This thread has deviated quite significantly from the original question.
I don't believe anyone was suggesting that the internal redirects currently in use behave in any other manner than the currently do.
The issue was with redirecting from (e.g.)
en.wikipedia.org/USA
to
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA
The original poster was proposing that this is done with a 'silent' 301 (page moved permanently) so that from a visitors point of view, typing either of the above give the same result. The fact that the page they view will actually be 'United States', with a redirect note is not relevant to this discussion, and there is no need to display any 'redirect' notice unless the requested page is itself a redirect.
The advantages of this method is that the user doesn't get a 'page not found, you will be redirected' message and either have to wait 5 seconds or click a second link. Instead they are instantly taken to the article they want. A second advantage is that the 301 error will inform the browser/proxy to look for this page in the new location from now on (though I don't know how efficiently current browsers/proxies deal with this).
The argument against this was that if people start making it a habit of linking to en.wikipedia.org/USA and then the server structure changes, then these links will no longer work. A second argument was that certain pages will not be accessible in this manner (e.g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki).
I hope that summarises the actual question and story so far and gets this thread back on track. Normal redirects are not in danger!
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)