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Linking through the multiple-comparisons tab gives a page listing 47 tagged questions (as of this moment). The textbox in the upper right corner reads "[multiple-comparisons]". Typing in another search term, such as "[multiple-comparisons] correlation" and pressing Enter restricts the search, in this case returning just 8 results. The URL for these results is https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=[multiple-comparisons]+correlation.

However, using the same URL for a link within a comment returns 390 search results!!

(If you link through the preceding line you will see 8 results. If you link through the first comment below you will see all 390.)

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  • $\begingroup$ Here's a test http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=[multiple-comparisons]+correlation $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Apr 19, 2011 at 16:45
  • $\begingroup$ Here's another test. http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bmultiple-comparisons%5D%20correlation $\endgroup$
    – Jeff Atwood
    Apr 19, 2011 at 21:53

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Hmm.

I get

https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bmultiple-comparisons%5D%20correlation

8 results.

There are

https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/multiple-comparisons

47 questions with the tag, so that doesn't seem unreasonable.

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  • $\begingroup$ it's quite reasonable. What's unreasonable is that the very same URL gives dramatically different results depending on whether it's used in a question/reply/Web browser or in a comment. When you link through the test comment I provided, how many results appear for you? $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Apr 19, 2011 at 20:23
  • $\begingroup$ oh you need to encode it. See the above version -- brackets have to be escaped. $\endgroup$
    – Jeff Atwood
    Apr 19, 2011 at 21:53
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks Jeff. That resolves it. $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Apr 19, 2011 at 23:19
  • $\begingroup$ Out of curiosity, why is it necessary to escape a square bracket when the quotation symbols are parentheses? $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Apr 21, 2011 at 3:20
  • $\begingroup$ Seems like an obvious bug in the comment-processing code. Why wouldn't you also interpret brackets correctly for strings starting with http:// and no white space in between. URL escaping is not likely to be well-known to users on specialized (non-SO) sites in the SE community. $\endgroup$
    – cardinal
    Apr 22, 2011 at 18:57

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