Steve Summit wrote:
<snip/> At some point, once Tim recovers from (or becomes inured to) his horror at sending us down this slippery slope in this hell-bent handbasket, we can think about introducing a proper built-in {{exists:}} operator, to eliminate the need for the bizarre compare-the-substitution-to-the-redlink hack. (Though I *am* appreciative of whoever devised it...)
This has now been done, for anybody interested: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions#.23ifexist:
HTH HAND