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ill when content exists (better) on enwp?

Since the English content (albeit not its own article but a section of another with a redirect) is far more sourced and detailed, is this a proper application of this template? I've never seen it used like this. Thanks! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 06:20, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

It's a bit unusual, but the DE article has its merits. This kind of usage becomes problematic when the EN redirect at The Terror of War, flagged as "with possibilities", gets extended into an article. Also, I don't know how Cewbot, which converts {{ill}} links to local links, deals with these constructs. On balance, I would not use {{ill}} that way. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:47, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

It's more that it's pointless than improper; The Terror of War is a redirect, so Fabrickator did not have to jump through so many hoops because the template will still show the ill. Primefac (talk) 08:32, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing! To review, there is a local link, but it is a redirect to a section of an article. There is also an interlanguage link to a "full" article. If only the local link going to the article section is provided, the user is not made aware of the existence of interlanguage link. So this makes the user aware of both the local and non-local links, which is what I would consider the right thing to do. Fabrickator (talk) 09:09, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Primefac's remark about hoops refers to {{ill|Nick Ut#The Terror of War|lt=The Terror of War|display=yes|de|The Terror of War}} where
{{ill|The Terror of War|de}} -> The Terror of War does the same thing. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:44, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

You say the template will still show the "ill" since it's a redirect (and presumably the "ill" will not get deleted altogether) .... perhaps you are right, though if that's not right, then this effort get wiped. Hopefully it's also smart enough that there would not be a need for display= or preserve=. In either case, the explicit use of the section name alerts editors that the local link is a redirect to a section rather than being the name of an existing article, thereby saving some head-scratching. Fabrickator (talk) 16:04, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Your "hoops" bypass the redirect The Terror of War, Fabrickator. Is there a reason for this? What I mean is, if the redirect is expanded into a proper article, your ill application would not see this (the ill would remain even though we now have an English-language article, normally something that would trigger Cewbot to replace the ill with a regular link). Unless you have such a reason, wouldn't it be better to supplement Primefac's removal of your hoops with |preserve=yes? At least, that's the only practical difference as I can see. Assuming you can argue why this particular ill would merit preservation, of course. Thanks CapnZapp (talk) 19:18, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

I actually can't follow you. In other words, I don't know whether you've decided that there's some justification for changing what I did. You did mention adding |preserve=yes but it already has |display=yes, so the '"preserve" parameter would be redundant.

We can't generally handle all possible future changes. That change could be adding an article that makes a section link irrelevant, or it could be the deletion of an article, resulting in the section link once again becoming relevant. Fabrickator (talk) 23:00, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Looking this over again, I see I was being a little "dense" about your suggestion to add |preserve=yes to Primerfac's suggestion. So the proposed change from what I had done was to drop the piped link (along with the |lt=The Terror of War).

IMO, if you do that, you would want to include a comment to document the fact that the target was a redirect (and what it redirected to). I suppose that if you haven't previously run into this situation, it might be perceived as a head-scratcher, but my contention is that having this fact explicitly indicated, specifically including the piped link, will actually facilitate its maintainability. Fabrickator (talk) 03:32, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

You have edited the page after Primefac's edit so I'll assume you aren't contesting it. So the case is closed: we agree there is little value in bypassing redirects for ills, and in fact, that going through a redirect is valuable, since 1) it means the reader isn't denied learning about a full article should one be developed and 2) it carries the potential for the ill to disappear once a full article at the redirect title is created (as long as we avoid the use of |display= or |preserve=) CapnZapp (talk) 09:13, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

No, that's an erroneous inference. Fabrickator (talk) 15:34, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Either the case is closed or it isn't. Your personal opinions only matter if you want us to adopt them - I'm interested in the consensus, nothing else. Feel free to replace "we agree" above with "you accept the consensus thinks" if that helps. Thanks CapnZapp (talk) 08:57, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

This edge case results in anomalous behavior: Article foo has a link to bar, which doesn't exist but is available on another language wiki, so you create an {{ill}} for it. Sometime later, it's decided to create bar as a redirect which happens to go to foo ... to make it more interesting, have it redirect either to foo or to a section of foo. There's nothing inherently wrong about doing this, but it will create a surprising result. My answer to this is that you either don't want to show a link that takes you to the same page, or you want it to be clear that it's taking you to a section of that page. And that's kind of the rub ... for this to work without surprising the user, you need to resolve the redirect without using the redirect feature. And there's the rub... if you take a "see no evil" position, you have bad results. It would be nice if redirects could behave in a transparent manner, but the redirect can result in an anomalous case.

By establishing the policy that a link which is actually a redirect should be manually resolved provides a uniform solution and minimizes the amount of head-scratching. Fabrickator (talk) 01:07, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

That {{ill}} should link to local redirects and to the interlanguage article was established after lengthy discussions in 2016. Circular redirects are not limited to those caused by {{ill}}, but are infrequent. That's where, for registered users, User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js and User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css are helpful. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:49, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Never mind the fact that we're not talking about circular redirects... Primefac (talk) 06:12, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

I used the term 'circular redirects' for the situation described by Fabrickator, as I understood it: a link in an article that points to a redirect which points back to the article where it's being used. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:46, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Oh, you used the term correctly, however the initial situation that is being discussed is not a circular link, so the segue into using them as an example was more what I was calling out. Primefac (talk) 10:51, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, Fab in their example with foo and bar set up a circular redirect, but in the case actually discussed the redirect isn't circular. It is a link on the Napalm Sticks to Kids page that redirects you to the The Terror of War section on the Nick Ut page. Had Fab said baz instead of foo when they wrote it's decided to create bar as a redirect which happens to go to foo ... to make it more interesting, have it redirect either to foo or to a section of foo. the example would better have represented the case discussed. CapnZapp (talk) 15:21, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Nevertheless, the primary objection raised is that a redirect can change... so what is not circular today may be circular in the future (so perhaps we should consider which would be the more problematic... an updated redirect that we don't follow or an updated redirect that becomes circular). Notwithstanding that issue, I think this is best characterized as a "best practices" issue rather than a policy issue, and perhaps not subject to a decree that can be so readily imposed as it seems like you would have it. Fabrickator (talk) 16:58, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

This is the first time I have understood your objection to be related to the malleable nature of redirects. Firstly, does this mean we now agree the current way regular redirects are handled by the ill template is adequate? Secondly, sorry, honestly, I don't see the big issue. If the occasional redirect gets changed to point back to the page with the ill on it, so what? It certainly doesn't strike me as a problem big enough to warrant a preemptive solution. Meaning I would not change all redirects just because the potential exists some of them could become circular. CapnZapp (talk) 19:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Any time you have a link that's a redirect, you don't a priori know where that link is going. But if you know it's a redirect, you have been warned. As an example, consider the 15 February 2024 version of Vazha-Pshavela. You will see a reference to "Boygar Razikashvili". You look this up on Wikidata. You will see that there's an English-language link and a Georgian-language link. Oh, btw, the English-language link is a redirect (to a section). You don't care, it's a valid working link, so you righteously add the link. So sorry, you just broke it.

If this section link had been redirected from any other page, it would have been "good", and if that link had redirected to any other page, it would also have been good, but that wasn't the case, so you've broken the page.

But let's consider that case. It's not a circular link ... today! Tomorrow, somebody changes the link, and it becomes circular.

When a naive user encounters this, it's vexing and perplexing. You worry the naive user is going to miss out on the newly-created English-language version of the named article.

My way, we avoid a potentially non-functional redirect. Somebody adds an English-language version of the article and this link doesn't pick it up. I won't lose sleep over that. It's a relative matter, keep it in perspective, because that problem will get fixed sooner or later, and with less frustration for the naive user community. Fabrickator (talk) 11:51, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand why you say it's a valid working link, so you righteously add the link. So sorry, you just broke it. I do not follow your explanation of this (or even very clearly what it is you are proposing as an alternative). If I'm understanding correctly, you seem to want to have a hard-coded link to a section rather than using a redirect in the ill template. If your concern is that the redirect target might change -- using a hard-coded section link has very similar issue -- the section headings are often edited and even the content from a section of one article can be moved into a completely different article. I don't see how your approach is any improvement. older ≠ wiser 12:20, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

You would seem to be making the case that we should avoid using section names as a target. Notwithstanding that issue, it's going to be less perplexing when the section label is visible in the wikitext than when it's buried in a redirect link. FWIW, at least some editors follow the practice of using a piped link rather than relying on a redirect (perhaps depending on the nature of the redirect) ... our mental model of redirects is that they're "transparent" ... i.e. you don't care where the redirect goes as long as it specifies the intended target... but this is not the case when the redirect goes back to (a section that's on) the same page. Now if the target section name is no longer appropriate, it breaks but in a quite transparent manner ... whereas when the section is specified in a redirect, it works okay from every other page but breaks when it's used on just the one page that the target redirects to. So in principle, this could break one way or the other ... but when it breaks, the advantage is that it breaks in a transparent manner, e.g. the section name is no longer applicable. Now if you've got this section name in a redirect (which likely was updated by some other editor), it's less apparent because it's buried under a redirect, with nothing that really alerts you to the fact that it is a redirect, and why should you have to know that, because transparency is a primary point of a redirect. Fabrickator (talk) 14:18, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

IMO, it is always preferable to use a redirect rather than a hard-coded piped section link when there is a good likelihood that the topic might someday support a standalone article. In other cases, it is mostly a wash, although when there is a change affecting the target, it is far, far, far simpler to fix links by updating the redirect once rather than having to location all of the incorrect piped section links.

I do not understand this statement: when the section is specified in a redirect, it works okay from every other page but breaks when it's used on just the one page that the target redirects to. You seem to be assuming that editors frequently go around changing the target of redirects to some random topic. I'd argue that is far less likely than editors inadvertently altering a section heading. older ≠ wiser 16:16, 14 April 2024 (UTC)