Last modified: 2011-12-14 17:37:23 UTC
The page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dustin_Diamond has a link near the end of the filmography for Hamlet A.D.D. When this link is clicked it takes the browser to the right page. However, when the resulting link in the address bar -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet_A.D.D. -- is used as a link externally, e.g. gmail or chat, the result is, "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name."
Because the auto-linking feature of whatever software you're using strips the trailing period. What are we supposed to do here, automatically redirect to a page with a trailing period? That's probably a good idea. We also might want to handle the opposite case, where a question mark or bracket or something is added to the URL by the auto-linking software.
(Note that you can work around the specific case by just manually creating [[Hamlet A.D.D]] and redirecting it to [[Hamlet A.D.D.]].)
(In reply to comment #1) > What are we supposed to do here, automatically redirect to a > page with a trailing period? That's probably a good idea. We also might want > to handle the opposite case, where a question mark or bracket or something is > added to the URL by the auto-linking software. You're joking, right?
No, I'm not. If the user goes to a page that doesn't exist, check for similar-looking page names, and if you find a plausible match do a redirect. You'd probably want to make it like a normal redirect, not an HTTP redirect, because otherwise you'd have trouble creating the page if you want it to contain something different. What's wrong with this approach? Specifically, given that there's no way to stop these bogus autolinks from existing, do you have a solution with a better cost/benefit ratio? On a website I run, I noticed a lot of 404s were due to bogus trailing punctuation (the opposite problem to the one seen here).
Might make sense as an extension, perhaps combined with more general autoredirection, e.g. from titles with different letter case. (That could mostly solve bug 453.)