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Shortcut: WP:CNRP

This proposal aims to settle the long debate about cross-namespace redirects (CNRs) by abolishing the need for cross-namespace redirects.

Solution

The proposed solution is to eliminate the need for cross-namespace redirects.

Implementation

• Create separate namespaces for the prominent shortcuts (e.g. WP:, CAT:). There would be a separate search filter named "Shortcuts" that would toggle searching in these namespaces.
• Modify the default search filter for logged-in users to include the Wikipedia:, Category:, Template:, Portal:, Help: and the newly created "Shortcut" namespaces. These settings could be changed anytime at Special:Preferences.
  • The default search filter for users searching Wikipedia anonymously would stay as article namespace-only.
  • Logged-in users who have the default (main namespace only) settings at the time of the implementation of this change would have their search filters changed to the new default value, and notified once at the "login successful" page after their first login with "Please review your search preferences at Special:Preferences/Search".
  • Logged-in editors who don't have the default settings would not be affected by this change.
• Modify the search mechanism from the current "check whether [text] exists, if not then search [text]" to: "check whether [text] exists, if not (and "search in Wikipedia:" is on) then check whether Wikipedia:[text] exists, if not (and "search in Category:" is on) then check whether Category:[text] exists, ...¹, if not then search". This way by typing "articles for deletion", the editor would arrive at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion without effort.
• Once all above steps are completed, delete all cross-namespace redirects,² since we no longer need them. The process of deleting these redirects would be as follows:
  1. If it contains useful edit history,³ the page history should be merged into the target page.
  2. If the redirect has incoming links, it should be bypassed in favor of the actual target,⁴ preferably by an automated bot.
  3. If the cross-namespace redirect has no incoming links, and has no useful page history, it could be speedied: CSD#R2 would be expanded to include "Cross-namespace redirects from the main article space which have no incoming links, and have no useful page history".²

Advantages

• Anonymous readers and those who deliberately filtered out non-encyclopedic content would not get pages about the encyclopedia-making process as search results. Filters would work properly. (WP:ASR and WP:ENC)
• Editors would be able to reach for example "articles for deletion" simply by typing it in the search bar. (usability issue)
• Mirrors would not have to worry about broken links appearing on their pages due to CNRs.

Possible disadvantages

• Having a different default search filter for anons and for logged-in users might be confusing to some.
  • The idea behind this change is that the majority of anons⁵ are not interested in the encyclopedia-making process, whereas the majority of the logged-in users are. This way the default settings for the search filters would reflect the preferred options of the majority. Those logged-in users who want to search only the main (article) namespace, would have the option to filter out the non-mainspace results at their preferences page.

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 22 August 2007, at 14:13.

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