Wifedogging

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Shortcut: WP:CHEAP

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.

There should be an essay here, and it should say something similar to what is currently on WP:RFD: "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." In fact, a redirect page may even avoid the creation of duplicate articles on the same subject, and thereby actually save data space.

On the contrary, deleting a redirect actually adds very slightly to the size of the database (since deleted pages are not really purged from the database, just hidden from public view). Unless a redirect is actively misleading or gets in the way of a pagemove, there is little point in deleting it.

Note, however, that this does not mean we should preemptively create redirects for their own sake. See Wikipedia:Redirect for more.

On the other hand redirects to templates make more complex to process Wikipedia content by bots and scripts.

See also

• Wikipedia:Disambiguations are cheap