Last modified: 2012-02-20 17:10:14 UTC
A URL like the one above (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fr%3A>) used to redirect to (for this example) <http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/>. The result is that one could create an interwiki link like [[w:fr:]] (say from the French-language Wikibooks site) to get to the main page on the French-language Wikipedia. (Obviously this would not be appropriate for the interwiki link on the main page, but it's a great shorthand on talk pages and user pages.) This no longer works. Instead, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fr%3A> is parsed as a [[Bad page]] on the English-language Wikipedia. So now some links on my various user pages are broken. And although it's not true in my case, there may be other users using such a link (say, between two French-language sites) in a context where the follower of the link may not even be able to read the English text on [[w:en:Bad page]]. (The previous behaviour would never have delivered any English-language text to such a link.) -- ~~~
That should be [[Bad title]], not [[Bad page]]. But now I notice another change: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/w:en:Foo> breaks, whereas I'm pretty sure that it used to redirect to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo>. In any case, that would be a good idea! -- [[w:en:User:Toby Bartels|Toby Bartels]] (a link to a URL that breaks, you'll notice -- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/w%3Aen%3AUser%3AToby_Bartels> should redirect to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3AToby_Bartels> -- but a very natural link to make, if one doesn't think of the English-language Wikipedia as the default Wikimedia site, and therefore is in the habit of specifying it explicitly when it ''is'' intended)
I have looked at this bug again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fr%3A correctly redirects to the french wikipedia. Same for [[w:fr:]]. This bug has been solved at some point during the last 8 years or so.
