Help:FAQ/Questions about contributions/Why bother to keep all those useless redirects?

Why bother to keep all those useless redirects?

"The name of such-and-such page has been changed from something that wasn't very meaningful to something that makes a lot more sense. But you're keeping the not-so-meaningful redirect. Why not just delete it and tidy up the site?"

Before a page is deleted, you need to make sure all the pages which link to it have their links changed to point to the new page. Otherwise you break the links. An easy way to do this is to select the link "What links here" in the Toolbox section in the menu bar down the left. Only when every page linking to this old unwanted redirect page has been so amended, and only then, is it okay to delete the page.

BUT: Even then, there may be external websites which may (however misguidedly) have a link to that page themselves. If this is the case, then their link to $\mathsf{Pr} \infty \mathsf{fWiki}$ will be gone. And that is a Bad Thing.

If the page being renamed is new, however (for example, you just wrote it then noticed a spello in the title), then (after the renaming) it is usual for that particular redirect to be deleted, as there has been little opportunity for the page to have been noticed by the outside world and linked to. --prime mover (talk) 12:29, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

More recently we have taken to deleting the redirects, as soon as the pages linking to them have been appropriately redirected. So this FAQ is now of limited relevance.