Thanks for the long message, I now get the point. However necessary the change, it's sure to drive some people away for good. Some kind of redirection mechanism

Thanks for the long message, I now get the point. However necessary the change, it's sure to drive some people away for good. Some kind of redirection mechanism would have handled this nicely. Now that I'm thinking about this, a browser extension could handle this - with JavaScript enabled of course. It could come with a V2->V3 host mapping, and then scan the page and fix the links within. Or maybe do the mapping when the link is clicked or otherwise interacted with.