User:Petr Matas/Proposal to allow some double redirects

The problem

Consider the following example. Wikipedia does not have an article on Procol Harum's member Mick Grabham yet. Mick Grabham is therefore a redirect to Procol Harum. Because Mick Grabham could become a normal article in the future, it is tagged as a redirect with possibilities. This means that links to Mick Grabham should not be retargeted to Procol Harum. However, the wrong capitalisation Mick grabham is not a redirect to Mick Grabham, but to Procol Harum, because double redirects are currently discouraged. If Mick Grabham becomes an article, Mick grabham will continue to target Procol Harum, which will be incorrect.

Proposed solution

1. Allow existence of double redirects X → Y → Z, where Y is a redirect with possibilities,
2. Change the bots to not fix such double redirects, and
3. Increase $wgMaxRedirects to at least 2 to make double redirects transparent to the reader.

Implementation laboriousness

• ad 1. Trivial (guideline update)
• ad 2. Moderate; at least one bot does this already
• ad 3. Trivial

Advantages

• Infinite redirection loops are not a problem, because the redirection chain traversal is always stopped after at most n hops (n = $wgMaxRedirects).
• A side effect of transparent double redirects: After a page move, prompt manual fixing of the resulting double redirects will not be necessary anymore, as the bots fixing them in a few hours or days will suffice. If the page move is reverted meanwhile, there will be no redirect updates whatsoever.

Disadvantages

• Slightly more complicated site structure

See also

• Wikipedia talk:Double redirects#Some double redirects are good or MDRAG Redux
• Wikipedia talk:Double redirects#Proposal to increase $wgMaxRedirects

Alternative solutions

• Add to each redirect with possibilities a notice for editors saying "if you change this to an article, you should retarget appropriate redirects to here." ^{[Source of inspiration]} However, this is complicated and error-prone.
• Add to each redirect X, which should point to a redirect with possibilities Y, a tag, which states that X should be retargetted to Y if Y becomes an article. The retargetting can be done by bots, however each redirect like X (more of them can be created in the future) has to be tagged, not only the redirects with possibilities like Y.