Help talk:Interlanguage links/Archive 2
 | This is an archive of past discussions about Help:Interlanguage links. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
| Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
More than one interwiki from the same language?
Is there a way to have more than one interwiki from the same language? For example, the English List of Sailor Moon video games is made to cover all the video games created for Sailor Moon, but over on fr:, they have their own articles, fr:Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon and fr:Sailor Moon (jeu vidéo). Thanks for any help. -Malkinann (talk)
- No, this is not possible, It would create a conflict. You can only link the summarized articles against each other and the specific articles to the corresponding articles. This means that you can't even put a single link to a language when the scope of the article there is different. By the way: in some languages you have both: summarized articles and articles to specific games/books/movies. --JonnyJD (talk)
- No, this is not possible, It would create a conflict. You can only link the summarized articles against each other and the specific articles to the corresponding articles. This means that you can't even put a single link to a language when the scope of the article there is different. By the way: in some languages you have both: summarized articles and articles to specific games/books/movies. --JonnyJD (talk)
Link to latin script variant of Kazakh Language Wikipedia Main Page ?
The Kazakh language Wikipedia is written in three versions: with cyrilic, latin and arabic alphabets. You can switch among them by clicking their respectives tabs on top of the page. I need to provide an interwiki link to the Main Page of the Kazakh Language Wikipedia but the default [[:kk:]] code gives me the cyrillic version and I want the latin script version of it [1]. How can I do this ? --InfoCan (talk)
Bots should not remove links
I propose that bots should not be allowed to remove interlanguge links (except perhaps in certain special cases, like two links to the same language on the same page).
Reason: a bot cannot possibly decide whether a link is useful or not. Only a human (with a reasonable understanding of both relevant languages) can make the decision. At the moment it seems that some bots (e.g. PipepBot, with whose owner I have tried to discuss this matter), delete links on the basis of some algorithm (maybe something like: if en:A links to de:B and de:B links to en:C, then delete the link to de:B on en:A). I don't believe that such an algorithm can ever be reliable, because:
- these algorithms seem to assume one-to-one correspondence between articles in different languages;
- there is not in fact such a correspondence, and the links structure should be sufficiently flexible to allow for that;
- even if we did insist on one-to-one linking (which is not agreed policy as far as I can tell), a bot would not be able to tell which is the wrong link, e.g. in the example above it might be the link on the de:B page which is wrong.
Even humans I think need to be urged not to be too officious in deleting inexact links, which are often more helpful than no link at all. --Kotniski (talk)
- My bot PipepBot is running pywikipedia interwiki bot. It never deletes interwiki links automatically. Every time the bot sees a problem it asks me, and I decide what to do. --Pipep (talk)
I discussed this topic a year ago already. We NEED an exact one-one relationship if we want to be able to interchange interwikilinks in different pages. We need to do that automatically, because this is the only chance to maintain that many interwikilinks in that many different languages. Nobody can speak all these languages to check them manually so we have to be strict about the relationsship. Everything else is going to lead to interwiki conflicts. The bad part about these is not, that these are inaccurate in 1 or 2 languages. The bad part is that no bot can update these links anymore because it is not clear how they relate to each other.
I understand that you want everything to be flexible, but then everything has to be handmade. Do you want to edit interwikilinks in 10 or 15 different languages on 10 or 15 wikis? You would have to to do that for EVERY article. The 1-1 relationship is not a restriction because we are not smart enough to write better bots. This is a restriction we have because of the underlying logic. Unless we have bots able to read the content in the article, but then we could create the whole wikipedia automatically from content stored somewhere. Plus: Unless you show me a concept that would work without 1-1 relationsships and I can't prove that it won't. On the other hand I don't feel like writing a proof of my concept because this is somewhat more timeconsuming than just proving that something doesn't work, but I guess it was done somewhere already, maybe for an equivalent problem.
You are definetely right that a bot shouldn't decide what's the wrong link to remove (if there is a conflict). However, if you see a bot removing a link this could also mean that a human gave the order to do so. In that case it is only semiautomatic and it can really help in solving conflicts. If that deletion was wrong then the person solving the conflict was wrong and people should discuss that. I am not that active solving conflicts at the moment, but if anybody has a question are needs a third opinion: tell me and I will have a look since I am still interested in the topic. --JonnyJD (talk)
Please have a look also at #Interlanguage_content_is_sometimes_a_partial_match. This also deals with basically the same topic. --JonnyJD (talk)
- I see the issue, but one possible solution which springs to mind is this: instead of deleting (without replacement) a link to a partial match, just add a comment after it in the wikitext, something like
[[ja:XXX]]< !-- partial match -- >
- Then program the bots not to promulgate such links further, and to replace them automatically when they get a good match; i.e. from the bot's point of view the link is effectively deleted, but for the human user it remain available until something better comes along.--Kotniski (talk)
- I work a lot with iw links, but only manually - i just never tried running a bot, and in any case i have to think for myself too often to let a bot decide.
- I have a very strong opinion about having one-to-one relationships whenever possible. When it is not possible, i prefer not to have a link at all.
- I am not not against bots, like some people. They are doing a fantastic job compensating for what i consider as a bug: different versions of Wikipedia have almost zero coordination on what articles and categories they should include and what should their structure be. It's not perfect, but for me it's as good as it gets, and all in all, it's probably the most viable compromise for people who want the Wikipedia in their language be an independent community.
- AFAIK, bots delete a link when they identify that an article was deleted in the other Wikipedia. That is a good thing, and that should make people consider deleting that article in their Wikipedia too - or, if they think that the subject of that article does deserve to be written about, to go the extra mile to that other Wikipedia and propose its re-creation.
- People raise an eyebrow when i do such things through embassies in foreign Wikipedias, but that should happen more. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
- Well, I basically agree with everything you're saying, except the bit about preferring no link at all to a non-1-to-1 link. Can you expand on that (i.e. explain why)?--Kotniski (talk)
- Truth is one. In a perfect world, all Wikipedias have the same information in different languages. (Unlike some people, i don't think that in a perfect all people speak one language; linguistic diversity is A Good Thing.) If the information is the same, then it's structure and organization should be the same.
- That was the philosophical part. The practical part is that it is a nightmare to maintain, for both bots and humans. I often encounter situations of this kind.
- In reality i very rarely delete links brutally. Usually i bring one Wikipedia in harmony with the other. Sometimes it means that i write a new article, sometimes i restructure the categories, sometimes i split and merge existing articles. That's something that bots cannot do.
- I mostly harmonize between Hebrew and English Wiki's, but i also lurk on ru, uk, ca, it, es and a few others. (It's a terrific way to learn languages, too.) Sometimes the Hebrew one is better, sometimes the English one. Nothing is holy. As in nearly all things in Wikipedia, BE BOLD is the number one rule and nearly always it works wonderfully. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
- Well, I basically agree with everything you're saying, except the bit about preferring no link at all to a non-1-to-1 link. Can you expand on that (i.e. explain why)?--Kotniski (talk)
- I hope you read the two discussion links I gave you further up. You can do some manual partial match, but you shouldn't do that as a normal interwikilink. Just include it in a decent part of the article if it really IS that important even if it is only a partial match. (prepend another ":" in the link) Then it is a connection, but it is also made clear that this is NOT a 2-way connection because it is no 1-1 link.
- The suggestion you made is somewhat errorprone with the exact formatting, but the real problem is, that the user can still get lost, because he has no defined way back and this should be possible with all the interwikis shown on the left side. Therefore, just make it a link in the text, if it is important or leave it if there is no direct connection. If we start doing partial matches officially then we end up with a lot of wild links to everywhere. (everybody would argue that there is some relation or one part that actually is discussed in both articles) --JonnyJD (talk)
- Well, I see I'm in the minority here, but I still don't agree. Surely the ability to go to some relevant article in one's own/other language is more important than the fact of always automatically going back to where you came from (which you can do anyway using the browser's "Back" button). And everyone's used to finding the interlanguage links where they are - users aren't going to start trawling through articles looking for additional inline ones. As far as I can see the suggestion I made above would solve the maintenance problem for bots. And I'm not proposing that more than one link to a particular language be allowed in any article, so the proliferation of "wild" links would remain firmly in check. --Kotniski (talk)
- Well, I see I'm in the minority here, but I still don't agree. Surely the ability to go to some relevant article in one's own/other language is more important than the fact of always automatically going back to where you came from (which you can do anyway using the browser's "Back" button). And everyone's used to finding the interlanguage links where they are - users aren't going to start trawling through articles looking for additional inline ones. As far as I can see the suggestion I made above would solve the maintenance problem for bots. And I'm not proposing that more than one link to a particular language be allowed in any article, so the proliferation of "wild" links would remain firmly in check. --Kotniski (talk)
- partial linking is very bad. interwiki bots do a very good job of propagating interwiki links. those bots do no actually add links. if en:X links to de:X and de:X links to sv:X. the bot adds sv to the en article and en to sv even knowing there is no direct link. Add in a few more languages and partial matchs become a quagmire. βcommand 2
- Have you looked at my suggestion above (the one about adding a comment in the wikitext after partial links)? As far as I can see it will solve this bot problem completely, while allowing humans to continue to see links which are likely to be useful to them.--Kotniski (talk)
- I don't believe that users will create clearly formatted entries so the bots can realize what type of interwikilink this is and do the right format for the right link (partial or complete). I don't want to offend anybody, but my experience shows that users quite often don't see the difference between partial matches and complete matches and having two formats makes this rather more complicated. Maybe I am wrong and users are quite aware of the surrounding issues. In this case we would need a new styleguideline for that and all the bots have to be rewritten BEFORE people add these partial links. So you should find a platform to discuss this with the bot-scripters and you will have to argue with them so they include that change. --JonnyJD (talk)
- I don't expect users to format these links either, but that isn't the point. The bots would add these comments, to exactly the links that they currently delete (except obviously links to non-existent or totally irrelevant articles, which would still be deleted). Of course there's a chance that editors will not understand the importance of the comments and delete them, but that can hardly be more of a problem than the situation we have now - where editors keep putting in reasonable links of the type the bots delete.
- I don't believe that users will create clearly formatted entries so the bots can realize what type of interwikilink this is and do the right format for the right link (partial or complete). I don't want to offend anybody, but my experience shows that users quite often don't see the difference between partial matches and complete matches and having two formats makes this rather more complicated. Maybe I am wrong and users are quite aware of the surrounding issues. In this case we would need a new styleguideline for that and all the bots have to be rewritten BEFORE people add these partial links. So you should find a platform to discuss this with the bot-scripters and you will have to argue with them so they include that change. --JonnyJD (talk)
- Have you looked at my suggestion above (the one about adding a comment in the wikitext after partial links)? As far as I can see it will solve this bot problem completely, while allowing humans to continue to see links which are likely to be useful to them.--Kotniski (talk)
- We already had that topic. Bots DON'T delete links without user input. There is at least a user telling the bot what links to delete. It's not that it would work automatically. We have huge lists of interwiki conflicts that need to be solved and if you see that as the point when the comment gets inserted then it simply doesn't work. It will create more conflicts that need to be solved, because you encourage to use partial links. The only difference would be the way how conflicts get solved (changing link types rather than deletion), but we would have a lot more broken interwikis and still not enough people willing working on them. Having more of these is a must before we try to improve the complexity of the links imho. Have a look at at lists like this: de:Wikipedia:Interwiki-Konflikte. The list is not even near complete and you can work a while on fixing a single conflict..
- I haven't found something better yet to reach scripters other than leaving a note on every bot owner or similar. --JonnyJD (talk)
- OK, I know bots are supposed not to delete links without user input. What I'm proposing is that, in cases where now the user (bot owner) gives the go-ahead for a delete, s/he should have a third option, namely "mark as partial match". Then the comment gets added (presumably the bot could do this, after the user clicks the button), and from then on that link is, from the bots' point of view, not there (well, they just have to remember to delete it if they find a better link in the same language). This does not affect the number of conflicts at all, for better or for worse, because regardless of whether the link is deleted or commented, the bots stop looking at it, so it can't possibly cause a conflict. However it does allow a potentially useful link to be retained for human users, who are the ones for whom we are presumably building this encyclopedia.--Kotniski (talk)
- OK, I know bots are supposed not to delete links without user input. What I'm proposing is that, in cases where now the user (bot owner) gives the go-ahead for a delete, s/he should have a third option, namely "mark as partial match". Then the comment gets added (presumably the bot could do this, after the user clicks the button), and from then on that link is, from the bots' point of view, not there (well, they just have to remember to delete it if they find a better link in the same language). This does not affect the number of conflicts at all, for better or for worse, because regardless of whether the link is deleted or commented, the bots stop looking at it, so it can't possibly cause a conflict. However it does allow a potentially useful link to be retained for human users, who are the ones for whom we are presumably building this encyclopedia.--Kotniski (talk)
- If you allow partial matches officially then more of these get added so you get more conflicts, because people start adding more partial matches because it "works" (not automatically) now. Changing rules also changes the editing behavior of people.
- This is basically the same issue like deleting irrelevant articles. We do that to get higher quality articles (or interwikilinks) rather than just as many as we can get, because we don't have an infinite number of people working on wikipedia. Of course, this is one major disagreement between en.wiki and de.wiki (where I come from) --JonnyJD (talk)
- Well, I sort of see your point, but as far as I know there is no rule at the moment against adding partial matches (it's just a preference that bot owners try to impose), and indeed people do add such links, hence the large number of conflicts. In fact, under my suggestion, the rules could be changed to specifically require that people adding partial links mark them as such using a standard comment; that might actually reduce the number of conflicts that the bots and their owners have to sort out.--Kotniski (talk)
- Well, I sort of see your point, but as far as I know there is no rule at the moment against adding partial matches (it's just a preference that bot owners try to impose), and indeed people do add such links, hence the large number of conflicts. In fact, under my suggestion, the rules could be changed to specifically require that people adding partial links mark them as such using a standard comment; that might actually reduce the number of conflicts that the bots and their owners have to sort out.--Kotniski (talk)
A proposal: language disambiguation pages
(Refactored: This discussion started as a subsection of an old discussion titled "How to deal with multiple articles in another language." from 2006.) --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
Well, you have to consider a most general case. There are lots of situations where a term in a language corresponds to two completely different objects or concepts which are called using different terms in another language. For example, Helmet in English is used for both Combat Helmet and Sport Helmet. In Italian, combat helmet is called elmo if we refer to ancient one, and elmetto if we refer to the modern one. Sport helmet is called casco. Currently the Henglish article Helmet refers to the Italian one Casco, whereas both Casco and Elmo refers to Helmet. This asymmetry is a problem. In dictionaries, this problems are managed by using numbers (1), (2)... and so forth. I do not propose that but we need a similar mechanism to manage interlanguage connections. A solution might be to create a specific disambiguation page to manage one-to-many relationships. Differently from the traditional disambiguation page, which is used to disambiguate between different meanings of the same term in the same language, this page would be used as an hub to redirect the reader to several possible translations of the same term. How to implement? A way could be to use the original term prefixed by a symbol. For example, if I add [[it:@Helmet]] to an article, the Italian link will take me to a page where Helmet (English) is disambiguate in the three different terms casco, elmo, and elmetto. Of course this page should not be searcheable as the other wiki pages, since it is not expected to be reached directly, but only thru a language link. It is a Special page. That would be solve a LOT of misunderstandings.--Dejudicibus (talk)
- I found a way to make it simpler. Let us create in every Wikipedia a new namespace callde X (that is, cross — do not consider it a term but a symbol, an icon, so that it can be understood everywhere). We need a namespace to avoid that the disambigiation pages be indexed by search. When a term "A-term" in language "aa" has more translations in language "bb", that is, "B1-term", "B2-term", "B3-term"..., we just put in the "A-term" article the link [[bb:X:A-term]] which takes to a X:A-term disambiguation page containing the links to all "Bn-term" articles. X:A-term page is not in the base namespace since it refers to a foiregn language for bb.wikipedia.org, and it can be reached only through the language link. Comments? Questions? Suggestions?--Dejudicibus (talk)
- This seems very complicated for a such little problem. The current system is not perfect but works well. The details of translation are soon explicated on wiktionary. Cdlt, VIGNERON * discut.
- I do not think it is a little problem, not for any person in the world that speaks more than one language.--Dejudicibus (talk)
- I do not think it is a little problem, not for any person in the world that speaks more than one language.--Dejudicibus (talk)
- This seems very complicated for a such little problem. The current system is not perfect but works well. The details of translation are soon explicated on wiktionary. Cdlt, VIGNERON * discut.
- I found a way to make it simpler. Let us create in every Wikipedia a new namespace callde X (that is, cross — do not consider it a term but a symbol, an icon, so that it can be understood everywhere). We need a namespace to avoid that the disambigiation pages be indexed by search. When a term "A-term" in language "aa" has more translations in language "bb", that is, "B1-term", "B2-term", "B3-term"..., we just put in the "A-term" article the link [[bb:X:A-term]] which takes to a X:A-term disambiguation page containing the links to all "Bn-term" articles. X:A-term page is not in the base namespace since it refers to a foiregn language for bb.wikipedia.org, and it can be reached only through the language link. Comments? Questions? Suggestions?--Dejudicibus (talk)
- Full suport to these ideas. The problem is real and deep. Interwiki links are a nightmare to sort out, there is often no solution with current system because terms in various languages do not cover the same meanings. We need a sort of multi-lingual disambiguation system. Whatever is the solution later used, the first step is to get aware of this problem. Jérôme (talk)
- I just can not undestand the need of this.
- An Encyclopedia is about otpic, not words. So If a word have 3 meanings in English, en.wikipedia should have 3 articles. The 3 pages at it.wikipedia should have interlanguage link point ing to the right page at en.wikipedia. --ChemicalBit (talk)
- Not necessarily. Take the example given by Dejudicibus: a Helmet is helmet, whereas it's a military one or a sport helmet. These are 2 kinds of helmets, but still helmets. One could write 2 articles, of course, but writing a single one also make sense, why not. But here's the problem: in italian (apparently), these 2 kinds of helmet have different names and unless there is another word covering both kind of helmet, writing a single article on it.wikipedia is just not possible (well, eventually it's possible using redirection, but when you use 2 words to describe 2 kinds of helmets, you'll naturally write two articles). The problem isn't that there is 1 word with two meanings in one language and 2 words in another, the problem is that one language may have a more general word when another have several more specific words (and no word covering the general concept). In this case, the speakers of the first language would tend to write one article describing the different kind and the speakers of the other would tend to write an article for each kind. I already found other example with a similar problem but unfortunatelly I don't remember what it was. Polletfa (talk)
- I just found another example: tax. In french, you have fr:Impôt and fr:Taxe. Both are translated by 'tax' in english and 'Steuer' in german but it french 'taxe' and 'impôt' are not exactly the same (I don't quite understand the difference because it's kind of technical). There is also 'redevance': the english link is 'royalties' but it's probably false, because the most well-known 'redevance' in french is the 'redevance audiovisuel', which is in english the 'television licence'. So 'taxe', 'impôt', 'redevance' are several kinds of imposition or charges, but it is very difficult to find the word which translate exactly one or another in another language because this is a theme were every country has its own tradition, its own categorization, its own reglementation... Other example: 'droit' and 'loi' are both linked with 'law' in english but... 'loi ' and 'droit' are slightly different in french (even if very closely related). Actually I think that a lot of interwiki links on articles related to law are either mistakes or simplification. Polletfa (talk)
- Good example. I Italian too tax refers to two completely different concepts: tasse and imposte. So, if both Italian articles can refer to the single English one, which Italian article should be referred in the English article? You cannot choose one. In both cases it would be wrong.--Dejudicibus (talk)
- I got nightmares was when I tried to sort out interwiki links of Thatching. In English, the article is about crafstamanship. In French, the article is fr:chaume, about the vegetal material (type of straw). But the French article fr:Chaumière (the sort of house has a roof made of the straw) has also an interwiki link to thatching, which is the closest in thematic, because there is no equivalent article on English Wikipedia for that kind of house. One could use cottage, because the French word chaumière often means a sort of cottage house, but if you do so, you will change of interwiki loop, and switch to "holiday house" series of words, where you notice that German Wikipedia has one article named de:Cottage (Wohngebäude) and one named de:Ferienhaus, with interwiki links randomly pointing to the cottage/chaumière mess.
- ChemicalBit, you are surely right, if there are two meanings we shoud logically make two articles. But you cannot "force" ten small wikipedias to make one or several articles just because English, German or whatever big Wikipedias need a specific way to cut information. Sometimes according to the language it might not even make sense to make two separate articles, if the concepts are understood as just the same in that language. Jérôme (talk)
- Good example. I Italian too tax refers to two completely different concepts: tasse and imposte. So, if both Italian articles can refer to the single English one, which Italian article should be referred in the English article? You cannot choose one. In both cases it would be wrong.--Dejudicibus (talk)
- I just found another example: tax. In french, you have fr:Impôt and fr:Taxe. Both are translated by 'tax' in english and 'Steuer' in german but it french 'taxe' and 'impôt' are not exactly the same (I don't quite understand the difference because it's kind of technical). There is also 'redevance': the english link is 'royalties' but it's probably false, because the most well-known 'redevance' in french is the 'redevance audiovisuel', which is in english the 'television licence'. So 'taxe', 'impôt', 'redevance' are several kinds of imposition or charges, but it is very difficult to find the word which translate exactly one or another in another language because this is a theme were every country has its own tradition, its own categorization, its own reglementation... Other example: 'droit' and 'loi' are both linked with 'law' in english but... 'loi ' and 'droit' are slightly different in french (even if very closely related). Actually I think that a lot of interwiki links on articles related to law are either mistakes or simplification. Polletfa (talk)
- Not necessarily. Take the example given by Dejudicibus: a Helmet is helmet, whereas it's a military one or a sport helmet. These are 2 kinds of helmets, but still helmets. One could write 2 articles, of course, but writing a single one also make sense, why not. But here's the problem: in italian (apparently), these 2 kinds of helmet have different names and unless there is another word covering both kind of helmet, writing a single article on it.wikipedia is just not possible (well, eventually it's possible using redirection, but when you use 2 words to describe 2 kinds of helmets, you'll naturally write two articles). The problem isn't that there is 1 word with two meanings in one language and 2 words in another, the problem is that one language may have a more general word when another have several more specific words (and no word covering the general concept). In this case, the speakers of the first language would tend to write one article describing the different kind and the speakers of the other would tend to write an article for each kind. I already found other example with a similar problem but unfortunatelly I don't remember what it was. Polletfa (talk)
- I have a lot of experience manually sorting out such cases. I wrote a script that finds them. I didn't operate it on en.wiki, but it has been quite fruitful in the Hebrew Wikipedia.
- My most important conclusion: if two articles are different enough for language X, then they are different enough for language Y, even if in language Y both have the same name.
- For example, in Hebrew Glacier and Iceberg are the same word, but we noticed that in most languages the words are different, and we realized that these are quite different things, even though both involve ice. So we split the article in the Hebrew Wikipedia. Basically, encyclopedic facts are the same, even if languages are different.
- So no, an "interwiki disambiguation" is not a good idea. There are only two options in hard interwiki cases: To harmonize article structure between two Wikipedias by splitting or merging - a thing which i did many times -, or if that is too hard - not to add interwiki links to the problematic article at all.
- For more information about the script that finds such hard cases automatically, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Interlanguage Links/Ideas from the Hebrew Wikipedia. If you would like to implement this in Wikipedia in your language, please let me know and i shall gladly help you. I already implemented it by myself in Russian, Esperanto and Occitan, and i am almost ready to implement it in Spanish, French and Nynorsk. Any other language should be very easy (except, in the meantime, English - en.wiki is huge and poses several technical problems, on which i am working right now). --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
- (conflicted) I agree with Dejudicibus. Probably we need a different namespace, made ad hoc for redirecting thoose peculiar cases. --Roberto Segnali all'Indiano
- Nope. A new namespace for this will add technical complexity, and will not solve the problem.
- One can say that "a helmet is a helmet", but if two full articles can be written in Italian about two different types of helmets, then two full articles can be written in English and in any other language. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
- Amir, it is not a matter of two different kind of helmet. The term helmet in English refers to two completely different objects in Italian. And this is true for a lot of other terms. For example, you use home and house to identify two different concepts. We use just casa. No difference. And thiese are the simplest cases. Glass is the transparent material to make windows in English, as well as the object used to drink. But in Italian glass is vetro in the first case and bicchiere in the second one, even if non made by glass. There is no realtion between the two concepts in Italian.--Dejudicibus (talk)
- The easiest solution would be to allow multiple interwiki to the same language. Id est, having in Helmet both "[[it:Elmo]]" and [[it:Casco]]" interwiki. In the interwiki coloumn that would result in something like:
- ... and so on. But this possibility could be misunderstood and improperly used by many users. Quatar (talk)
- It is technically allowed and it is, indeed, improperly used by many users. This help page discourages it - "links from any page (most notably articles) in one Wikipedia language to the same subject in another Wikipedia language" - but it is not massively enforced (unlike, for example, deletion of unjustified fair use images or unsourced data). I often remove such links, doing my best to improve article structure on the way, but sometimes it is hard to judge what should be removed and what should be left, so i unhappily leave them as they are.
- AFAIK, the standard interwiki bot software (see meta:Using the python wikipediabot) removes double links when it encounters them, but i'm not sure about its exact algorithm. In any case, this bot is unlikely to encounter a page with duplicate links without being specifically requested to do so. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
- I understand that human intervention from the bot operator is required before the bot removes links (though there may be exceptions to this). I actually like the idea of disambiguation pages (whether in a separate namespace or not) being used to solve this problem. Ideally every Wikipedia would have exactly corresponding articles, but of course this is far from being the case in practice, and so we need a more complex interlanguage linking system to take account of the complex relations involved.--Kotniski (talk)
- I understand that human intervention from the bot operator is required before the bot removes links (though there may be exceptions to this). I actually like the idea of disambiguation pages (whether in a separate namespace or not) being used to solve this problem. Ideally every Wikipedia would have exactly corresponding articles, but of course this is far from being the case in practice, and so we need a more complex interlanguage linking system to take account of the complex relations involved.--Kotniski (talk)
- Often, as Amir E. Aharoni notes above, these ambiguities can indeed be resolved by choosing more accurate link targets, or, if that can't be done, may indicate that some pages should be split. Taking a closer look at the examples you mentioned (while acknowledging that you meant them as examples of a broader phenomenon), for instance, I note that we already have separate English articles for Glass (material) and Glass (drinkware) (which actually redirect to Glass and Drinkware, and indeed link to it:Vetro and it:Bicchiere, respectively). Similarly, our Helmet article indeed properly links to it:Casco, as it should, since the two articles mainly discuss the same thing. We also have a separate Combat helmet article, which currently has no Italian interlanguage link, but should probably link to it:Elmetto (and vice versa). Meanwhile, I suspect that the most appropriate interwiki link target for it:Elmo would be Great helm, though, not actually speaking Italian, it's hard for me to be sure. As for Home and House, they currently link to it:Residenza and it:Casa respectively: this may be a reasonable arrangement, particularly as Residence in English is currently a disambiguation page, but it does seem (based on my limited understanding of the language) that there is some content at it:Casa which really discusses the concept known in English as "Home" and maybe ought to be split off or possibly merged with another existing article. —Ilmari Karonen (talk)
- Amir, it is not a matter of two different kind of helmet. The term helmet in English refers to two completely different objects in Italian. And this is true for a lot of other terms. For example, you use home and house to identify two different concepts. We use just casa. No difference. And thiese are the simplest cases. Glass is the transparent material to make windows in English, as well as the object used to drink. But in Italian glass is vetro in the first case and bicchiere in the second one, even if non made by glass. There is no realtion between the two concepts in Italian.--Dejudicibus (talk)
- (conflicted) I agree with Dejudicibus. Probably we need a different namespace, made ad hoc for redirecting thoose peculiar cases. --Roberto Segnali all'Indiano
See also m:A_newer_look_at_the_interwiki_link. --Nemo bis (talk)
Well, this problem is a little bit more complicated. The fact that a certain word in language A can be translated in two different ways in language B related to two completely different objects is just a case. There are other situations where the problem is not related to language but to culture. In addition, there is a more significant problem to face: there are several dozens Wikipedia today. If I write a new article in Italian, I have to update a lot of pages in a lot of different languages to add that link, and I have to search in a lot of different wikipedia to get the name of the article in those other languages. Sometimes the list of links of various localized articles is even longer than the article itself. But let us suppose we keep in a single page all the translations, that is, a central hub. All the pages links the hub. Maintaining all links would be easier. You just see Other languages in the navigation bar and you go to a page where you find all of them, and you may also have disambiaguation comments too.--Dejudicibus (talk)
- The "hub" solution is excellent, and the code for it is already written: it is described m:A_newer_look_at_the_interwiki_link and it already works as a test. I tried it, i found no problem with it, and i think that it should be enabled on all Wikipedias.
- I am glad that this discussion generates such interest. Ilmari Karonen's comment above demonstrates that it is quite possible to solve many cases of this kind. My script for finding such duplicates helps finding such cases, but i'm working with it almost completely by myself - this is an open invitation to join me in this interesting task! --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
Interlanguage extension
There's a new MediaWiki extension that may make the maintenance of interlanguage links, often called "interwiki", much easier.
See here for the relevant discussions:
- on meta: meta:Talk:A newer look at the interlanguage link
- on the Wikitech-L mailing list: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-September/039472.html
- on Bugzilla: MediaZilla:15607
Your input is welcome. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
Links to section
The current version says: "For [...] inverse link from section to article, use inline interlanguage links". I strongly disagree with this, as it doesn't work like this is practice.
It seems that the bots' handling of interlanguage links to sections has improved lately; for example, the ugly character numbers in the section names are gradually being replaced by real section names. But problems still remain. AFAIK, bots cannot detect a change in the name of the target section. Also, the problem of linking back from the section to other languages is still not solved. Consider Order of the Phoenix (organisation): In the Hebrew Wikipedia it is a part of an article called "Harry Potter: organizations" (a good idea, which other Wikipedias should consider!), but many Wikipedias have a separate article about it and link to the section about Order of the Phoenix in the merged Hebrew article. Now where should the merged Hebrew article link?
There's no practical and accepted way to add interlanguage links from a section. That's why i'd rather prohibit interlanguage links to sections completely across all Wikipedias. Instead, the different Wikipedias should consider harmonizing their article structures. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
When to NOT link to other language wikipedias
Is it ever appropriate to remove a link to another language wikipedia if some editors feel it is biased? Specifically, at Talk:2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict#Arabic interwiki there is a debate going on where some believe the Arabic Wikipedia is biased on this subject and should not be linked to. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Bsimmons666 (talk) Friend?
- Nope. If editors know the foreign language well enough to understand that the article is biased, then they can also fix the article and make it appropriately NPOV, can't they?
- (N.B.: I'm Israeli and i don't have any problem with links to the Arabic Wikipedia, or to any other.) --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
- I'm not sure that that logic holds – you can understand a language but still not know enough about a particular topic to know whether it's biased. However I don't think we're vouching for the neutrality of articles we link to in other Wikipedias, so I wouldn't remove such links except in extreme cases (e.g. if the target contains libels or copyright violations).--Kotniski (talk)
- I'm not sure that that logic holds – you can understand a language but still not know enough about a particular topic to know whether it's biased. However I don't think we're vouching for the neutrality of articles we link to in other Wikipedias, so I wouldn't remove such links except in extreme cases (e.g. if the target contains libels or copyright violations).--Kotniski (talk)
Interwiki sorting order
What exacly rules do you use by sorting interwiki? I suggested new sorting order for Polish Wikipedia: 1, 2, 3, but I don't know the reason of oryginal sorting order. Or mayby you would like to use new sorting order. BartekChom (talk)
- See m:Interwiki_sorting_order. Joriki (talk)
Links to sections of articles
I do not understand why this page recommends not to make interwiki links to sections of articles in other languages. It is my impression that this is indeed the normal practice when the Wikipedia in one language have collected several items in one article which have separate articles in other languages. (You may not see this so often here at the English Wikipedia as it often here you have the larger articles which cover several items - that could for example be descriptions of the characters in some fictional world).
What are the problems you see with such interwiki links? They help find the descriptions of the items in the other language, and they cause no problem for interwiki bots - or anybody else as far as I know. So why not recommend the use here also? Byrial (talk)
strange characters in interwiki
I noticed the strange looking interwiki links at Hydrofluoric acid, done in this diff. Should that be replaced with normal characters? Ark25 (talk)
- Looks like an accident (the same IP also did this). Help:Multilingual support#Unicode says that these accidents shouldn't happen no matter how old your browser is, but that doesn't seem to be quite correct. I can't imagine anyone intentionally doing these changes. —JAO • T • C
Best place to ask for adding interlanguage links for locked pages ?
where shall I ask things like this? Template talk:Geology-stub; also need to add at Template:Judaism-stub the :ro link: ro:Format:Ciot-iudaism. Ark25 (talk)
- I would suggest doing it on the talk page of the locked template. Write {{editprotected}} above your request, which will get the attention of a admin.--Kotniski (talk)
User who adds interlanguage link that don't exist
Please see Special:Contributions/Lynntyler. I have doubt about the usefulness of his/her contribution. --Inertia-japonica (talk)
Anyone want to interwiki talk pages?
I do! Rich Farmbrough,
- I would support linking actual talk pages automatically to the same languages, to which the main article links.
- Discussion pages, such as WP:AFD are already sometimes linked to other languages, but not very systematically. I'm trying - very slowly - to improve this using the tools described at WP:WPIW/HE. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
Redlinks
ResolvedThere are an awful lot of redlinks in this help page. Is that intentional? --Redrose64 (talk)
- resolved - they're blue now. Assume some kind of server malfunction in Miami, Fla. --Redrose64 (talk)
Particular tasks for languages
For a few languages there are pages, which try to list problems with interlanguage links to en.wp. They are mostly outdated and not updated systematically, but probably should be kept. If anything, i shall try to update them one day according to the procedure described at WP:WPIW/HE. In the meantime the links to them can be removed from the main page. Here's the section:
- For a few other Wikipedia languages, there are lists of pages where links may be needed. For example, the English article may have a Spanish link, but the corresponding Spanish article might be missing a link to English. Most of these lists are outdated.
- For more information on working with other language Wikipedias, see Wikipedia:Embassy and Wikipedia:Multilingual coordination.
Regards, --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
Interwiki links issues
Some things that has come up in relation to Alph Bot (see User talk:Alph Bot#Problem) that I could use some clarity on:
- Are we limited to only one English language page pointing to a page in another language's Wiki?
- Is there a problem with Set Indexes that are in the format of an article pointing to dab pages?
- Is there a problem with a page pointing to a section of a page in another language where the section is the only place where the topic is covered in that language?
- Do we have any thing on other Wikis, or here for that matter, on whether redirects can be set up solely for interwiki links?
Thanks
- J Greb (talk)
- I think your questions are very pertinent. I came here for the same kind of reasons (see below comment). For Q 1) and 3), I would say: 1) No, I don't think it's a problem. BTW, there are already many cross-inter-language-wiki-link referencing. Example, 「透明」(= transparency) and「透明度」(= transparency level) both link to「 Transparent 」, through it's sometimes used to mean「Invisible」as in 透明人間/Invisible man (Notice the first 2 caracters are the same as 透明/Transparent). 「Invisible」is linkless and I don't where I could link it. 3) That's a good idea, I think the more there are the better. Though it would be important that the tool tip show the section title and not the page title. Can that be done? － Cy21 ➜ discuss
- These things are not absolutely bad, and it's true that they already exist, but it is a nightmare to maintain them. So it's better not to use them. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
- These things are not absolutely bad, and it's true that they already exist, but it is a nightmare to maintain them. So it's better not to use them. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)
How can this be so complicated?
How the heck do I link from the Spanish Wikibooks article on soy beans to Polish Wiktionary article on dog food? What about from a commons image to Swedish wikipedia article on lung cancer? No wonder there are so few links. Please make it very simple. Thanks. 85.77.170.127 (talk)
Discuss Language Interwiki choice of word?
I noticed that sometimes there were 2 articles that lead 1 article in an other language... This of course because, most of the time, for languages with distant roots, translations don't go 1=1 but more 1=0.9 OR 1=1.1 (OR a phrase)
So I was wondering if there was a page to discuss this kind of language specific problem? Is there a spacial page for each language group? (Japnese ←→ English) I've searched but haven't found any. Thanks.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Cy21 (talk • contribs)
FYI, {{Comp}} has been nominated for deletion. 65.94.253.16 (talk)
Navbox template interwiki problem
I started adding German interwiki links to some aircraft and aircraft engine manufacturer navboxes Template:Rolls-Royce aeroengines as an example (the German equivalent is 'Vorlage:Navigationsleiste Rolls-Royce Flugzeugtriebwerk') and adding the English links to the German templates. A German editor spotted a problem and asked me to stop, which I did. I could not see the problem initially but it appears that when clicking on the language link in the left side bar of an article that this directs to the company navbox template and not the article. Is there anyway around this problem or is it something that is being caused at 'the other end'?!! Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)
- Same problem on wiki:it, have undone my related edits there. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)
- If you put the interwiki links within the
<noinclude> ... </noinclude>then they should only appear on the template's page, and not pages which utilize the template. See Wikipedia:Template documentation for more info. I've done this for Template:Rolls-Royce aeroengines so you can take a look at that for an example. TDL (talk)
- If you put the interwiki links within the
- Great, thanks. I will try it later. Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)
- Great, thanks. I will try it later. Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)
Old English
I don't know if this is the right place for this query. I have noticed that interlanguage links at the left side of an article seem to have each language named in its own language (Deutsch, Français, Polski, etc.) except for Old English, where it says "Anglo-Saxon". (See, for example, the interlanguage links at the left side of Beowulf.) The language was called "Anglo-Saxon" a hundred years ago. Scholars tend to call it "Old English" now. Regardless, if the Wikipedia practice is to have "Deutch" rather than "German" for the linked word that takes us to a particular article in German, and "Français" rather than "French" for us to click on to take us to a particular article in French, then putting ang at the bottom of an article should give us the word "Englisc" to click on, not "Anglo-Saxon".
How can this be fixed? Girlwithgreeneyes (talk)
- You should probably enter a new bug on Wikimedia Bugzilla and wait until someone fixes it... --Filemon (talk)
- Thank you. I have done that. Girlwithgreeneyes (talk)
- Thank you. I have done that. Girlwithgreeneyes (talk)
Interlanguage Bots
If bots automatically handle interlanguage links (like if A connects to B and B connects to C, then A connects to C), then is there a way for those bots to sort alphabetically by the two-letter language code? It would make navigating between languages a lot easier. InMooseWeTrust (talk)
FYI, {{Iw}} has been nominated for deletion. 70.29.210.155 (talk)
Interlanguage bots do not recognize deliberate human removal of errors
I recently worked on Merope (mythology), which was very sloppily linked to a lot of interlanguage articles, most of which correspond to Merope or Merope (Pleiades). I carefully removed the interlanguage links that do not belong, but three different bots have come along and re-added them.
My question: Shouldn't these bots have to analyze and understand that if human editors are removing and reverting interlanguage additions, they must not be re-added?
I know I could go into all of those sister Wikipedias and correct the problem by hand, but, in principle, it is galling that I would have to go to such lengths to defend a correct edit to English Wikipedia against an onslaught of bots programmed to reintroduce the error. Wareh (talk)
{{Bots|deny=…}}is your friend. -- Michael Bednarek (talk)
interlanguage links to Commons
I was looking for the information on how to add interlanguage links from wikipedias to commons. For example, I just moved Template:Str sub to commons: I added interlanguage link "[[en:Template:Str sub]]" to commons:Template:Str sub but would like to also add an interlanguage link pointing from Template:Str sub to commons. What is the correct syntax? --Jarekt (talk)
- There isn't one. Commons isn't a different language - it's a separate project. See the lead section of H:ILL, para. 2 "The interlanguage link feature works also on Commons, and produces links to the Wikipedias. This is not reciprocal: a link from a Wikipedia to Commons is an in-page link.". You could put it in a "see also" section:
- See also
- --Redrose64 (talk)
- Thanks. Do you know if this is a bug or a feature? In other words, was that a decision to allow links only in one direction, or the reason is that nobody thought yet about allowing that? I realize that I can use "see also" but that is not where I look for interlanguage links. --Jarekt (talk)
- Thanks. Do you know if this is a bug or a feature? In other words, was that a decision to allow links only in one direction, or the reason is that nobody thought yet about allowing that? I realize that I can use "see also" but that is not where I look for interlanguage links. --Jarekt (talk)
Template:MultiLink
Template:MultiLink seems broken to me. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beta_Negative_Decay.svg
All it is producing is red links wether referenced in wikipedia or the commons. I'm clueless about this sort if stuff, my apologies if I'm pointing out something irrelevant. TimL (talk)
- As far as I can see, it produces two links: one on commons (red in your example) and one on the English Wikipedia, under the blue superscripted string "en". I think it's pointless and recommend the conventional [[:en:Feynman diagram|Feynman diagram]] giving Feynman diagram. -- Michael Bednarek (talk)
Alphabetization
It appears that the Wikipedia standard is to alphabetize the interlanguage links. But how to alphabetize? Is German alphabetized as German or Deutsch? Is Hebrew alphabetized as Hebrew or Ivrit? The answer to this question should be on the this article page, and in other appropriate locations in the manual of style. —Anomalocaris (talk)
- It is, see H:ILL#Sorting. --Redrose64 (talk)
- Thanks, I found the answer while you were replying. A further question: Does Wikipedia have bots that automatically re-alphabetize the links, or is this maintained by human effort? —Anomalocaris (talk)
- There are lots of bots that maintain interlanguage links, and most of these will add new ILLs at suitable places, as here. Some of them will also sort existing ILLs into what they consider the proper order when adding another ILL, as here, but I don't know of any bots that sort the ILLs when there are no actual changes being made to the ILLs. --Redrose64 (talk)
- There are lots of bots that maintain interlanguage links, and most of these will add new ILLs at suitable places, as here. Some of them will also sort existing ILLs into what they consider the proper order when adding another ILL, as here, but I don't know of any bots that sort the ILLs when there are no actual changes being made to the ILLs. --Redrose64 (talk)
- Thanks, I found the answer while you were replying. A further question: Does Wikipedia have bots that automatically re-alphabetize the links, or is this maintained by human effort? —Anomalocaris (talk)
Nearly equivalent
What exactly is meant by "nearly equivalent", as mentioned in this Help article? A firmer definition may be required. A discussion is taking place at Talk:Kosovo#Interwikis which hinges on this point - please contribute. Regards, Bazonka (talk)
Help
I think this tool is very limited, has recently an article of Mount Teide in urdu language, yet does not bind to the other languages though below copy the links in other languages. I mean, in the article in English, Spanish or Chinese (for example) do not see the link to the article in Urdu. Please if anyone can help me would give a million thanks.--79.152.179.236 (talk)
- Done. Added ur:ٹیڈ to Teide. -- Michael Bednarek (talk)
- Thank you very much, Michael, but still missing the urdu language link in all other languages (French, Portuguese, Catalan, Chinese, Japanese ... etc). How do I automatically appears in all languages?. Thank you very much.--79.152.179.236 (talk)
- Normally, several bots go around and fill these links. It may take a while; see Help:Interlanguage links, User talk:Yurik/Interwiki Bot FAQ, Wikipedia:Bots/Status. You could visit the other-language Wikipedias and add the Urdu link yourself. -- Michael Bednarek (talk)
- Normally, several bots go around and fill these links. It may take a while; see Help:Interlanguage links, User talk:Yurik/Interwiki Bot FAQ, Wikipedia:Bots/Status. You could visit the other-language Wikipedias and add the Urdu link yourself. -- Michael Bednarek (talk)
No interlanguage links in mobile Wikipedia version
See subject. BPK (talk)
How do I link completely outside of a languages?
How do I link completely outside of a language? For instance, how would I link to [2] from another page on Wikisource? Banaticus (talk)
- The same as you do within a language Wikipedia. To link:
[[:Template:TopTenCircle]], to transclude a template:{{TopTenCircle}}. Why do you ask? Doesn't that work for you? -- Michael Bednarek (talk)
Do interlanguage bots work in template namespace?
I have added a number of langlinks to templates (notably {{ATC code A}}, {{ATC code B}} etc.) four days ago and hoped that a bot would add the backlinks from the foreign-language templates, but nothing has happened so far. Don't the bots work in template namespace? It would be rather tedious to do by hand. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk)
- They do, but as with articles that have never previously had ILLs, it can take days or even weeks for the bots to notice that the template now has some ILLs. You might find it easier to check that you have a Unified login, then go to those other Wikipedias and edit the templates yourself. Bear in mind that when a template has a documentation page, the ILLs should be added to that (within
<includeonly>...</includeonly>, like this), and not to the main template. --Redrose64 (talk)- Thanks, I'm not in a hurry. I'd rather wait than having to add links to 50+ pages. After all, the links have been missing for months or years ;-) --ἀνυπόδητος (talk)
- Thanks, I'm not in a hurry. I'd rather wait than having to add links to 50+ pages. After all, the links have been missing for months or years ;-) --ἀνυπόδητος (talk)
IW's in redirects?
What is our policy re. IW's in redirected pages? I've seen this done several places for good effect, but expect that it's not s.t. we'd want too much of. Or, since we say 'articles' in the plural, should we have both IW's on the same WP-en page?
There are a few cases I think it might be useful, but for all I know there's already agreement not to do this:
- We have an article 'history of (country) X from 1600–1700', while in language X the articles are 'history of X from 1600–1650' and 'history of X from 1650–1700'. Neither is closer than the other, so here maybe we want two IW's to WP-X.
- Article A in WP-A corresponds closely to article B in WP-B, and that in turn corresponds well to article C in WP-C, but A and C are not matches, and if we link from WP-A to WP-C, bots will start adding all sorts of inappropriate IW's. This might be a case where putting the IW's in a RD would help.
- Two related topics rd to our article, and for now readers in other WP's should be directed to it, but we might develop the RD's into articles. We could also place the IW's in the dab page.
— kwami (talk)
- Your last case about related topics is probably a good case to use redirects. The other two sound tricky; do you have concrete examples? When I merge articles, I sometimes leave interlanguage links in the article that becomes a redirect. I found the page meta:Interwiki conflicts interesting, although does require a bit of concentration to understand.
- I was wondering, is it better for English (specifically Ones' complement) to link to a foreign redirect (pt:Complemento para um, recently merged), or its target (pt:Representação de números com sinal#Complemento para um, a subtopic of English Signed number representations)? Vadmium (talk, contribs)
spans on iw links?
I don't think this is appropriate. I also don't think it being inflicted on other wikis will be appreciated. Something to talk about *first*. Alarbus (talk)
Capitalization of language names
Since a couple of days, many of the language names in the "in other languages" sidebar section are no longer capitalized: aragonés, brezhoneg, català, ..., while others remain capitalized as before: Afrikaans, Boarisch, Choctaw, .... If I'm not mistaken this is derived from the variable $coreLanguageNames defined in a Mediawiki file named Names.php (svn version). I assume the rationale is that in some languages language names (including the own language name) are not capitalized in running text: L'aragonés yera parlau por bellas 25.000 personas. However, also in these languages, all language names would tend to be capitalized in a list like we see in the sidebar. See for example the Aragonese Wikipedia. I think the change is not an improvement; it is better to capitalize the names also here like it used to be. --Lambiam
- More information at WP:VPT#MediaWiki 1.20wmf5 deployment complete. --Redrose64 (talk)
template from another language
how would it be possible to use a template from another language, e.g. to use "Meetup" as well on the french wikipedia? --ThurnerRupert (talk)
- Templates cannot be shared like that, I'm afraid. You would have to create an equivalent template at the French Wikipedia if it doesn't have one already. -- John of Reading (talk)
Only 1?
Since when does the software display only one of several interlanguage links in an article when there are several? E.g. Amadeus (disambiguation) links to de:Amadeus and to de:Amadeus (Vorname), both of which link to the English article. Another example is Hübner, de:Hübner, de:Hübner (Familienname). In reverse, there's de:Alt (Stimmlage) which links to Alto and Contralto, both of which link to the German article. In all these examples, only the first interlanguage links is displayed. -- Michael Bednarek (talk)
zh-min-nan typeface
The interlanguage links for Bân-lâm-gú (zh-min-nan) show up in a different typeface (for example, on the page Magong, Taiwan. Not super important, but it looks out of place. Can we fix this? Lesgles (talk)
- It looks fine to me: Bân-lâm-gú. It's possible that your computer doesn't have the "â" and "ú" characters in the x-small-sans-serif font, and so uses a fallback font. --Redrose64 (talk)
- Oops, I forgot I asked this. I thought it might be that, but it displays fine outside of the language bar. I think it has to do with the fact that my computer sees the Chinese tag, so it renders it in a font used for Chinese characters (Heiti SC), even though the language uses Latin letters. Anyway, I suppose you're right in that this has more to do with my settings and fonts. Lesgles (talk)
- Oops, I forgot I asked this. I thought it might be that, but it displays fine outside of the language bar. I think it has to do with the fact that my computer sees the Chinese tag, so it renders it in a font used for Chinese characters (Heiti SC), even though the language uses Latin letters. Anyway, I suppose you're right in that this has more to do with my settings and fonts. Lesgles (talk)
Featured Articles - clarification needed
The new text contradicts itself here - the instructions say you need...
{{Link FA|language code}}
[[language code:Title]]
...but the example that follows does not include the links to the French and German "tomato" articles. -- John of Reading (talk)
Fixed The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) - I'm not sure that was the right fix. I've just noticed a bot edit to Contract bridge which removed all the interwiki links, yet the two FA stars are still being displayed correctly. -- John of Reading (talk)
- Sorry, I misunderstood and thought the example was for pre-Wikidata usage. Corrected. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs)
- Sorry, I misunderstood and thought the example was for pre-Wikidata usage. Corrected. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs)
- I'm not sure that was the right fix. I've just noticed a bot edit to Contract bridge which removed all the interwiki links, yet the two FA stars are still being displayed correctly. -- John of Reading (talk)
Most IL links?
Is there a list somewhere of the pages that have the most interlanguage links? How about most ILL-linked pages on other wikipedias that are missing a corresponding page in English? Sasata (talk)
Sorting order
I don't understand the sorting instruction: "...alphabetically based on the local names of the languages". How do you alphabetize local names when they are written in many different alphabets? Or is there a list of standard English transliterations of all the local language names? The reference at m:Interwiki sorting order seems to have changed since this paragraph was written. Set theorist (talk)
- I don't think that it's critical. If you put a new ILL in what you believe to be the right place, but which isn't "correct", sooner or later a bot will come along to update other ILLs, and it'll move yours to the proper place at the same time. --Redrose64 (talk)
- Well I think I've figured out the answer. The page MediaWiki:Interwiki config-sorting order says "meta-native-languagename", meaning that this wiki uses the list order at meta:MediaWiki:Interwiki config-sorting order-native-languagename (whose underlying logic is explained at its talk page). It would be nice if there were clear link to this list directly from these instructions. Set theorist (talk)
- Well I think I've figured out the answer. The page MediaWiki:Interwiki config-sorting order says "meta-native-languagename", meaning that this wiki uses the list order at meta:MediaWiki:Interwiki config-sorting order-native-languagename (whose underlying logic is explained at its talk page). It would be nice if there were clear link to this list directly from these instructions. Set theorist (talk)
I guess that as the interlanguage stuff is all done by wikidata, most of the "sorting" problems will go away. But the number of languages keeps increasing, making it awkward to find particularly slighly unfamiliar languages. I would like to suggest that in many cases there is a clear "Prime" language for an article, which should be given prominence. Places, people, almost all cultural artefacts "belong" to one (or sometimes two or three) languages; even if you do not speak a word of Georgian, you can guess which page for Tblisi will have the most photographs. Imaginatorium (talk)
- Until the introduction of Wikidata, the order that the interlanguage links (ILLs) were displayed was directly governed by the order that they were given within the Wikitext. However, the introduction of Wikidata has changed all that: regardless of whether the ILLs are stored in Wikidata or given in the Wikitext (or a mixture of the two), they are displayed in the order given by meta:MediaWiki:Interwiki config-sorting order-native-languagename - the same file that is mentioned above. It would require a change to the MediaWiki software to allow an article-specific override (i.e. to place თბილისი at the head of the list for Tbilisi), which is outside the scope of this talk page. You might obtain some success by posting to WP:VPT, but it's likely that they'll direct you to Bugzilla. --Redrose64 (talk)
Adding interwiki language link to an article that doesn't have one
I'm probably missing something, but I can't see where in this page it explains how to add an interwiki language link to an article that doesn't have one. OK, I read "At the bottom of the Wikidata language list is an add link", and indeed that is true when there is already a language list. But how are you supposed to add a language when there isn't a language list, and therefore isn't an add link? Justlettersandnumbers (talk)
- If an article doesn't yet have any interlanguage links listed, and thus does not have the "Edit links" link in the language section, you have to navigate to wikidata directly, and then click on "create an item". In the label field enter the page title then a short description in the field for that. Now you can add the interlanguage link at the bottom under the heading for "List of pages linked to this item". Maybe this page needs to say something about that:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk)
- Thank you for your reply. Yes, I'd got about that far, by going to relevant page in another language and clicking the equivalent of "edit links" from there. But it doesn't seem to work, the list of languages still doesn't appear (to me, at least). Although I've edited the wikidata, Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai still has no language links, and the "English" link from Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai still leads to Giovanni Rucellai, which is now a disambiguation page. Well, maybe I did something wrong; but in the absence of any guidance at all, it's hard to guess what my mistake might have been. Justlettersandnumbers (talk)
- What is more, I don't have an "Edit links" link on Giovanni Rucellai, though I have several languages visible. Are we quite sure that this is preferable to the old method? Justlettersandnumbers (talk)
- What is more, I don't have an "Edit links" link on Giovanni Rucellai, though I have several languages visible. Are we quite sure that this is preferable to the old method? Justlettersandnumbers (talk)
- Thank you for your reply. Yes, I'd got about that far, by going to relevant page in another language and clicking the equivalent of "edit links" from there. But it doesn't seem to work, the list of languages still doesn't appear (to me, at least). Although I've edited the wikidata, Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai still has no language links, and the "English" link from Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai still leads to Giovanni Rucellai, which is now a disambiguation page. Well, maybe I did something wrong; but in the absence of any guidance at all, it's hard to guess what my mistake might have been. Justlettersandnumbers (talk)
- (e/c [replying to your first follow-up message]) Ah, I think you're caught in a cache loop. Everything is working fine. Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai has a full list of links, and the English link from the Italian Wikipedia leads to it. Go bypass your cache and you should see the same thing I am. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk)
- Thank you again for replying. I'd thought of that (and thought that if that were the problem, it should really have been picked up in beta testing and fixed before trying to implement this). I'd emptied the cache & reloaded the page several times before posting the above. Nothing. Now I've tried with different browser, one I haven't used for a year or so, and with a different browser on a different machine. Nothing. The language links don't show up. I don't myself see how that can be a cache problem (can it?) so suspect that there may be some other glitch at work here. Any advice welcome! Justlettersandnumbers (talk)
- I did not see any languages listed as well. I use a script that lists the Wikidata link under the title. The article did have that link, so I opened the Wikidata page. On Wikidata I have the slurpInterwiki gadget enabled. I selected 'Automatic addition' and automatically imported labels and descriptions. The article now has the language list. Possibly a Wikidata cache issue? --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk
- Excellent, thank you very much, Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai now appears correctly to me, and that's what I wanted to achieve. But the Italian article still links to the wrong page, and Giovanni Rucellai still doesn't have an "Edit links" link. I continue to be somewhat concerned that this system was deployed without adequate testing. Justlettersandnumbers (talk)
- Giovanni Rucellai does not have a Wikidata page, so it doesn't have the 'edit links'. Sampling the current ILLs, they are all for Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai, so the current ILLs seem to be wrong. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk
- Giovanni Rucellai does not have a Wikidata page, so it doesn't have the 'edit links'. Sampling the current ILLs, they are all for Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai, so the current ILLs seem to be wrong. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk
- Excellent, thank you very much, Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai now appears correctly to me, and that's what I wanted to achieve. But the Italian article still links to the wrong page, and Giovanni Rucellai still doesn't have an "Edit links" link. I continue to be somewhat concerned that this system was deployed without adequate testing. Justlettersandnumbers (talk)
- I did not see any languages listed as well. I use a script that lists the Wikidata link under the title. The article did have that link, so I opened the Wikidata page. On Wikidata I have the slurpInterwiki gadget enabled. I selected 'Automatic addition' and automatically imported labels and descriptions. The article now has the language list. Possibly a Wikidata cache issue? --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk
- I'm a bit baffled why you (Gadget) would not see it after I actually saw the list of interlanguage links on the English Wikipedia page, at the time I wrote the last message. Hmm. If it was a server cache issue I can't imagine why it would show for me but not for you--somehow browser specific? Anyway, I am always amazed at the ever new ways in which computer/software glitches can manifest. Glad it's cleared up.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk)
- I think all this confusion can be avoided by ignoring Wikidata and inserting the appropriate interwiki links into the respective articles in each language. I think some bots will then deal with implementing these links at Wikidata. -- Michael Bednarek (talk)
- I think all this confusion can be avoided by ignoring Wikidata and inserting the appropriate interwiki links into the respective articles in each language. I think some bots will then deal with implementing these links at Wikidata. -- Michael Bednarek (talk)
- Thank you again for replying. I'd thought of that (and thought that if that were the problem, it should really have been picked up in beta testing and fixed before trying to implement this). I'd emptied the cache & reloaded the page several times before posting the above. Nothing. Now I've tried with different browser, one I haven't used for a year or so, and with a different browser on a different machine. Nothing. The language links don't show up. I don't myself see how that can be a cache problem (can it?) so suspect that there may be some other glitch at work here. Any advice welcome! Justlettersandnumbers (talk)
- (e/c [replying to your first follow-up message]) Ah, I think you're caught in a cache loop. Everything is working fine. Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai has a full list of links, and the English link from the Italian Wikipedia leads to it. Go bypass your cache and you should see the same thing I am. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk)
I'm also having problems with adding inter-language links where none previously existed. The old method worked immediately, no "cache problems"; what was the problem that to be solved? Reading the above does not help since it seems to be more complicated and less obvious (to me at any rate) than before. I use Firefox 20.0.1. A recent article I've updated is Vsevolod Murakhovsky; although the equivalent Russian article exists, I couldn't set up a link in the script edits and there's no previously existing links so the new method doesn't work. I managed to access the Russian article and copied the link as {{Russian|Мураховский, Всеволод Серафимович}}. Either make the process simpler or revert to the old method, please; or allow both methods. This should be about enabling users, not inserting hurdles or implementing "clever" code. Was any prior consultation or testing attempted; if I'd implemented in this sort of way in my IT job, my appraisal would be compromised. Sorry to sound annoyed, but I am. Folks at 137 (talk)
- For any page on English Wikipedia, the Wikidata is held at [[d:Special:ItemByTitle/enwiki/fullpagename]] hence the Wikidata for Vsevolod Murakhovsky is at d:Special:ItemByTitle/enwiki/Vsevolod Murakhovsky. It works for other languages too: see d:Special:ItemByTitle/ruwiki/Мураховский, Всеволод Серафимович. Since the Russian one exists, but the English one doesn't, you would go to the Russian page, locate the "List of pages linked to this item", and at the bottom there should be an "[add]" link. Click that, and under "Language", enter en and under "Linked article", enter the title of the page on English Wikipedia, then click "Save". That's all you need to do at Wikidata. Return to the English article Vsevolod Murakhovsky and either make any edit, or WP:PURGE the page. The language links will appear immediately. --Redrose64 (talk)
- How, precisely, is that better than the old method? Folks at 137 (talk)
- It isn't, but you can ignore all that and continue doing it the old way; some bots will do the grunt work described above. -- Michael Bednarek (talk)
- Thanks, MB, I'll give it a go. "KISS" - "Keep It Simple, Stupid" is a good approach. Folks at 137 (talk)
- Thanks, MB, I'll give it a go. "KISS" - "Keep It Simple, Stupid" is a good approach. Folks at 137 (talk)
- It isn't, but you can ignore all that and continue doing it the old way; some bots will do the grunt work described above. -- Michael Bednarek (talk)
- How, precisely, is that better than the old method? Folks at 137 (talk)
Exactly how is the "wikidata" page reached from an article with no links? Is there supposed to be a link there or what? If so, I did not see it. 85.217.43.203 (talk)
Merging WikiData items
I think SAN and San should be merged. Can anyone explain me how to do it? Thanks. — Ark25 (talk)
- See d:Help:Merge. --Redrose64 (talk)