Feature summary (what you would like to be able to do and where):
Have Citoid either warn about or reject changes where a deeplink, after following a redirect, results in a homepage.
Use case(s) (list the steps that you performed to discover that problem, and describe the actual underlying problem which you want to solve. Do not describe only a solution):
See edits like https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=947631361&diff=prev and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=&diff=prev&oldid=1186037634. (there are several others for the same domain in various articles but I cleaned them up)
The original URL was http://www.chartattack.com/news/53698/the-queers-to-drop-live-album-recorded-at-cbgb. The chartattack.com domain has been usurped and now posts garbage "articles" about the usual suspects: crypto, best online casinos, etc. The deeplink redirects to the homepage now.
Reducing a deeplink to a homepage link is very rarely helpful.
Benefits (why should this be implemented?):
In cases like these, the link should be processed by a bot that searches archive.org. If that fails, a human should check it - maybe the URL scheme changed, or another archive site might have it, or maybe the article was also printed in a print magazine from the same publication, or the articles are also published on another domain. As an example of the latter, I found a 404 article from vh1.com on mtv.com. And if all else fails, either find another source to support the statements it was used for or remove those statements.
When Citoid reduces the broken deeplink to a homepage link it frustrates all those efforts and leaves a reference that is absolutely useless for our readers.