<article_title>Alan_Turing</article_title>
<edit_user>Malleus Fatuorum</edit_user>
<edit_time>Saturday, February 13, 2010 8:25:40 PM CET</edit_time>
<edit_comment>requires a redirect. Please do not remove the correct link again.</edit_comment>
<edit_text>Turing was given a choice between imprisonment or probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted chemical castration via [[<strong>estrogen|</strong>oestrogen]] hormone injections.&lt;ref&gt;http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/turing_a,2.html&lt;/ref&gt; A side effect of the treatment caused him to grow breasts.&lt;ref name=LeavittP268 /&gt;</edit_text>
<turn_user>Trovatore<turn_user>
<turn_time>Sunday, February 14, 2010 7:56:35 PM CET</turn_time>
<turn_topicname>Damn spelling wars</turn_topicname>
<turn_topictext>Editors on the (o)estrogen war need to go review all of WP:ENGVAR, WP:TIES and WP:RETAIN and after so doing, leave the british spelling alone please! Etrigan (talk) 18:56, 14 February 2010 (UTC) No one is trying to remove the British spelling. Well, one person did days ago, but that's over. The issue is that Malleus is stubbornly insisting on retaining the pipe, , whereas the direct link to the redirect is better. It is better because pipes break the link between the syntax seen on the screen and the article pointed to, and are a last resort. They are acceptable in some circumstances (such as when the linked phrase would go to a disambiguation page), but this is not one of them. --Trovatore (talk) 19:56, 14 February 2010 (UTC)So the relevant thing to review is actually WP:NOTBROKEN. --Trovatore (talk) 20:14, 14 February 2010 (UTC)Having read that, I'm convinced that it should be oestrogen. What's your logic here, Malleus? Etrigan (talk) 15:48, 15 February 2010 (UTC)Having partly created this discussion by turning estrogen into a pipe with oestrogen to correct the spelling, I now agree that for that reason and the reasons above there is no point in having estrogen there at all. If Americans can't cope, that's their problem. It's an article about a British person, for heavens sake, and they invented the language. HiLo48 (talk) 20:50, 15 February 2010 (UTC)Let's please stay off the Yank/Brit thing, which is irrelevant to the current discussion and can only inflame sentiment. I don't think Malleus wanted to pipe to estrogen on the basis that it's the American spelling; I think he thinks pipes are better than redirects.Here's how I see it: Pipes are closely analogous to "goto" statements in structured programming languages. They make the code less robust, less maintainable, and its structure harder to follow. There are circumstances that call for them, if you really know what you're doing and why, but they are never the first tool you reach for.Now this particular type of pipe is probably the most harmless of the unnecessary pipes. It doesn't mislead anyone. Oestrogen and estrogen will never be separate articles, so robustness doesn't really come into play. There's an abstract complaint that the results of typing what you see on the page into the "Go" box, are not the same as the results of clicking on the link, but the only difference is the redirect notice itself, which I'm willing to concede is negligible.But even though it's harmless in itself, it's unnecessary, and my concern is that a widespread profusion of pipes tends to lead editors to use more pipes. And pipes in general are not harmless. They are a last resort.Therefore we should use the simple link to the redirect oestrogen, and not the pipe. --Trovatore (talk) 20:59, 15 February 2010 (UTC) What is the logic of linking to a redirect page in this instance, not generally instead of linking directly to the page the link redirects to? That it's "unnecessary" is not a reason not to link directly to the correct page. --Malleus Fatuorum 22:49, 15 February 2010 (UTC) The broader reason is that pipes in general are bad, whereas redirects are not. Therefore when a pipe is unnecessary, that is in fact a reason not to use it. --Trovatore (talk) 22:52, 15 February 2010 (UTC) WP:NOTBROKEN pretty much sums it up. There's no reason to pathologically avoid redirects, and it complicates the markup without any benefit. --3773A5CyberFFB521cobra (talk) 22:59, 15 February 2010 (UTC)Well, I simply don't agree, so I'll just leave this article to your tender mercies and unwatch it now. --Malleus Fatuorum 06:01, 16 February 2010 (UTC)So continuing to make a contribution on this article was predicated on getting your own way? Weird. Etrigan (talk) 23:26, 16 February 2010 (UTC)Your threat below was quite unnecessary, and that's what persuaded me to withdraw from this article, not any desire to get my own way. I don't agree with the miniscule "consensus" on pipes vs redirects but neither do I think it's worth any further argument or threats of sanctions, on this issue or on any other so far as this article is concerned. --Malleus Fatuorum 00:52, 17 February 2010 (UTC)Good to see you've not followed through and unwatched after all. I've had the same threat made on me in the past, which persuaded me of its effectiveness in these situations. Etrigan (talk) 09:39, 17 February 2010 (UTC)It was not a threat and I have unwatched the article. Do with it as you will. --Malleus Fatuorum 16:04, 17 February 2010 (UTC)</turn_topictext>
<turn_text>No one is trying to remove the British spelling. Well, one person did days ago, but that's over. The issue is that Malleus is stubbornly insisting on retaining the pipe, , whereas the direct link to the redirect is better. It is better because pipes break the link between the syntax seen on the screen and the article pointed to, and are a last resort. They are acceptable in some circumstances (such as when the linked phrase would go to a disambiguation page), but this is not one of them. </turn_text>