User talk:AnthonyBot

Regarding these TODO notes:

• Fix linked redirects (e.g. [[Page A]] → [[Page C|Page A]] (TODO)
• Prune orphaned redirects (TODO)

This is just my opinion, but I think in some cases it's preferable to link to a redirect rather than linking directly to the actual page. For example, consider Nakazawa, which redirects to his entry on Minor Characters (Madoka Magica). If for whatever reason it's decided he has become important enough to have his own page, the redirect can just be promoted to a proper page, and all the links still work; whereas if everything had linked to him via [[Minor Characters (Madoka Magica)|Nakazawa]], the links would now all be broken and need to be updated. I think this case only comes up when the redirect is to a specific section of a page though, so automatically updating links to redirects that don't specify a specific target section is probably fine.

As for orphaned redirects, I believe they serve a useful purpose – to provide people typing into the search box with a reasonable guess as to what they meant. I have intentionally added many redirects specifically for this purpose. Not all orphaned redirects are useful for this purpose, but my point is that they need to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

~ Celtic Minstrel (talk) 16:17, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! Very appreciated.

• I fully agree; I think it makes sense to link to a redirect in some cases. The script is currently on a per-page and per-link basis (I have to manually accept each rewrite, though I haven't implemented the editing part). The intention is to try to fix something like Main Page where there are few links that are currently linking to a redirect.
• For orphaned redirects, there is a list in User:AnthonyBot/Redirects, but it was last updated in er, 2011. I haven't gave this one too much of a thought (it just used to be a thing back when the bot was last active in 2011), but a quick check run suggests there's actually no orphaned redirect at the moment, so we might not need this one after all.

- 0x99 (talk) 17:02, 3 August 2025 (UTC)