I have a feature request that I'd first like to put on the mailing list,
before putting it at SourceForge.
When I use the search feature, I am frequently annoyed by the large
number of pages showing up that are simply redirects. When I type
Zimbabwe, I might also be interested in "History of Zimbabwe", which
shows up. I am, however, not interested in the redirect
"Zimbabwe/History", which is a previous location of that same article. I
know it is important to keep that redirect for linking (both internal
and external), but it is not useful for searching. The same holds for
all other pages that were moved because of some naming convention or
change in policy, or moved across namespaces (as a side note, I'd like
to be able to search in Wikipedia: namespace articles as well, there are
getting too much of these pages).
My proposal is to make two kinds of redirects. The first type is the
type we currently have, the second one is different in that it still
redirects those visiting it, but the page does not show up in any
searches. I think this can be implemented relatively easy (a "flag" in
the database might do the trick), but I'm not sure if that is true; it
may have some performance impact. However, I do think this is an
important feature with respect to those that are using Wikipedia as an
encyclopedia: you want to find thing fast, and not get 231 article title
matches if searching for "Wikipedia" (which is only the 19th hit, anyway).
Of course, it would be necessary to check all redirects over time to see
if it should be a "silent" redirect or not, but that's a one-time thing.
Jeronimo