Forum:External links special page

Does anyone know what Special:Outbound does? It appears when I click an external link sometimes. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 21:43, 31 August 2009 (UTC)


 * On some wikis (like the Wow wiki, i think), clicking an external link show an intermediary page saying we are leaving Wikia (with some ads). — TulipVorlax 01:10, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Alright. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 15:56, September 1, 2009 (UTC)


 * In fact, i've experienced that page on all wikia as anon..... — TulipVorlax 18:03, September 4, 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not discussing the usefullness of the Special:Outbound page but now, all visits to my personals site from Wikia wikis have that special page as referer :

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/8495/06092009213819.jpg
 * It can't be helped, maybe. But it's a downside of it. — TulipVorlax 01:41, September 7, 2009 (UTC)

It appears for logged in users on wiki mainpages, but not in preview! It should show up on "show all ads" even if you're logged in, but I suspect it doesn't. I am missing an announcement of this feature, but maybe I haven't looked hard enough. -- ◄mendel► 18:32, September 7, 2009 (UTC)

Is anyone having problems with external URLs containing a query string? The other day I noticed that URLs containing an "&" are ending up with "&amp;amp;" in the URL after it passed through the outbound thing. This link should be getting you to " http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Hakpaks.Detail & id=6602 ", but I'm ending up at " http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Hakpaks.Detail &amp;amp; id=6602 ". Just in case this testcase doesn't work here for whatever reason, the issue can be seen in the Links at the bottom of the ACAG page of the adwr wiki. --Superlgn 05:50, September 20, 2009 (UTC)
 * The test link isn't working, maybe because the outbound tracking/interstitial page/whatever isn't setup here. Anyway, the ACAG page should show it. It's fine in the preview, but as soon as the page is saved it gets the outbound thing and it stops working. --Superlgn 05:52, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

yes, the external link that is passed to special:outbound is urlencoded, this includes turning  into   (along with other chars). Dont just look at what what you see when you mouse over it, your browser's mouseover popup will decode /most/ of the urlencoded characters, but not amp's for somereason. if you actually look at the source of the page, then you will see the the WHOLE url is encoded, including all the ? chars too. what you are seeing, is a bug.

example: http://adwr.wikia.com/index.php?title=Special:Outbound&u=http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php%3Fview%3DHakpaks.Detail%26amp;id%3D6602 logged out people actually going to the link will eventually be redirected to the correctly decoded url of http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Hakpaks.Detail&id=6602

where the bug happens, is if a logged in user attempts to go to a special:outbound link (which in a perfect world, they shouldnt see at all), there is no delay, and they are shunted to the passed url, BUT, for some reason, in this logged in user scenario, the  isnt getting decoded back into , leading the logged in user to end up at http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Hakpaks.Detail&amp;id=6602

--Uberfuzzy 08:50, September 20, 2009 (UTC)


 * Should be fixed now. --TOR 12:55, September 20, 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks for the explanation and the fix. The URLs I've tested are working properly now. --Superlgn 15:02, September 20, 2009 (UTC)