Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Administrator instructions

Administrator instructions for Redirects for discussion.

Note that deletion policy suggests a week of discussion before closure. However, exceptions may be made for items qualifying for speedy deletion. Non-admins may close discussions that they can action (anything except delete) and relist discussions, though they are encouraged to first review the guidelines for non-admins closing deletion discussions.

Install the XFDcloser gadget. Instruction for using it can be found on that page. At RfD, it automates the following:

• Relist: adding the relist template, moving a relisted discussion to the new page, and updating links in the nomination template to point to the new page (though this is often buggy on multi-redirect nominations; the script should inform you if it fails)
• Keep: closing the discussion and removing nomination templates from a kept page, and tagging the talk page with {{old rfd}}
• Delete: closing the discussion, deleting the redirect and corresponding talk pages
• Retarget: closing the discussion, unlinking any circular redirects, and tagging the page with WP:RCATS

You will still need to manually check the history and incoming links for a deleted redirect, and adjust incoming links if necessary for a retargetted one. If that was the last redirect open on that day's page, remove the day ({{Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/YYYY Month DD}}) from RFD.

• For instructions on how to manually relist a discussion, see Template:Rfd relisted.
• Enter the following text at the top and bottom of the RFD discussion section. Consider applying boldface to the result. (Together, these two templates will create a shaded box around the discussion thread confirming that it has been closed.)

• After the redirect's section header:

{{subst:rfd top|'''result'''.}} [Additional comments.] ~~~~

• At the bottom:

{{subst:rfd bottom}}

• If you delete a redirect, don't forget to delete the accompanying talk page, if applicable. Make sure to add a link to the deletion discussion in your deletion log.
• When you remove an entry from this page because people decided to keep it, don't forget to remove the {{Rfd}} tag from the page. It's worth periodically checking either Category:Redirects for discussion and Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Rfd to see if any pages missed this step. Checking either of these regularly has the side-benefit of finding pages where people added the {{Rfd}} tag to the page, but didn't realize they needed to edit RfD as well.
• Add {{old rfd}} to the redirect's talk page when you close the RfD, unless the outcome was delete.

After closing the discussion, the section will look like this:

Note: Sometimes a redirect has history, and the history is significant - i.e. contains information about the addition of text. (This often happens because someone did a cut-and-paste "move", instead of using the "Move this page" button.) If this is the case, do not simply delete the redirect page, which we need to keep for copyright reasons. There are two ways to deal with such pages.

• For cut-and-paste moves, the "right" way to handle them is to merge the history into the appropriate page, using the procedure outlined here. This is a procedure fraught with peril, however, and on rare occasions doesn't work correctly. Once done, it cannot be undone without a lot of exceptionally tedious gruntwork. So don't pick this option unless it's definitely the right one for the case at hand.
• Another option, useful for pages which were merged (for example), is for redirect pages with significant history to be archived into a talk namespace, and a link to them put into an article's talk page.