Last modified: 2007-05-04 14:31:19 UTC
It appears that if a page is moved to a title with a leading space, the space is not removed, essentially creating an unreachable article, as any standard link to it will redirect to the title without the space. This can cause problems with categorization, as it will categorize articles that don't seem to belong in the category at the very top, as they are sorted by the space, instead of the first letter, the link on the category page will still redirect to the non-space version. For example [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=:_Institute_of_Management%2C_Nirma_University%2C_Ahmedabad&action=edit] is categorized into [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikify_from_November_2006], creating a bluelink in the category that links to a deleted page.
Please describe how a page is being moved to a title with a leading space; these seem to be removed correctly in current trunk.
(In reply to comment #1) > Please describe how a page is being moved to a title with a leading space; theseseem to be removed correctly in current trunk. According to the page history for the one I found http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=:_Institute_of_Management% 2C_Nirma_University%2C_Ahmedabad&action=history , the page was moved on April 27, 2007. It may have been fixed since then. I can't seem to replicate it. It doesn't seem to still do it with page moves. Pages with leading spaces can still be created though, though not easily. See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=:_Main_Page&action=edit
Try saving from that link, it figures it out when you do that and redirects you to the main page. (It should figure it out before, though.)
There was a bug in normalization with initial colon. Fixed in r21853 on trunk, r21854 in REL1_10.