Currently (since https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/376588/), we are bypassing the "no article page" that is normally displayed when a user tries to directly access a page that doesn't exist (when requested by a non-autoconformed user on an ArticleCreationWorkflow wiki). This was done in order to cover the case of VE controlling the "Create" tabs from the no article page. This might cause confusion for users that enter a URL directly (or mistype a URL), but have no intention of creating an article. We should see if there is a better way to cover this use case. If there isn't, we may need to reconsider using the landing page idea and add some text to it that says "Wikipedia does not have an article with the title you requested" or something like that.
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I'd say the easiest way is to do a landing page (preferably) or a "fake" no article page where VE is not present.
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Resurrecting the landing page idea (specifically for this case) seems like a decent idea. Maybe it could send them to Special:NoArticle.