Help talk:Interlanguage links

Should interlanguage links be removed from this article?

Hello, seeking external guidance on a recent bone of contention. Please see this edit for the page Excelsior Recordings, which removed a substantial number of interlanguage links to Dutch musicians with articles on the Dutch Wikipedia. The editor's rationale was, "Revert spammy version, this is the English-language Wikipedia and not the Dutch version". I think the links are consistent with the idea that, if there is information on a topic in another language, that prima facie suggests we may need information on that topic on the English Wikipedia as well. Your thoughts? Chubbles (talk) 05:24, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Why don't you write the articles? You are now just trying to hide that the articles do not exist and that the artists are - to ENWP-standards - non-notable. The Banner talk 09:10, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

You're right. This is why the template exists, it's the whole point, and since the subject is Dutch the links are relevant. Spam??? Linking to information that's on Wikipedia, albeit on another language's edition of it, is spam??? It's no more spam than is linking from one article on English Wikipedia to another. The Banner, if you don't like it, then you're welcome to start a discussion here to gain consensus to remove H:FOREIGNLINK. For now, it exists and is in effect, and at the moment there are 176,187 transclusions of the {{interlanguage link}} tag and 137,446 of the {{ill}} tag across English Wikipedia. Largoplazo (talk) 10:04, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

This seems an appropriate use of the template. older ≠ wiser 10:20, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

H:FOREIGNLINK

I think that the usage of items 4-5 of H:FOREIGNLINK, must be strongly discouraged, for several reasons:

• It hides the fact that the Enwiki article is missing
• The function "What links here" does not allow finding Erich Anders where the references to Erich Anders area, if one uses the syntax Erich Anders
• What is most important, if an enwiki aritcle Erich Anders will be written, nobody will see it, because the wikilink will still be pointing to dewiki.

For the same reason the advice #3 "To show the language code and the link to the other language article, but don't link to an English article" must be supplied with the explanation that it should be used when there are serious reasons to do so.

Therefore I would suggest to rephrase this paragraph in view of the above. - Altenmann >talk 04:41, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree that item 5 is bad, as bad as an WP:EASTEREGG. Item 4 is only slightly less bad. It isn't terribly clear, relying on the reader to surmise (a) that the "French:" indicates a link to an article in another language and (b) that the reason for it is that English Wikipedia lacks an article. And it loses the benefit of the redlink. We should stick with the one consistent approach to avoid confusion and to invite creation here of articles about subjects of value. Presumably, if an editor is adding a link at all, it's because they deem the subject to be of sufficient value to refer people to it, hence they should feel it's of sufficient value tohave an article here.

This applies as well to the corollaries to 4 and 5 in 6. Largoplazo (talk) 12:40, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

The whole section is very confusing, and should be broken up, for starters, to separate those that involve the use of Template:interlanguage link and those that are links of other types. Eight is not helpful, and probably should just be dropped. Nine is incomplete, as other sister projects in foreign languages can also be linked; the full list is here, and if we say anything about foreign sister project links, it should probably just link that page, and not give a single example using wiktionary. Mathglot (talk) 00:06, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Interlanguage links with templates

Can we use interlanguage links with templates? (I'm making auto-changing system for the Translation of this week displayer for Latin Wikipedia). Thanks! Nguyengiabach1201 (talk) 04:19, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

When simply linking to a template, yes (see e.g. fr:Template:SOS or fr:Modèle:SOS which is exactly the same); but not when transcluding. That is, {{fr:SOS}} doesn't work. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:16, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Interlanguage links & DAB pages

The actor Alejandro López does not have a page on English Wikipedia, but he does have one on Spanish Wikipedia... I tried {{ill|Alejandro López|es}}, however that shows ONLY a link to the English DAB page (which does not include this particular person) and does NOT show the link to the Spanish wiki: Alejandro López (page where this link should live: Top Chef VIP season 3)... suggestions??? John, AF4JM (talk) 15:38, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

The purpose of the template is to provide the link to the other Wikipedia only as long as nobody has yet created the article here. Once someone does create an article with that title, all {{ill}} links to it appear as normal links.

The template can only tell whether there is or isn't an article here with a given title. If there is an article at that title, the template has no idea whether it's about the subject you have in mind or the same subject as the article with the same title on the other Wikipedia. In this case, there's an English Wikipedia page with that title, so the template does what it's supposed to in that case: it appears as an ordinary link.

Because there's already a Alejandro López page here, if someone were to create an article about the actor, they would have to name it something else, probably Alejandro López (actor). So you need to provide both that name and the name of the article at Spanish Wikipedia: {{ill|Alejandro López (actor)|es|Alejandro López}}. Largoplazo (talk) 16:29, 15 August 2024 (UTC)