Last modified: 2011-01-25 00:46:31 UTC
If you have a talk namespace with sub-pages enabled, coupled with a content namespace with sub-pages disabled, you want the top level for the talk namespace to match the content namespace title. i.e. [[AC/DC]] does not link to [[AC]], so neither should [[Talk:AC/DC]] link to [[Talk:AC]].
And should [[Talk:AC/Archive 1]] link to [[Talk:AC]]?? How is the software supposed to know the difference? Note that "check if X page exists/doesn't exist" is not a good way to tell, even if you could come up with a consistent method. The amount of extra database load that would be added is entirely unjustified by the trivial usability improvement. Suggest WONTFIX.
I workable work-around would be to provide a __NOSUBPAGE__ keyword (I'd happily WONTFIX this if that was available). The extra database load should be negligable (it already checks for the existence of the super-pages) and I think that existence of the associated main page would be a pretty good heuristic (how likely is it to have a rock band named [[title/Archive]]? You could also provide __SUBPAGE__, just in case).
Now *that* is a more viable alternative. Existence of the associated main page is *not* a good heuristic: what do you do with [[File talk:AC/DC]]/[[File talk:AC/Archive 1]] if the file is on a shared repository and so the file page actually *doesn't* exist? Placing a __NOTSUBPAGE__ behaviour switch on the page to trigger not-subpage-ness would work, although it would need to propagate to sub-subpages... Maybe page_props?
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 19032 ***