- This is moved/copied from The Sims Wiki talk:Development Portal
Shortcut TSW:COM |
I see these around the wiki, but I personally do not find these helpful as an editor or as someone navigating a wiki. They are on the pages which they redirect to, so in a way, why give a link to a redirect on the page you are already on. As a redirect I suppose it is fine, but to be on the page with this shortcut table seems at least to me of no helpful use. But this could just be me.
I was just wondering does anyone actually use these Shortcut tables, or find them useful in anyway? And if not, they probably should be removed from pages as they are just extra clutter. 
Discussion[]
- I have never used those shortcut tables at all. I don't really think it makes sense either on why there are links to redirects that take you back to the same page. IDontKnowAName3 (talk) 00:54, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
- There is a utility to the shortcut links. If you create a shortcut template that links to a redirect page that doesn't exist, the link will be red. So, the link being in the shortcut is itself a shortcut to the page that you'd need to set up in order to make the shortcut work. As for the shortcut feature itself, I have found it very useful, though I don't think its usefulness is universal. It's much easier to type out TSW:CPTP than to type out The Sims Wiki talk:Community Portal, as just one example. I think the myriad shortcuts for game titles are less obviously useful (why would I assume that TS4CL would lead to The Sims 4: City Living, when it could just as easily refer to The Sims 4: Cottage Living? Who even refers to the expansion packs with abbreviations/acronyms, especially with a game like TS4 that has so many packs?) but in most cases it's not so obnoxious to justify trying to get rid of it. I do question the use case for it in those kinds of circumstances, but it's hard to argue against trying to improve navigability even if it's hard to see the benefit in some situations. -- LostInRiverview talk · blog · contribs 21:32, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
- I am not against the shortcuts/redirects themselves, it is the box/templates on the article page. Even if it was moved to the talk page for reference, because on the article if comes across as redundant and page cluttering.
- I am not against the shortcuts/redirects themselves, it is the box/templates on the article page. Even if it was moved to the talk page for reference, because on the article if comes across as redundant and page cluttering.
- I think their usefulness is more relevant to non-content articles. For those pages (project pages in particular) the "page clutter" point is not as relevant because they aren't meant to be "seen" by usual readers, just by editors who might find the shortcuts to be useful. Tucking them away behind the talk pages wouldn't probably hurt anything, but I don't think they do any harm on non-content pages themselves. - LostInRiverview talk · blog · contribs 03:36, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Agreed.
- Agreed.
- I would not be opposed to getting rid of the shortcuts on canon pages, and reserving the template to be used on non-main namespaces only. The shortcuts themselves are just redirects to the parent page, and some of them are relevant to keep (e.g. TS3 as a shortcut to The Sims 3) even if they aren't highlighted as shortcuts via a table. A lot of the redirects, especially for TS3 and TS4 packs, just seem contrived and not really necessary either. -- LostInRiverview talk · blog · contribs 22:18, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
Conclusion[]
I assume, that this is the settled. These can be removed from regular articles and kept on wiki management articles.
- What I would add is that many (but not necessarily all) of the regular namespace redirects should probably also be deleted as the shortcuts are removed. There is a benefit to the more commonly-used or more likely to be used redirects, but a lot of the redirects (especially for TS4 packs just because of how many there are) seem really unlikely to ever be useful because it's unlikely that anyone would use the abbreviation as a search term in the same way that someone might use "TS4" to search for The Sims 4. But I'd rather the deletions were considered piece-by-piece so that we don't end up deleting useful redirects. -- LostInRiverview talk · blog · contribs 01:41, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
Thread concluded - general agreement exists that shortcuts should be removed from mainspace articles. Shortcuts will be maintained on non-mainspace pages. Closing. -- LostInRiverview talk · blog · contribs 05:47, 27 November 2024 (UTC)