Fixed in 672d48697991

hi, I think there might be a confussion about the meaning of -

to write to a file named - one should write to ./- instead, that's not a problem from wget it's the normal way - is interpreted (as an alias of stdout).

so:
$ LC_ALL=C wget -O ./- ix.de
--2008-11-27 00:49:03--  http://ix.de/
Resolving ix.de... 193.99.144.80
Connecting to ix.de|193.99.144.80|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.heise.de/ix/ [following]
--2008-11-27 00:49:04--  http://www.heise.de/ix/
Resolving www.heise.de... 193.99.144.85
Connecting to www.heise.de|193.99.144.85|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text/html]
Saving to: `./-'

    [     <=>                                                                                                ] 29,184      21.7K/s   in 1.3s   

2008-11-27 00:49:06 (21.7 KB/s) - `./-' saved [29184]

$ ls -la
total 41
-rw-r--r--   1 samus users 29184 2008-11-27 00:49 -
drwxr-xr-x   2 samus users    72 2008-11-27 00:49 .
drwx--x--x 117 samus users  9640 2008-11-27 00:47 ..

when you write to - you're using it as an alias of stdout, which will print the page to the console directly. I don't think this is useless since the rest the output is correctly sent to stderr so there's no mixing, you can handle them separately.

a real world example might be: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/desktop-wallpaper-changer-646084/#post3243438 and the use of -q is independent of the use of -O- imho.

as for the messages sent, here's the output I see (v1.11.4):
$ LC_ALL=C wget -O - ix.de >/dev/null
--2008-11-27 00:55:45--  http://ix.de/
Resolving ix.de... 193.99.144.80
Connecting to ix.de|193.99.144.80|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.heise.de/ix/ [following]
--2008-11-27 00:55:46--  http://www.heise.de/ix/
Resolving www.heise.de... 193.99.144.85
Connecting to www.heise.de|193.99.144.85|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text/html]
Saving to: `STDOUT'

    [     <=>                                                                                                ] 29,150      21.4K/s   in 1.3s   

2008-11-27 00:55:48 (21.4 KB/s) - `-' saved [29150]

(yet another example that uses -O- and not requires -q) it first says "Saving to: `STDOUT'" and then "`-' saved" which is probably not the clearest message but it's understandable I think.

Are you saying you wish the message from wget to say "written to standard output", rather than "saved to `-'"?