Help talk:Interlanguage links

Statistics

At this moment, we have ~1,862k categories and 1,354k categories without Interlanguage links, so about 27% of categories have Interlanguage links. --Jarekt (talk) 16:45, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Preference for articles or categories?

The article is not clear whether it's generally preferential for Commons categories to have interlanguage links to Wikipedia articles or to Wikipedia categories.

By the section "Namespaces", Commons galleries are currently expected to link to Wikipedia articles, but Commons categories are shown as being able to link to either. It's unclear on what should happen when there are both suitable articles and categories to link to. The description of this is also unclear, telling of, "...category namespace on Commons which often have Interlanguage links to Wikipedia articles." (emphasis added)

• In favor of category interlanguage links, it can be more appropriate and useful for Commons categories to direct to their respective Wikipedia categories if they exist, giving readers a similar category structure to navigate, with similar categorization purposes, and a variety of available further reading, all in their language where possible. This essentially establishes a weak parity between the two content structures and gives more direct context for Commons categories by providing a comparable content hierarchy. As well, having both galleries and categories link to articles can be a bit redundant.

• In favor of article interlanguage links, it is often a more direct link to the primary content of Wikipedia, encyclopedic articles, rather than categories and hierarchies of content. As well, it is common for articles to have more translations than Wikipedia categories, as categories usually arise after many articles have already been created or translated, so linking to Wikipedia categories could mean having fewer languages listed than if articles were linked instead.

Interlanguage links have a sense of defining the purpose of categories by the Wikipedia article or category they associate with. Wikipedia articles and Wikipedia categories on subjects tend to vary a bit as to their respective purposes, and choosing one over the other can mean a difference of context. It would be helpful to clarify this and establish a general preference rather than leaving it to personal preference. djr13 (talk) 16:35, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

This is in relation to Djr13, a newbie editor who has already decided to change the pre-existing practice and thus a great many of their edits so far are to change the iwl from a Commons cat so that it points to a WP cat, rather than a WP article (and obviously this has only been an issue where there was already a clear WP article to link to).

If you walk into a new environment, and everyone else has been doing it wrong for years, then just maybe you're the young revolutionary who is going to show them all how they ought to have been doing it all along.

Or, just maybe, you're not. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:47, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it looks like I've changed about 22 categories' interlanguage links from articles to categories, probably deeply impacting and subverting the standard practice of years of interlanguage links. Seeing the proper wikicitizen you are, you rightly reverted a good eight of these subversive activities, keeping this uppity, naive revolutionary in check. djr13 (talk) 17:23, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Interwiki link based on current user's language

Is it possible to link to a Wikipedia article of user's current language using Wikidata link? Example: use d:Q158262, and for user with English language it will link to en:Waldemar Cierpinski and for user with German language enabled, it will link to de:Waldemar Cierpinski. —⁠andrybak (talk) 17:48, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

There is Template:Interwiki from Wikidata, but it is for creating interwiki links, not inline wikilinks. —⁠andrybak (talk) 18:00, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, after digging around, I found Template:London, which uses this code:

{{Label|Q84|{{{1|{{int:lang}}}}}|link={{#if:{{{nolink|}}}|-|wikipedia}}}}

However, it feels that there should be a template, like:

{{Label|{{{1}}}|{{int:lang}}|link={{#if:{{{nolink|}}}|-|wikipedia}}}}

—⁠andrybak (talk) 18:04, 27 August 2018 (UTC)