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links to Special: pages should check for existence, and display appropriately
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Description

Author: gangleri

Description:
At [[en:User:Gangleri/tests/special/unknown#bugzilla:908]] you can
see links to [[special:versions]] and [[special:unknown]].

Both links are blue and direct to "No such special page". This
seems to be a special behaviour for ns:-1 / ns:special.

Regards Reinhardt


Version: 1.3.x
Severity: enhancement
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gangleri/tests/special/unknown#bugzilla:908

Details

Reference
bz908

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Low.Nov 21 2014, 7:02 PM
bzimport added a project: MediaWiki-Parser.
bzimport set Reference to bz908.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

rowan.collins wrote:

"Special:" pages do not exist in the same sense that other pages of the wiki do.
Rather than entries in the database, they are [to simplify somewhat] seperate
programs that interface with the rest of the software and its database. Thus the
check for existence made for linking to a "real" article can't be applied here;
also, the "red link" styling implies that the target doesn't exist *and can be
created*, so I'm uncertain whether a link to something like
[[Special:NonexistentSpecialPage]] should look the same.

Nonetheless, it would be nice if it was possible to spot such invalid links (it
probably indicates a typo needing correction); we could assign some different
styling to the link, or possibly even not render it as a link (although this is
probably asking for trouble). The biggest problem is with cache invalidation: if
a new Special page were created, we'd really want the links to it to stop
showing up invalid, and there's no way of tracking them with the current DB
structure; but maybe that wouldn't be a problem very often.

I must say, it would be nice to have an overhaul of the Special: pages system
sometime, to make the whole thing a bit more structured; but, I guess, it's not
a priority.

Additional fix in r22451 r22452