If I go to a non-existent page in the Android, it says “an unknown error occurred: 404”. It’s quite far from being user-friendly. It should say instead something like “This article doesn’t exist yet. Start writing it!” with a link to an edit form, probably also some reference to the deletion (and rename) logs if there is any.
Link previews also can’t handle 404s—if the linked article doesn’t exist, it just stays loading forever. I don’t know what it should do, but certainly not this.
Description
Description
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resolved | • Mholloway | T161008 Link preview offline error message is shown for missing pages that return a 404 HTTP status | |||
| Open | Feature | None | T155192 Improve handling of nonexistent pages in Android app |
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This is not only about red links in articles, the user can come from anywhere: for example, the app is registered as the handler of *.wikipedia.org links, which means if I tap on a link in my email app about a deleted page, I’ll get this “unknown error” even after fixing T119266, and I can’t continue to the web browser to see the deletion log.
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It definitely got better in the past five years—both the link preview and the page appearing when opening articles from other apps state clearly, with non-technical language that the page doesn’t exist—, but I still miss the Start writing it! part and the deletion log. I hope one day the app will be in feature parity with mobile web, and these would be small but impactful steps in that direction.