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I have noticed that many users link to the Mobile Wikipedia rather than the Desktop Wikipedia. This is very irritating when reading on a desktop.

Users of supported mobile devices are automatically redirected to the official mobile version of Wikipedia.

Supported: iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, WebOS, Opera Mini, NetFront (Sony Ericsson phones, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3), Wii, and numerous others.

Linking to the desktop version of Wikipedia makes browsing more pleasant for desktop users and mobile users will be automatically redirected to the mobile version. If you copy paste a mobile address, then please remove m. from the URL.
It's not much to ask!

Am I just crazy or are other desktop users irritated by this?

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    $\begingroup$ I'd just like to point out that this is Wikipedia's fault, not user's. $\endgroup$
    – o0'.
    Jul 14, 2015 at 16:43
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    $\begingroup$ What really freaked me out was when someone linked to wikipedia through some sort of alternate wikipedia client. I thought it was a phishing scam or political wiki or something. Freaky! $\endgroup$
    – PyRulez
    Jul 14, 2015 at 18:06
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    $\begingroup$ Here's a Data Explorer query for posts that link to m.wikipedia.org - data.stackexchange.com/worldbuilding/query/336825/…. In case you folks want to go through and clean them up or anything. $\endgroup$
    – senshin
    Jul 15, 2015 at 22:29
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    $\begingroup$ @senshin If only the edits changed the url by at least 6 characters... $\endgroup$
    – SnoringFrog
    Jul 16, 2015 at 16:00
  • $\begingroup$ Why do I get the impression that I am the single reason for this post since I post from my mobile devices usually :-) $\endgroup$
    – JDSweetBeat
    Aug 22, 2016 at 15:50

2 Answers 2

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I assume that the people doing this are posting from mobile, so they researched something, collected the link, and used it. Probably they don't even notice that the link is sub-optimal, so thanks for raising awareness.

If authors can edit those links that's great, but if they don't, anybody else should feel free to edit in this change. That way only the first person to be potentially irritated by it has to be irritated.

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This sounds like something that Stack Exchange’s automatical link conversion could automatically do, given that Wikipedia is probably the most linked external source. It’s not much different from converting this:

https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2267

to this:

Please don't link to m.wikipedia.org

I now posted a feature request for this on Meta.SE.

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    $\begingroup$ Interesting idea. They also do something special with Amazon links, I think. You might want to propose this on Meta.SE. $\endgroup$
    – Monica Cellio
    Jul 9, 2015 at 22:11
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    $\begingroup$ The issue is that sometimes the writer intentionally links to the mobile version of the website, e.g. stackoverflow.com/q/25790873/395857 . So I guess it would depend on the SE website. $\endgroup$
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Jul 10, 2015 at 1:48
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    $\begingroup$ At most you could show a warning, but as I never encountered this problem I don't know whether it's worth it. $\endgroup$
    – David Mulder
    Jul 12, 2015 at 12:16
  • $\begingroup$ @FranckDernoncourt In that case, solely doing it for Wikipedia may be the solution. It's cited quite often, and I can't see any reason someone would specifically need to link to mobile version of the site at any point. $\endgroup$
    – SnoringFrog
    Jul 16, 2015 at 20:08
  • $\begingroup$ @SnoringFrog Good point. $\endgroup$
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Jul 16, 2015 at 20:27
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    $\begingroup$ @SnoringFrog on Security stack or UX stack linking to mobile Wikipedia may have a perfect sense - if the issue in question only affects mobile one. $\endgroup$
    – Mołot
    Nov 21, 2016 at 0:08

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