Wikipedia talk:Shortcut

This is the talk page for Wikipedia:Shortcut (edit talk links history)

Hey, do the category shortcuts work for anyone? They don't work for me. For example, if I type "CAT:CSD" into the search box, I will get the article text back for Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, but not the actual list of articles in the category, making them pretty worthless to me. Is this just on my side? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 03:11, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

No, that's MediaWiki doing it. It's an artefact of how categories and redirects interact: a shortcut to a Category is a redirect, and redirects only contain the text of the page contained in the database. To make the software activate the on-the-fly listing of pages, it has to have Category: in the URL. Theoretically the software could recognise CAT: as being the same thing, but that would probably interfere with the redirect code in general, and wouldn't be appropriate for all sites that use MediaWiki. It's a non-ideal situation, but I suspect that the architecture won't allow for much better without significant re-engineering.  — Saxifrage | ☎ 08:17, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

I'm interested in setting up WP:WL as a shortcut to Special:Watchlist. Does this interfere with Wikipedia shortcut policy (because the watchlist is not in the Wikipedia: namespace) or can I go ahead? --Netvor | T | C 08:05, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure that we've got another WP to the Special namespace, so go ahead. It can't hurt. - Kookykman|(t)(c)

Yeah, WP:SB goes to Special:Sandbox, and a Watchlist shortcut is at least as useful.  — Saxifrage | ☎ 07:47, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Actually no. WP:SB goes to Wikipedia:Sandbox, not to Special:Sandbox. It seems that redirects to Special: pages have been disabled, possibly in a recent MediaWiki upgrade. However, I found about this after setting up WP:WL. So now we have a dysfunctional redirect page. What should I do with it? Should I list it on AfD? I feel rather silly about the whole thing. --Netvor » user | talk | mail | work » 08:02, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I should've actually checked my links, shouldn't I have? I didn't realise that a Special: link was always blue regardless of whether there's a page at the end of it. I'd say just put the speedy-delete template on it and let an admin take care of it.  — Saxifrage | ☎ 09:51, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Could I just set shortcuts up for them, or do I need to get them approved? --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 07:03, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've been trying to make a shortcut to a particular section that is used often when I'm dealing with POV-pushers. In particular, the shortcut is WP:NPOVUW. I think this shortcut would be great if I could get it to redirect properly, but when creating the redirect page, there is a problem with the script that sends it to the section asked of. I'm going to cross-post this to the Wikipedia talk:Redirect page. --ScienceApologist 16:42, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind, I just saw the Bugzilla report. I think it is sad that we will not implement this feature. --ScienceApologist 16:49, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't it be shorter if we didn't have to shift for all of 'em? -- Jeandré, 2006-02-18t19:26z

Well, it doesn't particularly matter, so long as you're using the search box (which isn't case-sensitive). It only matters if you're actually typing the URL into your browser. -- SonicAD (talk) 17:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I prefer keyboard shortcuts: F6 to access the URI bar and then the keywords in Firefox's quick search bookmarks, e.g. e wp:nor which goes to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wp:nor Is there a shortcut to put the search box in focus with a keyboard shortcut if the shortcuts remain in ALL CAPS? -- Jeandré, 2006-03-03t21:37z

Is there any particular reason that there are links on the shortcuts in the box? If it's only going to redirect to the page is it currently on, what is the point? It doesn't make sense. Could someone please explain this to me! --J@red ^[T]/_[+] 15:24, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto... somebody just went through and 'fixed' all of them so that they are now links. I really don't understand. I'll query on the user's talk page as well. --TreyHarris 23:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I 'fixed' 3 of them to be exact. And that was because WP:SHORT, which is the current guideline, specifies that this is the suggested use. See this section. This brought these 3 shortcut boxes in line with about the 150 guideline/policy pages I checked for having the shortcut box IN the guideline notice if it had both {{guideline}} and {{shortcut}} boxes on a single page, giving all these pages a more consistent and clean look. I think the consensus on the use of the link was that this introduces people to the usage of shortcuts. People seemed to think that if you didn't link them on their primary page, people wouldn't use them to link from anywere else either. But I don't really remember anymore where i read that. I'll see if I can find that back again. - The DJ 07:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Shall we add "Shortcuts are reserved for Wikipedia project reference pages (WP: namespace) only"? (from Template:R from shortcut). Shawnc 19:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We have already P for portals, WT for talk, Meta has WM, Wikipedia WP, adding more like H for a few help pages would be pointless at the moment. Technically all shortcuts are in the article namespace, 3 conventions to create redirects to pages in other namespaces are enough, let's not add more (H, U, HT, UT, ...) -- Omniplex 05:54, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On Wikipedia:Shortcut there is no imformation about its restricted use at all. The only thing I happen to run across about its use is in the template here[1]. I think that its use amd restriction should be layed out on the Project Page instead of hidden in a template.

The reason I am saying this is because recently I created one and it was deleted. Apparently I wasn't allowed to make one for a talk page, however I couldn't find anything that remotely said that except in that template. If its use is restrctied to WikiPedia only then it should clearly say that on Wikipedia:Shortcut. Otherwise admin that delete them really have nothing to defend the deletion of any that are created. --Scott Grayban 01:45, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are shortcuts to talk pages, for a list see WT:WT. So it's not impossible - but you'd need compelling reasons if you insist on WP instead of WT for a talk page. There's apparently some tolerance for useful shortcuts, e.g. WP:TIP goes to a talk page because the "real" page is blocked by the tip of the day. -- Omniplex 05:21, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One day you will regret all this shortcut biz. There should be a moratorium put one it. I like unique names. Else it is like a plot to get modemed users to download the same page twice. --Jidanni 2006-04-15

As modem user I managed so far. The few shortcuts I use are only because I'm too lazy to type complete names like "Village pump (technical)", WP:VP/T is as the name shortcut says shorter. -- Omniplex 05:36, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Below Changing_shortcuts I've noted what I think how changing shortcuts could work. Is that (in)complete, (in)correct, lousy, or ready to be added here? One user apparently thought that it's a good idea to grab an existing shortcut or two for another page that already has two shortcuts, because his page is more "important" :-( -- Omniplex 05:36, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody said if it's good, bad, or ugly, but somebody added WP:GF again (as dupe) meaning Wikipedia:Grapefruit, and the original target page still lists WP:GF as its shortcut. Therefore I now add this section to the "guideline". -- Omniplex 18:16, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There has been some discussion in WT:DYK about the shortcuts to T:DYK and T:TDYK - principally that TT:DYK does not work because TT: is an interwiki link (to the Turkish Wikipedia, I think).

It strikes me that we ought to discuss, (a) whether it is a good idea to have shortcuts to projectspace talk pages, templates and/or template talk pages, and (b) is there a risk that [[:WP:]] and [[:WT:]] could become shortcuts to Wikipedia in another language - would that invalidate all shortcuts? -- ALoan (Talk) 09:18, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

tt: is for the Tatar Wikipedia, not Turkish. Turkish is tr:. TZM^T (de:^T) 15:20, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the correction (I could not easily spot which language it was - now I know what to look for it is obvious, of course). But what about my questions ;) -- ALoan (Talk) 15:40, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The reason for these shortcuts is that T:DYK (Template:Did you know) is, I think, a bit of a special beast. The talk page is where the most action is (noms add stuff there, everyone comments to improve the "hooks" and point out issues with the articles (not enough sourcing, content, age, image problems etc.) and the admins pull stuff out to use, and archive older selected items, and discard older unselected items. So the template talk page is the first place people want to go, usually. The WP pages associated get MUCH less traffic, even when there's a fairly hot policy discussion going on at WT:DYK, and the template talk page is the first place most people want to go. Using TT would be swell but I suspect DYK is one of a VERY few things in WP where the template talk is MOST important. I wasn't here when it was first set up so can't comment on why it is organised that way but heaven forbid it be changed now, it would throw a lot of things off. So anyway, we came up with a namehack (T:TDYK and T:DYKT) for want of anything better. It's not the end of the world if we can't have TT working but if anyone has better ideas please bring them on! (PS, ARE there other significant areas where template talk is where the action is??) ++Lar: t/c 20:06, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is rather off-topic here, but perhaps we need to think about moving the suggestions away from the template talk page to something like Wikipedia:Did you know/Suggestions, more like WP:TFA? I was not there either, but I bet the current set-up is just historical accident.

The only directly analogous template I can think if is "In The News" (T:ITN or - oddly - WP:ITN) but there is not a mechanism for suggestions like T:DYK. WP:ITND goes to the related project page. -- ALoan (Talk) 20:24, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grin. Interesting idea. The place to bring it up, is, of course WT:DYK the talk page for the guidelines/rules/processes page. :-) ++Lar: t/c 20:33, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, to answer my own second question, I think "wp" and "wt" are ok, as neither is listed at List of ISO 639 codes. -- ALoan (Talk) 21:00, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If WM (on Meta), WP, or WT are used for something important the shortcuts will have to make room, they are not very important. Adding T: for templates is IMO a bad idea, unless it's Template:T: in the template namespace, not T: in the main namespace. -- Omniplex 13:59, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Template:T: sort of defeats the point of having a shortcut. That doesn't mean T: isn't a bad idea, but I'm not sure why it is worse than WP: or WT:... can you elaborate? ++Lar: t/c 13:27, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you use say {{x7}} what you actually get is Template:x7, that can be further redirected. If you try {{T:x7}} you get Template:T:x7 (example, doesn't exist). For an article (main namespace) T:x7 you'd need an extra colon in {{:T:x7}} if you want it to work as template (curly braces). Maybe beside the point for your purposes.

Unrelated, we have some prefixes like n: for news, m: for meta, s: for sources, q:, b:, what else? As soon as a t: is added (e.g. for the test Wiki server) all T: shortcuts in the main namespace would stop to work as expected. -- Omniplex 10:46, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Three RFDs C:WPCVG, C:CSD, and C:UBT about the introduction of pseudo-namespace C: in addition to CAT:, indirectly related to a recent "speedy deletion criteria" R2 debate about "cross-namespace redirects", which got no consensus, objections including "WP:ASR is no policy" and more. FYI -- Omniplex 04:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC) (see WP:VP/T#Special:Namespaces)[reply]

It would seem sensible, in the spirit of WP:WOTTA, to say that shortcuts without the corresponding expanded version should be avoided. An example here is WP:PRODSUM. Even though it technically redirects to user space, it should probably, if it was a "Wikipedia:Foo" page, have the corresponding "Wikipedia:Proposed deletions summary" page in existence. Anyone agree that shortcuts without the actual fully-named pages behind them are a bad thing? Carcharoth 11:17, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I don't see the point. If WP:WOTTA is a shortcut, then it's shorter than typing Wikipedia:WOTTA, right? And we should not be using bare links to shortcuts anyway for legibility reasons, so [[WP:WOTTA|wotta bunch of acronyms]] would be the idea in any case. Let's not go completely shortcut-crazy...you're talking about an expansion of nearly doubling the number of existing shortcuts. - this comment was by Nae'blis - the signature failed after a closing "nowiki" tag was omitted.

I wasn't very clear. What I meant was that WP:PRODSUM exists, but as a shortcut this is actually in article space. I went looking for something in Wikipedia space, but there was nothing there. This is a bad example, as the redirects point to User space. Let's take the example of Wikipedia:Proposed deletions. One of the shortcuts is WP:PROD. What I am saying is that someone could have created WP:PROD as an actual page, without creating Wikipedia:Proposed deletions. That is the sort of thing I am saying these guidelines should avoid. To me, the shortcut WP:PRODSUM implies that a page called Wikipedia:Proposed deletions summary exists, but it doesn't. Carcharoth 17:20, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh, I see what you mean now. I can see someone perhaps getting confused if they went looking for, say, "PROD" in the search engine, except that that I either get sent directly to Prod, which has a {{selfref}} hatnote sending me to the correct place, or the search engine lists Template:Prod as the first result, which then has a link to the correct place. Yes, if I type in Wikipedia:PROD directly into the address bar, I get a "no such page exists" message, but it then prompts me to search for it... which gets me to the right place. WP: is a pseudonamespace (there's been some talk of making it a real namespace), invented by convention and tradition, and most mirrors are smart enough at this point to exclude it from their results. It would be easy enough (and proper, in my mind) to make your redlink redirect to the userspace summary, and/or have DumbBot build its list in project space (perhaps a subpage of Wikipedia:Proposed deletion, but trying to reconstruct page names from shortcuts is sort of perilous. Just try and figure out where WP:DNUS goes to without looking, for example. And redirects generally get created on an as-needed basis, not by a bot or procedure. I think. -- nae'blis 17:53, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Thanks for catching that nowiki tag; sometimes I move too quickly for my own good when typing. -- nae'blis 17:55, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Saw this somewhere, so I thought I'd ask about it: is it appropriate to place a shortcut box, leading to a WikiProject, at the top of a relavent article? My impression has been that we try to leave any mention of Wikipedia itself out of articles. --Masamage 06:18, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Am i allowed to create a shortcut to a WikiProject? Does it matter if i am not an administrator? Simply south 23:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, you can do that. Just make the redirect, and put the shortcut-box ({{Shortcut|[[WP:whatever]]}}) at the top of your Project page. --Masamage 23:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The most terrible thing about Wikipedia is the use of shortcuts: who the heck can figure out what the IAR in WP:IAR means unless they are online and can click on it. There should be some bot to do something about this. At least in the mouseover. You guys think everybody has ADSL. Somebody forward this complaint somewhere. Please add something about this to the main article. I drives me nuts to download some articles for offline remote reading, only to find you young whippersnappers using "WP:XYZ" thinking that "oh, the reader can just click to find out what my fun shortcut means", well no, we can't always just click. And also even if we did, why should we just to find out if we wanted to click in the first place to download another 10000 bytes just to find out what those 20 or so bytes were. --Jidanni 2006-12-29

I recommend using Lupin's excellent WP:POP tool, which follows redirects on mouseover and gives you the first paragraph of the article. Also, please post your age, so we can find out who qualifies as a "whippersnapper". Also, you can just sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) instead of typing it manually. Supadawg (talk • contribs) 00:14, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]