Jimmy Wales wrote:
I'm not even in favor of "redirecting" versus just "aliasing", just because it makes the browser do an extra step for no particular reason. I'm not adamant about this point, though. I would just say that it's best not to redirect.
I made redirects rather than aliases when going across hostnames to keep the login cookies working. Remember the old furor over "I'm not logged in when I go to http://www.wikipedia.com/ but I am when I look at other pages"? It's much like that: it harms the user experience to have their login cookie for www.wikipedia.org not work at wikipedia.com or for nl.wikipedia.org not work at nl.wikipedia.com.
Extra bonus point: you see the preferred URL form in your browser's URL bar after loading it up.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)