. While both sides made valid arguments (keep arguments noting that these do see use and thus can be considered useful, delete arguments noting that Wikipedia's software makes it such that at most readers following the broken link will be asked to make one further click to reach the same destination), deletion has a sizable advantage in terms of numerical support. signed, Rosguill talk 17:27, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
{{Old RfD list|Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2015 March 29#Genie (feral child|keep|Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018_September 14#Genie (feral child|keep}}
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound... this nomination consists of every remaining redirect with unclosed parenthesis, of which there are now only twelve. All of these typos are not plausible to intentionally make on their own. Because there's been cumulatively 1000+ or so of these redirect types deleted over the last few months, this nomination seeks to determine whether there's a threshold that makes these redirects acceptable, or if one even exists. Most of these redirects have come to exist through erroneous links, which are updateable. While it's good to have redirects from common misspellings lying around for ease of navigation on Wikipedia, the presence of implausible redirect errors sets unreasonable expectations and portrays the faulty notion to readers that "infinite typo variations are encouraged, regardless of likelihood", when this is not currently the case. For the most part, spelling variations are accepted in redirects; especially with words that are tricky to spell, having a set of titles with minor differences can be useful to capture likely, intentional errors. When it pertains to disambiguation, though, there will never be a time where errors in the act of disambiguation are expected, for any title. While someone might spell a title like Hampster with an intentional (but incorrect) "P", one can generally have 100% confidence that a title with a left parenthesis will contain a right parenthesis, and, as an extension, typing in a title that doesn't contain a right parenthesis will have a 0% likelihood of being redirected to the correct title, as it will never be correctly expected. The disambiguator is Wikipedia's "official insertion" onto the title based on other article names that co-exist here. The tagline's format can be safely assumed as error-free, or if there is an error in the disambiguation, that it will be corrected ASAP without hesitation. Being locked into keeping tabs on any and all errors within this "topic title guarantee" inherited from Wikipedia disambiguation precedent, just because of one (or twelve remaining) bad links on the internet, is just not worth for titles that are one punctuation mark away from the correctness that was already assumed beforehand. Utopes (talk / cont) 01:46, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
:Delete all. When typing in to the search bar, the search result will be autocompleted with the missing parentheses. As for websites that cannot handle parentheses, that is, as has been established quite clearly over the last few months, their problem, and not Wikipedia's-- they need to fix their formatting handling. 𝔏𝔲𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔫🌙🌙🌙 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔐𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔱 (talk) 04:12, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
- Keep all - Note that I !voted delete on the last batch you nominated. This batch I'm !voting keep for the simple reason that they are demonstrably useful to someone... in that these redirects are all getting use (noting again that this is unlike the last batch). They're WP:CHEAP, they're useful, they're harmless. Note that I expressly do NOT support the creation of more of these things, for all the reasons cited by nom, but I don't think we should deliberately go out of our way to break someone's workflow just because it makes our database tidier. If, at some point in the future, these stop getting regular use for an extended period of time, I'd be happy to see them gone. But for now, they get use, they're unambiguous, they should stay. (No offense to nom, by the way, I appreciate getting community input on where the limits are / should be) Fieari (talk) 07:08, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
- Keep all per Fieari. Deletion would inconvenience readers without brining any benefits to anybody. Thryduulf (talk) 10:49, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
- Delete all as unnecessary. One parenthesis missing does not justify these redirects when the search function automatically fills in the desired results for anyone searching for them. These are just pointless redirects. Trailblazer101 (talk) 16:49, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
- Keep all per Fieari and Thryduulf, and the previous discussions. {{no redirect|1=Genie (feral child}} has gone down in use since the prior discussions except that it got over 6,500 hits on March 29, more than some articles get in a year. It's clearly still useful; Wikipedia's mission is to provide information to its readers, not to break things and hope that an external website notices (they won't). Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:17, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
- Delete: WP:UNNATURAL typos. The search box fills in the parentheses for you, I doubt anyone is going to type an opening parenthesis, forget to close it, and then hit enter without selecting the correct option from search. As for other websites, that's their problem. StreetcarEnjoyer (talk) 18:50, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
- :These redirects are not typos for the benefit of people already on Wikipedia, but people navigating to Wikipedia from external sites. Many sites most prominently Reddit, have an issue where the trailing parenthesis is cut off in URLs without some HTML wizardry. The site "forces" users to make these "typos" when you just copy the link sometimes. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 17:31, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
- Keep all I think my past self would have (and did) support deleting these. But we come down to yet another delete these convention failing to uphold a challenge on its merits, and so it goes. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:21, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
- Delete per nom. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:00, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
- Delete all per nom and WP:RDAB due to the missing end parentheses. Also, delete per precedence set at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 October 27#Redirects with disambiguators missing ")" and Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 February 14#Conjunction (grammar and etc.. Steel1943 (talk) 14:04, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
- Keep all — the assertion in the description "Most of these redirects have come to exist through erroneous links, which are updateable." is vague and misleading: it hides the useful truth which is that "At least some of these links are NOT updateable.", for example in IRC chat logs (e.g. for "Address (geography"). Agreed with prior Keep all arguments that a small handful of such redirects are WP:CHEAP. The net-net here is that a small handful are providing more utility (fixing unchangeable slightly erroneous links to Wikipedia, for a smoother Wikipedia experience) than cost. That's also a reasonable standard to apply for future such exceptions (source of link is apparently unchangeable). The arguments for Delete all appear to mostly be forms of the "Perfect is the enemy of good" problem. Tantek (talk) 17:07, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
- :All links are updateable, through either direct editing, or replacement if locked. The notice that appears on every page saying "did you mean to close your parentheses" would not discourage readers from reaching their destination being just a click away, and encourages the phasing-out of any erroneous links. "Perfect is the enemy of good" does not seem to be accurate when we aren't dealing with an out-of-reach concept of totality; there's no 80-20 about it. This the entire set of titles that are out of alignment with redirect fundamentals, and the problem can be solved with just this RfD. The lack of these redirects will not prevent anyone beyond finding it gone a single time, and immediately finding a new solution in seconds, whether it comes from adding a parentheses to their search term or url, or adding it to the link itself if handy, or generating one's own link. Utopes (talk / cont) 06:43, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
- Delete all if you are going to rescue typos by redirection then why stop with close parenthese. Why not redirect E Mathematical Contant and Genie (ferral child) OrewaTel (talk) 02:44, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
- Delete all per nom and RDAB, and also per precedence of previous discussions. CycloneYoris talk! 02:38, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
- Delete all - per all above, also a) Aren't these only "getting used" because as people type in names, the auto-fill starts listing results and as they get to the end of the name, but before they type in the closing parathesis, the redirect without one populates to the bottom of the auto-fill box making it most obvious and easy to click on,(but at that point, the correct, full name is right there at the top of the results as well).
b) It doesn't seem anyone wants to see more of these types of redirects created, so wouldn't deleting help with that? (There are people who literally spend all their time looking for pages to create, and having redirects like this to obstensibly compensate for typos in page names will just encourage the creation of more.)
Their usage is a false positive, they don't really assist with anything, removing them will not hamper anyone's ability to search, and if we don't want these types of redirects, then we shouldn't be making a special exception to this group just because they exist. (jmho) - wolf 04:59, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
- Keep all based on the fact there are legitimate reasons why people might be visiting these redirects other than simply typos. For example, in Markdown, unescaped right parentheses are interpreted as the end of a URL, so often times when people link these Wikipedia pages in Reddit comments, people will be directed to these sorts of titles. In addition, of course redirects are cheap. --Habst (talk) 16:46, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
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{{resize|91%|Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.}}
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Hey man im josh (talk) 15:17, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
- Delete all These redirects are explicitly discouraged and would fall under WP:R3 if created today. There is precedent for deleting them, and keeping them would have WP:PANDORA issues. QuicoleJR (talk) 17:29, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
- delete all per all the other times those redirects with missing parentheses got deleted cogsan (nag me (stalk me 18:06, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
- Keep all. Redirects are WP:CHEAP, and these are all likely from external links on sites such as Reddit and are absolutely pointed at the correct targets. These also all appear to be popular enough to get regular use about 5 users a day or so. Genie especially is frequently posted and can get very high daily page views (e.g. 6k a few weeks ago). It does Wikipedia no good to delete it or to force them to make an additional click. Arguments to delete because no one is going to forget typing the closing parentheses or because of auto-fill should be ignored, as the use case for this is almost exclusively linking from external sites. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 19:07, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
::Here is an example of the formatting issues with Reddit's Markdown language for its posts that is the primary reason for these redirects existing in the first place: [https://www.reddit.com/r/bugs/comments/gn9qa5/no_way_to_link_to_urls_with_closing_parentheses/]. Very few people are using these links deliberately. They are being forced to, and we should've deliberately inconvenience readers because of minor stylistic issues. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 19:18, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
:::We shouldn't be responsible for creating redirects accounting for bugs in other platform's errors. A bug that has been fixed years ago, from the looks of it, being fixed well before the reddit post was made, as implied. People using old reddit are doing so knowing full well its limitations. So now there's zero surprise that a parenthesis could go missing at the end of a URL, as it's been long-since documented and understood, apparently. The solution is not "allow infinite redirects with botched-up disambiguation because old-reddit users might run into a broken link here and there, despite it being fixed for many years but refuse to upgrade to avoid it"; or, we can stop supporting "Foo (bar" titles due to the pollution it causes on our end, allowing implausible misnomers among redirects, splitting histories and causing messes and clutter that can be simply avoided. Utopes (talk / cont) 20:48, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
::::(Also in response to the reddit poster's query linked, I tried the second hyperlink on both old and new reddit and it seems to be working fine for me; I'm getting to Paris (surname) both ways.) Utopes (talk / cont) 20:59, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
:::::i hear the error (whatever it actually is) was fixed ages ago cogsan (nag me) (stalk me) 22:29, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
:::::For what it's worth, it does not work for me in Old Reddit either on PC or mobile, with or without RES. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 14:06, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
::::Reddit is an absolutely massive website with hundreds of millions of users, so even a small percentage of Old Reddit users represents a significant population. Old Reddit users aren't people who just forgot to upgrade or something, there are real downsides to New Reddit (mainly ads-related) that lead them to opt out. A bug being documented is not equal to the bug being understood and 100% of end users having the technical know-how to avoid it. While not a scientific survey of any sort, anecdotal open-source evidence [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/zvbm6q/what_percentage_of_users_use_old_reddit_vs_the/] seems to show that approximately 5% of Reddit users seem to use the older version.
::::No one is saying that we should enthusiastically encourage or go out of our way to create a duplicate redirect for each page with a parenthetical disambiguator. But for ones that did get created, someone found them WP:USEFUL and where we have proof that they do get use as is the case here, which are two reasons explicitly listed as the #4 and 5reasons not to delete redirects at WP:R#KEEP, where's the harm in keep them? Far more editor time has been wasted trying to delete these than has ever been spent on creating them in the first place. These titles are not misnomers, with only a clear typographical difference and the page histories are usually extremely short. Many of these have also stood a decade or more without any serious issues. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 14:06, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
- Delete all These are pointless, as people are unlikely to be typing in the full disambiguation anyway. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 09:37, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
- {{strike|{{small|Keep all – Many chat programs and similar, when making links clickable, automatically omit a trailing parenthesis, considering it part of the surrounding punctuation, so redirects repairing this are always useful. Gawaon (talk) 09:50, 26 April 2024 (UTC)}}}} Vote changed to delete all, since, as {{u|Shhhnotsoloud}} pointed out (below), our software already handles this automatically, so there is no need for creating or maintaining such links manually. Gawaon (talk) 22:07, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
- Keep all per WP:CHEAP. Would I have created these redirects myself? Possibly not. Do they do any harm to the encylopedia and/or readers by existing? Also no - as far as I can see, they are practically harmless. I'm not seeing how these types of redirect are problematic enough to warrant deletion, and deletion may well do harm by breaking external links (WP:R#K4). To answer Utopes' point above, we're not responsible for creating these sorts of redirects for every title that exists, but I don't see how deleting the ones that do get created benefits the project. All the best, —a smart kitten[meow] 13:11, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
- Delete all. These are exemplar cases of WP:RDAB. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 17:48, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
- :Out of curiosity are any of the other examples at RDAB the result of programming error? -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 15:16, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
- ::{{re|Patar knight}} I don't know, but arguably Wikipedia isn't here to provide redirects to get around everyone else's bugs. (And anyway ... in old Reddit a redirect that misses the trailing parenthesis gets you to, for example, Harris (surname. The first thing at that page and many others is "Did you mean: Harris (surname)?". We simply don't need these redirects, and already have a useful essay which lists the kind of redirects we don't need. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 21:04, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
:Delete per Steel1943 (edit: maybe we should make a new CSD for this) JoshuaAuble (talk) (edits) 22:59, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
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{{resize|91%|Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.}}
Relisting comment: Final relist, noting the nomination has been open for over five weeks, as consensus has yet to precipitate. Keep or delete?
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 20:45, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
:Delete all per Lunamann and Steel1943. mwwv(converse) 14:37, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
:Delete all per WP:RDAB and Steel1943. These are not only unhelpful as a link but also unnecessary as a search term as the valid title exists and will autocomplete anyways. Gonnym (talk) 16:34, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
- Keep all; deletion would be actively harmful by forcing thousands a month to make one more click, with only the most trivial gain of cleanliness on our part. I am unsure why half the comments in favour of deletion appear to presuppose the falsehood that readers are accessing these redirects by searching these titles. All it takes is 10 seconds to check the rationale for these redirects' existence, which is incidentally why the PANDORA argument of mindless copying of redirect formats has never ever panned out in reality – the most trivial investigation on the part of the mythical editor-in-search-of-redirects-to-create would demonstrate why creation of these is unnecessary. J947 ‡ edits 05:15, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
- Delete all per nom, & errors on a user's part can be easily fixed by just adding a closing parenthesis in the next edit. {{small|(I myself have made this very mistake.)}} The Sharpest Lives (the deadliest to lead) 18:31, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
- Delete all per Shhhnotsoloud. The redirects are textbook RDAB and if anyone gets to them from another site they can click the handy "Did you mean x" link. We don't need to accomodate the bad code others have written more than we already do. Nickps (talk) 23:51, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
- Delete all: per nom. These are all unnecessary as autocomplete will suggest the correct search term. TarnishedPathtalk 01:49, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
- Keep. Harmless at worst, useful at best. -- Tavix (talk) 02:32, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
:The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review).