Wikipedia talk:Deletion by redirection

Thanks

Thank you for writing this essay. I was involved with a rather long and bitter dispute involving about a dozen people trying to pull a "redirect by deletion". Had I known this essay existed it would have gone a long way to resolving things more easily. In the end I was able to save the article, but only with herculean effort and no support in the rules re: deletion by redirection. This essay probably should be given higher status and visibility (even though it's a somewhat rare situation). -- Green Cardamom (talk) 21:05, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Past related discussions

• Redirection as a deletion (29 June 2007)
• Avoidance of AfD through redirect, proposed for efficiency. (2 January 2008)
  • At the time of this discussion, there were five policy alternatives to deletion, and redirection was not one of them. See Wikipedia:Deletion policy as of 18:24, 21 December 2007
• Suggested change to "Alternatives to deletion" section (1 December 2009)
  • At the time of this discussion, there were six policy alternatives to deletion, incubation being the newest option. See Wikipedia:Deletion policy as of 17:56, 1 December 2009
  • Result: Redirection added as the seventh alternative to deletion. See Wikipedia:Deletion policy revision of 18:16, 4 December 2009 and Wikipedia:Deletion policy revision of 18:18, 4 December 2009

Text of the new Redirection section:

Sometimes an unsuitable article may have a title that would make a useful redirect. In these cases, deletion is not required; any user can boldly redirect to another article. If the change is disputed, an attempt should be made on the talk page to reach a consensus before restoring the redirect.

—which remains the verbatim policy text for Redirection to date, the only addition being the policy shortcut WP:ATD-R. Wbm1058 (talk) 19:08, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

At some point since the above post a new guideline was added which can be found at WP:BLAR. -- GreenC 18:16, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Such is the level of instruction creep that I was totally unaware that this had been added on 27–28 December 2012, and am just learning of that now. Sorry, I guess this is an admission that I have yet to read the entire rule-book. I did not know until now that this common practice was known as blank-and-redirect. I've always thought it was known as deletion by redirection. I suppose the preferred name depends on your POV.

Wikipedia talk:Redirect/Archive 2012 § Notification of blanking+redirect has the discussion that led to that. WP:BLA indeed.

The above links are all in the Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy archives. For some reason, it didn't occur to me to search the Wikipedia talk:Redirect archives:

• Wikipedia talk:Redirect/Archive 2009 § Clarification needed
• Wikipedia talk:Redirect/Archive 2012 § Seeking clarification on when redirects are acceptable for existing articles

These are the two discussions which led to the policy from the redirect side of the house. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:16, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

It's the first time I've heard "blank-and-redirect" also, though I prefer "delete by redirect" which is easier and clearer to remember. One thing I don't understand is the BLAR guideline says to resolve disputes via AfD while the policy WP:ATD-R says to use talk pages (but then confusedly links to the guideline). I once tried to change the policy to say to resolve disputes via AfD, but was reprimanded that there was consensus not to use AfD for that purposes. So there is a contradiction between the policy and guideline. However I agree 100% with the guidelines use of AfD to resolve deletion disputes. -- GreenC 22:06, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Misdirection in this essay

I find my way to this essay upon encountering what I perceive to be too-aggressive attempts to effectively delete some articles by redirecting them, seeing objection, and then opening AFDs. This is for substantial articles, with extensive content and sourcing, for which merely redirecting is in no way appropriate. At most, if others agree that notability or other concerns mean the targeted article should not continue to stand, then the article should be merged to an existing list-article of things of its type. So, no AFD should be opened; any discussion should be part of a wp:MERGE proposal.

I suppose it is sometimes appropriate for a "disputed redirect" to be addressed at wp:AFD, but actually I am not sure. I believe it is wrong for this essay to encourage editors to open AFDs when a MERGE proposal is appropriate instead. --Doncram (talk,contribs) 20:28, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

The policy is at WP:ATD-R: editors can seek consensus for redirecting either on the talk page (as a merge proposal or an informal discussion) or at AfD. Both are allowed. I think consensus at AfD is perceived, rightly or not, as ranking higher than consensus in merge discussions, and some editors do indeed seem to give talk page discussions a pass and go straight for AfD. – Uanfala (talk) 12:47, 12 February 2023 (UTC)