Hi!
Currently, when an editor create at some wikiproject an interwiki link
using [[Lang:Project:Page|Text]] the readers get a link to a "Page" of
"Project" (in the "Lang" language) and "Text" is shown in
the link.
Besides this:
1) The "title" attribute of the <a> element is equals to (something
not very intuitive for readers): [[Lang:Project:Page]].
2) If "Text" is equals to "Page", and we want/need to show only the
"Page" text, it is needed to use [[Lang:Project:Page|Page]] (although
for local links [[A very long page name|A very long page name]] can be
abbreviated to [[A very long page name]])
3) When the target page doesn't exists, the reader go to a page
showing the system message "MediaWiki:Noarticletext".
I have some considerations:
1) What if the title attribute could be something more descriptive
like "Search at Project (in Lang) for pages related to 'Page'"?
The exact text could be translated for each language (or accordingly
to the target project), in such way that "Page", the real name of
"Project" (Wikipedia instead of "w", etc...) and the real name of
"Language" could be variables $1, $2, etc...;
2) For example, if in a page of a wikibook we need to use various
links to wiktionary and Wikinews, we would have to duplicate the total
size of each link (the number of characters to be typed) just to have
only the "Page" text shown. This is also bad for summaries, where we
can not use a long text. Perhaps another _short_ syntax could be used
to get "Page" instead of "Lang:Project:Page" without having to type
(the possible very long) "Page" two times (maybe the prefixed colon
[[:Lang:Project:Page]]?), in order to facilitate the integration
between the content of the projects;
3)Compare the following:
3.1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_collaboration
3.2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/education_collaboration
and note that:
3.3) If the article "Education collaboration" exists, the two links
carries the reader to it.
3.4) If not, 3.1 could be frustrating for a reader that has clicked in
the link expecting to get (immediately) more information (remember,
not every reader wants to became an collaborator, and that is fine)
related to what he was reading. There are various reasons to the
reader get the "Noarticletext" message, as in 3.1:
3.4.1) If the editor that created the interwiki link wrongly typed
"colaboration" is his edit, the reader will get:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_colaboration
Note that in this case, something like 3.2 is better than 3.1, for the reader:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/education_colaboration
I mean, he gets a message "Did you mean: education collaboration" and
still have some related links shown in the search results. While the
reader could prefer to go exactly to an Wikipedia article about
education and collaboration, and because of a typo (that could take a
long time to be corrected) he didn't, he could be happy to found
another article in the results (maybe one more interesting than the
article suggested by the editor who created the "wrong" link).
3.4.2) When writing, the editor simply imagine "There could be
something about this at Wikipedia, and some news at Wikinews, let me
create [[w:whis|this]] and [[n:whis|this]] links..." but instead of
search at Wikipedia and Wikinews for the exact text to put in each
link, he prefers to do a link using "keywords" like "education"
and/or
"collaboration". But these [interwiki] links are not "red [interwiki]
links", so they could stay exactly as they were created for a long
time, and bother some readers in the meantime...
3.4.3) Some editor do a search for "Education And Collaboration" at
Wikipedia and find a page (say, "Education and collaboration"). So he
creates a link (by copy and paste) pointing to "Education And
Collaboration" that is not at Wikipedia, because of the "A" and
"C".
Then, although the search engine is case insensitive and the editor
has found the article when he _searched_ for it at Wikipedia, the
reader that will _click_ in the link will not go directly to the
article.
3.4.4 And so on...
The enhancement of these features can be achieved easily by means of a
template whit code similar to this:
---- Begin of Template:Wikt ----
[[wikt:Special:Search/{{{1}}}|<span title="Search at Wiktionary the
meaning of '{{{1}}}'">{{{2|{{{1}}}}}}</span>]]
---- End of Template:Wikt ----
then, we can use:
* {{wikt|word|text}} instead of [[wikt:word|text]]
* {{wikt|word}} instead of [[wikt:word|word]]
and each of the resulting links points to
*
http://en.wikitionary.org/wiki/Special:Search/word
instead of
*
http://en.wikitionary.org/wiki/word
Note that with "Special:Search/" links, the reader still gets a red
link for easily create the page (if he wants to became an editor)
when no result is found.
I would like to hear from you if, besides the need of use a template
syntax just for create links, is there any other (technical/practical)
disadvantages (advantages?) of using such behavior in the interwiki
links (with or without using templates), and also if any of them is
easy (and/or of interest) to implement internally in the MediaWiki.
Thanks,
Helder