Template talk:Interlanguage link/Old version/Talk Archive 1

Spacing
Correct formatting would seem to require a space between the redlink and the parentheses containing the interwiki link. Could someone fix the spacing? Wareh (talk) 16:45, 2 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Done.--Patrick (talk) 23:29, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, that didn't cut it if the local link existed. I don't know what the original problem was (the original version looked fine to me), but if the parser removed the preceeding space, the nbsp HTML entity instead of using a space directly should fix it. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 03:38, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Messages in articles
I just saw messages about a proposed merge in an article off the Main page, and think this is confusing to the readers. I changed that article but am sure the template was used many times by me alone. See List of composers by name and find a better solution, please, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:58, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Relevant RfD
An RfD is being held that may affect templates similar to this one: See Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 February 15. —/M endaliv /2¢/Δ's/ 02:12, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

"temporarily"?
The documentation opens with: "This template temporarily displays a link".

Does this imply that a bot comes by and ma~kes some change? (which one then?). Or is the iw link not shown when the enwiki page has turned blue? -DePiep (talk) 09:10, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The latter. Observe how shows "". -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:18, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

A significant flaw
So, this template doesn't recognize what kind of page is on the English Wikipedia. We currently have a page José María Leyva which redirects to a disambiguation page. But I want to use this template on the disambiguation page to provide a link to the Spanish article. In short, this template doesn't detect if English Wikipedia has an article on the person, it only detects if it has a page. If that page is a disambiguation page or a redirect to one, it should not be linked. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:31, 15 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I see no practical way to do what you want. An impractical way would be to transclude the target page if it exists and then analyze its text with string functions to try to determine the type. I don't recommend that. Instead you can try to predict a future name of an English article or redirect and for example write  which produces . PrimeHunter (talk) 18:29, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
 * So you're saying it's not practical to upgrade the template to check for disambiguation pages? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 19:00, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Another issue is that DAB pages are not supposed to contain links to sister projects (WP:DABSISTER). It would be possible to link to the Spanish article without using a template. See Help:Interlanguage links. But instead of linking to another Wikipedia, the better course is to create the article on the English Wikipedia, by editing the page José María Leyva to convert it from a redirect to an article. Then the DAB page can link to the article here instead of on the Spanish Wikipedia. It doesn't have to be a complete translation. A lot of articles have started out as just a paragraph or so. To indicate that a more complete article exists on the Spanish Wikipedia, you could put the Expand Spanish template at the top of the new article. – Margin1522 (talk) 19:16, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm in a disagreement with another editor about that. I asked him to post a link to an English article that discusses him, so the Spanish link would simply supplement it. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 19:56, 15 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't understand what you are trying to do . Perhaps if I understood better, I could help you whip something up with MW:Help:Magic_words? — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 20:00, 15 January 2015 (UTC)


 * The template uses #ifexist: to check whether exists. If it exists then the template only links to . If it doesn't exist then the template makes both a red link to  and an interlanguage link. Oiyarbepsy apparently wants it to not only check that  exists but also that it is not a disambiguation page or a redirect to a disambiguation page. My impractical idea was something like {{#ifeq:{{Str find|{{:}}}|Category:All disambiguation pages}}|-1|code when it's not a dab page|code when it's a dab page}} to check whether  contains a string you would expect on a disambiguation page such as "Category:All disambiguation pages". It requires the whole wikicode of the page to be processed and that seems too expensive for this purpose. I don't know a more practical way to upgrade the template to check for disambiguation pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:19, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yup, Primehunter, that's what I'd like it to do. The big question is how a disambiguation page would link and what it would look like. Maybe the link would be forced red even though not technically a red link, and clicking would be an edit link for the page? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 21:23, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The best way to handle this is to guess what the future name of the article will be, as PrimeHunter mentioned above. You definitely shouldn't try to "guess" whether an article is a disambiguation page, as there's no reliable way to do that, and never can be. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:26, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, so you want to check if the target page is a DAB/redirect on the local wiki. Interesting.  PH's suggestion might work, but I'm not convinced it would be very reliable. MW:Extension:Scribunto/Lua_reference_manual makes me think that Lua could be used to determine if a page was a redirect.  Since, you may need some Lua-foo for the end result, I'm unable to help at this time.  Good luck. :) — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 23:00, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, if it ain't gonna work, I might as well take a shot at translating. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:10, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
 * If you do, I suggest to usurp the page ; it's the most appropriate article name & it has no (meaningful) incoming links. --Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:30, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Synchronize with template:Link-interwiki
The appearance of this template should be synchronized with Link-interwiki, as they seem to be used interchangeably. Why does Link-interwiki put the other-language link in a superscript while ill doesn't? Set theorist (talk) 05:06, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree. Those two templates should be merged. Personally, I like the link-interwiki style better. --bender235 (talk) 17:53, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I, too, think that the superscripted appearance of Link-interwiki looks better, but I strongly prefer the syntax of positional parameters of ill and therefore do not support a merge. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:44, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
 * A merge could have the best of both. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:34, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I have only just found this template, being used in an article, so I have no opinion on merging, and independent of the look of the other template (which I have not seen), I came here to suggest that superscript should be used. -- PBS (talk) 12:57, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 * See Templates for discussion/Log/2014 January 2, sadly closed as having no consensus, due to some editors trying to put the cart before the horse, and demand to see the merged template before agreeing to a merger. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:34, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I have added a parameter called vertical-align which alters the placement of links after the name
 * for superscript
 * for subscript
 * for normal (small) script
 * It is my intention given the consensus this discussion to default this template to superscript with the option to set it to something else, rather than the current "normal" with the default to set it to something else. -- PBS (talk) 08:22, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think that the appearance of the template is something that should be parameterized. It should have a standard appearance, instead of varying just because individual editors think super or subscript looks better. What are readers supposed to make of that variation? Is it supposed to mean something?
 * I'm also not really happy with the direction that this merge is going. The "ill" template used to be very simple – one link to one article in another Wiki. Now it's got a parameter that affects the appearance but that isn't described in the documentation. Instead it's described in the documentation for another template that is far more complicated than most readers or editors need (how many of them read more than one foreign language?). Not to mention options for Wikidata and Reasonator, which I can't recall anyone asking for. Creeping featuritis, if you ask me. Can't we have it so that at least the documentation for the old "ill" can be like it used to be, with no need to refer to another template to understand everything about it? – Margin1522 (talk) 10:51, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The Wikidata and Reasonator features were merged into Interlanguage link multi from two other templates (which linked to Wikidata instead of other Wikipedias). I've removed the option to make the interwiki links superscript, since it was added without any discussion and was never there in the first place (except in Link-interwiki, where it was added without discussion by an IP). Jc86035 (talk • contribs) Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125; to reply to me 11:37, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I now see by experimentation that the default appearance of "ill" is the way it used to be. But "ill" still accepts a  parameter (which for some reason encloses the language code in brackets, like a footnote) as well as a   parameter (which encloses the language code in parentheses, like the default). I still fail to see the reason for the inconsistency, and still think that the template is better off without this vertical-align parameter. I propose that we remove it. – Margin1522 (talk) 03:26, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
 * There's a related discussion over on the talk page of the main template (with all the bells and whistles), Interlanguage link multi, here. While I don't think it's a good idea to have such a feature it is probably best to keep it but not advertise it in the documentation, since there are some people who prefer the links being superscript. Jc86035 (talk • contribs) Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125; to reply to me 09:19, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

This template creates articles that link to themselves
In general, it's unhelpful for an article to have internal links that redirect back to itself (recursive links). But that's exactly what this article creates, when trying to provide an interlanguage link to an article when we already have a redirect by that name back to the original article.

For example, please look at the lede of Thilo Sarrazin. He wrote a book called Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Does Itself In); here, that title is simply a redirect back to his article, but German Wikipedia has an article at Deutschland schafft sich ab. The lede of our article has an interlanguage link which attempts to link to the page of the German article on the book, but because of the English-language redirect, simply redirects back to itself instead. Can anyone suggest how to fix this, or what template should be used instead? (Deleting the English redirect would work, but seems ill-advised.) Robofish (talk) 22:13, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I think this can (at the moment) only be solved by constructing the link manually: "In his 2010 book Deutschland schafft sich ab[de] (Germany does itself in), the most popular book..." Note also that the English translation of that phrase (such as it is – I'd prefer "Germany abolishes itself") should not be in title case nor in italics as no such title exists. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 08:30, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The template could use Module:Redirect to examine the target. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:37, 30 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I fixed this yesterday. Alakzi (talk) 14:14, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
 * So far, your change at Interlanguage link multi has no observable effect at the article in question, Thilo Sarrazin. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:23, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Previously, there was no interlanguage link. I can't turn a blue link red, so that's about as much as I can do for you. Alakzi (talk) 14:25, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Confusing
I came across the use of this strange template at Moskva River, and I thought it was a formatting error. It is totally unclear to readers what "redlink" followed by language code is supposed to mean. Most users probably won't even realise that the two letters represent a language code, let alone realise that clicking on it will take them to a foreign-language article on the "redlink" topic. The whole presentation of this needs to be rethought. 31.51.134.49 (talk) 00:26, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

"CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list" error
Use of this template is causing problems for CS1.

There is a maintenance category Category:CS1 maint: Multiple names: editors list which lists pages whereon there is a citation employing the singular form "editor" to introduce a list of names. However it appears that using ill causes CS1 to incorrectly show an error of this type when there is not one. As an example see Timeline of Bruges Where Dcirovic changed "editor" to "editors" for nl. Subsequently I changed it back, Henri Zondervan is a single name and yet it generates the error. See the enclosed talk copied from Dcirovic's talk page: "Hi, I've reverted your changes to Timeline of Liège and Timeline of Bruges. In both cases only one editor is given, so the editor form is correct. Using editors generates "eds" in the citation whereas the former generates "ed".  Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:25, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * You have reintroduced the "CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list" error in those articles. --Dcirovic (talk) 14:34, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * If ill is forcing single names to be interpreted as multiple names, then the fault is not with me but with the template! I'll start a thread on the template's talk page.  I'll copy this section straight over there, so I suggest any further comments are put there.  Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 15:22, 22 June 2016 (UTC)"

Can anyone assist in sorting out this problem? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 15:22, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Since links are not allowed in author, editor, etc. fields (that's what author-link and editor-link are for), and ill doesn't work in author-link nor editor-link, the most appropriate solution is to use the form :fr:Jacques Stiennon.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:41, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * One of the uses of seems to be that it populates Category:Interlanguage link template link number, which can be useful if someone wants to check whether ILLs can be migrated to the home wiki (if not for other reasons). Using :fr:Jacques Stiennon populates no such category, but can presumably be made to do so relatively easily due to the unique text   at the beginning of the link. Help talk:Citation Style 1 would be the place to ask to get a solution to this implemented, whether it's allowing ill in author/editor fields (unlikely), or creating a tracking category for , etc., ILLs (way more likely).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:59, 22 June 2016 (UTC)