NetHackWiki:Redirects

The syntax for a redirect is as follows:

#REDIRECT [[spellbook of protection]]

See metawikimedia:Help:Redirect for more help creating redirects.

Below are the general guidelines for creating redirects and when to employ them.

Article redirects

When creating a new article, redirect variations on that name to it, to avoid someone duplicating the article under a slightly different title.

• Redirect acronyms for community terms like to the articles with the fully spelled-out named pages, e.g. YAFM => Yet Another Funny Message.
• Redirect actions performed via extended commands - such as sitting, wiping or looting - to the extended command that they are performed with, i.e. #sit, #wipe or #loot.
• Redirects ideally should not include misspellings that the game does not acknowledge in some way, and will not necessarily reflect every possible community permutation used in place of a word or term besides ones that are reasonably commonplace.
• While a link to an article can be easily made plural or tense-appropriate by appending to a singular link (e.g. unicorns or wearing) or by editing the displayed text for that link (e.g. succubi), these also exist redirects that reflect what plurals and tenses are used in the game's code. These redirects include (but are not limited to):
  • Plurals and tenses with "irregular" spelling (e.g. dwarves, foocubi or forcing)
  • Multi-word article titles that change specific words when applying plurals or changing tenses (e.g. amulets of life saving or potions of gain level, though only the latter actually stack)
  • Note that plurals and tenses that NetHack uses may not match every possible plural and tense applied to a word or term in other contexts, e.g. there is a redirect for "dwarves" but not "dwarfs", since NetHack only uses the former.

Message redirects

In NetHack, the game often gives messages with subtle meanings and implications: Asking what a message means is a very common question in RGRN and a common use for the Rodney bot.

A user should be able to copy certain messages straight from NetHack, paste it into the NetHackWiki search box, and find a result. This is done by creating redirect pages for many NetHack messages, e.g. "You feel a strange mental acuity" redirects to telepathy.

To view an existing redirect page, you can either search it, or else click the redirect (like in the example above) and then click the hyperlink in the small note near the top, which will read (Redirected from You feel a strange mental acuity) - this link will take you directly to the redirect page itself.

Messages with multiple causes

For messages with a singular object, dungeon feature or situation as its source, there should be a single obvious page to redirect to. When a message has multiple causes, such as "You feel guilty", create a disambiguation page instead of a redirect.

How many message redirections do we need?

While there was previously a goal of creating a redirection page for every message in NetHack, following discussion on the project in June 2024 it was concluded that this is unnecessary: Editors can add messages and message redirects whenever they think it will be useful, just as they can edit other information about NetHack, but should ideally avoid messages that are self-explanatory or tied to dynamic content (e.g. "<monster> opens a door.") in order to avoid cluttering up search results.