Category talk:Plural redirects

Does this do more good or more harm?

When I type something in search, I want the bare minimum of choices (since I only get to see a limited number of options). I don't think we need redirects for every possible plural. I think instead, we should restrict plural redirects to those with unusual spelling, grammar or syntax, e.g. Globs of Ectoplasm might be helpful, but Glob of Ectoplasms is unnecessary. Everything else covered in the category distracts from good wikicode and/or easy searching and provides only a tiny benefit.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 18:52, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The number of redirects we have been allowing has grown (and yes, I know I just tag them by type more often than not). Since many are in this category, we can take a closer look at them and decide which ones really are necessary. G R E E N E R 15:45, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

If others agree, perhaps we could:

• Create a temporary tag, e.g. Category:Plural redirects (helpful).
• Tag as appropriate.
• Have one of the wiki's bots delete the others (then remove the temp tag).

I suggest that we tag the wanted redirects, since I expect that will be (at this point) less work.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 15:56, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I would not be looking forward to deleting all of those, so yes, bots is better. I'm off to do renos for my brother, but I promise to mull over what is actually useful as a redirect while moving the rock/soil/mulch. The pain is the fact that some of the less useful redirects are bound to be used as links, and the bot won't realize this as it deletes them. G R E E N E R 16:10, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I ran through a couple of search patterns, and when it comes to the plurals, many of them really are unnecessary. Since "blank" comes before "s" in the search bar, you'll find what you are looking for before you get to the list of plurals. I was not, however, able to set up a circumstance where the plurals got in the way of me finding what I needed; This could be due to me using poor examples in my process. I do agree that when the pluralization occurs before the end, the redirect should be kept. G R E E N E R 00:09, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Where they would get in the way would be something like:

• White Mantle Abbot, White Mantle Abbots, White Mantle Adherent, White Mantle Adherents, ...

i.e. instead of getting to see 10 possibles, you would only see 5 + 5 plurals. Not critical, but annoying when you can't remember what something is called. It also leads to people accidentally creating double redirects, e.g. using [[White Mantle Badges]] in an article instead of [[White Mantle Badge]]s. Again, not critical, but my point is that I believe the costs of plural redirects outweighs the benefits.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 00:32, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm fine with deletion, though we will have to be aware that many links may have to be changed to the singular. Since temporarily re-categorizing pages will do no harm beyond a bit of spam, that's okay as well. But if a plural redirect is used in many places, the cost/benefit may be better if we just keep that particular link alive. G R E E N E R 14:54, 1 May 2011 (UTC)