WikiQueer:Soft redirect

A soft redirect is a very short page that essentially tells users to look at another site to obtain the information they were seeking.

The technique is particularly likely to be used when redirecting users across Wikimedia projects—for example WikiQueer:Milestones is a soft redirect to Milestones. Normal or "hard" redirects would be undesirable in these circumstances because they could not be easily edited without hand-crafting the correct URL: clicking on a link to the redirect page would take you straight to the redirect's target and there would be no "Redirected from foo" message to click, so it would be difficult to return to the redirect page itself. There would also be infinite loop security considerations. Therefore hard interwiki redirects have been disabled and soft redirects are often used.

A soft redirect can also be useful if one wants to link to it from its target, as an invitation to create an article, like a red link. Just as a red link looks different from an ordinary link, a link to a soft redirect can look different using the stub link feature.

The following templates are used to create a soft redirect link:
 * Soft redirect for all soft redirects except those below;
 * Category redirect for category redirects;
 * Wikipedia redirect for Wikipedia redirects;
 * Wiktionary redirect for Wiktionary redirects.

Soft redirects to non-English language editions of WikiQueer should be avoided because they will generally be unhelpful to English-language readers.

For purposes of administration, particularly deletion, soft redirects are subject to the same administration processes as regular redirects, and should not be handled by processes that are intended for articles. For deletion this means that soft redirects are subject to R2 - R3 speedy deletion criteria, and are not subject to A1 - A10 speedy deletion criteria. For more deliberative deletion, soft redirects should be handled through WikiQueer:Redirects for discussion, and are not subject to either WikiQueer:Proposed deletion or WikiQueer:Articles for deletion. They are also specifically subject to G8 deletion if their target does not exist, as this has replaced the old R1 criteria.