On 8/31/05, Hínandil <hinandil(a)freespirits.org> wrote: Special:DoubleRedirects is a pretty inane concept. There should just be an admin bot to go ahead and fix all those links. At the very least, that special page should have a series of links (or preferably checkboxes and a submit button) to fix each double/triple/whatever redirect.. making them all redirect to the final target. Frankly I would see value in an automatically self-healing setup where redirects adjust themselves after being followed to point down the chain to that final target page. This A -> B -> A nonsense is just silly. A > B > A when followed once A becomes just A with no redirecting. A > B > C > B when followed once, A becomes A > B There's overhead, but not that much overhead, for a self-healing redirect concept.. just do the overhead the first time a user visits a redirect and ends up with a redirect. It might indeed be too much overhead for every redirect to check if it ends up with a redirect every time it is visited. One simple admin function to just "go fix all of that crap" would work though.. /rant (Btw, yes, I have to learn to program so I can do it myself..)

On 9/1/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins(a)gmail.com> wrote: Aah, I totally missed this.. good point. Yes, it means just a blank page.. no, it won't make the problem of missing content go away.. it's just another dead-end page. A, as (A > B > A), becomes just A B stays (B > A) You could have A have a reference that it was (A > B) but that B is (B double-redirect problem, but it can't be much smarter. Another panel to describe lost pages like would be a help for that though. Hmm.. I see your point. Maybe the answer is that when a page is first turned into a redirect page the editor is told that it's a double and they can act on it immediately. Then the page that tells them about the existance of that double-redirect could be the helper concept being mulled over. example: --- You just specified this page "foo" as a redirect to "bar". Unfortunately, "bar" is also a redirect (to page "baz"), would you like to change your mind? Redirect page to: [_________bar] --- Then if they changed "foo" to redirect to "baz" they can be again told if there is a conflict, etc. Blah, but I don't have much interest in the problem of redirects, because my primary editing experience is with my solo wiki.. I just needed to vent a little. =)

On 9/2/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins(a)gmail.com> wrote: I totally understand where you're coming from with what you've been saying. A lot of the over-automation i was suggesting is completely misplaced. I like what you're saying when you talk about how the problem is created in the first place. One solution I see is when moving a page, it picks up the list of things redirecting to it and displays them in a list. Then the user can choose all/some/none of those items to have the redirects adjusted to the new move location. So basically this amounts to a move control panel.. instead of just a "what do you want to name this?" prompt it would have a series of redirect links for optional automated adjusting. Also, I like the idea that redirect chains which end in content could have a similar feature to bring up a similar all/some/none checkbox list for admins to repair them to all point at the destination. Everything else can be left as-is, worked with by a person pulling up the double-redirects list. This would be an interesting dillema. I suppose if someone hacked in this functionality what would appear right now if a person moved a page and moved associated redirects to is there would be a mess of edits.. one for the original move, and one edit for each adjusted redirect page. I suppose one "revert" function to put everything back in place would be handy, but not necessarily.. uh, necessary. =) -- veering a bit: Personally, I like the idea of an article having metadata: * article aliases * article description Then people can make articles, specify aliases and alias collisions automatically generate disambiguation pages with the article description. Descriptions could also allow clearer listings for categories, backlinks and the like. Concepts: * If a page has no description, it is summarized out of the first paragraph. * Aliases are automatically generated with the various case combinations. * An alias which collides with an existing article will appear as a polite sidebar or header, so that a visitor can get an automatically-generated/maintained "there is also an article on foo.." Mind you, my beliefs are that wikis will eventually mature to absorb concepts like these found in content management systems, while keeping its notible agility: ease and speed.

On 8/31/05, Thomas Koll <tomk32(a)gmx.de> wrote: Actually not THAT easy, consider: Article A -> Art. B -> Art C -> Art. B To detect a cycle each 'new' article in the cycle needs to be checked against all previously visited articles.