Manual:RFC

Mediawiki recognizes inline references to RFCs; for example: the wikitext  becomes RFC 822 (link corresponds to [ ]).

So,  can be seen as a template with one parameter, but with a special syntax just for this application. If you do not want this behaviour, put something like  in your wikitext.

Note that  must be spelt all upper case, and alternate names such as   and   cannot be used, even if they exist. There must be no other punctuation but one or more spaces (ASCII: 0x20, SP) betweeen the characters  and the number. The number is terminated by the first non-numeral.

Leading zeroes making up for a total of four digits can be used in the RFC number, which may come handy in lists and tables. Yet beware: they work only, because the IETF does support such URLs on their website.

Using incorrect numbers, e.g. of non-existing RFCs, will display links that lead to an error page as long as the corresponding pages have not been created on the target server.

See also: Markup spec/BNF/Magic links