Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5716479-20130610233436/@comment-452-20130611031120

I believe that it has always been the case that redirects pointing to the same page are not bolded. It is like this because the page you're looking at "doesn't know" where the redirect points. (Although, all redirects have class="mw-redirect", so the page you're looking at does know it's a redirect, it just doesn't know the destination, and clicking on it is the same as clicking any other link.)

I use redirects in the same way, and with redirects like the one you describe - that are used because the section doesn't have enough info to merit having a full article - I usually try to make sure to link it to that section, which is something people may not realise is possible.

Say that Bob is a Character in X, but is currently only listed on the page Characters in X and doesn't have an article, I would create a redirect named Bob with: This way, if they're reading the section on that page about Alice (Bob's sister) and click the link to Bob, they'll be taken to the section about Bob instead of being confused when they end up at the top of the Characters in X page which they were already reading.
 * 1) REDIRECT [[Characters in X#Bob]]

You could also create an in-page link like this: Bob so that the link will jump to the section without reloading the page, but we're specifically talking about "using redirects now so you don't have to update all the links later", so doing that isn't ideal since you'd have to change it later.

Maybe you already knew all of that, but hopefully someone else will learn something.

edit: It occurred to me immediately after posting that what you could be thinking of concerning links being bolded is that if you created a link on "Characters in X" like this: Bob, it would display Bob without a link.