WeRelate:Suggestions/Make "→" section links work

Edit summaries for contributions to discussion page sections are pre-populated with a → character which is supposed to link to the top of that section. (Makes it easy to click on when you see it in your watch list). Those links are not working because section headings are (magically) being appended with the date of the last edit, and the anchor tag for the section is incorporating that date. E.g., there are two → characters at the top of this diff which both link to "#Source_merge", but the section anchor is "#Source_merge_.5B29_December_2011.5D". Can the section anchor be changed to remove the date portion? Then the "#Source_merge" links would work. Thanks. Colby Farrington 12:58, 29 December 2011 (EST)

This is not a request, or a direct comment on the above request, just a somewhat random observation prompted by the above request. Many active discussions get archived periodically. I suspect links to sections of a Talk page will break if that section gets moved to an archive page. Certainly some discussions on Watercooler, at least, may be worth keeping a links to, in a handy place, and many people seem to be creating cheat sheets of links to useful information, so perhaps some people actually try to do this. Overall, I think this has been kept to a minimum because the difficulty of including a volatile date has the net effect of discouraging links to sections, so perhaps archiving has not had a chance to get in the way yet. --Jrich 15:30, 29 December 2011 (EST)