Lars Aronsson wrote:
Opposition to this move in 2002 held that existing
links should
not be broken. It was agreed that
www.wikipedia.org (and .com)
could become an international starting page, but that old article
URLs, such as
www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Chernobyl should not be
broken, but should redirect to the new address on the English
Wikipedia. This contract has been held since.
I think talking of this as a "contract" is somewhat overdoing it -
it's an important point that this was the compromise reached during a
previous discussion, but unless there's a *very* strong statement
promising to uphold it "forever", we generally treat all consensus
policies as re-negotiable.