Help:Interwiki linking on Wikimedia wikis: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:33, 2 June 2024

Revision as of 10:15, 2 June 2024

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== Technical ==

A project's own namespace prefix cannot be reused as code for an external project. However, the prefix used for a target project may coincide with the prefix for a project namespace, within that project. As a result, to link to a page in that namespace, use the same prefix twice, for example: [[en:Wikisource:Wikisource:Scriptorium]].

You can't use one project's namespace prefix in another project's codebase because it might match a namespace within that same project. For example, [[MediaWiki:Sidebar]] exists on MetaWiki, Wikibooks, and MediaWiki.

So, when you're linking to a page in that namespace, add the project prefix, like this: [[MetaWiki:MediaWiki:Sidebar]], [[Wikibooks:MediaWiki:Sidebar]], or [[Mediawikiwiki:MediaWiki:Sidebar]].

When dealing with pages whose title begins with the projects prefix but the page is internal, for example [[Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks?]], keep things consistent across projects by adding the projects prefix again. It becomes, [[Wikibooks:Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks?]].

For portability across projects, one may want to select a link code that leads to the same target from all projects, for example: [[MetaWikipedia:wikibooks:Main Page]]. The "superfluous" "MetaWikipedia:" prevents "wikibooks:" being interpreted as namespace prefix, when the code is used at wikibooks itself, while at Meta the "MetaWikipedia:" is ignored (it is not a namespace prefix and even at Meta itself, it is recognized as code for Meta). The codes above work from all projects; however, the [[Help:Link#Wikilinks|existence detection]] and the [[mw:Help:Self link|self-link feature]] do not work on interwiki links.

In the first example the <code>Wikibooks:</code> prefix gets in the way of recognizing <code>Wikibooks:</code> as a namespace in Wikibooks. But in MetaWiki, adding <code>Wikibooks:</code> makes the link to be treated as an interwiki prefix rather than a namespace, this allows links to be redirected to another project. The codes work for all projects, but they don't detect [[Help:Page existence|existence]] or support [[Help:Self link|self-links]] with interwiki links.

=== Prefixes ===