[Wikipedia-l] Obscuring some redirects in the search

[tarquin]

Brion VIBBER wrote:

> tarquin wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
>
> Also there are links from external sites and personal bookmarks. Maybe 
> nothing links Zimbabwe/History, but there's at least one link to 
> Zimbabwe/Geography at this page:
>   http://www.geometry.net/basic_z/zimbabwe_geography.php
>
> How would it help our project if people follow links to what they are 
> told are articles only to find "Describe the text of the new page here."?
>
> Do not delete redirects just because you find them un-aesthetic.
>
That is a fair point which I'd forgotten about.
But other sites do not feel compelled to maintain old links.

I have suggested before that instead of just "Describe the text of the 
new page here.", we have the system run a page-title search and say:

"This page does not exist in wikipedia. Pages that match your requested 
title include: [[History of Zimbabwe]], .... etc"

then again, we could just leave redirects, it's easier :-)