User blog comment:DaNASCAT/Technical Update: August 16, 2011/@comment-4053809-20110817174436/@comment-168424-20110818044447

After reading alot of comments from staff, I still don't understand why the red link implementation for category just doesn't work this way: category pages that haven't been created still show a red link, but just don't automatically go to the create/edit page when you click on them, but still of course have an edit button when you visit them by clicking on them, so they can be created/edited at leisure. This serves the dual purpose of allowing experienced users to see that the categories are not yet created, but spares inexperienced users from getting the confusing create/edit page. Kangaroopower mentions this below, but I hadn't seen it before typing this.

The whole argument for the current functionality is based on the presumption that inexperienced users will be "disturbed" by seeing redlink categories at the bottom of pages. Has this been established by user studies or is it just a guess?