The Lurker
Redirection on error is fucking stupid
(Because "considered harmful" is used far too often these days.)
So I clicked on a link to a discussion board:
Server is temporarily down for regular maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience, please try again in 5 minutes.
OK, I'll come back in a few minutes and click Reload. Oh, no I won't — the stupid web server has redirected me to http://imbeciles.example.com/unavailable.html, so I can't do that, and they certainly haven't provided a link back to the page I wanted to see. I now have to go back to wherever I found the link (a window I had closed because I was finished with it, after all), open it again, and hope it doesn't happen again.
There is just no reason to redirect to a different URL on this kind of error. It's only making things harder for the user.
All timestamps are Melbourne time.