Template talk:Interlanguage link/Archive 2

Possibly misleading documentation
The documentation, under the heading "Note to former users of Template:Ill/Template:Interlanguage link" says "The article title should go first and the language code second in this template, whereas it was the other way around at Ill."

However in a use which confounded a colleague and lost her an hour of time before admitting defeat -, which gives  - I see that for each non EN language, the language code goes first and the article title goes second. I wonder if the documentation needs to be revised so that others don't take the questionable advice as gospel and bash their head against, which gives  & a headache. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:02, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Perhaps it should be clarified there that it is "former ill", not "former illm", and that it is the English article name that comes first now, then the language, then the other language article name (if different). Lidia Zvereva vs formerly fr, Lidia Zvereva vs formerly fr, Lidia Zvereva vs formerly ru , Lidia Zvereva vs formerly ru. "Multi" is different, but who wants that anyway? I link to one other langauage, that one has all the others. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:06, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The "helpful note" was added to appease those who were incensed that ill was converted to illm with "no warning." I think the entire doc could use some updating anyway, but that was a patch to get us through. I'll see what I can do about it. Primefac (talk) 12:34, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know exactly what incensed means, - I use ill a lot, because I am German, and I look at old versions a lot, and I think damage has been done that I can only hope was worth it. To replace "ill" by a long senseless string (it now says "multi" where nothing is multi) is also damage, imho. What should a new editor think who sees such a thing in edit mode? - I met a user the other day who wants to save 45 bytes by ref formatting. Calculate the number of misleading bytes the bot created. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:19, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * , I've updated the doc (though you may have to clear your cache to see the changes); let me know if you see any major improvements/changes that could be made.
 * , "incensed" is another word for "angry", and I wasn't necessarily referring to every person with opposition to the merger. Technically speaking changing "ill" to "interlanguage link multi" is not making it a senseless string of words, it's just replacing a redirect with the full code. There is a proposal above to move the template back to interlanguage link, though that will only clear up future use of the template.
 * As for old versions of pages - there is simply no way we can make sure old versions look right. I could name a dozen deleted templates that would "break" old versions of a page. The history is really meant for attribution purposes, and we make no claims that they will necessarily be right, accurate, or display properly. Primefac (talk) 14:10, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I try hard to not get angry ;) - Disappointed, perhaps. Forgive me for being picky: "interlanguage link multi" is misleading when there is nothing "multi". I took part in the proposal to fix at least that. - Thank you for dealing with us! Did you see the despair that arrived on my talk today, in the case at the beginning of the thread? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:18, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I know we can't make everyone happy, but thank you for at least being understanding. Getting input from both sides of the discussion helps make the template (and Wikipedia) better and easier to use. Primefac (talk) 14:31, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 17 November 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: MOved &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 15:10, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Template:Interlanguage link multi → Template:Interlanguage link – Now that all the templates have been merged to one version, the text "multi", which is functionally a disambiguator, is not necessary, especially since this is being used in many cases for a single link. P p p er y 21:32, 17 November 2016 (UTC) to reply to me 06:10, 18 November 2016 (UTC) to reply to me 12:56, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. Most people are probably using ill anyway, so they wouldn't notice the difference. Primefac (talk) 22:08, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Addendum I think (due to some of the comments below) that it would be worthwhile (especially considering the gigantic talk page merge I performed) that Interlanguage link and its talk page be preserved, potentially by doing a page swap rather than a delete-then-move. Primefac (talk) 23:36, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Support, simply due to the fact that the move target is currently a redirect to this page, and this no transclusion issues will result if this page is moved. Steel1943  (talk) 22:18, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. Yes, please, keep simple. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:18, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Support and seconding Primefac's point. I'm still used to ill myself, and so are no doubt many others. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:56, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: If this move takes place, special care should be taken to not leave behind double redirects, as that would impact a substantial number of articles. The person carrying out the move would also need to move all subpages. ~ Rob 13 Talk 00:25, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. Also, re-substitute (with bot) all the illm and Interlanguage link multi (oddly substituted) uses so they use an unnamed parameter instead of "3" and the template name is changed to ill for consistency. Jc86035 (talk) Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125;
 * That is likely impossible. See WP:COSMETICBOT. We're talking about 20,000+ edits to change a redirect's name to the actual template and remove two characters which do not change output. We'd need massive consensus for that large of an override to one of the most basic parts of our bot policy, likely at a village pump. Also, substitution wouldn't achieve that; we'd need a more complicated AWB bot run. Even if consensus were achieved, I struggle to think of a bot operator willing to take on that type of task for no gain in visual output, given the backlog at WP:Bot requests. ~ Rob 13 Talk 11:44, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Never mind then. Jc86035 (talk) Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125;
 * Support, including Jc86035's points above. At the end of the process, ill should be available as before, but with the new parameters. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:07, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * , ill is still a valid redirect, and still will be. It will point to this template (whichever name it happens to have). Primefac (talk) 19:33, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. An interim explanation at the top of illm might have been helpful. I wasted a good hour or more trying to work out why my new ill link was producing garbage, until I puzzled out the different syntax. Having said that, support on KISS principles (as a linker to 52 non-EN languages and counting). Narky Blert (talk) 01:06, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Point of interest, there is a note at the top of the documentation that explicitly speaks to former ill users, added 17 Nov (though I suppose if one had visited shortly before this time their cache may have prevented them from seeing the update). Primefac (talk) 01:35, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Oppose This is a process being forced through by Primefac who edit-warred to change the content of and by extension the redirect  which was a redirect to  until  became a redirect when it was altered to redirect to this template because it became a double redirect. Recent edit history of :  Having edit-warred to get her/his preferred version, Primefac then appealed to BU Rob13(Rob 13 ) for aid. See User talk:BU Rob13/Archive 5 and user talk:PBS. I am very disappointed with the behaviour of Primefac edit-warring to get his/her preferred version in place and in BU Rob13 protecting the page (and so condoning edit-warring), while also actively engaging in the debate on this page. I will leave it to others to decide if this is an improper use of administrative tools.
 * 19:43, 12 November 2016‎ Primefac . . (911 bytes) (+22)‎ . . (add autosubst)
 * 02:04, 13 November 2016‎ Hawkeye7 . . (889 bytes) (-22)‎ . . (Undid revision 749155886 by Primefac (talk) Do not autosubst)
 * 02:06, 13 November 2016‎ Primefac )‎ . . (911 bytes) (+22)‎ . . (Undid revision 749207200 by Hawkeye7 (talk) yes, because of the TFD)
 * 02:10, 13 November 2016‎ Hawkeye7 ‎ . . (889 bytes) (-22)‎ . . (Undid revision 749207434 by Primefac (talk) The 2015 TFD does not authorise that.) (undo | thank)
 * 03:32, 15 November 2016‎ Primefac m . . (954 bytes) (+65)‎ . . (cat test)
 * 00:15, 17 November 2016‎ PBS . . (889 bytes) (-65)‎ . . (Undid revision 749588986 by Primefac reverted auto-subsitution as it uses the wrong template. If I wanted to use "Interlanguage link multi" directly I would.)
 * 11:36, 17 November 2016‎ Jc86035 m . . (867 bytes) (-22)‎ ..
 * 13:14, 17 November 2016‎ Primefac . . (64 bytes) (-803)‎ . . (no incoming transclusions, redirecting to final target)
 * 14:35, 17 November 2016‎ Francis Schonken‎ . . (867 bytes) (+803)‎ . . (Undid revision 750031047 by Primefac (talk) there are incoming transclusions to this template)
 * 14:42, 17 November 2016‎ Primefac ‎ . . (64 bytes) (-803)‎ . . (Undid revision 750040939 by Francis Schonken (talk) there will be a transition period. THere *will* be instances that will need to be changed. This will happen regardless)
 * 16:03, 17 November 2016‎ PBS . . (867 bytes) (+803)‎ . . (Undid revision 750041944 by Primefac (talk) for the same reason as given before)
 * 16:04, 17 November 2016‎ Primefac (talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (64 bytes) (-803)‎ . . (Undid revision 750052771 by PBS (talk) please stop trying to overturn consensus. If you want to contest this, go to WP:DRV or WP:TFD)

Personally even if I were strongly in favour of this move (which I am not for the reason I explain below), I would have opposed it on the principle that the methods used to get to a point where the merge could take place should not be encouraged with my support.

Also it is highly questionable whether a decision made in a debate without many participants back in February 2015 is still binding -- consensus can change (WP:CCC) -- particularly as the template bodies had already been merged (see the next paragraph).

As to the merits of the merge and move. The templates had already been merged -- I participated in that process -- what was left was a wrapper template of precisely the type that is proposed in the next section. Here is the text from the version of the template as of 21:31, 7 October 2016

So for Primefac and BU Rob13 to claim that there is a "clear community consensus at this TfD" to turn into a redirect is clearly disingenuous.

Keeping the two interfaces separate with the body of the code in this template works well, and allows for the most common instance of one foreign wiki link to be met with a simpler interface than the allows. -- PBS (talk) 23:21, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * No offense,, but I fail to see your opposition to the move request through all the straw. Primefac (talk) 23:31, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You already know of the offences you have committed, others do not. All you need to read is the last paragraph. -- PBS (talk) 23:35, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * My point was more that you're not really !voting on the page move, you're complaining about the merger. Saying "we shouldn't move the page because the page shouldn't have been merged in the first place" isn't particularly relevant. I'm not trying to pull a fast one, I'm just trying to figure out why you oppose the move (and only the move). As a note, I amended my !vote above in an attempt to preserve the original page history (since it's pretty big). Primefac (talk) 23:40, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * My role in this debate on this page was explaining how TfD works, how consensus works there, how templates sit at TFD/H waiting for merges, and to enforce the consensus. Those are all administrative roles. I have never, and will never, provide any opinion on what should happen with these templates because I just simply don't have one. ~ Rob 13 Talk 23:33, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

@ Primefac the move is relevant. If it does not take place, then we can go back to the status quo ante and alter the redirect (that you forced through with edit-warring) to the wrapper that was there before. The wrapper is a much simpler interface to use when there is only one language to which to link. In most cases there is one clear article that is better than the others, and the others can be reached through the usual inter-language links that exist in all articles -- PBS (talk) 23:48, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Um... I'm not sure what you mean by "simpler interface". seems to work just fine (Sigmund Jakobsen). The only change to the "status quo" is the parameters have been swapped. Primefac (talk) 00:10, 24 November 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

List of SOE agents
@, heeeeeeelp, Interlanguage link gives a lot of possibilities but none is working? what happens? Lotje (talk) 16:23, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * . The issue was double redirects. Primefac (talk) 16:36, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank God, there is users like you hanging around. Lotje (talk) 16:45, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry for being late, - I just saw that it worked ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:21, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * No need to sorry, schitterend dat het werkt! Lotje (talk) 17:36, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Not working?
Not sure if something changed, but even on the template page itself, the template is rendering red links and directing to en.wiki instead of the relevant non-English article indicated by the language code. Timothy Joseph Wood 15:24, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * , it looks like everything is working fine for me. Try purging your cache? Primefac (talk) 15:25, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Converting interwiki links to this template
As a result of discussions at Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 51, I've taken a look at how many interwiki links exist in mainspace which do not use interlanguage links. These links appear rather poorly as Example rather than Example. This wikicode appearing in mainspace doesn't appear to be a best practice, and it may be outright confusing because someone may click on it thinking they're going to an English page, not realizing the "xx:" means another language. Example may be even worse without the (pt) after it, as that is certain to surprise. By the principle of least astonishment, I believe these should be converted to use this template. Thoughts? Should a bot make this change in the mainspace? ~ Rob 13 Talk 11:23, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree that those links ought to be eliminated and be replaced by ill, but I think that may be more complicated than a bot can handle. For article names which already have an English Wikipedia entry but refer to a different subject, a human editor who knows about disambiguation rules for various projects is required to construct a proper English article name. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:38, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm. What would you think about creating an inline clean-up tag to track these and using a bot to mark all instances? I agree the context could be a concern. I ran a database scan and about 60k pages have these. ~ Rob 13 Talk 14:02, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Pinging for thoughts. ~ Rob 13 Talk 02:09, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I understand your proposal. If you suggest to create an inline-WP:CLEANUPTAG, say iw-fix, which would emit a message like [needs comforming interwiki link], that seems inefficient to me because instead of applying that tag, the editor could just fix it. In most cases, it's a simple affair:  becomes  . Sometimes, it's a little bit more complicated:   becomes , and other cases may require even more thought, but it shouldn't be beyond what a normal editor can do. Maybe we can add a search link like  (slow) into the overleaf documentation which will show offending pages. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:47, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

RFC on use of interlanguage links in templates
Can experts on the use of this template please comment at Wikipedia_talk:Categories,_lists,_and_navigation_templates.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:07, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Attention to, , , , , and , who have edited this page at least 10 times.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:47, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I edited this page only in my capacity as a closer, so I don't have any strong views about this template. In any event, thanks for the ping. ~ Rob 13 Talk 15:41, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

More than 5
to reply to me 12:55, 23 January 2017 (UTC) to reply to me 14:16, 23 January 2017 (UTC) to reply to me 16:41, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * P.S. it has come to my attention in that discussion that the current limit is 5 languages. I think we should bump that up to around a dozen. I was attempting to point to Gracie Carvalho as an example of what Template:2010-2019VSFashion Show could look like and noticed that the current limit is 5 languages. Is there any significance to the current limit?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:38, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * There are 3 obvious ways around that problem. a)  gives Gracie Carvalho; b) pick a comprehensive version in a widely-spoken language, say Gracie Carvalho or Gracie Carvalho, and trust the interested reader can pick additional languages from the side bar there; c) write a stub for the subject. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:39, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * and d) increase the capability of the template to accomodate more links.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:38, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * P.S. note that choice a) above incorporates a link to a sister project, which has been determined to be something we don't want to do on ENWP per this June/July 2015 RFC.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:43, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * There was talk during the merger with illm about converting this into a module, but it was decided to wait (and clearly it's now fallen by the wayside). I'm somewhat in agreement with Michael, though - if the page is on more than five wikis (and not English) we should probably have at least a stub on the person. Primefac (talk) 12:44, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I didn't write the module to scale very well but more links can be enabled by just tacking more onto  (line 29). Jc86035 (talk) Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125;
 * , can you bump up the number to 12 or so?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:55, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Done, although there may be a few issues with implementing the module (mostly to do with skipped parameters). Jc86035 (talk) Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125;
 * , Why does Gracie Carvalho still only show 5 (Gracie Carvalho)?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 16:06, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The module is currently unused, as it was previously deemed unnecessary. Use the sandbox:  → . Jc86035 (talk) Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125;
 * , Module? do you mean that Ill was deemed unnecessary? Where was this discussion? What does this have to do with you saying that you have expanded it beyond 5 and it not working beyond 5?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 17:30, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

, the module was created to allow for greater functionality than the template itself. It's not saying that this template is unnecessary, it's saying that it can be improved upon. Turning a template into a module requires little if any discussion, provided that the transition doesn't break anything. The template itself only handles five languages, but the module Jc86035 has been working on can handle more than that. So far it has been unnecessary to have the template use the module, but that might change based on this discussion. Primefac (talk) 17:34, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * , It sounds like once the RFC closes, you can make the template handle more than 5 if the RFC makes that necessary.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:14, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Thx. .--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:15, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

to reply to me 08:18, 11 March 2017 (UTC) to reply to me 08:20, 11 March 2017 (UTC))
 * , At Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Templates we have held discussions on the meaning of the closure of the RFC. Basically, I think we would like to test going live soon. Right now the redlink with the most interlanguage links has about 7 or 8 languages. Can you enable to ILL to handle 12-15 arguments?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 16:18, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Haven't worked on the module, don't know if it's ready. Pinging . For the record, the RFC closed as no consensus and the discussion linked above resulted in "do so at your own risk". Primefac (talk) 17:33, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The module isn't necessary. All that's needed is to add extra lines to the transcluded Separated entries template, but I remember some extra links were removed either because they were hardly ever used, because having too many links creates clutter, or both. I'll add them back, although I will revert if anyone complains. Jc86035 (talk) Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125;
 * (Regarding modules, I think they're usually discouraged if they perform simple functions doable in wikitext without any signicant loading improvement, because most Wikipedia editors can't read Lua and this stops the modules from being maintained properly. Jc86035 (talk) <span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left">Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125;
 * O.K. Template:2010-2019VSFashion Show is now showing 7 ILL links for Gracie Carvalho. What is the current max now?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:32, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I see the new limit is 12 based on this change..--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:37, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Correct. If there are more than 12 languages, a) it really should have one on en-, and b) if it doesn't, it really should. Primefac (talk) 18:46, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

New RFC on Template:ILL
Join the discussion at Village_pump_(policy).--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:23, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Use interlanguage link template in see also template
I am trying to use the Interlanguage link template for the field 1 in See also. Instead of getting "See also: some link (language code)", I am getting "See also: some link (language code)". How can I get rid of the brackets and the colon? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fleon11 (talk • contribs) 22:44, 16 May 2017 (UTC) to reply to me 08:32, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
 * You can't, because See also adds its own link brackets. Try only linking to the page that exists, or using the generic Hatnote. Jc86035 (talk) <span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left">Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125;

Link to Reasonator
"Link to Reasonator" section needs to indicate what Reasonateo is, and link to info on it. Typing 1-handed due to injury or would do it myself. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:30, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The Usage section says: "There can also be a link to Magnus Manske's Reasonator Wikidata item viewer." A second link in the section about Reasonator makes sense. I have added the link Reasonator there.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Interlanguage_link/doc&diff=782506980&oldid=781103660] PrimeHunter (talk) 10:07, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I find 8 uses of 1, 7 of them entirely redundant to Wikidata, 1 misleading. It would be better to drop "reasonator" altogether. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:31, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Why doesn't this work?
"The Cologne school" works as expected, but is wrongly capitalised.

"The Cologne School" fixes the capitalisation, but doesn't work, the de: link is missing.

"The Сologne School" looks right and works right. But with a Cyrillic letter in it, it's likely to confuse a future editor.

Is there a better workarond? Maproom (talk) 15:32, 6 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Try Cologne School (sociology) or Kölner Schule if we really need an article that isn't there in German. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:38, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * , I'd go with Gerda's first suggestion, since that's how it would be disambiguated if/when the page is created. Primefac (talk) 16:17, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you both! I'll use that. Maproom (talk) 16:23, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Language of displayed text
In running text I would mark up, for example, the word "Ammehjelepen" as.

If I use that in this template (Interlanguage link) though,  renders incorrectly, as:



and  is likewise no good.

How can I indicate correctly the language of the text displayed where the template is used? Do we need an additional parameter? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:42, 30 June 2017 (UTC) to reply to me 09:54, 1 July 2017 (UTC) to reply to me 05:52, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm going to ask the extremely stupid question, but... why would we be doing this? I would think either one or the other would be done, but not both. Primefac (talk) 16:56, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Usually we don't use lang for article links, so it shouldn't be necessary for this template. Otherwise they would be added to page titles as well. Jc86035 (talk) <span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left">Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125;
 * "Usually we don't use lang for article links" Foutaise! Or, rather, please speak for yourself. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:56, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
 * there do appear to be a few thousand, but many are Wiktionary/Wikisource links and all of the pages linked still have a  on their <h1 ></h1>. Should it be possible for the language of page titles to be changed? I don't think it's currently technically allowed. Jc86035 (talk) <span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left">Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125;
 * The - very good - reasons for using Lang are explained in that template's documentation. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:56, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

, I just noticed that your second example isn't actually coded properly, which is probably why it's not showing up right. It should be, which shows up as  (and appears to be correct). Primefac (talk) 16:23, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Doh! Thank you. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:42, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm grateful to Primefac for the above fix. However, there is still a problem. The output of the example they corrected (styling removed for clarity) is:

and this says that the text "(other languages)" is also in Norwegian. Better output would be:

and that probably requires the functionality of lang to be part of this template. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:55, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, you'd have to stick lang inside ill. This could probably be done with a lang param that would then trigger an #if statement that would wrap the piped text in lang, but then we're getting into some very nested and convoluted #if statements (and I do mean that, I just spent ten minutes trying to code it in a semi-readable format and failed). Primefac (talk) 01:20, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Obviously if this is something that's really desired, I can actually sit down and figure out the most logical way to nest all these #ifs (there's also an #if for the "link text" param). Just let me know. Primefac (talk) 01:25, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Text error
This article starts with  There might be something wrong ! Oriental Sword (talk) 08:07, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
 * There's nothing functionally wrong, only that all of the template's code should be surrounded by <includeonly ></includeonly> to avoid that display. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:36, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Display text when no Wikipedia articles exist
A version of this template,  currently renders as , even though there are no articles in any language; just a Wikidata item. Can this behaviour be changed? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:05, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * , I'm honestly not sure how we could change that, since all this template is doing is creating an external link to whatever page is being linked. For example, I could create and it will link to a nonexistent page on fr wiki (Francesco de la Monte) as well as the nonexistent page here. #ifexist only works on the local wiki, so it wouldn't be much use. Primefac (talk) 20:15, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * We could, for example, change the wording "other languages" to "Wikidata". But I'm sure Lua can be sued to detect whether other article links are present in Wikidata. ? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:38, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Template doesn't use Lua, but yes, we could very easily change "other languages" to "Wikidata". I would support this change. Primefac (talk) 12:47, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
 * , it's been almost two months with no complaints, so I've implemented the change. now displays as  . Primefac (talk) 15:25, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I have updated the four pages linking to Dürrbach to link to the correct Wikidata item, about her, instead of the item about the copy of Guernica. Jc86035 (talk) 15:29, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Feature request: nolink
nolink if set would not wikilink the local (English) language page. For example:



Would produce:


 * Chanson douce (fr)

-- Green  C  01:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose – the rationale of this template is two-fold: to provide a link for the interested reader to articles in Wikipedias in other languages, and to create a red link for all the reasons mentioned in WP:RED. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:11, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok I won't use the template for my use case and can achieve the same result using other methods. -- Green  C  02:43, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Removing Reasonator
Should the Reasonator link capability be removed from the template? There are only about 14 articles which use the parameter and it's not an official WMF thing, so I think it would be better to remove the links. Jc86035 (talk) 03:21, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This is genuinely out of curiosity, but is the reason no one uses it because no one wants it, or because no one knows it exists? I was a major player in the big merge of this template, and I didn't even know what it was until about two minutes ago when I clicked the link (previously I just saw "it's a thing this template does" and glossed over it). Of course, then the next question that gets asked is "if no one knows it exists, it must not be important," but then we start going around in chicken/egg circles. Primefac (talk) 12:08, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't know. It's on the documentation, but the documentation is quite long for an inline template so it's possible that no one reads to that point. People might not be bothered to find out what it is or might not bother linking to a non-Wikipedia. I personally think there are not enough benefits to justify its inclusion, since it usually just repeats data from the Wikidata item, probably doesn't count as an interwiki link (and so shouldn't belong in the body of an article), and often generates grammatical errors even in the summaries of its showcase items. It might end up being prohibited by the current RfC anyway. Jc86035 (talk) 09:55, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Cool. I guess if there's no opposition I'm fine killing it off. Primefac (talk) 12:15, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I support removing it. It just adds complexity. I am also wondering how many actual articles use the WD= parameter. "What links here" for the redirect  gets 2 hits, one of them to 's Talk page. "ill-WD" has a few more, but again from Talk pages or the ill merge discussion. So I am wondering, how often has the WD= parameter actually been used? Is there any way to find out? Basically I am wondering about whether it's a good idea to send readers to Wikidata instead of an article on the topic. – Margin1522 (talk) 02:36, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * At the moment, there are 1084 pages that use the WD param (full list here). Primefac (talk) 02:44, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, I guess that's too many to eliminate then. – Margin1522 (talk) 03:34, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, for what it's worth, there are 149 pages that link to Reasonator (but only 14 articles), so that's something to consider. I guess it's used more on the backend/talk pages for folks not so much looking to learn more but to get more information for writing the page? Primefac (talk) 12:40, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe the Reasonator link could be disabled in articles and drafts? Jc86035 (talk) 13:02, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, could do I suppose. Primefac (talk) 13:47, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Broken code (February 2018)
As best I can tell, previously functioning markup (see example below) is now broken? The same is possibly also true within the template documentation? With best wishes. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 12:53, 17 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Umweltbundesamt
 * Umweltbundesamt
 * Umweltbundesamt (Deutschland) to prove the target exists
 * , I'm not sure what I'm looking at here. The dewiki page exists, the enwiki doesn't, and thus we get a redlink to enwiki and a (what appears to be valid) link to dewiki. Am I missing something? Primefac (talk) 14:51, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay. My misunderstanding of how the template works.  Thanks for the quick answer.  RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 15:16, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

German version needed
I wanted to use one yesterday, in order to help repair a bad bluelink in de:Tobias Kratzer. The link was to the wrong page de:Telemaco instead of to the correct page de:Telemaco (Gluck) (which does not exist). I redlinked it.

The correct page does exist in enwiki, eswiki, itwiki, nowiki and svwiki, but there seems to be no way at all to link from dewiki into that d:Q3982867 group. IMO it should be easy to.

I have ill linked from English Wiki to articles in more than 130 languages. This one time I have wanted to link from German Wiki to other languages, to help readers and editors, I could not do so.

Erzähl mir nicht, dass ich einen Stub-Artikel auf Deutsch schreiben sollte. Das ist nicht mein Argument. Narky Blert (talk) 02:06, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi Narky Blert. Each language makes its own policies. It appears from de:Hilfe:Internationalisierung that the German Wikipedia does not allow articles to make inline links to other languages. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:24, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks for your reply. I know, and respect the fact, that each Wikipedia language has its own rules. Weirdly though, de:Hilfe:Internationalisierung points you at de:Hilfe:Interwiki-Links which links to Help:Interwikimedia links.
 * It isn't documented in de:Hilfe:Interwiki-Links, but dewiki will accept a soft link like en:Telemaco (Gluck). IMO that is thoroughly useless, because it makes it look as if an article in your language exists when it doesn't. I find it a real pain to click on a bluelink and find myself looking at a page in, say, Chinese, Japanese or Thai (I'm still waiting to be sent those t-shirts).
 * Sigh. If dewiki will only accept soft links to other languages: their loss. So be it. Narky Blert (talk) 03:16, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * And Korean. Make that four t-shirts. Narky Blert (talk) 03:25, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't work on the German Wikipedia but when you say "dewiki will accept a soft link like en:Telemaco (Gluck)", I wonder whether that just means some people make such links in articles and they haven't been removed yet. There is an old discussion at de:Hilfe Diskussion:Internationalisierung de:Template:Ill has been deleted four times. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:46, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * interesting link - thanks! The result seemed against the better of the arguments, but so it goes. I found the arguments about links to non-Wikipedia Wikis (the sorts of things I would add only as External Links at best) particularly misguided. However, this horse looks well and truly dead and not worth flogging.
 * I only tested that soft link in German Wiki, and did not add it. I loathe soft links, except (and then rarely) to Wiktionary. In the case I found, I turned a bad link into a redlink - and notified an experienced German Wikipedian I know who might be interested in taking on a translation. Narky Blert (talk) 19:20, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

No redirect proposal
I propose that the English language article linked by this template be linked with rather than Example. I'm looking at Teresa Martínez de Varela, which uses in the lead. Unforunately, is a redirect to Grupo Niche, a group that Jairo Varela was a member of. It's okay to create redirects to related topics like this, but it disrupts the purpose of Template:Interlanguage link, which is to point to a particular notable topic that is not yet available on English Wikipedia. Linking to the redirect page itself would encourage article creation and translation. Furthermore, this will only trivially slow access to the redirect target if that were a desired destination, as it is prominently linked on redirect pages. Daask (talk) 17:09, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 22 May 2018
Please add wd as an alias for the parameter WD. Thanks —capmo (talk) 15:52, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * , why is this necessary? Primefac (talk) 16:08, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Many people, including me, customarily use to write template names and parameters in all-lowercase. Having the alias would save us the time to find out why wd is not working as expected :D That would also go in line with the language codes, which are used in lowercase. —capmo (talk) 16:14, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please make your requested changes to the template's sandbox first; see WP:TESTCASES. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:45, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Sandbox, seriously? It's so simple a change that anyone with basic knowledge of template editing could have done it straightforward. Anyway, here's what you've asked for. Just curious: If you think I'm skilled enough to edit a template sandbox, then maybe I should be granted template editor rights? ;) —capmo (talk) 14:06, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The sandbox has been synced here: Template:Interlanguage link/sandbox. — xaosflux  Talk 10:46, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks —capmo (talk) 14:06, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done
 * - I don't think I'm the only one who's passed over this request for the last 6 days assuming "Thanks" meant just "Thanks for doing the sync" rather than "Thanks for doing the sync, and I've done the sandbox change, but I couldn't be bothered to do the testcases".
 * Sandbox editing (and testcases) comes before template editor rights - WP:TPEGRANT. Cabayi (talk) 15:56, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually, I misread it as "the sandbox has been synced (with the template)" as a sandbox->template sync rather than template->sandbox... Primefac (talk) 16:21, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks again to everyone involved, and sorry for the confusion! —capmo (talk) 16:27, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Articles with different titles and a different name display within the link
I have added a new section near the top of the documentation because like many people I only use this template occasionally and it is often to link to biographies in a native language that have yet to be translated into English. In such case I usually do not want to include the full name eg "Brigadier General " so I am using.

Equally I do not want to spend time looking thorough lots of stuff in this document that I am of interested in (like the ability to link linking the article to lots of different foreign biographies), what I think is useful is to have quick explanation (aide-mémoire) useful examples at the top of "usage". So given that explanation please explain why you (user:Primefac) reverted my edit, as "piped links" is not the obvious name to go look for a named parameter as templates are full of pipe symbols (there is one between each parameter).(For those of you name familiar with UNIX the bar character "

BTW I suggest that the parameter name "lt=" be superseded with "display=" as that is the common name for such a parameter as "display" and "display" is more descriptive than "lt". -- PBS (talk) 20:39, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I've re-written the /doc, mostly moving things around, in order to make it more obvious what is where in the ToC. It just didn't make sense in your edit to have the same information written slightly differently in two places, but I see your point that it wasn't exactly easy to find.
 * As for display, that is already being used, and I'm not sure we should be changing an existing parameter's intended use without some form of consensus. Primefac (talk) 21:42, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Related discussion elsewhere
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking. Verbcatcher (talk) 21:34, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Link to one foreign language
Using "no" in an example ought to be a no no as "no" is a meaningful word in English and elsewhere "yes" is used to mean yes. I suggest the example is changed to a language who's two letter symbol is not a word in English eg fr, de, nl or similar (not no or (sic) any other two letter word in English as it is potentially confusing. -- PBS (talk) 17:39, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I respectfully disagree that it's confusing, but I won't fight against it if a consensus agrees to change it. Primefac (talk) 13:26, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * If we are concerned that readers will see the abbreviation “No” (Norwegian), and think we mean the English word “No” (a denial)... then Changing our example does nothing to resolve the confusion ... it simply hides it away (moving any confusion to actual articles where we link to a Norwegian article.) Perhaps a better solution would be to pick an unambiguous abbreviation (something that isn’t a common English language word... perhaps Nw?) Blueboar (talk) 21:15, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The same language codes are used by speakers of over 200 languages. I don't think we can ask the Wikimedia Foundation to change the ones that happen to be English words. OTOH if this example is even slightly confusing, why not change it? A well-known language code (fr?) would be one less thing to worry about. – Margin1522 (talk) 01:17, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Font size
Can someone please change the font size from 85% to a 100% to help comply with MOS:ACCESS/MOS:FONTSIZE. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 23:11, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Here in the sandbox with special:diff/849728436. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 23:12, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe not yet. The template is usually only out of compliance when it's used in something like an infobox or navbox, in which the text size is smaller, so I think it could be done with CSS after TemplateStyles is enabled next week. Alternately, you would need consensus to change the font size for all uses, and not just where the text is too small and violates a guideline. Jc86035 (talk) 04:10, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. As stated above. There have been multiple tangential (and often unfinished) discussions about whether this template should be used in an infobox, but so far there has been no resolution and I would be extremely hesitant to make all uses larger. Primefac (talk) 11:50, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Template fix
Hi, I came across the following use of this template, in which the date 16 February 2017 renders incorrectly:

The issue was fixed when I added the language parameter (for Hebrew):

Can someone troubleshoot this? Thanks! — TAnthonyTalk 14:25, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * , you haven't used ill in your example above. Primefac (talk) 16:32, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Ha, OMG you are so right I came to the wrong talk page, I was also working with ill. Thanks!— TAnthonyTalk 16:44, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Broken
Every instance of {Interlanguage link|Foreign Article|xx} is now acting like [Foreign Article] (xx) instead of the intended [xx:Foreign Article|Foreign Article] (xx). They are all redlinks. (For affected articles, see Pages that link to "Template:Interlanguage link".) (I could try to diagnose it by sandboxing a rollback. But it might be obvious in the code, or it might be caused a template that this one calls.) -A876 (talk) 22:48, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: You failed to give an example but the cases I checked are behaving as intended and documented. Read the first paragraph of the documentation. It creates a red English link on purpose. The foreign article is linked on the language code ([xx:Foreign Article|xx]). If the link is missing somewhere then give an example. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:22, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry! Not broken! I guessed wrong about what it was supposed to do. And the documentation bounced right off me. Reading it now, I see that the template works as-advertised. The dual-mode is a good idea, though subtle. I tweaked the description to make it seem clearer, and to me-proof it. -A876 (talk) 21:16, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Sister projects
Is it possible to use this template to link to biographies on Wikispecies and/ or Wikisource? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:56, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Technically it should be able to: Animalia and Zhi-Qiang Zhang seem to work. Primefac (talk) 15:55, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

using this template in the dutch wikipedia
How can i use this template within the dutch wikipedia?--Geerestein (talk) 00:44, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Each Wikipedia language makes its own templates and policies. Templates at the English Wikipedia cannot be used at the Dutch Wikipedia, and they have no equivalent of this template. nl:Help:Gebruik van interwiki-links says in bold: "Het is in principe ongewenst om in artikelen zulke taallinks in lopende tekst op te nemen." Google translation: "In principle, it is undesirable to include such language links in current text in articles." I guess that means the Dutch Wikipedia does not want a template like this. The English Wikipedia allows it in Help:Interlanguage links. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:13, 26 December 2018 (UTC)


 * thank you for your response. --Geerestein (talk) 10:10, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Use square brackets
I propose switching the markup from parentheses AKA round brackets – (fr), etc. – to square brackets – [ fr ] , etc. – to match the prevailing style for editorial insertions in published English works, and (more to the point) Wikipedia's own style for marking reference citations, footnotes, [sic], editorial changes to quotations, inline dispute and cleanup templates, the "[edit]" links optionally present on section headings, the "[collapse]" markers on templates and tables with that feature, and other such editorial insertions. They are actually a type of self-ref, being the encyclopedia directly addressing the reader as such.

Round brackets are not used for this purpose, but are part of the running prose, as in "She was CEO (and chaired the board of directors) from 2002 to 2012". Likewise, we do not use square brackets for purpose. The two forms of brackets are simply not randomly interchangeable on Wikipedia. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:26, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. I'm usually averse to change but the rationale here makes a lot of sense. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:45, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. Makes sense, though low priority—I wouldn't sharpen-my-machete support it. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 09:05, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Yes, a machete might attract a hobo with a shotgun.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:49, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Support – An excellent idea...I recently ran into this issue when inserting an interlanguage link next to a parentheses-enclosed piece of information. The proposed distinction is useful. RGloucester  — ☎ 15:29, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * That just happened to me again within the last two minutes. The result is visually confusing and hard to parse.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:49, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Support: Great idea.— TAnthonyTalk 15:58, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * [Support] Outriggr (talk) 01:24, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅. Pretty strong support. If there's any opposition I'm happy to revert, but I see none so far and I don't expect there to be any unless the change is made and people see it come through (totally not speaking from past experience...). Primefac (talk) 02:57, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Infotips
Previously, template "Interlanguage link multi" or "illm" worked on this way (using brackets instead of parentheses) until it was redirected to this template (Interlanguage link) a couple of years ago. I remember that it (of perhaps was it this template¿?) also used to display —when the mouse cursor was hovered over the hyperlink— in the tooltip to which foreign language Wikipedia it linked, so therefore, for example, instead of hinting "es:Néstor Humberto Martínez" it showed "Néstor Humberto Martínez (Spanish Wikipedia)". I think that it should be reimplemented on Wikipedia, because regular people will get the reason for those hyperlinks within those brackets (that the information is available in other languages than English). 179.53.125.227 (talk) 18:37, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Issue with Template:Main
Looking at the Confession (religion) article there seems to be an issue with the use of this template going with Template:Main. It's present in this revision of the article in the section on Buddhism:

Confession_(religion) 12:29, 15 March 2019

Confession (Buddhism) is appropriately red linked as the article doesn't exist in the English Wikipedia, but there's also square brackets and a colon there.

 :[[Confession (Buddhism) [ zh ]  ]] 

I tried removing the "lt=" part in the code as that looked like an error to me, but the issue was still present.

Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 21:26, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The code in the article: . That's a monstrosity and not supposed to give a meaningful result. Template:Main is for links to English Wikipedia articles. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:09, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed; this is not an issue with the template but an issue with people nesting templates that aren't meant to be nested. Primefac (talk) 14:21, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

I tried out:

and this produces:

Main articles: Confession (Buddhism) and 忏悔 from the Chinese Wikipedia

This seems to me to capture the basic idea of Template:Interlanguage link as described in Help:Interlanguage_links

It is sometimes possible to combine the two approaches, giving a local red link in addition to an interlanguage link explicitly marked as such. For example: "...the plans were drawn up by German architect Hans Knoblauch (de)..." is coded as  The template ill was designed to assist this combined approach.

The idea that in due course an English Wikipedia article on Hans Knoblauch or on Confession (Buddhism) could be created possibly using content from the German Wikipedia or the Chinese Wikipedia.

Do people think the fix mentioned above is okay? Or, on the other hand, should there be a policy (perhaps stated in the help documentation for Template:Main) that Template:Main should only be used for English Wikipedia articles? Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 21:23, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The lead of Template:Main already says: "This template is used after the heading of the summary, to link to the subtopic article that has been summarized." This clearly requires the subtopic article to exist in the English Wikipedia. We don't need to explicitly disallow every rare error. My searches [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=hastemplate%3A%22Interlanguage+link%22+hastemplate%3Amain+insource%3A%22main+interlanguage+link%22&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%22namespaces%22%3A%5B0%5D%7D&ns0=1][//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=hastemplate%3A%22Interlanguage+link%22+hastemplate%3Amain+insource%3A%22main+ill%22&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%22namespaces%22%3A%5B0%5D%7D&ns0=1] did find 23 other cases but I doubt further documentation would have helped much. If you want to link a foreign article then don't do it with Template:Main or other hatnote templates (see WP:REDHAT). You could formulate a sentence in the section to include something like Confession (Buddhism). PrimeHunter (talk) 22:06, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
 * We could mention in the documentation of this template that it should not be used in hatnotes but let's not add it to a big bunch of hatnote documentations. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:14, 26 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Okay, for the Buddhism section of the Confession (religion) article I changed it so that it's not part of a hatnote.


 * And also added this to the documentation:

This template should not be used in hatnotes as red links should not be present in hatnotes.


 * If people do nest the two templates like that, and if that's present in current articles, the result may look a bit off, but the links still function as if it was in body text. Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 02:16, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Lots of wikidata links for non-notable people
There seems to be a proliferation of wikidata links for people that aren't notable, but have entries on Wikidata (mainly minor academics or relatives of famous people). See for example, Katie Bouman, which has 2 of them. They are typically created with the Interlanguage link template. Do we really want to go down the road of having random " [Wikidata] " links sprinkled throughout our articles? Personally, I think it's distracting and disrupts the readability of the sentences. It's also problematic because it creates red links for people that, in many cases, shouldn't have Wikipedia articles. Can we suggest that people not create Wikidata-only links? or at least not for non-notable people/subjects? Kaldari (talk) 01:25, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * That is not a good idea. For example, the article currently has
 * Her father, &#123;{ill|Charles Bouman|wd= Q63092539}&#125; → Her father, Charles Bouman
 * Actually, this edit added "Her father is Charles Bouman". Those are effectively external links that distract the reader. Johnuniq (talk) 01:53, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed. These links are totally unnecessary and a distraction.  Unhelpful, too.  Regards,  GenQuest  "Talk to Me" 02:27, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I disagree that these links are not useful. Readers can skip them just as easily as blue links, and links to Reasonator specifically, which is part of Wikimedia and only technically external, can offer a concise summary for a subject otherwise not covered. Whether those red-linked subjects are notable for the English Wikipedia may be "problematic", but there were, and still are, plenty of examples of former red links that now have articles (WP:NOTFINISHED). -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:55, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I also disagree that these links are not useful. Useful depends pretty much on "useful for whom", and we do address readers with dfferent background and interests. I'd prefer, however, to see only one such connection to one red link, and a 2-letter-abbreviation for Wikidata, comparable to our 2-letter language codes such as "de" for German, to keep distraction lower. Best of course to write the article, however stubby, if an interlanguage link annoys you, yes you who reads this. (I do my share. Today's will be Dieter Mathoi.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:10, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * About Prof. Högbom, I changed his ill Wikidata link to sv, since he has an article in the Swedish Wikipedia. His CLEAN (algorithm) is notable enough to have its own English Wikipedia article. In fact, an article in Astronomy and Astrophysics says that its influence on astronomy and other fields of science has been "immense". So I added that cite to the algorithm article. None of this would have happened without the red link. So although I was opposed to ever sending readers to Wikidata in the discussion at the time of the ill templates merge, I suppose it can serve a purpose, if someone thinks this topic should have an article. I do wish the editor who added it had found the article in Swedish. – Margin1522 (talk) 12:59, 13 April 2019 (UTC)


 * , regarding using just "WD", I thought this issue was discussed earlier, but all I could find was when we changed it from "other languages" to "Wikidata" in the display. Other than that, there was only talk of removing it entirely from articles, but that never gained traction enough to actually get done. Re-opening that discussion might be worth looking into if there is concern about linking to Wikidata in the article space. Primefac (talk) 13:20, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I found the parameter Qnnnnnn useful when there are articles in several other languages and I couldn't decide which one was more appropriate to use and listing them all would indeed have been distracting. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:37, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, and to be honest given the past discussions I don't think there would be much support for removing it entirely. I think the main opposition to changing the tag to just  would be that it's less obvious than , but I don't particularly have an opinion on the matter; I'm just the editor that will likely update the code :p Primefac (talk) 13:51, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * No one outside of the Wikimedia community has any clue what "WD" or "Wikidata" mean. They are just weird confusing links thrown into the midst of article text from the POV of 99% of our readers. Kaldari (talk) 22:28, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

CFD discussion regarding the category populated by this template
There is a discussion regarding Category:Interlanguage link template link number going on at CFD here. More input from editors familiar with this template would be helpful. —Kusma (t·c) 06:03, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

WP:RF
Is there a template or some other way of alerting readers what this means? A redlink with a blue "[es]" after it is not intuitive to casual readers. I raised this at the Help Desk, but it timed out after three days, the original can be see here. As a starter something along the lines of the following would help: This page includes inter-language links. When a link is made to the Wikipedia of another language it is shown in red with a blue language symbol after it. For example Castle Sternberg indicates that the English Language encyclopaedia has no article on Castle Sternberg, but the German language encyclopaedia does. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:41, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Martin, do you mean that every page that uses ill should have some sort of maintenance-style template at the top, or are you suggesting that your proposed/draft text would be some sort of hover/popup text over the link itself? Primefac (talk) 20:03, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * "every page ... should have" – absolutely not! More a case of "any page ... may have".  Editor discretion is relevant here, I was looking at List of dedications to Edith Cavell where there are a lot of places which really are not WP:NOTABLE enough for the English Wiki but, for instance, the Dutch Wiki might have an article on a street in Amsterdam.  It would be nice to wikilink them, but I felt that readers should have ill explained to them.  We know what it means, but would all readers?  As to whether it should be implemented by a pop-up, infobox or navbox, I seek advice.  Instinctively I don't like the pop-up, but only at the level of personal feeling.  If there is no existing template, then I'll just add the relevant help text manually; but I don't want to duplicate effort or trample on anyone's toes. Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:58, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi Martin, although I'm familiar with dozens of those language codes from ISO 639-1, I nevertheless agree whole-heartedly that they are opaque to a lot of readers. I agree with Primefac's implication that the way to improve this is not by placing something at the top (where nobody will notice it, probably) but by using a pop-up title of the sort that the Html code   generates (see example). The template Hover title does something similar. (My recollection is that usage was controversial for some reason or in some contexts, perhaps having to do with mobile browsers, screen readers, or the like.) It would not be hard to code the template to cause a pop-up title to say "read this article in Spanish" when you mouse over the es. Example:"Albert Gau&#91;de&#93; &#91; <abbr title='read 'Albert Gau' in French'>fr &#93; &#91;he&#93; was a French priest, journalist, and politician."
 * How do you feel about something like that, instead of a notice at the top? P.S., superscript alignment is just my personal preference; it could just as easily be standard alignment.  Mathglot (talk) 23:58, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
 * There is already a "pop-up" that shows (for example, in Castle Sternberg) "de:Burg Sternberg". Does that need to be modified further? Primefac (talk) 01:07, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
 * The popup as currently provided, "de:Burg Sternberg", doesn't address the problem of unfamiliarity with two-letter language codes. I think Mathglot's proposal would be an improvement and deserves consideration. However, I think its implementation would be non-trivial. Module:Lang might provide functionality for things like "de" -> "German", but that's above my paygrade. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:39, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, I was just mentioning it. I don't have any particular feelings either way, so from here on out I'm mostly going to observe (though happy to answer questions), but I will say that with over 60k transclusions of this template, it will need a bit stronger consensus than a few editors agreeing that a change is necessary. Primefac (talk) 03:46, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
 * – That looks to be exactly the sort of thing I was meaning.  – I agree, hence my reference to WP:RF.  We editors may know the ins and outs, but does the proverbial high school student or individual learning English (or both) know?  I've made a copy of Mathglot's suggestions into my sandbox and will have a play.  It ought to be fairly straightforward to write a "jacket" template that will invoke ill to do the real work.  I'll report back if I get something working. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:05, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Maybe ISO 639 name can help:  returns: "". -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:22, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Martin, if we do it all, it should be in ill, and not in a wrapper template, as the latter would depend on people choosing, and using it going forward, while leaving the whatever-tens-of-thousands of existing links unchanged. I don't think it will be that hard to code it. Ping me to your sandbox now and again; I'd like to watch your progress, and perhaps comment on your Talk:sandbox. Btw, I think starting it out as a wrapper is okay, while you work out your parser function calls and all that, but when it seems to be working as you wish, try bootstrapping your code into a sandbox-ill and getting that working.
 * Primefac is right about needing a bigger consensus to change an existing template, but you also have a much better chance of that, if you can point to a working sandbox version, so still very worth developing it. Mathglot (talk) 20:13, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Pop-up text
Any thoughts on whether the pop-up should repeat the name of the article in the pop-up text, or just have the hard-coded string, "Read this article in Fooese"? I tend to push for clarity and transparency, hence I like the article name itself in the pop-up, and surrounded by ticks to delimit it adds to clarity.

There is a possible downside to consider however: length, and weird characters in a title. In your sandbox, please add a few test cases with very long article titles (can anyone had a couple of examples below, please?) and a few test cases with titles containing quotation marks or other characters that might possibly screw up popups or parser code. Anything we produce as a suggestion for an updated template, should be bullet-proof. If that's too hard, then, we just don't pop up the article name, and just use hard-coded string instead. If I were coding it as a module, I'd test for string-length, pop up the first 40 characters of article name followed by ellipsis, and suppress any weird characters. I think this is also doable in parser code with some of the string manip stuff, if we really want the article title in the popup. Mathglot (talk) 20:34, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 19 September 2019
Please sync with the sandbox (oldid 916625451) to implement consensus at Categories_for_discussion/Log/2019_August_11 to delete Category:Interlanguage link template link number. I've looked at the testcasses and no unintended consequences were found. --Trialpears (talk) 20:36, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Primefac (talk) 21:01, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Red links
Why is this template producing red links? Until the defect is corrected, I am removing it and replacing it with ordinary wikilinks. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)T @ 17:42, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * , that's intentional, the red link is for the English version with the other language version being in brackets. Replacing with direct links to another Wikipedia would confuse our readers and not be useful for most of them since they don't know the language. --Trialpears (talk) 18:03, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Question
Hello, hoping someone is watching. I want to make an ill-link to swede Per Andersson (skådespelare). Per Andersson is already an article.

I can make Per Andersson (actor) but would like it without (actor). Is there a way to have the redlink look "Per Andersson" but if you click it you get Per Andersson (actor)? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:34, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Gråbergs Gråa Sång, just use  as in Per Andersson (actor). —Kusma (t·c) 21:04, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:25, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Raw interlanguage link
Trying to templatify interlanguage links on List of fatalities from aviation accidents, but the sortname template is in the way so I need to find some way to make the template not display the redlink, and just display the blue link to the other language. I tried, which just caused the template to default to the article name. Any advice? Ionmars10 (talk) 00:05, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
 * One can use hs to work around sortname's limitations. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:45, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Why do you not want to display the red link? There is no English language page for the individual at the moment, hence the redlink.  Were one to be created the red links magically turn blue which saves someone having to go around page after page looking to see if wikilinks need to be added.   There is a problem with users not understanding the system.  I raised this a while back (see Template_talk:Interlanguage_link/Archive_2) and started to play around with hover title and abbr.  Hover title says to use abbr instead.  Abbr says to use hover title instead.  So I went away to think (and got distracted by other matters) and my sandbox contents were deleted for being in breach of Categories_for_discussion/Log/2019_August_11.  I suspect that the best way to proceed without offending anyone is to use a notice at the top of table. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:06, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
 * , because the red link is already generated by the sortname templates that the table already uses, so if I try to use the regular interlanguage link I'll get something like this: Sigrud Knubben
 * Michael Bednarek's solution looks like it should work, though. Ionmars10 (talk) 11:04, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see; it is the duplication, not the redness. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:57, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see; it is the duplication, not the redness. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:57, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Language of link text
It would be good to be able to indicate the language of the link text in cases, like  (in other words, to incorporate the functionality of lang). Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:49, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree. This has been raised before, in a round-about way, at Template talk:Interlanguage link/Archive 2. The discussion petered out and nothing was done. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:38, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Not just petered out but blocked and my sandboxes partially emptied without warning: "16:36, 9 January 2020‎ Le Deluge talk contribs‎ 1,806 bytes -1,757‎ Interlink categories deleted per Categories_for_discussion/Log/2019_August_11". Presumably I was using something that was not acceptable so be careful.  Martin of Sheffield (talk) 15:43, 22 February 2020 (UTC)