robchur wrote:

...of course, it would make even more sense if MediaWiki followed the redirect
when saving the categorisation, and did a silent replacement. ;-)

The solution I suggested in #3311 would also help.

• Bug 13241 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

As an aside, the following css will work
#catlinks a.mw-redirect {color: green}

Thinking about this, well making redirects green would be kind of cool, it'd only make sense if all redirects were green, and that'd be a pretty major UI change.

Maybe instead of doing that, we should make redirect categories be italic in the list at the bottom of the page. This would fit in with our redirects in system-generated lists (Category pages, prefixindex, and special:allpages) are italic. Thoughts?

rd232 wrote:

Italics sounds good to me. It's easy to do. With the new rapid deployment cycle, can we have this done, please?

This is a major problem on the Commons. For years. With millions of files the Commons needs all the help it can get in categorization, especially from the initial uploaders.

Files are constantly being categorized in redirected categories. Because of this people often categorize poorly, and use the most general category instead of looking deeper for subcategories.

Those people doing this have no easy way of knowing that they have done this. The redirected category link at the bottom of the file page looks blue, the same as regular category links.

If people knew they were categorizing incorrectly they would search for a more apt category. This would help the Commons tremendously because most categorization is done at the initial upload.

As the Commons gets bigger and bigger it necessarily uses more and more category redirects. We are not trying to get rid of redirects. On the contrary, we need a lot more. Redirects are essential. See "Don't delete redirects" on meta:
*[[meta:Don't delete redirects]]
*http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_delete_redirects

Redirects make categorization easier. When people use search or HotCat they see redirects too, and thus are able to categorize even if their English comprehension is not at the level of a native speaker. But people need to know when they are done that they are using a redirect, and may want to look further for a better category, subcategory, etc..

As for HotCat it shows redirects along with the actual category names. This is a good thing. But HotCat automatically resolves the redirect to the correct category name upon saving the category addition. See [[commons:Help:Gadget-HotCat]]. But that does not help most people in the initial categorization since most people doing uploads do not use HotCat.

There are bots that help with some automatic moving of files from redirected categories to the correct category. But that does not help get deeper, better initial categorization into better categories, subcategories, etc..

By the way, this request does not depend on bug 3311 for automatic category redirects. That is a separate issue. Automatic category redirects are not necessarily a good thing in this case. Searching for more apt categories and subcategories for files is what is important. Automatic category redirects do not necessarily go to the best category for a file on the Commons.

(In reply to comment #6)

Italics sounds good to me. It's easy to do. With the new rapid deployment
cycle, can we have this done, please?

Note, an admin can do this right now on commons if they want. Add the following to MediaWiki:Common.css:

.catlinks a.mw-redirect { font-style: italic }

Of course, this only works if the category has a #Redirect[[foo]] on it. The commons category redirect template won't work since its not a real redirect.

gerrit change 40781 (That just puts the css i mentioned in comment 8 in MW's default css files)

russblau wrote:

(In reply to comment #8)

(In reply to comment #6)

Italics sounds good to me. It's easy to do. With the new rapid deployment
cycle, can we have this done, please?

Note, an admin can do this right now on commons if they want. Add the
following
to MediaWiki:Common.css:

.catlinks a.mw-redirect { font-style: italic }

Of course, this only works if the category has a #Redirect[[foo]] on it. The
commons category redirect template won't work since its not a real redirect.

All category redirects are soft redirects, so this change will accomplish exactly nothing.

(In reply to comment #10)

All category redirects are soft redirects, so this change will accomplish
exactly nothing.

This change will effect all MediaWiki installations, not just the Wikimedia Commons. The Commons method of using soft redirects
[[(commons:Template:Category redirect]] is opposed by many people, and may possibly change to hard redirects: #REDIRECT

See: [[User_talk:RussBot#Hard_redirects_of_category_names]]

Russbot periodically moves files from redirected categories on the Commons to the correct category. See:
[[commons:User:RussBot]]

R'n'B writes: "If there were a consensus to use hard redirects, the bot could handle that (with some work to adapt it)." R'n'B is talking about RussBot. That page says "This bot will periodically clean out
[[commons:Category:Non-empty category redirects]] by moving the contents of redirected categories into their corresponding new categories."

There really is no remaining good reason to use soft redirects on the Commons. They only confuse people. Soft redirects do not automatically transfer people to the correct link. This is confusing to people using the Commons, especially to non-native speakers of English, or those who speak no English at all.

Italics for redirected category links helps facilitate the use of hard redirects which automatically transfer one to the correct link. If hard redirects are used the italics will help people realize they are trying to categorize files into nonexistent redirect categories. See my previous comment for why this is important.

Oops. I wish we could convert Bugzilla commenting method to using editable MediaWiki pages. Corrected links:
[[commons:Template:Category redirect]]
[[commons:User_talk:RussBot#Hard_redirects_of_category_names]]

By the way, there is further discussion about redirects here:
[[commons:Commons:Administrators' noticeboard]]

Note, even with hard redirects, you can still add explanatory templates underneath if you so desire.

[[commons:Commons:Administrators' noticeboard]]

Yeah linking is borked (in a scary way when it comes to apostrophes). for url: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators'_Noticeboard#Why_aren.27t_we_using_simple_category_redirects.3F_.23REDIRECT

Discussion continues here:
[[commons:Commons:Requests for comment/Hard category redirects REDIRECT]]

As I figure it out I have been adding info on how to add links in Bugzilla threads here:
[[Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests]] - currently the relevant section is named "Links from within Bugzilla".

Merged by Nikerabbit.