Board Thread:Technical Updates/@comment-26339491-20191203204132/@comment-24155515-20200408174036

Not the 12 and under crowd specifically, just people with valid reasons to not log in--COPPA covered users were just the most succinct example to grab. Most IP users could probably have an account, but I've edited non-Wikia wikis (en-wp :P) long enough to have seen both my fair share of trash IPs and the less-prevalent IP-with-a-good-reason-to-not-log-in (a small subset of non-trash IPs). It's more like I was just pointing out it's bad usability to have no non-login workaround. (I might be just a little annoyed because I knew about this and then forgot about it, and it was confusing for everyone in a discussion a few weeks ago when someone in an off-wiki location who didn't have an account was being linked a file page for the purpose of viewing it and redirected to a page with no obvious clue what they were supposed to be looking for.)

As for the file page linked on file page thing: they wouldn't be clicking the link on the file page they can't access. I was looking to see, since it redirects to a page the file is used on, what would happen if the page it would logically redirect to is... itself. So if a user accessed the file URL from a place it's accessible (either another page that's just not the one it would redirect to for some reason, or an off-wiki link), I was curious if it was coded with that foresight (it was) or if it would end up in an infinite loop of trying to redirect to the file page only for the file page to redirect it to the file page (it's not).

I'm sort of also curious what would happen if the file was linked on another file page where that's the page the logic would in theory redirect to (would it cut its trip to the second page short and follow the first page's logic and so send it to the main page lightbox, or would it follow the second page's logic and go wherever that page wants to redirect?). But I'm not willing to test that so soon just for the funsies of knowing the answer, when the consequence is potentially having to end-process my browser or even restart my computer if the RAM use is bad enough.