Change 333716 had a related patch set uploaded (by Esanders):
Open external links in new window

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/333716

@Esanders should it be based upon $wgExternalLinkTarget ? besides that, ok

Does this patch address the issue raised here: T150970?

@debt No.

This is talking about the external links in the More details sidebar. It has nothing to do with the full screen VS modal design

Thanks for the clarification, @JGirault, the details on this particular ticket were pretty vague.

$wgExternalLinkTarget is for third parties only, it will never flipped on WMF projects. When considering the behavior of external links, one needs to consider both usability guidelines (that strongly advocate for the same window in general case) and usage considerations for each particular case. Here, following an external link in the same window and then returning would result in map position being reset because we don't update window hashes with position or otherwise save it. I guess target="_blank" would not be needed once we have the oojas router in place.

In T156060#2974994, @MaxSem wrote:

$wgExternalLinkTarget is for third parties only, it will never flipped on WMF projects. When considering the behavior of external links, one needs to consider both usability guidelines (that strongly advocate for the same window in general case) and usage considerations for each particular case. Here, following an external link in the same window and then returning would result in map position being reset because we don't update window hashes with position or otherwise save it. I guess target="_blank" would not be needed once we have the oojas router in place.

Thanks @MaxSem, this is a strong argument in favor of the new window. Based on this, let's approve the change.

Agreed

Change 333716 merged by jenkins-bot:
Open external links in new window

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/333716