Wikipedia:How to make a redirect

This help page is a how-to guide.

It details processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting.

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A redirect is a special type of page that sends the reader to another page. They are used when there are different names for the same subject.

For example, the United Kingdom is often referred to as the "UK". The article on Wikipedia entitled

UK is a redirect to the United Kingdom

article, as it is the same topic as the United Kingdom article.

Redirects ensure that different articles about the same subject are not created, and that visitors who may only know one way of referring to a topic are able to find the article they wish to, even if they are unfamiliar with its title.

Criteria for redirects

To make redirects on Wikipedia, you need to

make an account. However, if you don't have an account, you can still request a redirect here

.

If you do have an

against

the creation of redirects, which you should familiarise yourself with.

If the redirect you create potentially violates these guidelines, it may be brought up at

Redirects for Discussion

, which may result in its deletion.

However, some redirects break guidelines so obviously that their deletion is likely to be uncontested and uncontroversial within the Wikipedia community; as such, if the redirect you create is a clear violation of Wikipedia's guidelines, it may be

speedily deleted

without prior debate instead.

Creating a redirect

To create a redirect, enter the title you wish to redirect away from into the box below. This will create a new page, but it will not be published to Wikipedia proper until you hit 'Publish'.

Enter the title you want to create here, and click Create redirect:

Note that creating a redirect on mobile browser can cause issues; you may wish to switch to desktop view. To do this, scroll to the bottom of this article and click the 'desktop view' link.

If the article already exists, creating a redirect from that title will remove the existing article, which is usually a bad idea.

If the article doesn't exist already, you'll see the following text:

#REDIRECT [[Name of article]]

Replace "Name of article" with the article you want it to point to, and click "Publish page".

For example, entering 'UK' into the above box would create a new page with the title 'UK'; a redirect from this page to the United Kingdom article would be formatted like this:

#REDIRECT [[United Kingdom]]

Publishing this page would create the UK to United Kingdom redirect.