Template talk:Interlanguage link/Archive 7

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When to use WikiData and when not to use WikiData

Neither the old nor the current documentation answers or even attempts to answer this question. When is it appropriate to link regular Wikipedia readers directly into WikiData?

Full disclosure: I've always been suspicious of WikiData, since it can make editing article details more difficult or next to impossible (I consider myself to have the technical level of proficiency that when I can't understand where and how to edit something, it falls into the "next to impossible" category for regular editors. This most often happens when the factiod appears in a template, such as in an infobox of some sort)

I would personally strongly discourage wikidata links in regular article text (the common case of ill usage). Anyone thinking a direct wikidata link is more helpful than supplying foreign-language articles directly is probably so technically proficient they have all but forgotten how profoundly scary-looking such technical details comes across to regular readers. Or, of course, they belong to the fraction that disagree with WP:NOTCATALOG, and think "why link to only three languages when WikiData not only tells people there are 7 languages with articles on this subject, but also gets automatically updated each time another language is added (or removed)?"

But more to the point: Unless I'm mistaken the recommendation Discouraged if there are only a small number of language options is new.

I would have preferred "Discouraged unless you have a very good reason to link into WikiData at all". But I do appreciate the sentiment, only I think the reverse recommendation would be more directly useful for our documentation: that, in those few cases where more than 2-3 links are warranted, we offer WikiData as a reasonable option.

To tie this into preceding discussions, I would concede that while Overwater basket weaving looks intimidating (or rather, the page you're sent to), it probably is better than Overwater basket weaving...

Anyway: what I would suggest is for our documentation to not remain silent on where and when to use and not use |qid=. Either you feel confident you know the answers and write up the doc, or you explain here on talk and we can do the documentin'. I would not expect a link to existing documentation to help here, since the question specifically is "when to use ill with qid?" and not generally discuss the pros and cons of having WikiData overall.

CapnZapp (talk) 09:34, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

I should add that I can easily see WikiData being used in special situations, where various constraints make it convenient. Please focus the discussion mostly on the general case: is there an argument to be made to use WikiData at all in regular running text, i.e. the general case where ill is mostly used? I am aware {{Interlanguage link Wikidata}} used to be its own separate template; I'm also aware that all too often templates are merged or removed purely for cleanup/tidying reasons ("fewer templates are always better, right?", "we did it because we could, never stopping to think whether we should"), so I would not necessarily expect there to be any value whatsoever in our current template supporting the |qid= parameter, i.e. the answer might well be "qid is supported just because, but the reason the two templates used to be separate is precisely because the use cases aren't overlapping"... Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 09:39, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

The absence of an article in any Wikipedia language version is the most obvious use for linking to a Wikidata entry. I sometimes link to Wikidata when I don't want to be seen favouring a certain language. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:50, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

I will agree with the extant use cases, they either seem to be where there are no foreign-language articles (which makes linking to a blank WD entry seem kind of pointless?) or there are so many it's clear the editor didn't want pick. That being said, I see much more of the former than the latter, and I think that is an inappropriate use of this template, because these WD entries give almost zero usable information if someone were to want to write an article on the person (which is the whole point). I personally am not a fan of allowing WD in mainspace, but there has never been any consensus about the matter. And yes, I unilaterally added the discouraging recommendation, largely based on consistent feedback and comments I've seen over the years. Primefac (talk) 13:52, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

A link to a Wikidata page where no foreign-language articles exists often provides quite important information (authority control records, date of birth/death, organisational/personal relations and positions), but most importantly it will provide further links once an article in any other language is created. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:07, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

"Add a link to WikiData when no foreign-language articles exists" appears to me to be a reasonable use case.

"Add a link to WikiData when many foreign-language articles exist, and I don't want to choose" appears to me a really bad use case. It presumes regular readers can use and appreciate WikiData pages. I believe a personally curated selection of quality links serves the majority of readers much better.

I would argue we should a) only add WikiData links when no quality articles exist or where other technical considerations prevail (though nobody has given examples of such), and that we should b) replace WikiData links with our curated selection once one or more quality articles exist.

Once more, I can vaguely see appropriate uses of WikiData that doesn't have anything to do with the number of quality articles in foreign-languages, but the experts on this doesn't seem to have chimed in yet. My best guess would be what was discussed in the 2023 discussion, such as "red link lists in user or project space" (whatever that means) and/or "its use for identification purposes and to establish the initial connection to an already established piece of infrastructure elsewhere".

Generally, I suspect no proponent of WikiData have bothered to discuss this issue (specifically when to use what used to be {{Interlanguage link Wikidata}}) but I could be wrong, please link in that case. Assuming no existing consensus is forthcoming, I propose we agree that using WikiData to avoid having to select language(s) should be discouraged by our documentation, and that this documentation needs to explain when using WikiData is appropriate. CapnZapp (talk) 13:20, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I agree with this statement by CapnZapp (as well as most all the rest throughout this discussion). In article space, it is really, really hard to see how linking to Wikidata is a 'good thing' for most readers. For the average reader, WD is a massively confusing technical back-end repository with a very unfriendly user interface. I mean, I'd consider myself moderately familiar with WD and nearly every time I have to dig into WD, it takes several minutes just to re-orient myself to make any sense out of whatever is there. older ≠ wiser 13:47, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

On Polish wikipedia, they have altered the user interface so it is much more natural to use. OTOH, I don't get the point of adding an interlanguage link when there currently is nothing to link to, unless there's some indication that the creation of such an article is imminent. Fabrickator (talk) 16:10, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

"I don't get the point of adding an interlanguage link when there currently is nothing to link to" – of course links to non-existing articles in foreign Wikipedias are pointless, if that is what you meant. OTOH, I don't see the criterion "that the creation of a local article is imminent" as valid; if it helps to understand some aspect of an English article, {{ill}} should be used. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:59, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I keep rolling this around in my head trying to grasp your point. All I can come up with is that if there's a non-English article but no local article, then it is sensible to link to the non-English article. But this is presumably the starting premise. Fabrickator (talk) 05:46, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

A classic use case for the zero-languages thing is for ambiguous names, where a Wikidata link can uniquely identify the person you are talking about. It is probably only useful for advanced readers, though, as Wikidata can be a bit overwhelming for the uninitiated. —Kusma (talk) 14:24, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I've started a documentation section trying to address this topic. Please understand I'm boldly adding in my limited understanding, not being too concerned with dissenting voices here, so feel free to improve this starting point further. CapnZapp (talk) 11:43, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I did find this RFC: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_204#New_RFC_on_linking_to_Wikidata Not sure if it's applicable. CapnZapp (talk) 12:03, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

If it is, and means what I think it means, I would like to question the wisdom of merging {{Interlanguage link Wikidata}} into this template, and our documentation should be much more clear on |qid= usage. CapnZapp (talk) 12:06, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Crosspost: I've added a link to here from WT:Wikidata#When to use WikiData and when not to use WikiData? hoping for expert editors to chime in. Please advertise this discussion in other appropriate places if you know of any. CapnZapp (talk) 12:20, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Fundamentally, Wikidata is the right (only) way to go ... any given article on Wikipedia may be available in dozens of languages. Virtually nobody will be familiar with a majority of those languages, but with the translation tools available at our fingertips, each of these language versions of an article has the likelihood of providing some details that may not be available in any of the other versions.

I'm not suggesting people should look through the numerous versions available, but who are we to discourage them from doing so, assuming they have sufficient interest in the subject matter? Even more compelling is the fact that without Wikidata, any time an article becomes available in some new language (none of the available languages being English), we presumably would be obliged to add the language in every article which has a link to the target article. This is obviously somethng which just doesn't scale.

The problem with this is the poor user interface. Using Wikidata makes it quite easy to access all of the various languages an article is available in, but the present user interface on enwiki is quite clumsy. In other words, there's a certain "learning curve" to figure out how to use it, and this is an obstacle that's just going to discourage its use. It's somewhat of a Hobson's choice.

The real choice is to fix the poor user interface. They've done this on the Polish wiki. You click on a little icon and you're presented with a list of available languages, click on the language you want to view and there it is. It's all been done, and for those who have made no effort to even try out their implementation, you have no basis to reject this as the all-around best solution. Fabrickator (talk) 16:36, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Please consider moving your posts arguing for the implementation of Polish WikiData elsewhere, Fabrickator. I don't necessarily disagree, I'm just working with what we have. Either way, changing Wikidata is out of scope of this discussion at Template talk:Interlanguage link. Thanks CapnZapp (talk) 19:35, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I reject your premise. The plwiki implementation is superior to the two proposed options. I have no reason to doubt that implementing this would be fairly straightforward. If we start using Wikidata with the existing user interface, that forces users to learn that poorly-designed interface, and after we switch to the Polish interface, they are forced to learn a new one. Let's just fix the interface to match the Polish design and the user community can be presented with a much more straightforward interface. Fabrickator (talk) 20:04, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

For a second time, please confine your comments to the subject at hand - this talk page is about improving the Interlanguage link template (and its documentation). CapnZapp (talk) 06:03, 26 February 2026 (UTC) To make it absolutely clear and avoid any sort of language barrier issue: I wholeheartedly support your proposal, Fabrickator - it's just that this here talk page ain't the place to have that discussion. I would love if WikiData was some user friendly repository that we could send the general readership, trusting they do not get lost or get scared away by the presentation! But now is just isn't, and this discussion is about what to have our documentation tell users on how to use {{ill}} now. Hope that clears it up, CapnZapp (talk) 12:34, 26 February 2026 (UTC) If you were talking about this template all along, apologies. CapnZapp (talk) 14:37, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't know how this was implemented on the Polish wiki, but it appears to be through a modification to a version of this template (perhaps with some code module behind it) and does not appear to directly involve any change at WikiData (although I could be mistaken). older ≠ wiser 12:43, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Ah. CapnZapp (talk) 14:37, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Add: to be clear, I think the way the PL template displays the WD links is vastly superior to simply throwing readers into the chaos of the WD UI. But that said, I still think linking to multiple foreign language article through WD is something of an editorial copout. No reason to force readers to guess at which articles are a one-line stub or a barely corrected machine translation vs a quality article. older ≠ wiser 12:50, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. For example, the Polish ill template is used because Polish Wikipedia doesn't have an article on DST Global. So far so good. But instead of manually recommending quality links only (to English DST Global, French fr:DST Global and/or maybe even Russian ru:DST Global) it automatically populates a popup to all three and the thoroughly empty Persian article as well fa:دی‌اس‌تی_گلوبال. I see zero advantage in this approach. I don't subscribe to the idea the encyclopedia becomes better with editor convenience. CapnZapp (talk) 09:27, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

I can certainly see advantages of having this template automatically update whenever a new language is added (through a WikiData connection), assuming we're talking about something user friendly, and not the current link straight into raw WikiData. The issue of WP:CATALOG could be solved by adding a mandatory "this is a quality article" flag. At first, I'm thinking a parameter to this template, though of course the long-term solution would probably involve WikiData holding assessment information (WP:ASSESS) and automatically decorating links to C-class articles and above (or similar).

But I suspect little of this can be accomplished without involving the WikiData team. In the short term, I started this talk section to garner feedback on the documentation page and recent edits, specifically related to the then complete absence of actual advice related to WikiData and this template's ability to create WikiData links instead of regular interlanguage links. Discussing major overhauls of this template and/or WikiData is probably best held in new talk sections. Here I'm chiefly monitoring for feedback on the recent edits - in particular, the one telling readers not to add WD links into the main body of articles. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 14:47, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Synching Wikidata fallback link presentation

This template can shorten "WikiData" into "wd" by saying |short=yes or |s=yes.

{{Wikidata fallback link}} can "shorten" Wikidata into by using |wd=icon.

I suggest we make it so both templates can do both, so editors don't have to remember which template can't do what.

Furthermore that we add "wd" as another alias of "short" and add "icon" as a new parameter.

This way the following would work equally for both templates:

|short=yes → [wd]

|s=yes → [wd]

|wd=yes → [wd]

|short=icon →

|s=icon →

|wd=icon →

|icon=yes →

CapnZapp (talk) 14:53, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Makes sense I guess. Need to think about the logic. What if both |wd=yes and |icon=yes? What if |wd=icon and also |short=yes? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:01, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Need to think about the logic. Please do. Wikipedia already handles templates with mutually exclusive parameters, so I'm confident that won't be an insurmountable hurdle. Still, if you conclude you want to implement all or just a partial subset of my suggestion, go ahead. CapnZapp (talk) 10:17, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

This was your proposal not mine ;) I've got plenty on my plate right now. That said, I am happy to help check any code once it's written — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:33, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm not a template editor. I just wanted to highlight the incongruity between the two related templates. Why do WikiData links shorten to [wd] here but there? Why have previous discussions (§ "Note d"? - No, it's a link to Wikidata!, § Removal of superscript option, § recent change from square brackets to parentheses and probably more) for this template never suggested as a possible standard that means "WikiData"? Or rather, instead of merely doing that (the highlighting) I thought to present a complete proposal for anyone willing to implement it. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 14:28, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Category:Pages calling interlanguage link with many languages

A recent discussion made me realize Category:Pages calling interlanguage link with many languages provides useful commentary upon the "how many language links?" discussion.

Just a heads up that despite only the most fleeting of mentions by our documentation (Template:Interlanguage link#Tracking categories) we have had some sort of concrete insight into this question since February.

This category considers {{interlanguage link}} usage in which four or more languages are provided enough to track. The category alphabetizes on the number of links starting with D for 4; skipping A, B and C. As I write this the record is held by eight articles containing at least one {{ill}} link with eight languages.

I consider this (the fact that articles containing {{ill}} links with one, two or three languages are not considered many enough to be tracked) validation for the current phrasings (which I came up with independently and, as I write this, constitutes just a single gentle piece of guidance: ...more than 2 or 3 links are rarely needed in the lead). Cheers, CapnZapp (talk) 12:10, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

I originally coded the nested #if logic for populating the category to include A, B, and C, but with 252 thousand uses of this template, I opted to make the category actually useful; knowing which templates contained 1, 2, or 3 languages would have simply caused the category to be a list of transclusions, and based on the various discussions on this talk page I figured the "concerns" were for pages with more than that. To be honest I almost started at 5 but I genuinely had no idea how many would fall into the 4-language territory and I knew I could always trim the code if I needed to shrink the cat. Primefac (talk) 19:16, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

The description on the category page reads While there is currently no consensus as to the maximum number of languages that should be provided in a template call, editors may wish to prune down uses where there are an excessive number of interlanguage links. I agree to everything about this. Not only is there no consensus about a maximum number, the consensus is that it wouldn't be useful to form such a consensus. Instead fewer is better than many, and links to high quality articles are better than links to low quality articles. Which I feel is reflected in this text by word choices such as "may wish to prune" and the idea there can be an "excessive" number. While still allowing the full flexibility of local consensus to best determine where any particular number of links is justified and where the same number would be excessive. Best regards, CapnZapp (talk) 14:22, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

Navigation templates

Is there any specific guidance on interlanguage links placed in navigation templates – keep, remove, deprecate, other? WP:NAV notes that the templates are an aid to navigation, but it appears that using interlanguage links may not fit with the idea that navboxes are generally supposed to appear on every article that they form links between as this is not going to be the case when the link is to a non-English page. I was exploring the "Pages calling interlanguage link with many languages" category and noticed a couple of templates of interest – Firstly {{Buddhism topics}}, where of the 2,500 pages with the interlanguage link template to five of more languages this navbox, and therefore the interlanguage link, appears on more than 2,000 of them. (I have added “Buddhism in Tuva” to the WikiProject:Buddhism requested articles list). Second is {{Diplomatic missions of Japan}} (and a series of similar navboxes) made up predominantly of interlanguage links, where my thought would be that the links should appear on the "list of..." article rather than the navbox. EdwardUK (talk) 00:29, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

My personal opinion:

{{Buddhism topics}} contains only a single {{ill}}; my immediate reaction would be to say "if this causes you any issues whatsoever, just boldly prune this single ill - or even remove it altogether". {{Diplomatic missions of Japan}} just makes me shake my head. I would strongly question even having such a template at all on English Wikipedia, not just the senseless overuse of this template. It seems like a perfect candidate for a WP:TFD...

Anyhoo, to your general question: The only areas where I know of a connection between this template and navboxes, infoboxes et al are: |align=ib, and how WikiData links (|qid=) are expected (in article space at least) only in such boxes, not to be inserted in running text. Perhaps other editors know more. Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 12:27, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree that {{Diplomatic missions of Japan}} is not very helpful for navigation. It also reminds me that we do not have a bot that checks whether the foreign articles have been deleted: at least Düsseldorf is a broken link so not helpful for navigation at all. —Kusma (talk) 19:28, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

A single language link in a navbox one does not seem to be an issue, (for Buddhism topics I noticed it mainly in relation to previous discussions over links with many languages, which to me does not seem so much of a problem once I spotted it is mainly down to one duplicated link rather than many individual ones) more of a concern to me are seas of red/blue when lots of links make it harder for me to read such as here Old revision of Tournoi, which in articles can be improved by reformatting. When It comes to the navboxes, the reformatting would mean removing the links and moving them to the related article instead, for which I would not be surprised if I got some pushback, so I thought it would be useful to discuss the issue before making the changes. EdwardUK (talk) 20:02, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

I tried removing links from some of the "Diplomatic missions of..." templates and when I added them to the corresponding list articles they were all reverted as "Not necessary" which to me suggests that their inclusion in the templates is not necessary either. EdwardUK (talk) 15:28, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

If anyone else but me got confused by this: EdwardUK is not talking about Japan anymore (i.e. {{Diplomatic missions of Japan}} and its corresponding List of diplomatic missions of Japan) - I had to browse your contribs to understand what you meant. As for the reverts, first off: I have no insight into this area and so remain neutral on whether the reverts were justified or not. But I do want to point out that all reverts were made by the one and same editor, and in no case did this editor initiate a discussion with you. (Every revert I could find was made with the ultra terse "not necessary" edit summary). If this happens once, fine. But this -being summarily reverted with no attempt at engagement- happened at least four times as I could see, which normally is the brevity we associate with combating vandalism. But your edits were made by a well-established registered account (you have edited for ~10 years), furthermore drawing into question the summary treatment you were afforded. What I am trying to say, EdwardUK, is: if this was me, I would not draw too much conclusions from being opposed by a single editor, especially one that is willing to treat me much like if I were a vandal instead of engaging in discussion. Thus I see no firm basis for concluding ill links have no place in templates. All of this is a personal reflection and I have no plans on engaging further on this subject. CapnZapp (talk) 13:54, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Is there any specific guidance on interlanguage links placed in navigation templates as far as I am aware, no. Every time it comes up (usually somewhere like TFD) there seems to be a consensus to not include ills in a navbox, but there isn't any sort of WP:ALLCAPS that formally states it. It should probably get discussed formally somewhere at some point, because I agree with the above that having a navbox be 90% redlinks with external sister links is a bit annoying. Primefac (talk) 10:58, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

The Buddism in Tuva ill link

Unless I'm mistaken, cewBot should have converted this ill link into a regular link. The ill call doesn't use |preserve=, and the link destination isn't circular (it does not lead back to the {{Buddhism topics}} template). I suspect CewBot thinks it is a circular redirect because the Buddhism topics template is somehow placed/transcluded onto the page the link redirects to (through intermediate templates?), i.e. Buddhism in Tuva is a redirect to Tuva § Religion. As far as I understand this means it's perfectly acceptable for you to do CewBot's job manually, replacing {{ill|Buddhism in Tuva|lt=Tuva|tyv|Сарыг шажын Тывада|ru|Буддизм в Тыве|fr|Bouddhisme à Touva|uz|Tuvada buddizm|az|Tıvada buddizm|v=ib}} with [[Buddhism in Tuva|Tuva]] pending the creation of the standalone Buddhism in Tuva article you requested. BWDIK CapnZapp (talk) 12:53, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

The bot not removing it could also be based on the categorisation if the bot is checking "Category:Interlanguage link template existing link" and the Buddhism template is not categorised as such. I am not sure why this template does appear in the category even though the pages it is used on are, and when there are other templates that do. EdwardUK (talk) 19:14, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

I may be wrong, but it is possible that Cewbot only works in article space. I think that makes sense; we would not want bots to mess with intricate template syntax. —Kusma (talk) 19:24, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

I believe you are correct. Primefac (talk) 10:38, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Note:For posterity: Together with the above comment, Primefac made this exact edit. CapnZapp (talk) 13:37, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

how does Category:Interlanguage link template existing link work?

I noted Category:Interlanguage link template existing link contains over 5000 items.

Picking random pages, why is Vladimir Lensky from the page 1st channel Ostankino listed and/or unresolved?

Vladimir Lensky is a redirect, but not a circular one. The template call does not use |preserve= or |display=.

Am I missing something or should the ill link have been replaced with a plain link long ago? (Whether this is the Vladimir Lensky intended is beside the point)

Why is 2020_KBS_Entertainment_Awards listed? At least I can't find any ill link that isn't red, and I went through the article twice.

Why is Cuprostibite on the list? Oh, because of the multiple Evgeny Semyonovs. But why aren't these converted into plain links? No use |preserve=/|display= as far as I can see? Maybe the conversion fails for repeated ill links?

Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 15:06, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

The pages you picked are listed here: Wikipedia:Database reports/Interlanguage link templates need to fix. For 2020 KBS Entertainment Awards the links for Seunghee and Soobin were broken. With Somyenov and Lensky the wikidata items for the English and Russian articles do not match, which I think causes the bot to leave them to be manually checked rather than automatically removing them. EdwardUK (talk) 16:38, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

So the bot does check whether the foreign-language link would have been red (if that was technically possible)? That's great to know, and should be explained by the doc... Same with WikiData mismatches - the doc could explain that even if the ill link itself doesn't involve WikiData, the bot will still check so both articles reference the same WD item. In general, that database report you linked would be a great resource for any editor unsure whether their link will/won't/should have been converted. Regards CapnZapp (talk) 17:56, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

I do not think that a bot checks for the existence of valid interlanguage links. I usually do so for the links that I add, at least.

Regarding different Wikidata items for the same entity, this sounds like a candidate for Wikidata item merging. It would be great to have a report of such items, but I think that merging should be a human process so it may be verified. Peaceray (talk) 18:50, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

It could be that 2020 KBS Entertainment Awards is placed in that category because the bot notices the foreign-language link is broken, just as a general error message - one that has no bearing upon the bot's actions. In other words, the bot does appear to check for the existence of valid foreign-language links... but in practical terms it is as if it didn't, if it does not do anything with this information. This case gets muddled because the ill's with non-existent foreign-language articles are the ones for Seunghee and she does have an article on English Wikipedia. The Soobin links are perfectly fine: no English-language article (called Soobin (k-pop star) anyway) and an existing Korean article ko:수빈_(2000년). The intricacies of that database report (why are Soobin listed when it is only the Seunghee links that have a problem? Why are the Soobin links spelled out as "interlanguage link" while Seunghee remains "ill"? Why are the Seunghee ill links even there since the bot should have replaced the ill with a regular blue link? Can it be that once a page appears on this list, no amount of editing can get it off? Questions, questions....) elude me. CapnZapp (talk) 20:59, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Number of language links supported

I noticed that the number of supported linked Wikipedia articles was increased from 12 to 16 in October. A page with that many links would look like this:

Underwater basket weaving[az][bg][ca][de][es][fa][gu][hi][id][ja][km][lv][mad][nl][or][pl] is the most popular course at Wikipedia University.

I rather thought we should be moving down from twelve to maybe six max. When are more than that ever needed? Mathglot (talk) 06:39, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

I agree that a use case for 16 languages seems unlikely. I support reducing them to six. If I can't decide for the most suitable language version, I pick either the language most related to the subject or the Wikidata link and let readers follow their own preference. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:25, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

You suggested a reduction to four links max three years ago: Template_talk:Interlanguage_link/Archive_4#Proposal: reduce the number of foreign links CapnZapp (talk) 16:11, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

The general view at that time seemed to be that 12 was too many for use in mainspace, but this number could potentially be useful in project space – there was no discussion for the increase to 16. I have no problem with the number being restored to 12 as looking at the template parameters usage report I found only one example of with 16 links – added in 2025 for something there has been a page for in English since 2008, I have removed the template. I also found examples where some of the other language versions have been deleted so the links to them could be removed. If changing the template to support only six links, I would suggest first checking through the about 150 uses with more than that to select which links to keep instead of just editing the main template which would cut off anything after the first six listed – some have the links arranged alphabetically rather than in order of usefulness. EdwardUK (talk) 17:34, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

If there is a legitimate use for 16 in project space then I don't object. I admit I was imagining articles only, and how it would look disruptive or confusing to users to see such a string. Maybe it would be enough to change the doc page, and not the code, then. How do people feel about recommending six (or four?) as a max in mainspace? And Capn, thanks for the reminder, I forgot about that. Mathglot (talk) 18:37, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

I would be inclined to not focus on any specific number, and instead urge the user (of the template) to only include foreign-language articles that actually add value. Without examining examples in detail my hunch is that the vast majority of 6 or 12 language ill links are created by completionists and "I don't want to be the one choosing one language over another"-ists. But I would say ill isn't intended to be a catalogue of every Wikipedia with an article on a given subject. As a Wikipedia editor it is absolutely my job to choose one language over another (when warranted of course). What is ill intended for? Currently we only say 1) to add links to foreign-language Wikipedias where English Wikipedia does not yet have an article 2) to provide readers options to research further and 3) to signal the topic should have an article on English Wikipedia (i.e. the red link). I would prefer if we strengthen this to state outright something to the effect of "add an ill link only if you believe the link adds value" - that is, that ill links should be a curated selection of foreign-language articles, and that 1) above should not be read as an invitation to add every language with an article on X. Once that is in place, any concern over numbers should fade away. Or rather, when and if a 12 link ill template is created, and we agree all twelve are warranted (presumably because they complement each other in some way), then I guess it's good the template supports 12 links...? CapnZapp (talk) 20:24, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

While I support having the technical ability in the template to have many languages (seems fine in user or project space), I would suggest that people only add more than one or two links if each new one leads to nontrivial additional content that is not in the first one or two language links present. But this requires manual curation, not hard rules. Perhaps there should be a maintenance project for ill's that link too many languages, and perhaps we should encourage users of multiple languages in a single ill to make a hidden comment explaining why they need more than one language. —Kusma (talk) 10:45, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

I think we can all agree that with 1 or 2 links, the usage is entirely non-objectionable (as regards the number of links, that is). Probably we can all agree that 3 links is also too few to spend energy investigating. If there's more than three links, however, I would certainly not object to justify the number if asked to. I would avoid having that discussion in hidden comments though, and would much prefer discussing such things on the talk page in question. If anything, the hidden comment should refer to the talk page (for example a short and simple "<!--5 foreign languages, as discussed on talk-->" would be good). Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 13:55, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

I thought that something like <!--de has most complete biography, fr has list of works, es has content about family--> might be appropriate to explain why you use three interwikis, but I tend to agree that the talk page is the place to go if the issue requires nontrivial discussion or explanation. —Kusma (talk) 14:57, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

<Tangent alert>I am generally against hidden comments that discourage editing of the page. Stuff like <!--don't change, there's consensus for this phrasing--> serves no other purpose than claim ownership of anything from sentence fragments to entire pages. Hidden comments should IMHO only be used as a kind of FAQ - when something is frequently changed you might suspect people erroneously think your intentional edit is a mistake and there hidden comments can help: <!--yes, this looks wonky but it really is intentional, ask on talk before correcting--> for instance. In your case, I would prefer this justification to be on talk, not in the hidden comment itself, since if I (for whatever reason) want to change or replace the ill links, I feel like I'm now arguing against that comment. It to me comes across as needlessly conflict-prone is all I'm saying. I should never feel I have to justify making a change to a page. I should be able to justify my edit, sure, but hidden comments that imply value to the status quo go against the ethos of Wikipedia I feel.

I will clearly say I fully understand the good faith place you come from and am in no way accusing you of any of this here, just that to me, hidden comments should be used as little as possible, and be kept as neutral and generic as possible. CapnZapp (talk) 15:25, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

I really doubt that there is any valid reason to have more than 3. I wanted to say more than one, but Kusma gave a good, albeit very strange example. Not sure why those pages would be that different that each had a unique fragment. But I really doubt anymore is needed. We aren't a link repository, and once you click on any of those language links, the others should appear on the sidebar. Gonnym (talk) 11:59, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I can easily see two or three foreign languages ending up covering different aspects of a topic, and thus, an editor not wanting to have to choose between them for the "while you wait for English-language coverage, here are..." suggestions. As for more than three, you really need to explore the talk archive. Use cases were presented, that's about all I can really say, since I haven't looked into them myself. They were sufficiently persuasive back in 2023, is my impression. Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 19:49, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Just noting that there are currently 37 pages with 6-9 wikilinks in the article space (though the cat still seems to be populating, a few hours later it's up to 49, so it might fluctuate), with ~1200 pages using 5. Primefac (talk) 22:49, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

The idea that there is some "limit" on the number of interlanguage versions beyond which one more additional version would be detrimental is highly arbitrary. Though enwiki has the largest number of articles by a longshot, there's no reason to establish an arbitrary limit on the number of other languages, as though there's some kind of special entitlement for English.. Even though enwiki has the greatest number of articles, it's still just one more language, and you never know when that's going to be in the language that got skipped over in the interlanguage link. I understand you probably don't want to read them all, but that's a decision for the reader to be making, not one that should be arbitrarily imposed. You never know when that "n+1"th language will have just what someone was looking for, perhaps it includes some detail missing from all the other versions. As for those who find the extra versions to be extraneous, they have the complete freedom to ignore them. Fabrickator (talk) 05:21, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Are you talking about project space, such as a bot-created table, say? Or do you think there should be no limit in mainspa○e as well? How do you feel about the example sentence that opened this section—are you okay seeing a sentence like that in an article? I think it would be disruptive and very confusing to readers, don't you? And I do not understand the special entitlement point. Mathglot (talk) 05:51, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

My premise is rather simple: every language is useful. We don't know which non-English languages the reader is familiar with, and establishing an arbitrary limit is, well, arbitrary! Why should it be okay to create a limit only on enwiki, when every other language wiki is fine with just listing all the available languages? Even though enwiki has the greatest number of articles, it's still just one more language, and you never know when the one language that's skipped over is the language that the reader is familiar with. I understand you may not want to read all those different language versions, but that's a decision for the reader to be making rather than having it be arbitrarily imposed. For those who find the extra versions to be extraneous, it's hardly a lot of extra effort for the reader to just skip over them. Fabrickator (talk) 07:09, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

I am not talking about not reading all those those different language versions, I am talking about having two words [az][bg][ca][de][es][fa][gu][hi][id][ja][km][lv][mad][nl][or][pl] in a sentence or two sentences separated by a lot of stuff your eyes have to skip over while reading. Don't you find it kind of annoying reading that sentence? I do. Imagine an article with lots of those; I think I would stop reading it. Mathglot (talk) 07:23, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

You've placed this list of links withoout any context, so that there's not much clue why this list of links should be there. But Wikipedia pages are loaded with all kinds of "cruft" to which wikipedia users learn to filter as needed. Of course, this is only cruft if you have no interest in the target of the link. The more such links we have throughout wikipedia, the quicker that people will treat this as just how certain content appears in WIkipedia. Fabrickator (talk) 10:17, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Discussing a hard limit seems moot - I don't think there is or will be consensus for one.

Other than what the template supports, of course. I have zero opinion on whether that number should be 12 or 16 - except that anyone implementing a reduction should feel responsible for cleanup, making sure there are no errors or incorrect usages hanging.

As for everyday use, if our documentation focuses on making sure "yet another" link actually adds value, and isn't just added "because" (for completionist purposes, for nationalist purposes), we should avoid giving a specific number. We should discourage listing all languages - as someone commented, the "this article in other languages" functionality already exists. We should also discourage listing every non-stub language. The "I don't want to choose between language X and Y so I'm including both" is a weak argument: as Wikipedia editors, we are asked to make editorial decisions all the time. Including both X and Y should be done when there's actual reasons for having both. And of course, "not everybody knows language X, so I'm adding language Y" is definitely a bad argument: we're not showing preference for "popular" languages, or languages English Wikipedia visitors are more likely to know.

What we could say is "typically no more than 2-3 links should be needed" or somesuch. This would not be a hard limit at all - just that whenever you consider adding another language over the two or three preexisting ones, you should be prepared to argue for why you think more are needed on talk: What value does your fourth link add to readers? Assuming a cogent argument is successfully presented, adding that link should be no problem. Obviously I'm not saying the 4th link is problematic while the 2nd isn't. I'm mostly saying it isn't worth it to be procedural about it when someone adds a 2nd or even a 3rd language. If we narrow our scrutiny to the 4th addition (and beyond) we simply save ourselves a lot of work.

Likewise, if someone reduces the number of links, and presents a compelling reason (such as "when Norwegian and Russian were added back in 2018, they complemented the Dutch and Spanish articles. Now in 2026 both the Dutch and Spanish articles have been considerably expanded, so I'm removing Norwegian and Russian, since they no longer bring any additional value over and beyond what the reader can learn from Dutch and Spanish") that should also be fine.

CapnZapp (talk) 10:57, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Regarding the following text in the earlier discussion:

What we could say is "typically no more than 2-3 links should be needed,"

I don't think a failure to obtain a response to this statement constitutes a consensus to incorporate it as a directive as you have done (see Template:Interlanguage link/doc). This becomes an invitation to challenge every instance where more than 3 languages are specified. Setting aside your arbitrary limit, what is the point at which an extra language does more harm than good? A lengthy list of languages might be surprising or distracting to some users, but the more it's used, the more it's visible, the more we can expect people will learn to be pleased that these non-English versions have been made available to them. You find this objectionable, while at the same time, you prefer to impose your personal preferences, while dismissing the viability of implementing a proven solution that addresses your objection to having a list consisting of 4 or more languages. Fabrickator (talk) 21:31, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm offering the following link as an example of how the Polish interlanguage link looks: pl:Revolut. Look for red links which have the icon following the link. Clicking on the icon displays the available languages (albeit in Polish, of course). FWIW, I'm doubtful that there's any special changes required on Wikidata tat specifically supports the Polish language implementation. Fabrickator (talk) 06:50, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

As for the language, I think I have been fairly open with my thought process. On the other hand, awaiting feedback that might never come is a losing strategy when it comes to Wikipedia editing, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What I mean to say is, if you genuinely think the language currently comes off as too strong, then I welcome your suggestions (either here on talk or as bold edits to the doc itself). I certainly did not have as my chief intention to make readers start challenging existing usage (though I have a genuinely hard time envisioning when a 4th or 7th language represents a meaningful contribution). More to the point, I intended my language to not come across as an "arbitrary" or hard limit, that's why I phrased it as "very rarely more than 1-2" and not "do not use more than N" where N is a single definitive number. In short, the intention definitely was not to make a four-link ill come off as "illegal". The chief intent is to discourage using this template as a replacement for the existing functionality that tells you "here are ALL of the languages with an article on this subject." If you can suggest a softer way to say "just because this template supports 16 links doesn't mean it is a good idea to use 12 or 7 of them" please do. After all, linking to half-empty sub articles provides very little less than zero extra value over the first one or two (or three) quality article links. Now, I realize you are probably arguing from an "what if ill used the superior Polish code?" perspective, so let me just remind you that until such time such functionality is implemented here on English Wikipedia, I'm assuming our template works as is, and that is what I'm basing my argumentation on. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 12:05, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

I apologize for the delay in responding to you. What's been rolling around in my head is how many problems there are with your proposal, which is essentially to curate the selection of foreign language articles associated with a given topic. So for instance, I could raise the issue of simply how to select this subset of one or a few articles on a given topic. The "enlightenment" is that I don't need to elaborate on all the problems, I only need one.

After we have selected the various versions of the article to include in the interlanguage list, the articles (in all available languages) will remain subject to change, and the selection that was made some number of months earlier may cease to be appropriate. Thus we are creating an ongoing commitment to go through the curation process whenever any of the available language versions are edited (or when new versions are added as well as when any selected versions are deleted).

Listing all available languages (which we're already doing for any English-language article listed in Wikidata) is trivial, but curating an order of preference among all articles for a particular topic, essentially which needs to be done whenever any articles for a given topic is edited, and doing so within some reasonable period of time, I believe would be seriously out of the question. Fabrickator (talk) 07:24, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

First off: I apologize for the delay in responding to you. Discussions going a couple of days between replies is, I believe, still considered perfectly active and thus, no need to apologize.

Regarding your main argument, not sure where you're going with this. The alternative to having some links is having all of them. I find that a clearly worse solution. What is the point of this template? To signal to readers that just because English Wikipedia isn't all-knowing and all-powerful doesn't mean a subject isn't covered anywhere. Specifically, ill links are red links, meaning they send the signal "I believe this topic should exist on English Wikipedia but currently does not." They don't just carry a purely neutral technical meaning ("this link doesn't exist"), but quite specifically include "...but it should." (If the topic should not exist, the link shouldn't be red, it should be unlinked entirely.)

To me, that means that ill links should point towards resources that help other editors develop red link articles. Not every foreign-language article is going to be helpful. I don't see any point of including poor or sparse links. The basic notion of "this exists" is already much better covered by existing functionality (not the raw WikiData interface but WP:ILLSIDEBAR).

Please note - I'm not asking any editor adding ill links to commit to perpetual maintenance. I'm not arguing ill links must be perfect. If a foreign-language article deteriorates in quality or gets removed, so be it. If articles in other languages gets added or gets substantially improvements, so be it. Editors should not be compelled to add every language simply because their hand-picked selection might not stay relevant. All an ill link is saying is: "this topic should be covered by English Wikipedia, but isn't. It is, however, covered by other languages. Here are a hand-curated selection of such articles, the ones a human has found truly useful." And of course, nothing forces you to vouch for the quality of the language you select. I'm sure many ill links focus mostly on the "this topic should be covered but isn't" part, with a random foreign-language the editor found but haven't read thrown in (because otherwise the editor would simply make a red link).

What I'm asking you, therefore, is: what's the alternative to picking a few languages? If you have another reply than "all of them" please share. Otherwise, the key would be: can this list be populated automatically and should it? Because just providing every language with zero indication of quality will just replicate WikiData. Listing every language could be useful if the automation could also retrieve the articles' assessment data and thus emphazise the quality articles. But now we're (once more) entering the future. In the meanwhile, my arguments are predicated on the template as it exists today. I would ask that you do not take any future enhancements (such as the Polish template) into account when engaging in this particular talk section. You are entirely free to start new talk sections to suggest major overhauls to the template, after all!

So. If you are chiefly concerned about the language making editors think there exists rules or limitations that I have now told you never were intended, feel free to suggest tweaks. But if you're arguing that since anything else than just a machine-generated list of every language (with no differentiation) cannot be perfect, we should avoid that, I don't know what to say. That argument could be made for the entire Wikipedia - and still, we persist in crafting our articles despite knowing everything we enter could become obsolete one minute later. I don't see why ill links should be exempted. I don't see why people should stop trying to help budding article writers just because their suggestions might not hold up a year from now. The key here is: if you encounter a red link to Overwater basket weaving but it is in the form of Overwater basket weaving because I made the judgement call that the Madurese article was the most comprehensive seven years ago, you aren't meaningfully hindered in your efforts if that article has deteriorated and/or another language's article has significantly improved. You will probably still click WP:ILLSIDEBAR languages to get an overview of the information all Wikis combined could give you. However, the general reader would definitely be hampered if the ill link read Overwater basket weaving. Chances are the Madurese article still holds up, and thus Overwater basket weaving is infinitely more helpful. And of course, if you think that the Odia article contains significant amounts of information not covered by the Madurese article, you will amend the ill link to read Overwater basket weaving, or maybe even just Overwater basket weaving. CapnZapp (talk) 08:53, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

@Fabrickator, the ideal result is that given one or two links to a quality article in other languages that someone will take the opportunity to create an article in English and negate the need for using {{ill}}. Once there is even a stub in English, all the other languages are readily accessible (assuming there has not been a mix-up with the QIDs). IMO, it is an abdication of editorial responsibility to make a reader choose an arbitrary language with absolutely ZERO indications about whether that article in the other language is a one-line stub or some very bad machine translation of something or something someone managed to spam a pile of crap into. older ≠ wiser 12:35, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

older ≠ wiser Ha ha ha! Now you've defined away the problem. We just go ahead and create the stub, allowing for the existing mechanism to display the whole list of other languages to be displayed in the "languages" section in the left margin. Arguably somewhat annoying, though I will note that if this solution were to be implemented for other languages, we would wind up with a list consisting of bona fide articles with these stubs mixed in, which of course would easily become quite annoying. Hey, listen, ask and ye shall receive! Fabrickator (talk) 15:38, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Just to note: you don't need to create an article in English to get access to all the other languages - you can find the same WP:ILLSIDEBAR list by following any of the supplied ill links, assuming that function works across all editions. Editors are of course free to start English language articles. Just observing that doing so chiefly to gain access to the language list does not make sense to me. CapnZapp (talk) 18:53, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure I have any reason to care for what you're saying ... perhaps it's something so obvious that I don't consider it perplexing. There is a "languages" section in the sidebar, there's a link that will take me to the available languages for the article being viewed. At least, that's how it works on enwiki. I suspect you want to make the point that this shows all the languages that the target of a given link is available in, that somehow would make moot the objections to listing one or two of the available languages ... because that's the point, we shouldn't be preventing users from (easily) viewing all the available languages for a given target. But I'm not grasping how that is the case. Fabrickator (talk) 22:54, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

If you want to reach a consensus over how to phrase our documentation, I expect you to make an effort understanding your fellow editors. Do ask if you feel I have been unclear. I will withhold other comments at this time. CapnZapp (talk) 09:27, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

The sidebar show the interlanguage links for the article I'm viewing ... so I suppose one could first go to a foreign language page that they don't necessarily understand, and see if that page has a link to the term of interest which makes no sense. Another possibility is to view one of the ill links for the linked article, oh, and then look at the sidebar there. I'll pick French. Whooops, sorry, no sidebar. Try some other, I might find one. Okay, there is a sidebar on the Turkish language. I'm lost, what was I looking for? Is there some kind third party who can help to clarify this? Fabrickator (talk) 21:21, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

"Whooops, sorry, no sidebar" – that's probably because you're looking in the wrong place. Afaik, every Wikipedia has a list of corresponding articles in other languages—French most certainly does—but not always in the same place. The default location for the language list for most (all?) Wikipedias and default skin is at the top of the page, not in the sidebar. Mine are in the left sidebar, but that is due to my choice of skin in Preferences. Mathglot (talk) 21:40, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

No, it's not ("an abdication of editorial responsibility to make a reader choose an arbitrary language with absolutely ZERO indications about whether that article in the other language is a one-line stub... or something someone managed to spam a pile of crap into" ). If you think it is, then at least be consistent and demand that wikilinks must also have an indication of whether the linked article is a one-line stub or a pile of crap. I see no reason why interlanguage links should be held to a higher standard. Mathglot (talk) 21:40, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

@CapnZapp: So as I understand your proposal, the "sidebar" is not necessarily the list of available languages that appears in the left margin on certain language wikis, but it also includes the pull-down list of available languages usually on the upper-right-hand side, so that as long as there is a link to any one language, the rest of the languages become visible, which "works" because the premise is that there's at least one {{ill}} by definition. Presumably, we're concerned that the user interface should be, shall we say, comparatively straightforward. You have expressrf concern about being presented with a lengthy list of language codes, while at the same time, you ignore the existing plwiki implementation (which I will continue to assert requires no changes on the part of the Wikidata project). You content that a lengthy list of language codes will be distracting. It's certainly true that the first time a user encoutners these language codes (even if there's only one), it's distracting. It may be a little surprising the first time a user sees any of these interlanguage lists, even if it's only one. People either click on these lists and decide for themselves whether they're useful or not. Maybe it's a little harder to ignore a list that has 15 items (with codes that are likely to be more obscure) compared to a list that with a smaller number. Many novice users may just ignore these lists, that is not cause for concern.

However, you would cut the list down to (for instance) two links from the available languages, and then navigate the pages from these two other language Wikis in order to view the full list of available languages, meaning that they're presented with a page that's in one of numerous languages. IMO, for the more novice users, this will surely be more perplexing, simply because the "pattern" of these pages can be quite obscure, and rather than being pleased that they have access to numerous versions, they will be perplexed when they click on a link which takes them to one of these pages. Fabrickator (talk) 07:13, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

I can't say I am certain about this, Fabrickator, but my best guess is that you come from the perspective "why doesn't we just implement the Polish template, where every language is pulled out of a WikiData identifier, and shown to users in a reasonably accessible manner?" (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Okay so here goes:

a) this template functionality isn't (yet) part of the English interlanguage link template, and since you are (so far) the only editor even talking about it, I am not taking it into consideration. Also I'm not a template editor (I specifically mean I am not a Wikipedia:Template editor and thus couldn't edit this template even if I wanted to). I am having a discussion about improving the documentation of the template predicated on the template's current functionality. Please don't accuse me of "ignoring" functionality of other Wikipedias. There are hundreds of Wikipedias in other languages, with wildly different customs, traditions, and implementations. Before you or others port over the code into English Wikipedia it might well as not exist at all, as far as the scope of this discussion is concerned.

b) even if the template did change to the best of worlds, I personally don't like any solution that drops the human element, where an editor selects quality links. No matter how WikiData is presented, it will still present a quality article equally to an empty stub. Just like how the present functionality (WP:ILLSIDEBAR) presents every language equally. Giving readers dozens or hundreds of links is no better than giving them no links. Also keep in mind the possibility (risk?) that a more automated ill template leads to a backlash.

c) Theoretically, code could look at assessment templates and display A class listed articles differently from C class articles, but I don't take that into consideration for this discussion, about how to best document the present template.

So given what we have now, I'm improving the documentation in the direction I believe I have clearly outlined at various places on this talk page. Again, as best I can judge, you appear to have a completely different discussion. Nothing wrong with that, except your inability or unwillingness to split the discussions - after all, we CAN talk about two things at once. It would just help and avoid frustration if the topic of "improving the current template's documentation" and the topic of "drawing up plans for this template's future" could become separated talk sections (in my opinion).

I'm telling you this because my perception is that you aren't responding to anything I want to discuss, and don't even seem interested in my discussion. Likewise, my guess is that you are frustrated because I appear to not see what you're seeing. The logical thing would then be to... have two discussions! I could start a new talk section if you asked me, I'm just concerned other editors might still respond in the existing sections. I honestly think everybody would best served by you starting a separate talk section titled "should we import the Polish WP template?" (or whatever title you prefer).

Also, just so we're clear. I'm not Mathglot. I am not proposing any reductions to the number of language links supported. (In fact, the only change to the template I could currently see is the unmerging of {{Interlanguage link Wikidata}}. I suspect that merge was made for no better reason that "hey, fewer templates is better", and so far I have not heard a single argument to say otherwise. In fact I even suspect not a single second has been spent on considering any benefits to keeping {{Interlanguage link Wikidata}} separate.... But this is off-topic for this talk section.) I'm arguing we should encourage editors to only supply as many languages as needed to provide a) readers with a good overview of the subject and b) fellow editors with a comprehensive list of what resources other Wikipedias can offer to help with developing a red link. This is a documentation issue, not an implementation issue.

Best regards, CapnZapp (talk) 09:06, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

What I'll say is that I am opposed to attempts to mandate that an editor should select a subset of the available languages. Interlanguage links are a "surprise bonus" to the reader. There are comparatively few articles that don't have an enwiki version yet for which there are large numbers of other languages in which it is available. This demand to provide a curated list of non-English articles is quite counter-productive.

Of course, the list of language codes can come as a bit of a surprise to novice Wikipedia users (and to emphasize, I'm referring to the most typical set of users, who may have never edited a single article). There's going to be a first time they encounter such a list, whether it's a lengthy list or more commonly a fairly short list. I wouldn't claim that these foreign language links are self-explanatory, but it really doesn't take too much head-scratching to realize that clicking on one of those links, results in an article in which the words displayed are not in English. Those who are unaware of any way to translate the text may be prone to dismiss these links as useless. (I don't care ... interlanguage links are a free bonus, if you don't like them, then ignore them... this is just not asking too much.)

For the rest of the user community, that list of language codes (short or long) is an unmitigated bonus. We have all these "regular" red links, and for the most typical Wikipedia user (i.e. those who have never made a single edit), those red links are a pointless distraction. Attempting to curate the list of available languages is a really bad idea; a policy that requires an editor to justify language links (i.e. the implication that any more than some set number of languages is subject to challenge) is counter-productive. Having such a policy in place does not serve the broader community. Fabrickator (talk) 19:33, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Matter of perspective I guess. Your unmitigated bonus looks to me like editorial laziness and in effect amounts to telling the reader we don't care about you and here are a bunch of links to languages you likely don't understand and we're not going to give any hint as to which articles are good quality and which are not. older ≠ wiser 19:39, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

And just to be clear, I don't think anyone is talking about mandating anything. Only that the documentation should recommend best practices. I mean no one can force anyone to do anything around here so long as it is not disruptive. There are lots of experienced editors (myself included) who routinely ignore some minor aspects of style guidelines (perhaps because the 'rule' is obscure and can't be bothered to look up; or because it makes very little practical difference). In the long run, bots and gnomes will eventually update it to align with whatever the relevant guidance is. older ≠ wiser 19:59, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

The proposer (who added the pertinent text to the interlanguage link "doc" page wrote "... you should be prepared to argue for why you think more are needed ..." This would authorize any editor to place a challenge on the article talk page to justify a need for the current list of languages, and in the absence of a timely response, to revert the edit which resulted in the violation of the recommendation or to use their own discretion to modify the link to conform to the guideline on the interlanguage link doc page that "more than 2 or 3 links are very rarely recommended." Now you say there are "bots and gnomes" that will somehow alter this rule. Sounds pretty fuzzy to me. Fabrickator (talk) 06:35, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

While you are obviously free to oppose recent changes to the documentation, I am not trying to "mandate" anything - I am trying to make the documentation go from saying absolutely nothing on the number of links (or WikiData) to saying, well, what it says now. I don't consider that a mandate, I consider that a recommendation. Recommendations can be easily overruled - but you are encouraged to then justify your exception. And yes, if you think that's "fuzzy" I take that as a compliment - since this isn't a Wikipedia policy or guideline page, every usage advice is "fuzzy" in that it can be adhered to or ignored at will. I don't think this will have a huge impact on usage, mostly because I choose to believe most editors don't add seven or twelve links where three (or even one) would suffice, but to me it's nice to encourage users to justify whenever they add more than two or three links, in the hopes most editors see the point and spend at least a little effort selecting fewer links of higher quality.

As for WikiData, it appears to be solved - that 2018 RFC hid in plain sight, I just added it here on the template's documentation subpage and not just over at Wikipedia:Wikidata#Appropriate usage in articles.

That said, what do you want, Fabrickator? It would help constructively moving forward if you could give us an indication of what would satisfy you. I am still very unclear on what exactly you feel is wrong and/or how to rectify it. Remember what I said earlier: If you are chiefly concerned about the language making editors think there exists rules or limitations that I have now told you never were intended, feel free to suggest tweaks. Either way, I do want to thank you for addressing the issues I'm concerned about.

Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 08:39, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

To be clear, if you or another reader is concerned about an existing four (or seven) link {{ill}} usage, I certainly won't come hunting you down. In my mind, the "worst" thing that can happen (full disclosure: I really think it's the best) is for some random editor to stumble across that ill link, and decide to pare it down to only quality links. Whether that leaves 1, 3, or all 7 depends on the links of course, and every such outcome is perfectly acceptable (including leaving the ill link with all 7). Then, the editor that added the original ill might object to the removal of one or more links, but that to me sounds like regular editing and resolving any conflict sounds like completely ordinary consensus forming. If that helps?

If you believe the current language will make overzealous editors ruthlessly remove every instance of a 4+ link ill, even where all four links meaningfully contribute (perhaps akin to how plot summaries sometimes are ruined because sizes outside 400-700 words are not tolerated) then I would encourage you to suggest tweaks to ensure the language comes off as a recommendation and not a mandate. Myself, I have a hard time envisioning that to be a problem in practice. Firstly, I genuinely believe there are very very few instances of a topic where 2-3 languages won't comprehensively cover it and where more are justified (but note I'm not ruling it out and am not trying to prohibit using all 16 of them), and secondly I honestly don't see the current language evoking that kind of overzealous (Occasionally. Mostly entirely justified) policing that our various WP:PLOTSIZEs do... and here I think it's important to note that WP:FILMPLOT, WP:NOVELPLOT etc actually are binding MOS pages, which this documentation page most definitely is not. CapnZapp (talk) 08:47, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

The doc page should reflect the fact that there is no consensus about how the set of languages should be chosen, indicating that some Wikipedia users will find a lengthy list of possibly obscure language codes to be distracting, while those who believe that attempting to curate a list which best meets the needs of the user community is ultimately futile due to the varying requirements of the Wikipedia user community, including but not limited to the varying levels of language expertise as well as accessibility to and limitations of translation tools available to the end user. There is no way to just wave away this problem. If you're going to make the case why there should be only a small handful of languages, then we should also have the argument that such an effort is counter-productive. If you're going to object to that, then you should not be making the opposite case, that limiting it to a small handful of languages is preferable. Fabrickator (talk) 23:23, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

It used to say that, in section § When to use, but that subsection was removed in the last couple of weeks. I find rev. 1339781589 of 22 Feb. altogether better than the current one. I understand the motivations behind the subsequent removal of the entire § How to section from the doc, but I think it might have been useful to some editors and am on the fence about its removal. Otoh, the usage subsections should not have been removed, imho, and you just bumped into one of the reasons why. Mathglot (talk) 00:16, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

First off, I don't believe I personally have removed much if anything - looking at the history for 2026, my edits have added plenty but rarely removed anything. I could be wrong, in which case I would appreciate the specific diff or diffs y'all object to.

As for your arguments Fabrickator, at this point you really need to present your alternative. So far you seem to be arguing that recommending fewer language links has no consensus (i.e. that you and - so far - you alone oppose it). But why are you actually opposing it? So far you have done nothing to argue why your alternative is better. Sure, you're arguing curating a list is "ultimately futile", but how do you see that as any different from the tireless work by the multitudes of human editors to improve Wikipedia in general... and also: what does that mean in practice?? That you prefer automation? That you prefer displaying every language (no matter its quality)? What do you want? Constructively speaking, that is? Above and beyond just a removal of any usage guidance? You need to present your alternative so we can start discussing its pros and cons, and decide whether we prefer one or the other. Just returning to the bad old times when our documentation had nothing to say on how to use the template, resulting in some users thinking it's okay to add all 16 languages (which I vaguely assume is Mathglot's initial impetus for starting this series of talk discussions) and/or using the WikiData link in article space "so I don't have to choose", makes me go "why?" - what possible upside would that have? Please start actually arguing for your alternative - why you find [your alternative, whatever that is] advantageous - and not just argue against my good-faith attempt at improvement.

And please also explain how exactly you can find a soft recommendation to choose quality over (what I presume) quantity to be "counter-productive", Fabrickator? You say it's futile, but to me that's a very poor argument for not even trying, and I'm having a really hard time seeing your perspective here. (I mean, it would make sense if you wanted to pave the way for the Polish implementation, but I acknowledge how you are quite specifically not talking about that here) CapnZapp (talk) 10:09, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't think you did, either, but this point, I also don't care, as this discussion has gone on way too long, and is going nowhere. We should just let it die a merciful death. Mathglot (talk) 10:19, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

If it helps closing the discussion, I can note I have no objections to adding (re-adding?) "There is no general consensus when this template should be used, or what languages should be linked when an article missing in English is present in several other language Wikipedias." which is what I assume your first link was referring to. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 14:39, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and boldly removed the claim that had been added to the effect that listing "more than 2 or 3" languages was objectionable or otherwise undesirable. Fabrickator (talk) 17:21, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Whoops, I had overlooked a second instance of the suggested limit of "2 or 3 languages" within the "doc" file. That has now been removed. Fabrickator (talk) 03:14, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

I am going to assume good faith and consider that you misunderstood the latest exchange between me and Mathglot. A bad faith interpretation would be that you can't argue for your position: your "bold" edits completely undercut this entire lengthy discussion, and I cannot believe you don't understand that the "bold" part of the WP:BRD cycle is at the beginning of a discussion, and not a means to cut it short and stop listening to others.

In the GF vein, I have further edited the doc. I will remind you, Fabrickator; I really implore you to bring a more convincing argument (for removing any notion of a curated quality list) than "it's futile". So far you have not engaged on this topic at all, and I ask you once more to to lay out your arguments why us Wikipedia editors should abandon our usual drive for (manual) excellence. Note that other editors have chimed in to this discussion, none of them have objected to my idea and at least one have supported it. In particular: if (and I do say "if") you have plans for the Polish implementation, and oppose any recommendations that would go counter to an eventual future where every language is auto-populated, start a separate discussion about implementing the Polish code. If and when you gain consensus for that approach, this discussion becomes obsolete and you are free to remove any notion that a hand-curated quality list is better than mindlessly spamming 7 or 16 languages. I have stated multiple times, I am only taking the current template in mind. CapnZapp (talk) 08:50, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

I need to challenge your specific claims, Fabrickator, so here are a few comments to your initial posts (please text search the timestamp, I don't know if you can link directly to an arbitrary spot on the page):

• 05:21, 21 February 2026 (UTC): We told you a recommendation is not a limit. Anytime an editor can justify 4 or 7 links, that's alright. Most of the time, though, we expect 1, 2 or perhaps 3 links to provide the comprehensive overview that is the purpose of this template. And in those cases, where the 4th or 7th link doesn't add more than "yes, this language also has an article", our argument is that this functionality already exists (WP:ILLSIDEBAR).
  • "You never know when that "n+1"th language will have just what someone was looking for, perhaps it includes some detail missing from all the other versions."
    No, it's not that you never know. Wikipedia editors can absolutely know. Don't add a language just because it exists. Add it because you personally recommend it.
  • "As for those who find the extra versions to be extraneous, they have the complete freedom to ignore them."
    Not as long as the list doesn't distinguish between quality articles and useless cruft (stubs and whatnot).

07:09, 21 February 2026 (UTC): Again, this is not a limit.

• • "My premise is rather simple: every language is useful. We don't know which non-English languages the reader is familiar with, and establishing an arbitrary limit is, well, arbitrary!"
    Every language may be useful, but many articles sure aren't. (That includes English Wikipedia by the way!) Please only link to actually useful articles, regardless of which language they're written in. Including or excluding a particular language does NOT mean Wikipedia or individual editors have anything for or against that language, it just happened that the topic was either covered more comprehensively in another language or that the language had poor coverage for this particular topic.
  • " For those who find the extra versions to be extraneous, it's hardly a lot of extra effort for the reader to just skip over them."
    I dispute this. And this is precisely the reason Mathglot started the entire discussion. And once more, if you want to find out the complete list of languages for which a topic is covered, you already have ILLSIDEBAR and you already have WikiData - I believe the value of this template is improved by not replicating that existing functionality.
  • "But Wikipedia pages are loaded with all kinds of "cruft" to which wikipedia users learn to filter as needed." As someone who has worked with user interfaces, I find this notion uninformed and unacceptable. Enough said.

If you have any questions, or are unsure about my logic, please consider straightening this out with me before continuing any further. Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 09:12, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

@CapnZapp: I'm under the impression that we have "agreed to disagree", though, assuming we're each in the habit of adding or updating interlanguage links, we could wind up working at cross-purposes, e.g. you create a link in which you intentionally omit one or more of the available languages. I see the link, realize that additional languages are available. I'm unaware how they came to be "missing", i.e. whether their omission is due to an oversight, was intentional, or if the omitted languages that were added subsequent to the addition of the interlanguage link template. (I will dismiss the idea of trying to research the history.) It occurs to me that a possible solution would be to have some indicator that a language is intentionally omitted. This could either be a hidden comment or it could be a feature of the template, i.e. list all languages in which the article exists, but have a flag indicating that a language is intentionally "hidden". I will note that there are so many instances where we are missing possible "ill"s that this may be more of a theoretical issue than a real one, but it could be quite irksome if we created a situation in which editors were working at cross-purposes with each other. Fabrickator (talk) 10:04, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

I will continue to defend your right to add an additional language to an existing ill link, but I will also trust your judgement - that the link you added actually contributes to the overall pool of foreign-language resources the ill link provides to the reader. Myself, I have never seen it as a problem adding or removing specific languages from ill links, because to me it is just part of editing articles: just as I sometimes add or remove or reword article text, I sometimes add or remove or replace ill languages. If the ill link has few languages, I seldom question the judgement of previous editors - if the ill link has many languages, I nearly always can very easily prune the list.

And with that, now that you have started an RfC, I don't anticipate further posting in this thread. Do continue to ping me if you post further comments or queries in this talk section directed at me, however! Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 11:59, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

3 articles is an appropriate max recommendation. Curating and making editorial decisions is what editors do and should do.  Mr.choppers | ✎  14:44, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Ill with redirect present

Could we add an option of keeping the english-language link black when the entry is a redirect? I wanted to add Mitsuoka Ryugi, but it now redirects to Mitsuoka. It should eventually become a standalone, but I want to keep the link to the ja entry and a) not send people to the redirect and b) not have the bot remove the {{ill}}. Thanks,  Mr.choppers | ✎  15:04, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Keep the english-language "link" black? You mean not have it as a link? No. This template's core function is to present a red link so interested editors know what page destination to develop.

You created the Mitsuoka Ryugi redirect recently. The best solution would be to develop it into an article right now (possibly using Japanese language information) or at least add the bare-bones amount of info about this subject at the Mitsuoka page. I don't think asking at RfD for the redirect to be deleted so soon after creating it would be useful (though it would probably be granted, given how Mitsuoka does not even mention Mitsuoka Ryugi). As for the bot, use |preserve= to keep it from converting a blue ill link into a regular link. CapnZapp (talk) 16:36, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Sadly I don't have the time to create every article which deserves to exist. I do not suggest deleting the redirect, I just wanted to be able to use {{ill}} until Mitsuoka Ryugi is no longer a redirect; |preserve= does exactly what I needed. Thanks,  Mr.choppers | ✎  17:18, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

I thought that as Mitsuoka Ryugi and the redirect target Mitsuoka have different wikidata identifiers (Q18457409 and Q1544189) cewbot should not remove the template until the redirect is converted to an article, and preserve will stop the template being automatically removed even after the article is created. EdwardUK (talk) 17:27, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Ah - however, in the Automated removal section I read Cewbot will also not convert this template into a regular link if the English Wikipedia page exists but is a redirect back to the same page where the template appears; i.e. #Circular redirects. which suggests that it will only remove the template if it's a circular redirect. I will await confirmation before editing further.  Mr.choppers | ✎  20:00, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

EdwardUK, you see that "not" in the part you quoted from Cewbot? It will *not* convert a circular redirect, according to your quote (which you quoted correctly). How do you get from that, to it *will* remove it if it's circular? Seems to me you flipped what it says 180° so you're saying the exact opposite of what the template doc actually does. Or have I misunderstood you? Mathglot (talk) 05:46, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Fix ping: Mr.choppers. (Edward: apologies for the unnecessary ping.) Mathglot (talk) 05:50, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, my bad. I guess my question remains: will cewbot remove the {{ill}} template if a redirect exists or will it not? Edward says no, CapnZapp suggested yes, the template page instructions are not entirely clear. Perhaps we should revise the relevant section:

You can remove the template when a red link turns blue, and it is no longer needed. However, there is no need to remember to do so, because Cewbot does this automatically for you, replacing the template with a plain wikilink... Please be aware Cewbot removes this template when it detects the target article has been created on English Wikipedia, converting {{ill}} links to regular (blue) links.  Mr.choppers | ✎  13:01, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Iff the bot checks the wikidata entities between English and foreign-language links and leaves those not matching, we should certainly say so in the documentation.

Since it is a fairly obscure point, best would be to use a {{efn}} note and point to the documentation of the bot. Unfortunately the bot appears to be undocumented. Unless you count the source code. In that case, the source code link is broken, and since the bot owner is Japanese I couldn't make heads or tails of a cursory look at the github. Perhaps easier would be to... just test it. CapnZapp (talk) 13:43, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

On the "Interlanguage link templates need to fix" report it currently has an ill template for Alexandre Singh on 2025 Seattle International Film Festival which is not a circular redirect (it redirects to an article about a film rather than the festival), but has not been converted by cewbot, so I expect that Mitsuoka Ryugi could also appear the next time the report is updated (although the number of problematic pages is so large that the report only shows 39% of them).

I agree that it could be helpful to add something about this to the documentation, though I also am uncertain of exactly how the bot functions, so I am unsure how best to word it – possibly following the automated removal footnote it could have something like "If cewbot detects an problem with conversion of a link it is added to a database report to be reviewed manually". EdwardUK (talk) 16:18, 8 April 2026 (UTC)