delete and add together are a poor edit, i agree, but when i tried to add "3184&displaytype=raw" it turned & into %26 and = into %3D, so i got "3184%26displaytype%3Draw" -- which index.pl rightly has trouble finding.

the <A href...> thing does work, i had just assumed it wouldn't, since there was no indication it would, and the personal nodelet did seem to be munging my other stuff. great! thanks.

update: yeah, that's what i do now that i know <A ...> works. what didn't work was just putting that string above into the add field.