Problem: If an article link in a navbox template is a redirect its text will not auto-bolden in the target article. Incomplete page moves leave navbox redirects behind. The navigation pop ups gadget does identify redirects when mouse hovering over them individually but it's a slow process with large navboxes.
Proposed solution: Develop a tool or gadget to identify and list all the redirects in a particular navbox template (and article pages?), a reversed version of 'what links here' seen in the left side bar.
Who would benefit: Wikipedia readers, they will see bolded alternate names in a navbox once they have been corrected (aircraft types often have a manufacturer's designation, a name and/or a military designation and name so they generally appear three times in a navbox).
All this takes is a little snippet of CSS in your user CSS: .navbox .mw-redirect { font-style: italic; color: red; }. Style to your preference. --Izno (talk) 20:46, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Does this refer specifically to redirects to the page itself, e.g. if article "Color" contains a navbox which lists "Colour" (a redirect to Color)? If so then I support replacing that self-link by bolded text, which would be difficult to do in CSS without changing all other redirects. Certes (talk) 01:03, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, while we currently still have this convention to not use redirects in navboxes, I think that it was a bad community decision to have this rule, as there are often very good reasons to deliberately link through redirects (and this does not stop at navboxes).
I'm not against bolding the text (although I consider it of cosmetical benefit only) and disabling circular links in a navbox if it would point (back) to the current page, but I'm against the suggestion to not use redirects, because not using redirects in navboxes clutters up "What links here", complicates reverse-lookup of specific (sub-)topics and makes it more difficult to (re)organize contents. I haven't investigated this further so far, but it should be technically possible to still achieve the former but without the latter (so that we basically get the best of both worlds) through the use of some kind of special *{{navbox-link|link|label}} template (where link could also be a redirect) instead of having to use direct (or piped) links *[[link|label]] in navboxes. Might be worth investigating this.
But even if it would not be possible I consider a circular link in a navbox an almost neclectable issue compared to the significant pollution of "What links here" (to the point that it is often not reasonably usable any more) and not to be able to take full advantage of redirects caused by the current way of doing things.
To be clear about it, I think we should make it a rule that all links from navboxes should go through redirects instead of pointing to articles directly, possibly even through a dedicated redirect featuring a " (navigation)" disambiguator in its name (similar to how we route all links from identifiers through special " (identifier)" redirects), so that links from navboxes are easy to identify in "What links here" and can be specifically muted or selected. And, if technically possible, achieve the (non-essential) bolding and circular link suppression by other means. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:46, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Thingofme (talk) 14:51, 30 January 2022 (UTC)