Wikipedia:Soft redirect

This page documents an English Wikipedia editing guideline.

Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page.

Shortcuts

A soft redirect is a replacement for the usual "hard" redirect. They differ in that they leave the reader on the redirect page, requiring them to click through to the redirected link as opposed to automatically taking them there. Unlike normal redirects, a soft redirect does not use special code or functionality of the wiki software. All they consist of is a notification to users, showing the destination to another site to obtain the information they were seeking.

Soft redirects are intended mostly for external use, where hard redirects will not function. For internal use in general, hard redirects should be used instead. Soft redirects are used when the destination is:

a Wikimedia sister project, see § Soft redirects from Wikipedia to a sister project; for example Wikipedia:Gather is a soft redirect to mw:Gather. Normal redirects would be undesirable in these circumstances, and hard interwiki redirects are disabled per these reasons that they could not be easily edited without hand-crafting the correct URL, since clicking on a link to the redirect page would take you straight to the redirect's target and there would be no "Redirected from foo" message to click, so it would be difficult to return to the redirect page itself; there would also be infinite-loop security considerations.
a special page, where the system would automatically "soften" attempted hard redirects, such as Wikipedia:List of tags which redirects to Special:Tags;
on a non-English language editions of Wikipedia. These soft redirects should be avoided because they are generally unhelpful to English-language readers. Instead, editors should link to the alternate language Wikipedia directly with one of various forms of interlanguage links;
in some cases, an internal target, such as WP:AN/K, a cross-namespace redirect;
in rare cases, another website, such as meatball: targets.

Category soft redirects

In English Wikipedia, categories with the {{Category redirect}} template are also called "soft redirects", due to their similarity to interwiki soft redirects. See Wikipedia:Categorization § Redirecting categories for the policy. Do not put redirect categorization templates on soft redirects ({{R category with possibilities}} and {{Wikidata redirect}} are exceptions).

Templates

Shortcut

WP:SOFTTEMPWP:SOFTTEMP

The following templates are used to create a soft redirect link:

{{Soft redirect}} for all soft redirects except those below:
{{Category redirect}} for category redirects
{{Portal soft redirect}} for soft redirects from the portal namespace
{{Wikibooks redirect}} for Wikibooks redirects
{{Wikinews redirect}} for Wikinews redirects
{{Wikiquote redirect}} for Wikiquote redirects
{{Wikisource redirect}} for Wikisource redirects
{{Wikispecies redirect}} for Wikispecies redirects
{{Wiktionary redirect}} for Wiktionary redirects
{{Wikivoyage redirect}} for Wikivoyage redirects
{{Commons redirect}} for Wikimedia Commons redirects
{{Soft redirect with Wikidata item}}, a redirect category for Wikidata redirects

Categories to add for cross-namespace soft redirects

Soft redirects to targets outside Wikipedia (e.g. to meta.wikimedia.org) do not require any categories to be added manually. For soft redirects that go from Wikipedia's mainspace to targets outside Wikipedia or to targets in any other Wikipedia namespace, add Category:Unprintworthy redirects to mark them unsuitable for any printable version of Wikipedia.

For any soft redirect that goes from one Wikipedia namespace to another Wikipedia namespace, add the relevant category placing it within the appropriate sub-category of Category:Cross-namespace redirects, i.e. describing it by the target namespace:

Category:Redirects to user namespace, for a soft redirect to a user space page (but not to a user talk page). Note: by its name, template {{R to user namespace}} would seem appropriate to use, and indeed that template would apply the "Redirects to user namespace" category, but that template's instructions indicate it should not be used for soft redirects (at least in part because it would display inappropriate/confusing information for editors/readers following the soft redirect), so manually apply the category, instead.
Category:Redirects to talk pages, for a soft redirect to any talk page, whether the talk page is that of a user, or of a category, or of a template, or of a mainspace article, etc. Note: Likewise, {{R to talk page}} would seem appropriate, but that template is also not be used on soft redirects.
Category:Redirects to category space
Category:Redirects to help namespace
Category:Redirects to the main namespace
Category:Redirects to portal namespace
Category:Redirects to project namespace
Category:Redirects to template namespace

Administration

For purposes of administration, particularly deletion, soft redirects are subject to the same administration processes as regular redirects, and should not be handled by processes that are intended for articles. For deletion, this means that soft redirects are subject to the R2–R4 and G8 speedy deletion criteria and are not subject to the A1–A10 speedy deletion criteria. For more deliberative deletion, they should be handled through RfD and are not subject to proposed deletion and AfD. In AfD discussions, soft redirects are considered an alternative to deletion.

Category soft redirects

Templates

Categories to add for cross-namespace soft redirects

Administration

See also