On 6/29/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote:
I say only redirect to an article if the article
already contains some
kind of substantial content about the subject the redirect is about. So
if the author's page actually discusses the book in question go ahead
and redirect, but if it doesn't then IMO it will only lead to confusion
and frustration on the part of the reader.
Good point. It's a pity there is no way to add meta information about
redirects. Sometimes it would be helpful to have something like "Foo
is actually a slang term for Boo. Redirecting to Boo...". The
alternative is trying to make sure that every article contains every
major redirected term in bold in its first paragraph, which is rarely
the case.
There have certainly been cases where I've been redirected without
understanding why (usually because the topic is some synonym for some
obscure point discussed in the 14th paragraph...) It's not obvious how
to then fix the problem though - you almost need a "Topics discussed
in this article" box up the top.
Unlike a real encyclopaedia, we don't seem willing or able to have
incredibly short articles that say things like "Wreckage: temporary
name given to English pop group Ibex in 1970. See [[Ibex (group)]]".
You could never write "the perfect article" on a band which
technically existed for 1 month, and whose most interesting
characteristic is that Freddie Mercury broke it up shortly after
forming it. But nor is simply redirecting to another topic altogether
always a totally obvious thing for the reader to understand...
Steve