"Ilmari Karonen" <nospam(a)vyznev.net> wrote in
message news:4595A54D.2070803@vyznev.net...
Plyd wrote:
To the proposition given by Steve, I would add "Correct all double
redirects", to prevent not wanted pages to be re-redirected
automatically.
Like this :
* Poker/Hands (linked 1 time - [[correct]])
* Ace-to-six low (linked 3 times - [[correct]])
* Deuce-to-seven low (linked 7 times - [[correct]])
[[Correct double redirects for
these pages]]
That actually sounds like the best solution so far. Maybe with a
checkbox for each redirect, like on [[Special:Undelete]] or
[[Special:Watchlist/edit]]?
Another solution is for MW to be a bit cleverer, and to follow double
(triple/quadruple/whatever) redirects automatically, which would make this a
non-issue.
To fix the speed issues involved in following these redirects when they are
encountered, the actual target of the redirect could be cached in the DB
(and this might be useful to do for other reasons too, e.g.
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6934).
If an infinite loop is encountered the whole loop should be logged to the DB
in a 'recursive redirects' table, and shown on an associated redirect page
to be fixed. If a user visits one of the pages in the loop then no
redirects are followed and the requested page is shown, with a suitable
error message allowing them to fix it there and then.
As far as I can see, from a user-interface point of view this is the ideal
solution to this and several other problems (I've always wondered why the
software doesn't handle double-redirects properly). I don't know whether
the reason for only allowing single redirects is technical or just
historical, however I'm sure that if there are technical reasons they can be
overcome with a bit of creativity.
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)