[Wikipedia-l] Obscuring some redirects in the search

[Ray Saintonge]

tarquin wrote:

> well it is if I want to see if there exists a page "surrealist" so I 
> don't need to write a pipe for [[surrealism|surrealist]].
>
> As for redirects like "Zimbabwe/History", we don't want people to link 
> to those.
> I am of the opinion that we should simply delete them -- the only 
> argument against is that Google has indexed them.

I happen support the view that some of these useless old redirects 
should simply be deleted.  That Google indexes them is really no excuse 
for keeping them.  We keep them because Google indexes them; Google 
indexes them because we keep them.  How can it end that way?

The risk that we might lose some potential follower because the link to 
the article he is searching is broken is so low as to be ridiculous.  As 
Wikipedia gets bigger that risk keeps getting smaller.  If we keep 
things just long enough for Google to index the article under its 
updated name that should be more than enough.  Many of these old format 
articles are in such an irregular format that they aren't likely bases 
for searches.  A search for /Zimbabwe History/ is going to give "History 
of Zimbabwe" anyway.

Keeping garbage on a site just because the space is cheap on the hard 
drive seems like such a wasteful attitude.

Ec

>