Guideline:Soft redirect

A soft redirect is a replacement for the usual "hard" redirect and is used where the destination is another wiki or website. They may also be used for local targets in some cases (e.g. BTW:AN/K). Soft redirects 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.

The technique is particularly likely to be used when redirecting users across. 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.

Another situation where soft redirects are used is when the intended target is a special page, and the system automatically "softens" attempted hard redirects to special pages. For example, BattleTechWiki:List of tags redirects to Special:Tags.

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.

Category soft redirects[edit]

In English BattleTechWiki, categories with the {{Category redirect}} template are also called "soft redirects", due to their similarity to interwiki soft redirects.

Do not put redirect categorization templates on soft redirects ({{R category with possibilities}} is an exception).

Templates[edit]

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

Categories to add for cross-namespace soft redirects[edit]

Soft redirects to targets outside BattleTechWiki (e.g. to meta.wikimedia.org) do not require any categories to be added manually.

For soft redirects that go from BattleTechWiki's mainspace to targets outside BattleTechWiki or to targets in any other BattleTechWiki namespace, add Category:Unprintworthy redirects to mark them unsuitable for any printable version of BattleTechWiki.

For any soft redirect that goes from one BattleTechWiki namespace to another BattleTechWiki 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:

Deletion[edit]

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 speedy deletion criteria, and are not subject to speedy deletion criteria. For more deliberative deletion, soft redirects should be handled through BTW staff, and are not subject to BattleTechWiki:Proposed deletion.

See also[edit]