Here is an idea that I've had in mind for a while, and expressed parts of before, but never so completely. It is now an official feature request: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=594421&grou... I copy here the text of that request (slightly recontextualised):

There are several redirects to nonexistent pages, and these are worse than useless. If [[A]] redirects to [[B]], [[B]] doesn't exist, and [[C]] has a link to [[A]], then it appears that an article has been written, causing readers to waste their time following the link and causing writers to pass up the chance to write a new article. Furthermore, [[A]] doesn't appear on the Mostwanted list.

However, there is some sense in these redirects. If there are several possible names for an article, or even if there is only one name that best fits our conventions but other possibilities that are well known to be common mistakes, or common variations that might appear in the text of an article, then it's nice if the redirect from [[A]] to [[B]] is there, even if [[B]] isn't written, in order to anticipate [[B]]'s arrival. Unfortunately, this really doesn't work in light of the previous paragraph.

Here is how we fix that problem, and make redirects to nonexistent pages harmless (or better). If as before, [[A]] redirects to [[B]], [[B]] doesn't exist, and [[C]] links to [[A]], then this link shall be rendered in [[C]] using the style for nonexistent pages. Furthermore, the URL for that link shan't have &noredirect in it, so that people that click on the link will be editing [[B]], which is probably what they want. However, since this may be surprising, there shall be a big notice warning people that this is happening, along with a link to the &noredirect URL, so that they can edit [[A]] itself if they think that the redirect is wrong. (This big notice could be along the lines of the big notice warning people when they're editing an old version of an article.)

As for the Mostwanted list, we will get an additional bonus feature. If [[A]] redirects to [[B]] and [[B]] doesn't exist, then any link to [[A]] *or* [[B]] shall be added to the Mostwanted count for [[B]]. [[A]] itself still won't show up on Mostwanted. This is what makes the idea not only a convenience but actually a positive good. If [[A]] and [[B]] are both names for the same thing, then they *should* combine in Mostwanted, to get a more accurate idea of what articles are really most wanted.

Of course, if you make [[A]] redirect to [[B]], then it's best to write [[B]] as well, but sometimes people don't have the time or the knowledge for it at the moment.

I'll give you an example from real life. While I was disambiguating [[Corn]] a while back, I found myself going through a lot of CIA pages on various countries' economies, and I noticed that there were at least 3 versions of [[Soybean]] (that plus [[Soy]] and [[Soya]]), none of which existed. Now, I could have changed these all to have the same name, but I didn't want to start a search through articles for "soy" when I was already busy with "corn". Also, they're all fairly common names, and they *should* be redirects in the end. So I put them all (plus [[Soya bean]] just in case) on my watchlist. By and by, Vicki (IIRC) created one of the articles (writing what I never could have), and then I made the rest redirects. But it would have been easier if I could have made the redirects right away and been done with it. Furthermore, the article might well have been written sooner, since Vicki only wrote it because she found it on Mostwanted. It should have been one of the top 10 most wanted articles, but because the wants were distributed among several names, even the top version was down the list a bit.

-- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia-l@math.ucr.edu