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Standard parameter name for Wikidata IDs

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At Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Standard parameter name for Wikidata IDs, I propose that we standardise on the most-used property name for Wikidata identifiers, |qid=, instead of |WD=, keeping the old name as a working alias, at least for the foreseeable future. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:42, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:05, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, assuming that WD is kept as an alias for a long time, say five years. Would suggest adding 'q' as an additional alias. Mathglot (talk) 04:13, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just noting I have set up a tracking category to see how large of a task this would be to change existing param use. Primefac (talk) 16:59, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please respond at the original discussion, per WP:TALKFORK. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:07, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Pigsonthewing: Would you post the archival link for the Village pump (technical) discussion? I just cannot seem to find it. Not that I mind switching from wd to qid going forward as I am already used to it on Commons, but I would like to see the discussion. Peaceray (talk) 18:42, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 216 § h-Standard parameter name for Wikidata IDs-20241126154400. It was about as well-attended as this discussion, but SILENCE is as good a motivator as any. Primefac (talk) 19:03, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can this now be enacted? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:28, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. Primefac (talk) 12:56, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

possessive apostrophe s ("'s")

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Not really an important problem, but:

It is common practice in Wikipedia not to include the possesive apostrophe s in the link, e.g., "[[Winston Churchill]]'s politics", not "[[Winston Churchill|Winston Churchill's]] politics", so the link appears blue and the "'s" black: "Winston Churchill's politics". However, when applied to an interlanguage link, "{{ill|Gregor Gog|de}}'s paintings" looks ugly: "Gregor Gog's paintings" – and in "{{ill|Gregor Gog|lt=Gregor Gog's|de}}" the "'s" appears blue, too: "Gregor Gog's paintings".

Any ideas about that?

--Cyfal (talk) 13:52, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Either include the 's in the link as in your second example, or don't use the possessive. If it's an issue that regularly occurs and the non-possessive version won't cut it, I suppose I could sandbox some form of |ps= postscript parameter to put text between the link and the interlanguages. Primefac (talk) 13:55, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Or be amazing and solve your problem by writing the red-linked article. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:01, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

By far the easiest solution is to rephrase into "the paintings of Gregor Gog." I've edited the Asso page. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 09:49, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, indeed easy! --Cyfal (talk) 10:01, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Extra spaces in parameter values are not stripped properly

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I just added a test case that shows extra spaces in parameter values not being stripped properly, leading to undesirable display issues like "Foo bar [ de ]" instead of "Foo bar [de]". I don't have time to work on it right now, but if someone wants to fix it, it might be a fun task. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:20, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ironically, I just came to this talk page after noticing the same thing, specifically the fact this template produces "NAME [LINK]" instead of "NAME[LINK]". This needs to be resolved, but I don't have any time to figure it out at the moment either. Steel1943 (talk) 23:49, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
​ That's... an entirely different concern. Primefac (talk) 17:33, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks ... I guess? Is one worse and/or more controversial of a fix than the other? I mean, per the current state of Template:Interlanguage link/doc#Vertical alignment, it occurs, but probably shouldn't. Steel1943 (talk) 18:24, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Generally it's a good idea to keep separate ideas in separate threads; an issue with white space in parameters is a different issue to white space in the template output, so if I were to mark this section as {{resolved}} because the parameter issue has been fixed, there's still the output spacing issue which might not yet have been addressed. It's not the end of the world, just probably not the best place to start a new discussion on an only-somewhat related question. Primefac (talk) 19:59, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

White spaces in output

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Just to make sure I understand the issue, though, is the concern that there is white space before the interlanguage link when |valign=sup? Personally I'm not thrilled with having a sup option anyway, but I suppose we should sort out the issues with the template as it currently stands. To make up a completely arbitrary pair of examples:

I take it you would prefer to see the second example as This page does not exist either[fr] without the space? Primefac (talk) 19:59, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Circular redirects

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They sure are annoying. I mean, I realize they're well-intentioned, but it really works against the editor trying to set up ill links when you must go through hoops to render the foreign-language link in the expected manner, link to something that looks like the English article while still keeping the link red (to make it clear clicking it won't do you any good: since it's a redirect back to the article, or a "circular" redirect from the perspective of the article anyway).

Previous talk discussions:

I feel one intuitive but-maybe-not-ideal solution isn't covered by our documentation: setting up a "false" link that's deliberately kept red as a kind of quick-fix replacement for actually deleting the redirect. Because deleting the redirect isn't the solution - it's worse than useless from the perspective of the article in question (and the editor trying to set up the ill), but it does provide a search target from Wiki as a whole (even if Google seldom picks up on this).

Assume we're on the Painter's Collective article where painter Janie Smith was active. A well-meaning editor creates the Janie Smith page as a redirect to the Painter's Collective article.

Now if we want to use ill to indicate there's a French-language article on Janie Smith, we can't just say {{ill|Janie Smith|fr}} because the existing redirect prevents the ill link from being red (with the [fr] link correctly being blue). One intuitive option is then to change the ill to: {{ill|Janie Smith (painter)|fr}} which now breaks the French-language link and so further to {{ill|Janie Smith (painter)|lt=Janie Smith|fr|Janie Smith}} to both correctly link to the French wikipedia and give the impression we're still using the Janie Smith link, only it is intentionally red, as it should be (to signal to the reader the futility of clicking it).

Should we recommend this? CapnZapp (talk) 10:26, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's a kludge that would fix the appearances on a case-by-case basis, but requires follow-up when someone actually converts the original Janie Smith redirect into an article (that editor may be unaware of the ILLs using the Janie Smith (painter) formulation. And to extend the hypothetical, suppose Janie Smith worked in multiple media, and other editors might create ILLs using other parentheticals such as Janie Smith (sculptor) or Janie Smith (potter) or simply Janie Smith (artist). older ≠ wiser 12:52, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for replying, and I do realize it isn't perfect, but I'm not sure this is any less desirable than the workarounds we do recommend (Template:Interlanguage link/doc#Circular redirects)? To me, your description would apply to them as well... and in some cases are less intuitive or easy to implement. Thanks, CapnZapp (talk) 09:52, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not quite. I'm no fan of the current recommendation, but that essentially results in a peculiarly formatted hard-coded link to the foreign language article. The current guidance says nothing about replacing the circular redirect with a nonce redlink that might remain an unassociated redlink after creation of an article at the title where it would more typically be expected. Some comparable maintenance would be required to remove the hard-coded link, unlike with how ILL link would more gracefully detect the newly existing article and not display the foreign language link. The presence of both a hard-coded link and a link to EN article seems somewhat less of an issue than creating a nonce redlink. older ≠ wiser 11:12, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One solution I've always thought is that redirects with {{R with possibilities}} should always display pink by default on-wiki. That way those redirects would still work but editors and scripts would know not to remove the {{ill}} until the actual article is created. --Habst (talk) 18:52, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is a little bit more general problem, in that it can also occur when interlanguage links aren't involved. In particular, a local redirect (perhaps involving an anchor link) may wind up going back to the current page, with the "unexpected" behavior that it doesn't take you to a new page, with a result that is likely to be quite confusing to the user.
As long as we're not letting it just use what's in Wikidata rather than relying on having the list of available language in the wikitext, then I would advocate just to document the use cases, e.g. if there is an existing article with the same name but it's really a different topic, then just add an arbitrary qualifier, and use the "lt=" parameter to indicate the name to be displayed. OTOH, in the case of a local link that happens to be a redirect to a section or to an anchor link, then just "short circuit" the redirect. I understand the objection to this approach (e.g. we can't pick up changes to a redirect), but these are just examples of limitations of how things work. Fabrickator (talk) 21:24, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just to be clear, are you still discussing improvements to Template:Interlanguage link/doc#Circular redirects or something else? Thanks CapnZapp (talk) 16:49, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm definitely talking about a "circular link" problem which occurs with {{ill}}, but the underlying problem applies to more than just interlanguage links. There's a rather more obscure instance of this issue on Soundgarden, which has links to [[Scott Sundquist]] (which redirects back to Soundgarden#Members ... I have used {{ill}} to override this to redirect to simple:Scott Sundquist, which provides a better experience for the user. That is the exceptional case, usually I'm simply dealing with an {{ill}} where it's necessary to use it in a "hacky" way to get the desired result. Fabrickator (talk) 19:24, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies if I misunderstand you, but I will take that as a "no," or rather, you're only tangentially touching the "hacky" ways to get around circular redirects, and more pertinently, documenting our recommended ways to accomplish that. As for the "underlying problem," I'm not sure this talk section is a productive venue for that discussion. Again, I could be wrong. Best regards, CapnZapp (talk) 21:10, 12 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here's an example borne out of Fabrickator's issue that showcases what I'm proposing and why I think it is an improvement. It links to Simple Wikipedia for reasons not relevant to using this as an example; the idea is the same whether we link to French Wikipedia or any other.

If we are at the Soundgarden article, we realize linking to Scott Sundquist just creates a circular redirect. The current documentation suggests you manually construct your link to Simple Wikipedia, as in:

blah blah Scott Sundquist [simple] blah blah

using Scott Sundquist {{small|{{bracket|[[:simple:Scott Sundquist|simple]]}}}}

There is no attempt to create the appearance of a link to Sundquist. If Scott Sundquist is expanded from redirect into an article, us editors need to manually intervene.

The alternate approach I'm discussing would create an intentionally red link to be able to keep using {{ill}}:

blah blah Scott Sundquist [simple] blah blah

using {{ill|Scott Sundquist (Soundgarden drummer)|lt=Scott Sundquist|simple|Scott Sundquist}}

There is a link to Sundquist, and it is red as desired. If Scott Sundquist is expanded from redirect into an article, us editors need to manually intervene.

The primary concerns must be what we present to the reader. Any technical behind-the-scenes maintenance issues surely are secondary to this. In both cases, manual intervention is required. The amount of work needed to fix the link might differ slightly, but that feels like a very minor difference. I propose we add to our documentation the option to take this second approach. CapnZapp (talk) 12:49, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A reader might object, arguing "what if an editor creates a redirect back to the article in good faith?" It is unlikely this would happen any other way than clicking through the link and failing to realize the presence of an {{ill}} template and a circular redirect problem. And even then, is this really more or less of a problem than the same well-intentioned editor "helpfully" adding brackets to the first example, turning Scott Sundquist into a linked Scott Sundquist, which then would astonish readers if used? To me, it would be unreasonable to only accept fool-proof solutions, and it's not as if the current recommendation is exactly more fool-proof than the proposed one. CapnZapp (talk) 12:57, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm OK with adding this as an alternative approach. I'm not convinced there is any significant advantage or disadvantage to either approach. Some editors have something bordering on red-link phobia and either remove the redlinks or turn them into marginally (often barely) helpful redirects. Perhaps the real emphasis should be to re-iterate the value of redlinks (and ILLs) as marking potential articles. older ≠ wiser 13:48, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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If I create a link like

{{ill|William Richard Hughes|qid=Q117194259|lt=William R. Hughes}}
William R. Hughes [Wikidata]

there is a tooltip on the Wikidata link saying "William Richard Hughes in other languages".

However, in this case there are no articles in other languages, simply a link to the Wikidata item (with links to useful external sources); which in turn links to Wikisource, in English. Can the tooltip be modified? "...in other Wikimedia projects" might do. Or if there is a |qid= value, we could say "Data about..."

In all cases, should the tooltip not use the |lt= value, instead of that of the first parameter??

It would also be good to have an option to replace the word "Wikidata" with a tiny, inline Wikidata logo, like those used elsewhere. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:37, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can use |s=1 to shorten Wikidata to a d. I agree that the tooltip should be improved. —Kusma (talk) 19:48, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But using the |lt= parameter can mean not using a helpful disambiguator in the tooltip, so I am not sure this is the way to go. —Kusma (talk) 21:03, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What about the objection at User talk:Winged Blades of Godric § June 2018 RfC on Wikidata links, in which User:Fram stated

No: there is consensus that Wikidata links are not allowed in text, and there is no consensus to make an exception for interlanguage links.

Please clarify whether the stated prohibition is or is not in effect. If it is not in effect, then I would suggest (nearly) always using the wd=/qid= parameter ... generally speaking, it's not for me to dictate which language version will serve them best, and this also doesn't become outdated as the list of available languages changes. Fabrickator (talk) 21:06, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt readers would understand "d. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:01, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Pigsonthewing: I think a "d" is just as incomprehensible as a Wikidata logo to most readers. Anyway, to answer @Fabrickator's question: I am not aware of any formal re-evaluation of the consensus that there should be no links to Wikidata at least in the body of articles, but I do not think it is enforced very much. Personally, I prefer links to Wikipedias (if available) to Wikidata links, because I'd rather read an encyclopaedia article in a language I understand only moderately well than a database entry. —Kusma (talk) 07:22, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Kusma: It seems that your primary objection to the example wikidata link is that the article was not available in any language. This situation violates my expectations. If there's no available interlanguage link, we shouldn't be displaying a link that suggests that an interlanguage link exists. Of course, the situation can change ... maybe when it was coded, there was an interlanguage link that was subsequently discarded, or perhaps somebody created the Wikidata link speculatively. Ideally, the wikidata link would be displayed only if an interlanguage link actually exists.
Your other objection seems to be that you don't care for the formatting of the interlanguage links (as such) when using the Wikidata link. I will point out that some of the other language Wikis have customized the display (with some variation in how they've customized it), so that you're not taken to the page as displayed on the Wikidata site. Fabrickator (talk) 03:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is possible to retrieve a single wikidata link given the qid and lang code, and I believe it is possible to retrieve a list of all links given the qid. If that pans out, then we could suppress the wikidata link in the template by testing if 'en' is the only link in the set. Mathglot (talk) 08:49, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That would be most unhelpful. When an editor comes to write an article about William Richard Hughes (to use the example already given), then the data in Wikidata and the material at Wikisource will both be useful resources to them. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:13, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If it is useful, then it should be linked in the article, either inline or floating it with {{wikisource}}. Mathglot (talk) 09:26, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is no case for doing so in an article which links to William Richard Hughes, but is not about him. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:34, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It sounds like you are saying that even if English is the only Wikipedia that has an article on the topic, we should still display the Wikidata link anyway, as long as Wikisource (or any Wikimedia project) has it, is that right? If that is what you are advocating, then it does not belong here: this is Template talk:Interlanguage link not Template talk:Interproject link. If English is the only Wikipedia language project that has the topic, then there should be no Wikidata link and no {{ill}} template, as there is no other language to link to, and is just a frustrating time-waster for readers hoping to find something in another language. Mathglot (talk) 20:57, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, that is not what I said. I personally don't mind Wikidata links if that is the best information we have, but I prefer links to the Serbian Wikipedia to links to Wikidata. I do not read Serbian. If we use inline {{ill}}, we should only link to the best two or three articles and not link to Wikidata at all. Any reader will be served an encyclopaedia article that they can autotranslate in their browser; anyone wanting to write an article should be able to find the wikidata item from the Serbian or other Wikipedia if they expect it will help them. —Kusma (talk) 18:09, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Fwiw, that is basically my preference as well. Mathglot (talk) 18:41, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My opinion that wikidata is too long & that d is incomprehensibly short. While I prefer the latter to the former as it looks better, it would be useful to have something like data, just like we can use species in this template instead of wikispecies. Peaceray (talk) 06:12, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A further thought: there is no assigned value for qid at ISO_639:q, so that is up for grabs. Also, there is no wd assigned at List of ISO 639 language codes#Table of all possible two-letter codes, but I would understand if we wanted to stay away from that value. Peaceray (talk) 06:21, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While we try to refine small details attendant to the use of param |qid= and agonize over what identifier to use, what if we step back a second, start at the top again, and ask who actually uses this feature, and who benefits? My sense of the terrain is that few editors really understand and use the {{ill}} template, even fewer understand wikidata or what it is about, and the ones that understand both well enough to want to use the |qid= param is a sliver, being < 2% of all {{ill}} transclusions. So who exactly is all this for, and how much discussion is it worth to decide what form the link should take? To return to the question at hand: everybody in this discussion is entirely atypical, being in that small sliver, and I'm pretty sure just a d is good enough for everyone here. Who, exactly, gets helped by a longer identifier? Do we want to also add a little circle-i icon, linking to a help page explaining what wikidata is? (I think not.) If we are going to have this feature in {{ill}} at all, we might as well cater to the audience that uses it and understands it: the experts. Call it whatever you want, for as short as you want. Use a Greek lower case delta δ—or whatever you want. We'll read the doc once, and remember it the next time. Hardly any of the remaining 99.9% of active editors will notice nor care how it gets decided. Not trying to be ornery, just realistic. Mathglot (talk) 09:18, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"d" is not good enough for me, as I already indicated. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:36, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I really disagree with the notion that Wikidata can be helpful to the average reader. Please pretty please accept that only technical folks gain anything useful out of a Wikidata link, and please confine such links in mainspace articles to the absolute minimum (ideally 0 links across the whole of Wikipedia). I wished the idea to code ill to accept wikidata links never occurred. From my perspective, we should not spend time friendlifying this unfortunate ability of our template - that can only normalize the habit of linking to wikidata, and we should definitely keep that to specialized usage only. I have therefore zero opinion on what letter or symbol to use. Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 17:45, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Kusma: So please clarify whether you're objecting to the way that {{ill}} displays links, the fact that there is a link to content on a different-language wiki, or something else? I'll point out that our article layout (perhaps depending on your skin) already includes a list of non-English versions for whatever article you're looking at. FWIW, the display of any given article already has lots of "marginal" content, much of which is probably ignored by a large majority of Wikipedia users. Anyway, once I understand what it is you find objectionable about {{ill}}, then I can respond appropriately. Fabrickator (talk) 19:29, 17 March 2025 (UTC) (whoops, this was intended to be directed to @CapnZapp:) ... Fabrickator (talk) 19:45, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I love {{ill}} and use it all the time (just not to link to Wikidata). You seem to be misunderstanding me somehow. —Kusma (talk) 19:36, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
[ec] No, I don't accept that at all. But if the Wikidata interface is a concern, the answer is instead to link to the equivalent on Reasonator or Scholia. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:16, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Andy, I am not seeing a groundswell of support for your idea (but maybe we just need to wait a bit for more responses?). That said, maybe there is an easier way to get what you want without needing discussion, or altering the way the template works for everybody, namely, a WP:User script. There is an even easier way, if we are talking about just altering the d/wd/wikidata link, namely, put a class on it and then you make a change to your common.css to name it as you wish. I can make that change for you in a few minutes (I expect you could, too) and I doubt there would be any opposition to it, as it would affect only you and no one else. Would that work for you? (edit conflict) Mathglot (talk) 19:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Andy, this is now updated in the sandbox, and testcases 1.19 → 1.22 now show '[myWD]' instead of '[Wikidata]' for me. (Have only briefly browsed unrelated test cases on that long test case page, but they should all be fine.) Mathglot (talk) 20:00, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, but no; neither a user script nor local CSS hack meet my needs. I came here with two suggestions; the principle one of which was to avoid presenting our readers with the misleading "in other languages" tooltip (Wikisource, for example, is not "another language"). The very first comemnt below my initial post says "I agree that the tooltip should be improved."
My secondary suggestion was for an option to present readers with an icon which would take up less space than the current "Wikidata" link. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's still not clear to me who you are advocating for, as you mention "my needs" in the first sentence, but then switch to "our readers" in the second one. If you are saying that your proposal would be better generally for our readers, then I disagree for reasons stated previously, and I don't think you are anywhere close to getting consensus for it. If you are talking about your needs, then a partial solution is already sandboxed and tested (and you can have an icon instead of, or in addition to custom text, if you prefer). As far as the "misleading" tooltip, Jonesy already changed that (although truly, I think verrry few of our readers will notice) but if that was your principal concern, then are we done now? (edit conflict) Mathglot (talk) 20:43, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No. Not least because the tooltip still refers to "other languages". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:17, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can see, no actual change in language for the tooltip was settled on, so I tried to clarify. Since the original discussion thread has forked within this section to talk about multiple topics, perhaps a new thread or sub-thread can come to a consensus about what the tooltip text should say. I'm happy to implement any reasonable consensus. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:59, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just to make clear my own preference, because so far I have been mostly trying to come up with possible solutions for you, I am opposed to changing the tooltip, and it should continue to say "other languages" (or words to that effect) because that is what this template {{Interlanguage link}} is about. To the extent that some readers understand what this template does at all, they get that it links to other language Wikipedias, and that's about it.
It seems to me the underlying locus of the problem we are discussing here is the merger from Template:Interlanguage link Wikidata, which perhaps overloaded too much functionality into one template, and now there is no good solution to your issue anymore, because you simply can't come up with links and tooltips that work in every situation for what are essentially different functions, so we are all barking at each other here unnecessarily. Perhaps the merge was a mistake, as it seems to have created a disputatious environment for little gain (other than the admittedly programmer-pleasing reduction of multiple templates into one) and maybe they should be separated out again, and then this will all go away. Afaic, you can have the ILL-Wikidata template say something different—and I am content to give you a blank check and to have it say whatever you want, as long as this one stays the same for its original purpose of displaying language links. Adding @Tamzin and Jc86035:. Given all the discussion and apparently fruitless effort here so far, I don't see a solution on the horizon that will please everybody in one template. Mathglot (talk) 22:28, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you can tell us in which situation "William Richard Hughes in other Wikimedia projects" does not work, and how "William Richard Hughes in other languages", which demonstrably does not work in every situation, is somehow better? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:46, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Works great for experts; confuses everybody else. Take a poll of a thousand readers and ask them what "other Wikimedia projects" means, and get back to me. To the extent that you get anything other than blank stares, you might get a bare few, "Uhhh, you mean, um, like WikiProject Military history?" I think that you are trying to please thee and me too much, and are forgetting who the vast majority of our readers are. Mathglot (talk) 22:58, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I use {{ill}} extensively, probably averaging a several times a day, & commonly link to Wikidata when no other project has an article.
I use Wikidata as a staging area for biographies & films that either do not yet warrant an article or for which I do not have time to create it. I use the Wikidata item to add references for properties & to add linked data identifiers. I think that is useful to both editors looking for links to help establish notability & to readers looking for more information. I will also point out that sometimes there are links to other projects, such as Commons categories, & that it is useful to go transverse Wikipedia→Wikidata→Commons for someone or something that has no article yet has a Commons category. Furthermore, I think it is useful to educate our readers that there are other projects in the Wikisphere other than Wikipedia.
Regarding the |qid= parameter being < 2% of all {{ill}} transclusions, I would be curious to see an actual count for all languages & projects. Peaceray (talk) 22:36, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is consistent with my understanding which is that the current guidance for using {{ill}} on enwiki is just to list each language which is to be linked. The obvious disadvantage of this is that it doesn't reflect any languages that get added.
Certainly there are some cases where this guidance is not adhered to, which is consistent with your "2%" statistic. As far as I am aware, this is the only language wiki that operates under this guidance, and assuming that's the case, it's dubious as to why we're even having a discussion of the best way to use this parameter that we're supposed to be avoiding. Fabrickator (talk) 22:54, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Listing languages to be linked involves a human choice/judgment call about which ones have useful info (longer, better, different, more reliable, etc.) in the mind of the person who placed it—somewhat analogous to how placing ordinary wikilinks into an article is a human choice. Placing a wikidata link admittedly gets you a list of all of them (still one click away from an article), but they are not human-curated. Are you happy when it takes you to a list of 15 links, or 37, or 152? What do you do then? (Or for that matter, to a list of stubs all translated from en-wiki.) I'd rather have Kusma's chosen link set any day, including the Serbian link—which I don't understand either—but if he included it, that is one more reason that it might be worth grabbing and passing it through Google translate. (Something else we could automate, if we wanted.) I much prefer a handful of human-curated links, at the cost of maybe missing a great new article in Catalan, say, but then, once I am at the Dutch article, there it is, all shiny and linked in my sidebar. Mathglot (talk) 23:13, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I typically do not link to Wikidata when there is a valid article in another language Wikipedia. The sole exception would be when that language Wikipedia is essentially only pulling its information from Wikidata.
I also do curate language links. If there several links, there are some that are bound to be better than others. My criteria as a non-speaker is a combination of the length of the article, the number of citations, the appearance of the article, & whether the article is marked as being generated rather than being created by a human.
BTW, we do not seem to be limited to just other languages (& Wikidata). I have linked to Wikispecies as well. Peaceray (talk) 00:01, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly believe each and every language featured in an ill link should be hand-picked and curated by a human editor. I strongly think what some other Wikis do (have the template list every other language) is a mistake. That the list of languages don't grow automatically simply because another Wiki adds the subject (and WikiData connects data points) is a good thing. Ill links aren't meant to say "this link exists", they're meant to say "in my capacity as an Wikipedia editor I've selected this truly useful article in Swahili for you while we await an English-language article". I would think easily 80% of other-language articles are trash and should not be linked just because they exist. And no, that's not something we should let readers decide for themselves. This is an encyclopedia, not a catalog. Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 01:09, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Peaceray, likewise. As far as WikiSpecies, that ain't the half of it; example:
But let's not encourage that. Regards, Mathglot (talk) 01:23, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would advocate limiting it to the List of Wikipedias#Active editions & those at Help:Interwiki linking, minus the international chapters. I do not think we should be applying {{ill}} to everything at meta:Interwiki map.
Perhaps we should be splitting the functionality into two templates/modules:
  • Template:Interlanguage link
  • Template:Interproject link
I do think that there are valid reasons for linking from a non-existent articles to other projects, specifically Wikidata & Wikispecies. Peaceray (talk) 06:02, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Couldn't agree more. Regarding split, it was originally two, see above. We could just unmerge. Mathglot (talk) 06:34, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding split: IMO it would be unfortunate to split because it would make its use more complicated. A better way would be to incorporate any desired change in behaviour/output into the existing template. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:39, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Michael, I see it the opposite way, that it would make it (them) simpler. Can you explain your view? Mathglot (talk) 18:43, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First, splitting would necessitate changing existing usages of |qid= in {{ill}} to the new template. Second, after a split, editors have to remember the name of another template, {{Interlanguage link Wikidata}}, for Wikidata links. This is particularly cumbersome for articles with several handful of red links, often assisted by scripts like User:Cobaltcigs/IllWill.js (or my fork User:Michael Bednarek/IllWill.js). -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:34, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, those two reasons doesn't appear to be particularly cumbersome. They're just variants of the basic "yes, of course if we split a template in two you need to switch over some usage to the new template" inconvenience, but if that was considered a show-stopper no template would ever be split. Plus, how did editors do back before the templates was joined together? (I really thought you'd have a use case where it was important you could both link to another language and wikidata at the same time in one and the same template?) Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 09:43, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm thinking that there is a fair point of discussion about an unmerge here, but we are off on a tangent (of which I am guilty of promoting early on) and I think we should shelve it for the time being, in the interest of sticking to the main discussion, if there is indeed any more discussion to be had about it. My sense is that it is spinning its wheels, but perhaps it will regain traction. Mathglot (talk) 09:57, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrary break

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Start afresh? Or not... Mathglot (talk) 09:57, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Purpose of this template

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Fabrickator and Mathglot raised an interesting or even crucial topic, and I want my reply here for general consumption:

So the following is a reply to how the Polish project (and I think there are others) is using {{ill}}. Read the full context here: User talk:Fabrickator/interlanguage link discussions.

This Polish Wikipedia usage is a good example of what I would strongly argue against. The first ill on the Polish Brisbane page (unless I missed one) is centralną dzielnicą biznesową, or Brisbane central business district. Just listing every Wikipedia project with an article on the Brisbane central business district puts the onus squarely on the reader to find out which, if any, are actually any good or even helpful. But this is, in my experience, vanishingly rare. If there are articles in five languages, the reader should be lucky if even one is worth the visit (and that's assuming the translation is effortless). Of course, for some article subjects you could find a dozen high-quality articles, but I'm talking in general terms here, not anything specific to Brisbane.
I much prefer the approach where ill links are only encouraged when an editor is making a personal recommendation: yes that Swahili or whatever article on the Brisbane central business district really is a good and useful substitute until the time we can offer a Polish-language article (to the point where this Swahili article would make for a great starting point to translate into Polish). We should not clutter our articles with a complete link catalog to other projects just because there might be an article with the correct name, even if that's just a stub or start-class empty shell of an article. {{ill}} should only be used to help readers, not to satisfy completists or as a meta-tool for editors. Why? Because ill links are presented as integral parts of the running text, part of the encyclopedic project, as opposed to menus and sidebars and help pages and See Alsos and wikidata and other "meta" resources. CapnZapp (talk) 10:26, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Short version: yes, I much prefer curated links, too. What I like about the Polish model is the presentation with the little pop-up table. If I could change that list to be instead the intersection of curated links with my fave languages so that regardless what was curated, I would always see the ones that are in my faves list, with the rest of them available via an extra click, that would be ideal. It may be possible to swap out the underlying foreign-wiki links rendered by the template, for a google-translate link instead, under user css control, but I would have to look into that. Mathglot (talk) 11:01, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've only been cursorily following this discussion, but I agree with CapnZapp and Mathglot that a curated selection is much better than leading readers into a mass of links to articles with highly variable quality. older ≠ wiser 11:14, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I realize I should probably expand on my view: having some kind of functionality that tells me as a reader that there exists an article on the Brisbane CBD in these 7 or 28 other languages is fine, if it is presented away from, and implemented outside of, the actual article text. That is, the ill link should be used to present your personal choice of a foreign-language article as a Wikipedia editor, but if some computer thingamagog manages to detect this and present a "Did you know all these articles exist in other languages, covering subjects our Polish Wiki does not yet cover?" sidebar or subpage, that's fine by me. The difference is: we don't replace hand curated content with automatic linkage (because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written by humans, not an automatically collated catalog). Rant alert: In this way this subject touches on the same issues as my intense dislike of Wikipedia surrendering movie "Reception" sections to merely parroting Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes aggregate simply to avoid edit wars between editors liking and disliking some piece of pop culture. A hand curated selection of good critics' reviews of said movie is far FAR superior to garbage like "68% liked this". End rant. It's the same here: every single ill link should represent a recommendation from an editor to the readership, just like everything else that appears as mainspace article text. Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 13:05, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree. If an article in the english Wikipedia does not exist, then I find it helpful to get a list of articles in other languages that I actually speak. Therefore, I prefer listing in the template at least the most common languages. Even if, e.g., the chinese version is much better than the german one, I would prefer reading the german article (I do speak German...) instead of using Google translate on the chinese version (I don't speak Chinese). --Cyfal (talk) 20:09, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just a sidebar, to note again the parallel discussion at User talk:Fabrickator/interlanguage link discussions (previously linked by CapnZapp). I would hope we can keep this discussion all on one page (this one). Mathglot (talk) 00:00, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Responding to the title of this section, and to suggestions that we should have *only* a wikidata link and no other links at all, I would say this: the purpose of this template since its inception has always been about emitting a red link and tagging it with a few links to foreign Wikipedia articles. Removing this original, core functionality from the template would be a huge change, altering its basic DNA, and invalidating about 200,000 transclusions in mainspace. If you believe that Template:Interlanguage link should have one link only, targeting Wikidata, then you should propose that Template:Interlanguage link be deleted, resurrect template Template:Interlanguage link Wikidata, and rename it to 'Template:Interproject link Wikidata', and then redirect this template there. The likelihood of that gaining consensus seems infinitesimal to me, but that would be the proper procedure. You'll also need to request a bot to deal with the existing transclusions. Alternatively, you could unmerge, as previously mentioned, and then a bot would not be required. Mathglot (talk) 01:11, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is clear that editors used to the Polish Wiki considers that approach superior, and everybody is entitled to their opinion. Let me see if I can make you reconsider. What I don't like is how the merging of wikidata into this template creates an opening to usurp the intended functionality of this template. You (as in y'all, not Mathglot) could consider it reasonable to offer both functionalities (one template for curated links, one for autopopulated wikidata) but I don't agree. I think Wikipedia is much better off if we make it clear that automatically generated content has no place on Wikipedia. As part of the encyclopedic project, that is - as I have already stated, I have zero objections against quality of life improvements to the editor experience. Just don't conflate that with the actual content intended for readers. The reader should not be given "here's every other language" with the expectation he or she will sort out the bad articles from the good - that is decidedly unencyclopedic! The editor, on the other hand, might well benefit from easy access to such links, and that's fine as long as they are given outside of the text: in menus, sidebars, subpages or what have you. CapnZapp (talk) 10:04, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Originally written as a reply to User:Cyfal, I decided to post it at the end of the section to minimize the risk of people skipping it, since I realize it's not just a direct response to their post. Thank you Cyfal for making me realize there are two distinct aspects we are discussing.

It's not a good thing if we offer five links and only one of them leads to an actual quality article, and the other four leads to sparse stub articles. In the best case all five links are good to decent, but I think that's rare. There are two distinctly different use cases here: you want a convenient link registry, I want hand-crafted recommendations. Polish Wikipedia has conflated the two, allowing your use case to overwrite mine. I think that is a mistake. I'm not opposed to your idea, but I oppose 1) the placement of your convenient link register and 2) that it would replace curated links.

Regarding the first point: Your convenience links are a meta resource, and should not be given right in the text. I urge you to implement your idea using another tool than the ill links, because they are part of the encyclopedic content, the actual text of the encyclopedia. We link to other Wikis for articles that exist, but we do so as a sidebar. Something similar should be done for articles that don't exist.

Regarding the second point: I urge you to find a way to implement your idea in a way that doesn't supersede the existing purpose of ill: namely providing curated links where an editor doesn't just say "btw this exists", but says "I found this article actually useful, hope it tides you over until an English-language article can be written".

There is no reason these functions must be pitted against each other, just because Polish Wikipedia did so. Again, I don't object to offering "here's every wiki with an article on X" as long as that functionality doesn't interfere with how (and where) ill works today. Best wishes CapnZapp (talk) 10:30, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I should say I do understand that from a certain perspective it can feel unreasonable to object to just adding the catalog function to today's template. That is, if the template first listed the curated links and then automatically added one more choice "Complete list" (or similar). It would seem reasonable this would satisfy both camps: You could click the one or two languages recommended (and that would fulfil ill's purpose today) and you could click "complete list" and get a popup (or something) populated by wikidata that would fulfil the "Polish ill" template's purpose. However, this just opens a back door to leaving the list of curated languages empty and only relying on Wikidata to fill the list. This completely circumvents the purpose of the template, and that is why I want the two functions to be separate. There is no reason we should conflate the two functions just because that might be technically convenient, thus inviting editors to bypass its intended function just to get to the catalog function! At the very least there should be a big bright error message if you try to leave the list of curated suggestions empty, much like how certain other templates protest when you don't supply the right parameters (can't remember off hand but there's citation-related templates that violently protest if you forget one of the parameters) CapnZapp (talk) 10:47, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi CapnZapp, is it true that "the existing purpose of ill [is]: namely providing curated links where an editor doesn't just say 'btw this exists', but says 'I found this article actually useful'"? I don't find anything like this in Template:Interlanguage link and always interpreted it otherwise. BTW, here and here are some older discussions related to the current one. --Cyfal (talk) 07:12, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If it helps, I will readily clarify I am a regular user expressing personal preference. I am not speaking for Wikipedia. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 10:14, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with CapnZapp's stance that editors ought to pick the most appropriate link(s) instead of offering a list of all existing languages; after all, those not picked are only 1 click away from the picked one(s). -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:02, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Once upon a time (maybe about 3 years ago), I was engaged in a tangentially-related discussion. Tangentially, because the issue was about using the qid to obtain the list of available languages to be displayed. At the time, I was informed that this was not permitted on enwiki. Admittedly, the display of available languages was awkward, i.e. it wasn't displaying just a set of available links, it was displaying the Wikidata page for the specified qid.
Now I came here a couple of weeks ago, and the complaint seemed to be that there was a link labeled "wikidata", which the issue evidently was that it wouldn't be clear to novice users what that was for, and "wikidata" was too long and if you set the "short" (s) parameter, then "d" would be displayed instead of "wikidata", which was even less clear. But the greater surprise was, so it seemed, that the example use case for this was when the available languages consisted of the empty set. So if the "wikidata" link was unnecessarily confusing in the "expected" case (i.e. that there are in fact some usable links), to provide a link only when it offered no usable functionality, then surely the smoking caterpillar was somewhere nearby.
Setting aside the issue of using "wikidata" only when there's actually no wikidata to be found (and the irony would be that if someone were to add a non-English version of that article, then for that one interlanguage link, it would suddenly all be good, even as additional languages were added).
I don't hope to convince any of the advocates of the approach they have been promoting, but if they're intending to insist on this usage (e.g. that the editor is obliged to review the available languages and pick a very limited subset of those languages), then I'm going to urge that we should have a much broader audience discussing this proposal. Fabrickator (talk) 06:26, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not arguing for or against you, only to note that you might be crossing the streams here as it were. The initiative to act falls upon the parties that want to effect change, not the parties that support the status quo. Don't expect me, for instance, to act: I'm content with what you brought up earlier (Wikidata links are not allowed in text, and there is no consensus to make an exception for interlanguage links) and I don't have a problem with WikiData links being represented by "wikidata" or "d" mostly because it is functionality I don't use (or encourage anyone using) outside of the presumably specialist usages of the original template*. Regarding the number of languages in an ill link, that needs to remain up to editor discretion. As long as editors find it reasonable to be asked to prune their lists if they link to mostly useless stub articles (as Michael Bednarek says: the complete catalog will appear as a meta resource outside the text once you click the article in any one language), I don't need or want ill to have more specific advice. CapnZapp (talk) 11:37, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The original template for WikiData ill links was {{Interlanguage link Wikidata}}. I can't find any "should we actually support this" discussion so I'm assuming the template mostly got created because of the classic "because we could"? 😉 The relevant merge discussion is here: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2015_March_8#Interlanguage_link_templates. I can't find any discussion of "do we actually think is it actually good the main template now supports WikiData links" there either; the discussion appears to be focused on the good old "fewer but more complex resources is always better than more but simple ones" programmer's elegance fallacy (that has doomed so many projects... 🙄). CapnZapp (talk) 11:37, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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