Category talk:Redirects to sections

Purpose?

Why do we care if a redirect goes to a section or an article? NE Ent 15:05, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response, NE Ent – redirects that go to sections help with searches, and a section redirect may become a full article, project page, etc., at some point if the subject target page gets too long. Contributors sometimes expand sections of pages into their own notable subject pages and use redirect-to-section page titles to do so when appropriate. Joys! – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 06:46, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

I was unclear; obviously redirecting a topic to a section is frequent useful (e.g. Entmoot) but value does classifying a redirect as to a section (or not) add? NE Ent 16:50, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

This question does arise from time-to-time and has been answered in a general way at WP:RCAT, an editing guideline that includes the need for maintenance of redirects. Specifically, redirects to sections are categorized to help those contributors who look for potential article or project-page candidates. Other editors are concerned with the difference between Redirects to sections and Redirects to embedded anchors, a distinction lost on some good-faith-minded editors. A closer focus is sometimes desired by editors, such as the sorts generated by {{R ME to section}} and {{R comics to section}}. Still more helpful detail may be found at MOS:LINK2SECT and {{R to section}}. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 19:21, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Maintenance?

@Paine Ellsworth: Hi. Long time, no see. I've been tagging sectional redirects with {{R to section}}, and as I go, I've been wondering more and more about what uses this category is put to. What maintenance is done to these redirects through this category? Are there bots run on them? (To do what?) And, what other uses is this list put to?     — The Transhumanist    14:08, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Follow-up question...

The template tag itself, or the "What links here" from the template page, could be used to effect. Are they? For what purposes? I'm just trying to understand how this component of the WP world fits in, and what its benefits are.     — The Transhumanist    14:17, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi The Transhumanist – your questions were partly answered in the previous section. The section category and subcategories are some of the oldest and largest of the redirect categories, so though I do not get involved much with bots, I don't see how such a large population could be maintained manually. I do think it's good to know where section and anchor redirects go for search purposes, external and internal, and there may even be applications for the CD/DVD versions of the encyclopedia. Sections are as you know more focused than article titles. Wish I could tell you more as my work has been moreso to update and maintain the rcats and cats themselves, as well as to bring the indexes into the modern era. :>) There are a few categories I monitor and manually maintain, but I leave these big cats to bots. Thank you for asking!  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  17:41, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the leads, and your prompt reply. Always a pleasure,     — The Transhumanist    05:35, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

You're very welcome, and likewise!  Paine  07:19, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Are {{R to section}} and {{R to anchor}} intended to be mutually exclusive?

@Paine Ellsworth and DarkGlow: The second bullet in the rubric for {{R to anchor}} implies that {{R to section}} and {{R to anchor}} are intended to be mutually exclusive – is that the intent? If so, then to prevent good faith edits such at this:

1. the rubric for {{R to section}} needs to be clear in what sense the word "section" is being used (as the Wikipedia term Section rather than normal English), and to state the intended mutual exclusivity
2. there should be a bot to detect and revert such edits

If they are not intended to be mutually exclusive, what is the intention of the two Rcats? Why not merge them?

Jim Craigie (talk) 07:01, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

To editor Jim Craigie: hi, and thanks for asking! The two rcats are mutually exclusive, yes, as explained in their documentation (which I've recently clarified). {{R to section}} is used for section headers only. While section headers are a type of "anchor", it was decided many years ago that the section rcat should be used to track that type of redirect. Anchors can be found anywhere on a page, and I think the documentation at {{R to anchor}} explains it best. The only confusing part for me at first was when a section header had been changed to something else, and the old section header had been anchored, as in:

• =={{anchor|Old header}} New header==

Simply put, if the redirect targets the old header, then the anchor rcat should be used. And if the redirect targets the New header, then the section rcat should be used. Easy as pi !>) P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 11:14, 9 November 2020 (UTC)