It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article or aWikipedia policy, as it has not beenreviewed by the community.
This page in a nutshell: Redirects take up minimal system resources, so it doesn't really hurt things if there are a few of them scattered around.
The policyWP:RFD states: "Redirects are cheap. Redirects take up minimal disk space and use very little bandwidth. Thus, it doesn't really hurt things if there are a few of them scattered around." A redirect page may even avoid the creation of duplicate articles on the same subject, and actually save disk space.
Because "deleted" pages are hidden from public view and not actually erased from the database, deleting the redirect will not save any disk space, and in fact actuallyconsumes space slightly due to writing to the deletion log (although this is very minor). Concerns about the servers' performance are in any eventlargely irrelevant to the work of editors.
However, this does not mean we should pre-emptivelycreate redirects for their own sake. SeeWikipedia:Redirect for more.
On the other hand,cross-namespace redirects make processing Wikipedia content more complex for bots and scripts.
Creating redirects can help preserve the option of splitting an article when desired; candidates for such include articles dealing with a geographical topic with different names at differing periods of history, articles that are set indices, or articles that cover multiple characters in a book (seeMOS:REDIR).
Creating redirects from existing articles can be valid alternatives to pursuingdeletion discussions, saving discussion time where a redirect is a legitimate and likely outcome. Consensus should still be sought via discussion (or theBOLD, revert, discuss cycle, for less contentious topics).
