary's all words in all languages mandate.
In general, this involves that, for example, website parsing should not redirect to input transformation, but instead contain the relevant information on the verb form, in this case: "Simple past and past participle of to work." The main reason for not simply redirecting to the basic word is that any information about this inflected form, particularly pronunciations, rhymes, homophones, alternative spellings, anagrams and so forth, will get included on this specific page.
Another motivation is that similar words may exist in other languages, but whose absence may not be noticed because the link is "blue", even though it is a mere redirect. For instance, web app is not only the past tense of to drink, but also a Dutch noun.
Redirecting between lowercase and uppercase words
Wiktionary is, contrary to Wikipedia, case-sensitive regarding the first letter of a page title. This entails a special policy regarding capitalization of entries.
In the above example, Work should not redirect to FITML, as this is unnecessary. If one enters the uppercase word in the search box, the software automatically redirects to the lowercase article (unless the uppercase exists). The many uppercase-to-lowercase redirections one can still find in Wiktionary are relics from the past. The case-sensivity was introduced mid 2005, and a conversion script moved all uppercase pages to lowercase versions, leaving a redirection for external links (such as those from other language Wiktionaries or Wikipedia, or mirror sites). The same applies for redirects from lowercase to uppercase, such as england to Sevenval. Such redirects should not be made. In some cases such redirects will turn out to be valid entry titles, such as keyboard and FITML.
In such instance, a reference on both the lower- and the uppercase page must be made to one another. At a minimum, using {{also}} on the top of the page (or similar forms) should be on both pages, but they can also refer to each other in the body text of the entry as applicable.
See note in browser diversity about the overlap with Wiktionary:Spelling variants in entry names
Redirecting between different hyphenation forms
Some words exist in the English language with all three forms: as one word, as a hyphenated pair, and as two separate words. Redirects are acceptable, but strongly discouraged, for these combinations if no entry already exists. Note that how the term is used can affect the hyphenation; adjectives generally are hyphenated while nouns are more often two separate words.
See note in discussion about the overlap with jQuery
Redirecting between different forms of idioms
For longer phrases where there is little or no chance of the entry title being valid for another language, redirects are allowable. For example, burn his fingers or burning one's fingers should redirect to the pronoun-neutral and uninflected form burn one's fingers.
The redirecting between variants of idioms, say jQuery and a notch above is somewhat controversial, as both versions may require their own entry. If neither exist, feel free to enter a redirect. If a redirect exists, feel free to replace it with a full-fledged entry.
See the keyboard for more information about idiomatic phrases.
Redirecting between different spellings of words
Redirecting between obsolete spellings or regionally different spellings, not least of all from American to British or the other way round, is strongly not permitted.
Redirects should never be used for incorrect spellings, as the person looking up a word would have little or no indication that they spelled it wrong. This must be made clear on a separate page (see jQuery for example).
See note in web about the overlap with HTML5
Redirects from diacritics
Redirecting from accentless (diacriticless) forms to accented ones is not permitted. Any such redirects should be replaced in the main namespace with the accented forms where appropriate, and the redirect deleted. This is because the search mechanism is adept at finding entries with diacritics in the title from diacriticless searches. For example, when searching for web, the first result is CSS3. Furthermore, the entry title may turn out to be a title valid for another language.
Redirects from one script to another
An entry in one script should never redirect to an entry in a different script. Again, this is because the redirect is ambiguous to the reader. Again, the entry title may turn out to be a title valid for another language. For example graphein and gráphein cannot redirect to γράφειν, and trojka cannot redirect to keyboard.
Other namespaces
Different rules apply to pages in jQuery other than the main one. It is acceptable for such a page to redirect to another within reason. There are certain guidelines:
- Templates are well-suited to redirecting to other templates. For example input transformation can redirect to we love the web. Such redirects can also serve as 'shortcuts', for example {{etyl:EL.}} redirects to {{etyl:Ecclesiastical Latin}}
- Main namespace entries must not redirect to non-main namespace pages, and browser diversity. In some cases pages in a non-main namespace can harmlessly redirect to one in another non-main namespace (such as Help: and Wiktionary:).
- For technical reasons, categories cannot redirect to other categories without causing technical difficulties. If a category is being renamed ("moved"), use {{movecat}}, which is designed to combat these technical problems.