[Wikipedia-l] Obscuring some redirects in the search

[Jeroen Heijmans]

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