Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:06:28 UTC
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Parameters_to_index.php#Raw says ctype the content-type value to be used in the HTTP header when returning the raw content, instead of the default text/x-wiki; this can only be one of the allowed types, which currently are text/x-wiki, text/javascript, text/css, and application/x-zope-edit What is wrong with adding text/plain to the allowed types? You must admit that would be the most reasonable choice to be able to read raw wikitext in some browsers.
text/plain is unsafe, as a number of browsers interpret it as "go ahead and try to detect the file type and if it looks like HTML render it as HTML". Hence, arbitrary JavaScript execution. You may thank Microsoft and Apple for that.
If you're feeling hackish, 'text/css' offers a dirty alternative. All major browsers render text/css just like text/plain (as of the time of this writing). So instead of linking to "?title=Some_Page&action=raw", try "?title=Some_Page&action=raw&ctype=text/css" At least it'll stay in-browser and not prompt you to download the thing.
