Template talk:Sister project links/Archive 2

Template-protected edit request on 30 October 2016
To allow links to wikivoyage to go to the correct part of an article containing a listing could you please append page name with  # . To get the effect that is available with Wikivoyage-listing as show in this example.

Traveler100 (talk) 17:01, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * ? Should your queued up changes in the sandbox go in simultaneously with this proposed change? — Andy W. ( talk ) 00:56, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I think this is a good idea. It will make it easier for Wikipedia editors to use this template.   WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Wow, forgot about that. Please clobber my edits, as I won't be able to do old IE or mobile testing until Thursday. I'll merge the edits back in later. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 23:14, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * No deadline, and it's almost Thursday anyway. Here's the requested diff (or with queued up sandbox changes: this; from your sandbox version: this). Essentially, the latest sandbox revision seems good to go in 1 sync if you're ready. (tested in preview at Eiffel Tower with . FYI  — Andy W. ( talk ) 22:58, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Immediate request is Yes check.svg Done — Andy W. ( talk ) 23:30, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Done with testing, no issues in IE8, IE7 doesn't vertically center lines (esp. WikiNews) but not sure if that's a big deal. Mobile hides both versions, and image description pages aren't linked in both versions, so no changes there. If there aren't any objections to the visual changes at /testcases, I'll go ahead and sync them. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 05:23, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I notice the "Learning resources from Wikiversity" (which wraps for me) seems to yield less space above and below (compared to the live version), so I tried upping the height, but undid, probably it's too browser/size specific? Current sbx looks ready — Andy W. ( talk ) 07:46, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You're right, messages that wrap to a second line are taller than 29px. I hope 31px is enough height. I made the icons slightly larger to make the heights uniform. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 17:33, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Linking directly to wikinews
Please see 2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire I inserted a link to  both with and without underscores for spaces and it would only ever generate the generic   rather than a direct link to the news story. I can only suspect that is due to a comma. Can someone smarter than me help? —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:40, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * A quick look at that template code is that it is designed to link to collections of pages, not single pages (typically categories). For wikinews it goes to the search feature. —  xaosflux  Talk 17:17, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I used to link to the news article.  Feel free to revert. —  xaosflux  Talk 17:19, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Weird--that doesn't make sense to me. I've never had a problem with any link to any travel guide, dictionary entry, etc. Only now. I'm not surewhat you mean about collections of pages... Since I made the search a redirect on, I will revert it so that we are just using the one template. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:14, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * sisterlinks redirects to Sister project links which was changed in 2014 [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Sister_project_links&diff=636498416&oldid=632647820] to not search for the parameter  in Wikinews. Currently the parameter is only used to omit a Wikinews search with  . The only way to control what to search in Wikinews is to give an unnamed parameter but that will also affect links to other sites. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:42, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The  is still coming from that template.  I'm fine with the revert - just saying this appears to be working as coded. —  xaosflux  Talk 19:02, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm saying it's not supposed to direct there, though: I have an input for  and the template isn't directing there. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:14, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Did this fix it for you? — xaosflux  Talk 12:20, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It is using "unnamed parameter 1" or falling back to the article title. — xaosflux  Talk 12:20, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * A very trenchant hack. The template should still allow me to directly link to it but that is a good enough work-around in the meantime. Thanks for your help. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:03, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Copied this to Template talk:Sister project links for future follow up from template maintainers. — xaosflux  Talk 16:09, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 22 January 2017
Cannot show the correct wikinews. e.g.

For wikinews, it cannot show the target news even I put it in the infobox. Please help. 219.79.127.74 (talk) 02:55, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: This is not a valid edit request. Also, n accepts a yes or no value, not a specific string. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 03:25, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to unhide from mobile
It's been proposed by Great Brightstar, via this sandbox diff and this user talk thread, to unhide this template in mobile view. Specifically, to remove the  class on the container element. I'm a little worried about size, but I don't oppose the idea, and TemplateStyles can adjust the size later. I thought adding  and   classes would be helpful. Any other thoughts on this? Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 04:24, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't really use mobile--can you tell me how other similar templates render? ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:51, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
 * the individual templates render on mobile view. At the bottom of every page there's a link to mobile view you may use this to test things.--Moxy (talk) 15:46, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Sure, as Brightstar pointed out to me, Template:Sister project (mobile view) is visible, just not floated. Mobile skin doesn't seem to style the  family of classes. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 21:03, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

|author= defaults to yes or no?
The TemplateData section says: Use for articles about authors to force the Wikisource links to include the "Author:" prefix. Can be set to "yes" or "no". The default is "No". (FWIW, the capitalization of "No/no" here is inconsistent, which is a no-no.)

However, the Parameters section indicates otherwise, including it with parameters whose default is "yes": ""

So which is it? BTW, the documentation as a whole needs a lot of work. Thanks, —Geekdiva (talk) 21:38, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Horizontal rather than vertical version
Is there a horizontal rather than vertical version? Such that the whole width of the page is used. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:27, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I was wondering the same, especially since it can look a little weird to have a section with one regular external link and then this template containing 5 sister project links on the right, as the Reddit article currently does. --V2Blast (talk) 04:47, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Subject bar. See Jeff Gordon. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:50, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks! V2Blast (talk) 08:39, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Great Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 14:18, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Horizontal
Is there a horizontal version of this template? Perhaps something that would integrate better with authority control and portal bar? See also Template talk:Authority control. czar 12:59, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Which was archived.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  19:16, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * See . Thincat (talk) 23:29, 13 February 2019 (UTC)


 * , this page is the best place to ask questions about the template. Your best bet for a horizontal version is Subject bar, though I think it's rather clunky compared to the one eswp uses. As for your question about columns, my best guess is that using this template in a columned section will push some of the columns to a newline, generating unnecessary white space. czar  01:40, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot for commenting! Well, then I guess we'll have to put up with the way it is, right? As to the column issue, I was wondering since I didn't see any problem e. g. after including it in this columned ref section.--Hildeoc (talk) 20:26, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
 * , re: columns in Differential_calculus, when you resize your window into a single column of refs, the template occupies the second column and creates white space beneath it, rather than letting the refs split to a second column. (fwiw, I think it's fine, though and better than subject bar in that instance.) Also you might also be interested in tracking this request: User talk:Evad37 czar  23:02, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 6 June 2019
Please add the sistersitebox class to match the other sister project templates. I've done the same in the sandbox already. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 07:14, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ASister_project_links&type=revision&diff=900539700&oldid=868413528 ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:29, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

«Wiktionary link?»
I am learning, with all due respect: in this edition I watched that a red link not showed for indicating a non existing article at Wiktionary... very well but, why at documentation shows two posible values, "yes" or "not"? Thanks in advance,--Jimmy Olano (talk) 00:20, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Fix template distortion when the skin is Minerva Desktop or Timeless
Hi. I'm here to propose a fix for the template distortion when the user's chosen skin is either Minera or Timeless. You can observe the distortion here:


 * Testcase page, revision 728410928, Minerva Desktop skin
 * Testcase page, revision 728410928, Timeless skin

The reason for this distortion is the mixture of static and elastic CSS units of measurement. Paddings are given in, which is different in each skin. When a skin uses a bigger font size, the  padding is bigger. In addition, the F12 Developer Tool shows that the CSS of these two skins add their own paddings of 0.5em to unordered lists. What I did was to ensure that no CSS designator adds elastic paddings to the template. Here is what I did in the sandbox:


 * Comparison of the template at revision 900539700, with template sandbox at revision 912847145

The result can be seen in the two links above.

So, I suppose this is a pull request for revision 912847145, sandbox branch, into master branch? By the way, thanks for 's help. flowing dreams (talk page) 08:05, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * you have a wonderful edit request above, I wish everyone's was like that! Someone will likely get to this in the next few days (the backlog isn't that big). —  xaosflux  Talk 11:09, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * If you're comfortable with CSS, why don't you start a WP:TemplateStyles page at Template:Sister project links/styles.css? I've set this to answered for now, which you can flip back to unanswered if you would rather not spend the extra time, but that's a correct-or fix here. --Izno (talk) 14:16, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi. 😊 I'm gonna need to give you a little background for what I'm going to write. You're the fourth registered user I talk to since signing up, the fourth admin, and the fourth person with smashing personality. So, I'm a little embarassed writing this: Sadly, I've reached my capacity. I'm dead tired and I'm not going to be able to edit until Saturday. On top of that, I absolutely have no idea WP:TemplateStyles is until I read it. I would love to put the extra time, it is just that I absolutely can't. Since you say my fix is the correct one, please do perform the pull. Please! It'll give me a sense of accomplishment. Hopefully, we will work together in the future and I do the TemplateStyles thing next time. flowing dreams (talk page) 19:52, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * No worries. I'm reactivating the edit request. I did not however mean to imply it was the correct fix. --Izno (talk) 20:23, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ I've implemented the request, due to caching this may take a little time to propagate, you can WP:PURGE a page if you think there is an issue. Thank you for being being communicative and collegial in this! As with most my tech changes, if any admin or template editor sees an immediate new problem, please revert without waiting to discuss.  's tempaltestyles suggestion is a good idea and a way the page could be further improved, but it is a hefty task someone would need to do.  —  xaosflux  Talk 13:03, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * 👍 Thank you both. 👍 And, Izno, sorry for misunderstanding your "that's a correct-or fix here". 😉 My bad. flowing dreams (talk page) 04:40, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
 * By the way, I'll communicate here when I am done with the Wikipedia:TemplateStyles article. flowing dreams (talk page) 05:53, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 14 December 2020
The Wikiversity logo was updated in 2017 to File:Wikiversity logo 2017.svg, but this template still uses the old logo. The Wikiversity logo used in this template also has the "WIKIVERSITY" wordmark underneath it (despite the wordmark being barely visible at the size used), unlike the logos used for all the other sister projects. Therefore, please replace Wikiversity-logo-Snorky.svg with Wikiversity logo 2017.svg, making it consistent with the other sister projects and also updating the logo. Thanks. GreenComputer (talk) 02:49, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:36, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Default values wrong
1.The template appears to be case sensitive, but the default values are "No" rather than "no", or "Yes" rather than "yes", causing links to be shown when they should not be. 2.The search string in "1=" is ignored in some of the links but shown in the heading Example aiming not to show wikinews etc :
 * Using "No" for everything


 * Using "no" for everything


 * Using "yes" for everything - 15 items

author is not there


 * Using defaults (currently "No")

Amousey (they/them pronouns) (talk) 13:37, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , I have no clue what you are trying to explain here. What is the problem and what do you think is the solution? ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:31, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Ita a case sensitivity coding problem. I've edited to display the code. The template code has the test  but the default values are "No" rather than "no" (case-sensitive) so it fails. Updating the default values in the template data is probably the best way forward. Amousey (they/them pronouns) (talk)
 * I still don't know what you want. What needs to be changed? Every time I have used this template and written "wikt=no" I got exactly the behavior I wanted which is not having a link to Wiktionary. Nothing seems broken and everything is fine. If you can explicitly say "change [x] to [y] in [the template/the documentation]" then I can help you. Otherwise, I cannot. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:25, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Using instead of code like   would allow for case-insensitive values of "yes" and "no" to be used, as well as short values like "y" and "n" - Evad37 &#91;talk] 23:50, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ — hike395 (talk) 05:39, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Autopopulate from Wikidata
This template is always a pain to configure. Is there a version of this that pulls sister projects based off of what is linked in Wikidata? czar 01:49, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I wish. I have manually added this hundreds of times. :/ ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:53, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Isn't that what the "in other projects" section of the sidebar does? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 07:57, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Nobody sees that or uses it. I really think this needs to use Wikidata, and could easily! Right now it's a lot of work, but could be automatic. ɱ  (talk) 20:11, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * is this something we can accomplish, in line with ccat and its related templates? Pharos recommended your help. ɱ  (talk) 20:28, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, this would be possible. I think the implementation would be quite straightforward, but we need to figure out how it should work. In particular, I think the defaults should change to 'if locally defined or if on Wikidata', but there may be cases where this removes links if they aren't on Wikidata. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:42, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, so what do you think should happen? Given the low usage of this template compared to other sister link templates, I wouldn't think the loss too big a deal, and some might be gained? Is there even a way to prevent that while switching to Wikidata, which would be much better for links in the future? ɱ  (talk) 18:18, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

✅ Commons links are pulled from wikidata if neither c nor commons are specified. Implementation in Module:Commons link. — hike395 (talk) 08:34, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ Now pulling all of the sensible iw links from wikidata (if they exist). Updated the documentation, too, which had fallen behind the template. — hike395 (talk) 19:24, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ for real now. I originally misunderstood 's request --- now I think I've implemented it with auto. If 1, then the default becomes either find a sitelink in Wikidata, or if missing from Wikidata, just drop the link. As says, if we turned on 1 for all uses of this template, some number of links would disappear. So I made it be an optional. If you always want 1, you can also just use Sister project auto instead (since 1 is just a wrapper around Sister project auto). — hike395 (talk) 23:47, 20 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for doing this! But isn't it a faux pas to fork the template? And wouldn't it be better to have this template form a maintenance category for fixing the instances whose links do not match those of Wikidata? I'm thinking of how many templates are going to be marked as "auto" and then need to be undone when "auto" invariably becomes the default. czar  00:16, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I can work to unify the templates: the code will get uglier. At some point, I will be tempted to Lua-ify it.
 * There are two cases for tracking:
 * If a sister link is specified, and it isn't "yes" and isn't "no", and if it doesn't match the Wikidata entry (e.g., even if the Wikidata entry is missing), then put it into a tracking category. These cases should have wikidata sitelinks copied over to wikidata.
 * If a sister link is default (i.e., either an explicit or implicit "yes"), and there is no Wikidata entry, then put it in a different category. These cases may have a bad search, but that requires manual checking.
 * Are these the two cases you had in mind, Czar? — hike395 (talk) 03:58, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Lua away! :)
 * My read of this template's (admittedly weird?) defaults is that the more obscure sister links only need to show when specified. To me the logic is:
 * If Wikidata has a relevant sister link, show it
 * If the template has an override to prefer a different link or hide an entry, honor it
 * If this suppresses an otherwise valid sister link from Wikidata, put it in a maintenance category for review
 * If the Wikidata-supplied links match the template-supplied links, put it in a maintenance category for someone to remove the manual parameters
 * This is the fun one, for preserving expected behavior. If Wikidata has NO relevant sister link but this template would normally default to showing the seven default sister projects anyway (as search links), let it.
 * Put these in a maintenance category for someone to review whether those default search links are providing any value (and we can take next steps based on how we find it's in use). I can't think of a valid use case for using this template for generic searches but I also haven't looked hard enough.
 * This is basically what you recommended, just more specific. Open to feedback. czar  04:34, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

✅ --- I had to Lua-ify the template to easily implement your suggested tracking categories. Now live in the sub-categories of Category:Tracking category for Sister project links. — hike395 (talk) 19:47, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Default to category when no page for primary article exists?
Wikisource, Wikibooks, and Wikiversity all have categories for California, but none of them have a primary page named California. Can this template be modified to look for a corresponding category whenever the sister project does not contain a match for the article name? Currently when you select the Wikisource sister project from within the California article, it provides a search list. It would be more useful if it brought you to the "Category:California" page. I can do this with the "Subject bar" template by entering an alternate search term, but it doesn't appear I can do this with the "Sister Project links" template. OvertAnalyzer (talk) 00:30, 7 October 2020 (UTC)


 * You can specify "Category:California" as a parameter (e.g., Category:California), and it should do what you want. There's no programmatic way of determining whether a page exists at a sister project, AFAIK. — hike395 (talk) 05:31, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

auto=yes
The option auto=yes no longer works if the search term differs from the page name. Yours aye, Buaidh  talk e-mail 18:06, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Can you fix this? Thanks, Buaidh  talk e-mail 15:46, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Happy to take a look. Do you have an example where it fails? — hike395 (talk) 17:44, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think I see what happened. You were working on List of Colorado statistical areas. The Wikidata entry for that article has no sister links at all, so the sister box is empty, as long as auto=1. The search term doesn't affect this. What I've done is add a warning message in preview mode to tell editors to try auto=0 instead when this happens. — hike395 (talk) 19:57, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I've also created a tracking category, Category:Pages with empty sister project links, to see if this has happened on any other pages. — hike395 (talk) 20:27, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't  be able to locate Colorado, n:Category:Colorado, and Colorado? Yours aye,  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:14, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I can see why it's reasonable to think that the template works that way, but the code doesn't currently do that. Let me poke around in the sandbox and figure this out. — hike395 (talk) 02:21, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ It turns out it was a one-line change in Lua to implement what you want (see the current state of List of Colorado statistical areas). — hike395 (talk) 02:59, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Wonderful. Thank you so much, Buaidh  talk e-mail 19:18, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 8 June 2022 - Null edit
Odd request, but I need a null edit to be submitted for the module page. Same issue with the fact that, for some reason, despite what the categories say here, this page gets chucked into Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates and wont leave it, even after a purge. For some reason, this only updates after a null edit. Considering filing a phabricator task for it, but then again I'm pretty sure I've seen similar tasks before about this exact issue before. Thanks. Aidan9382 (talk) 04:41, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅.  P.I. Ellsworth &thinsp;, ed.  put'r there 06:08, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Wikibooks Cookbook?

 * Could someone with permission to edit the module and its associated templates, specifically Sister project links and Sister bar, please create a variant of b (used for Wikibooks) particularly for Cookbook so templates like Sister project links can link to Recipes from Wikibooks Cookbook on relevant articles? It could use cb or cook. The default text for the usual Wikibooks parameter is not suitable, and it's a bit odd/messy linking the Cookbook separately from the rest of the sister links. – Scyrme (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Hello? Didn't use the template earlier, since I assumed there would be some discussion first; I would appreciate a reply. – Scyrme (talk) 12:53, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * ❌ the edit request template is for when the edit has been tested and is ready to go live, which you may do in the sandbox at anytime. For a general discussion of asking someone else to make this template better - you will need to wait for someone that is interested in it to do so.  —  xaosflux  Talk 18:52, 10 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Could you give me an example or 2 of an article where this feature could be used? That would help. — hike395 (talk) 00:30, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Sure. These three articles currently use Cookbook alongside other sister project linking templates: Dessert, French cuisine, Vanilla.
 * Dessert uses Sister bar including a link to the Cookbook but that link reads "Textbooks" ignoring the context; this is probably why Cookbook is also used in the same article, despite this being technically redundant.
 * French cuisine and Vanilla link multiple sister projects, and either could benefit from simplifying them to one of the tidier combined sister project templates, but they would not be able to substitute Cookbook without reproducing the problem seen on Dessert, namely that the link would read "Textbooks" which is misleading and unhelpful; while the Cookbook is hosted by the same project, the context is relevant to these articles (for the same reason that it helps to use Cookbook instead of Wikibooks). – Scyrme (talk) 12:30, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ --- I added cookbook. I also added code to detect "Cookbook:" in either wikidata or in the supplied wikibooks argument. If either of those is detected, the template will use "Recipes" instead of "Textbooks". — hike395 (talk) 01:10, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Excellent, thank-you! – Scyrme (talk) 19:05, 12 June 2022 (UTC)