Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:06:29 UTC
Currently, we have a significant number of articles whose titles cannot be properly represented in MediaWiki because they use restricted characters. For example, the article [[Benzo(a)pyrene]] is actually supposed to be under "Benzo[a]pyrene", but MediaWiki doesn't permit brackets in titles. I propose a proper escaping syntax for titles that would remove this limitation. Just as the title "C++" may be linked to by [[C%2B%2B]], "Benzo[a]pyrene" would be linkable by [[Benzo%5Ba%5Dpyrene]]. While editors would have to be educated about percent-encoding, this solution would make sure that the title shows up correctly in watchlists, logs, etc. Further, it would not lend itself to the rampant abuses offered by disabling $wgRestrictDisplayTitle.
I don't know why some of these restrictions exist anyway. I can see why [[ or ]] would cause problems in a page title, but a single bracket, or single brace, or < > (as long as there was no actual tag involved) seem quite harmless. Even # with nothing coming after it ought to be implementable. Anyway, in whatever way works best, I second the request to make as many page titles as possible possible.
This is to avoid bad interaction with markup; forcing humans to guesstimate how to use non-obvious escaping rules not very nice. Increasing our XSS attack surface also not cool.
