Link popup should distinguish between draft (never published) and draft (forked)
under review
Y
Yinmn blue Lark
When I use
ctrl + K
to add a link and type an article name into the search bar to create a relative link, it shows me a Draft
status when an article is Published + Forked. It shows me this same Draft
status for articles that have never been published. This has led me to select and link to draft articles that result in 404s. It'd be nice to distinguish between Never-Published Drafts and Forked Drafts in this context. Distinguishing between these two states would also be useful in a lot of other contexts.
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Mohamed Shakheen
marked this post as
under review
Mohamed Shakheen
Hi Yinmn blue Lark
Thank you for bringing this to our attention - this is a useful observation around the linking experience.
We understand the concern with the current behavior in the Ctrl + K link picker, where both never-published drafts and forked drafts (from published articles) are represented under the same “Draft” status. As you pointed out, this can create ambiguity and lead to unintended linking to non-published content, resulting in 404 scenarios.
At this stage, we would like to further validate this behavior and its broader impact across different usage patterns. Specifically, we’ll be looking into:
- How frequently users encounter ambiguity between never-published vs forked drafts
- The risk and impact of incorrect linking in real-world workflows
- Opportunities to improve status clarity within the link picker and other surfaces
We also want to ensure that any differentiation introduced aligns consistently with the existing versioning and publishing model, without introducing confusion in other parts of the product.
Your input is valuable in helping us identify areas where the authoring experience can be made more intuitive.
We’ll keep you posted as we progress through the validation.