Last modified: 2013-03-14 09:15:26 UTC
Writing RFC 1234 creates a link to ietf.org. Since it is an external site, it would be more proper and correct to link RFCs via interwiki links using eg. [[rfc:1234|RFC 1234]] syntax. Same with other links if there are any. On the other hand linking of ISBNs from plaintext could be considered correct, since it's linking to special page on such wiki.
No pressing reason to remove the existing feature at this time.
Although no "pressing reason", it may stay opened in case anybody's interested in creating a patch. In fact, comparing to other links to external sites, there's no reason for RFCs to have the privilege of this behavior.
"No pressing reason to remove..." doesn't mean, "I can't be bothered to do it", it means "we aren't going to do this because it's a well-established feature that should not be removed without a good reason"; in the absence of a good reason to remove the feature, we are not planning to remove it.
Reopening. A pressing reason has come to light since this bug was originally filed - this feature now causes articles on the English Wikipedia to violate a core stylistic guideline on the placement of external links within articles. Please see the following discussion for details. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&oldid=543625370#Automatic_RFC_linking_should_be_disabled
Might be WONTFIXed again in favor of bug 45942.
Ah, good. Bug 45942 is an improvement over this, so reapplying WONTFIX.