The {{shortcut}} template places a notice on pages that there is a shortcut available. This may make it easier for people to easily link to pages (especially in the Appropedia and Help namespaces).
It may be appropriate for a bot to update piped links from time to time, in order to provide clearer results in search engines, if someone is using a search engine to look for a page. However, this is less of an issue with pages in the Appropedia and Help namespaces
Format
Capital letters are preferred for shortcut names. This is so that links to policy and help pages stand out clearly in discussions, e.g. A:BOLD. All-uppercase shortcut names also distinguish them from ordinary page names, and make shortcuts more legible when the {{Shortcut}} template displays them in a small font. This reflects the standard usageW in Wikipedia's help and project namespaces.
Internals
A shortcut is a type of redirectW,W page. Its content is very simple, for example the A:BOLD shortcut contains:
#redirect [[Appropedia:Be bold!]] {{R from shortcut}}
where {{R from shortcut}} is a template that adds the shortcut to the Category:Redirects from shortcuts category.
Prefixes
Shortcut prefixes resemble namespace prefixes, but they do not correspond to literal namespaces on Appropedia. All the shortcut pages are actually pages in the main (article) namespace.
Ideally, shortcut prefixes should reflect the namespaces that the linked-to pages are in:
A: | Appropedia: (Project:) |
H: | Help: |
CAT: or C: | Category: |
P: | Portal: |
(none) | shortcuts to articles |
but some shortcuts on Appropedia do not follow this rule.
List of shortcuts
See also
- {{R from shortcut}} - template to place on shortcut pages, to add them to Category:Redirects from shortcuts
Interwiki links
- Commons:Commons:Shortcuts - shortcuts on Wikimedia Commons
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Shortcut - guidelines for shortcuts on the English Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia:List of shortcuts
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Redirects - Wikipedia's guidelines for redirects
- Wikipedia:Help:Redirect - technical information about redirects, how they work, how to edit