This is a style guide for redirects in the English Wikipedia. The ultimate goal of the guide is to have every redirect categorised in a standard format, as well as to have every main-namespace (article) redirect categorised as either printworthy or unprintworthy. Printworthiness becomes important when a printed edition of Wikipedia is published, for example in CD-ROM format. For more information, see the documentation on the {{R printworthy}} and {{R unprintworthy}} template pages and Wikipedia:Printability.

Redirect statements, which should start at the beginning of the first line of the redirect source, should follow one of these formats:

     #REDIRECT [[Target article name]]
     #REDIRECT [[Target article name#Anchor]]

Replace "target article name" with the name of the article that is the desired target (including an optional anchor, if required). The target should be the exact name of the target, including correct casing, otherwise it may create a double redirect, a broken link, or some other problem. Use the same casing for the first character of the target as the target page, although this will not affect the working of the redirect. Although wikisyntax allows spaces and underscores to be used interchangeably, to avoid confusion and for easier maintenance, use spaces and underscores exactly as they are used in the target page title and anchor.

The redirect statement should appear all on one line or it will not work properly. Other elements such as redirect templates may appear after the redirect statement, however.

විකිපීඩියා:Redirect/Deletion reasons

Other common elements සංස්කරණය

In addition to the redirect statement itself, the source for a redirect may contain other elements such as redirect templates, the optional {{DEFAULTSORT}} tag, redirect categories, and interwiki links (and {{rfd}} if the redirect is nominated for discussion or {{db}} if speedy deletion is required).

Adding redirect templates සංස්කරණය

Redirect categories should be added with redirect templates (rcats) and not as regular (linked) categories. There is no specific order required, so this is left up to editors. Do not substitute redirect templates, nor should they ever be used on soft redirects. Redirect templates can be added in two ways: individually or grouped.

Individually සංස්කරණය

Individual redirect templates can appear anywhere after the redirect statement itself. Generally however they are added before any categories.

#REDIRECT [[Target article name#Section/Anchor]]

{{Some redirect template}}
{{Another redirect template}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:(sort key)}}
[[Category:Some category]]
[[Category:Another category]]

Grouping template සංස්කරණය

Alternatively, redirect templates can be added with the {{Redirect category shell}}. If the redirect does not seem to fit into any redirect categories, add {{Redirect category shell}} without any parameters and the redirect will be sorted to ප්‍රවර්ගය:Miscellaneous redirects. If some rcats are known, they can be added by leaving the first parameter blank (empty), and monitors of the Misc. category will know to come and check the redirect.

#REDIRECT [[Target article name]]

{{Redirect category shell|
{{Some redirect template}}
{{Another redirect template}}
}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:(sort key)}}
[[Category:Some category]]
[[Category:Another category]]

If a blank line is left between the shell template and the DEFAULTSORT magic word, then unnecessary whitespace is introduced when the edit is saved. Readability for editors is still acceptable when DEFAULTSORT is placed on the first new line after the Redirect category shell.

A comparison of the two styles may be found on any redirect template page and at Template:Redirect category shell/Comparison.

Most of the categories populated by redirect category templates (Rcats) are hidden categories. Hidden cats cannot be seen by viewers who are not logged in, nor by editors who have not set their preferences to view hidden cats. So if you have tagged a redirect with an Rcat and saved the redirect, but you cannot see the category, the first thing to check is if you have set your preferences to view hidden cats:

  1. Go to මනාප → Appearance
  2. Scroll down to වැඩිදුර සැකසුම් තෝරාගැනීම
  3. Check the box සැඟවුනු ප්‍රවර්ග පෙන්වන්න
  4. සුරැකුම ක්ලික් කරන්න

You may need to purge your browser cache to ensure that you can see hidden cats in the future.

File redirects සංස්කරණය

When rcats are used to categorize image-file redirects, the category(ies) may not appear on the redirect page after saving even if preferences are set to view hidden cats. Yet the image-file redirect will still populate the category(ies). For example, in ප්‍රවර්ගය:Redirects from moves at the bottom of the page under section heading Media in category "Redirects from moves", a file redirect has been correctly categorized, and yet the categories from {{Rcat shell|{{R from move}}{{R from short name}}}} may not appear on the redirect file page. Hidden categories on image-file redirects can also be detected by clicking on "Page information" in the Tools list, usually in the left-margin sidebar.