On 4/13/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
[[m:Help:Redirect#A redirect to an anchor]] states that:
An example of this: <nowiki>#REDIRECT [[definitions#G]]</nowiki> This is not possible. You will still be redirected to <nowiki>[[definitions]]</nowiki> but you will not be sent to the #G anchor. This feature '''will not''' be implemented in the future, so such redirects should not be used.
When was that last sentence added, and by whom, and on what authority?
Well, there has been discussion about it in the past, but no-one has come up with a very convincing scheme of how it would actually work - either technically, or in terms of content management. I would guess whoever added that was trying to discourage the optimistic view that "if we use it, it might start working some day" since the chances are it never will.
The only "live" bug report I've been able to track down is http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1282
That said, one suggestion that just might work is to have a custom redirect message appear with a link to the appropriate section. This would avoid the problems of being dumped in the middle of an article, at a header not necessarily 100% matching the topic searched for. i.e., the message might say something like "For 'The Knights who say Ni!', see [[#other characters]]"
[Note that in order to be useful for such messages, the redirect notice would have to be slightly more noticeable than it is now - we already have people not realising they've been redirected because monobook does too good a job of making the notice look like a minor decoration.]
Another key problem, though, is that the current system for linking to sections doesn't create stable links - that is, if the heading name changes, however subtly, all links to that heading become links to the top of the article. One interesting idea that could solve that is http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1521 which suggests manually specifying the anchor for a particular heading; this would make the anchors "sticky", so having redirects pointing to them would become far more useful.
So maybe saying this will "never" happen would be a bit strong, but I think it's a fair way off yet, unless someone really commits to designing and coding a decent solution.