It is very difficult to use this URL in Email, Blog, Chat, IRC, etc. Many of
us will be happy if we can use 'http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple' instead of
the long URL.

Just as a note, many programs (not all) will accept http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/ആപ്പിൾ just fine. Modern (using an extremely loose definition of modern) browsers will convert that into the percent encoded form when entered into the address bar.

As for the actual bug, I don't think this is feasible with the current interwiki system, but ignoring that, I don't think its a good idea. Redirects should be explicitly created. I would be very annoyed if page X started to redirect to page Y because someone vandalized page z. (not to mention the confusion that would cause). Also there are (I assume) some words which have totally different meanings in different languages.

Thus i don't think automatic redirection would be a good idea even if it was easy to do. However, it might be interesting to have the Did you mean thing in the search page take interwikis into account. (I have no idea how feasible that would be).

Cheers.

sadik.khalid wrote:

Screenshot

Attached:

sadik.khalid wrote:

Just as a note, many programs (not all) will accept
http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/ആപ്പിൾ just fine. Modern (using an extremely loose
definition of modern) browsers will convert that into the percent encoded form
when entered into the address bar.

You are right we can type http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/ആപ്പിൾ in the address bar, browser will convert it. What about pasting this URL in email, blogs, etc.

I am attaching Screenshot from Firefox, Gmail, Blogspot, Gtalk and Chatzilla. I hope this will explain the problem what we are facing in the case of article 'ആപ്പിൾ'. If the Article Title is little long like 'കേരളത്തിലെ ഗ്രാമപഞ്ചായത്തുകളുടെ പട്ടിക' it will spread to five lines! Look at the above link, it is linked to 'ആപ്പി' instead of 'ആപ്പിൾ'.

Also there are (I assume) some words which have totally different meanings in different languages.

There is a chance for this, If different language using the same script. In this case we can show search suggestion instead of Automatic redirect.

Thus i don't think automatic redirection would be a good idea even if it was
easy to do.

Please note 'http://en.wikipedia.org/Apple' is automatically redirected to 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple' after 5 seconds.

(In reply to comment #0)

Here is the URL for Malayalam Wikipedia Article Apple:
http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%86%E0%B4%AA%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%AA%E0%B4%BF%E0%B5%BE
It is very difficult to use this URL in Email, Blog, Chat, IRC, etc. Many of
us will be happy if we can use 'http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple' instead of
the long URL.

The use case is invalid, you can ask shorturl extension now for this.
Closing per this + what bawolff said.