Editing Help:Interlanguage links (section)

== Links in the "Languages" list<span class="anchor" id="The list of links"></span> ==
{{shortcut|WP:ILLSIDEBAR}}
[[File:Interwiki Languages Ænglisc.png|thumb|In non-default skins, a list of available languages is visible in the left sidebar of the desktop version of Wikipedia under the "Languages" section.]]
Pages on Wikipedia can link to equivalent pages in other languages. The English article on [[Spain]] includes a link to the Spanish article [[:es:España|España]] in the "Languages" list, and vice versa. These links are primarily maintained in  Wikidata and can be overridden in rare cases using [[#Local links to override Wikidata interlanguage links|local links]] in the text of the page. Using Wikidata is the preferred method.

=== Wikidata ===
[[File:Interlanguage links provided by WikiData.png|thumb|Click on ''Edit links'' to add links to the Wikidata page]]

[[WP:Wikidata|Wikidata]] is a sister project of Wikipedia; it is a collaboratively edited knowledge base. Part of this project is to centralize the interlanguage links for all the Wikipedia projects. The "Languages" list for a page contains  a list of links to a version of that page in different languages. Editing that list on Wikidata is the standard procedure to add or modify interlanguage links.

==== Adding a new link ====
"Languages" in a menu at the upper right (or in the sidebar in non-default skins) shows the Wikidata language list. At the bottom is a link labelled "Edit interlanguage links" (or "Edit links" in non-default skins; mobile viewers may lack such a feature). Clicking on this will reveal the Wikidata page. To modify entries on the list:
# Scroll, if necessary, to the box marked "Wikipedia" and click on "edit" at the top of that box.
# Click on the greyed-out "wiki" field, the final item on the list, and enter a language code (see [[list of ISO 639-1 codes]] for all language codes).
# Click on the greyed-out "page" field (now visible) and paste or type in the name of the article as it appears in that language's Wikipedia.
# Click on "publish" at the top of the box.

Modifying or removing an existing interlanguage link is similar. To modify a link, click "edit", then modify the text of a link and click "publish". To remove a link, click "edit", then click the trash can icon for the link you wish to remove.

If you get an error message like "Site link{{nbsp}}... is already used by item Q{{nbsp}}...", this means that there is already an item in Wikidata pointing to the article you are trying to link to. Wikidata does not allow more than one item to point to a single article in a Wikipedia. This can happen for one of two reasons:
* The two items really are the same, and might need to be merged: see [[d:Help:Merge]].
* The scope of the two items is not in fact the same (typically, the article in one language is wider in scope than the article in the other language) and they should not be linked, unless there exists a [[Wikipedia:Redirect|redirect]] between the two items on one of the languages. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism in Wikidata at present for linking articles that are related, but different in a scope – it is possible to do this with [[#Local links to override Wikidata interlanguage links|local links]], however.

It may take several minutes for the link to show up in the article's "Languages" list. To enable links between [[Wikipedia:Template namespace|template]]s, you must explicitly [[Wikipedia:Purge|purge the server's cache]] for each template.

===== Finding interlanguage links for an article =====
There are many ways Wikipedia articles in other languages can be found. These include translating the article's title and its synonyms to other languages and searching for them on the respective language-versions of Wikipedia or on Google, searching for <code>articletitle site:wikipedia.org -site:en.wikipedia.org</code> (for non-English Wikipedia articles), and checking related or superordinate articles or categories in other Wikipedias.

=== Local links to override Wikidata interlanguage links ===
{{sh|WP:LOCALLINK}}
{{Ombox
| type  = content
| text  = '''Deprecated''': Local interlanguage links should not be used in the article namespace and should only be used in [[#exceptions|exceptional cases]]. 
}}
Before 2013, the only method of generating a link to the article in another language was to use a "local" interlanguage link in the text of the page itself. As of 2013, the use of such "local links" for interlanguage linking was ''deprecated'' except in the situations listed below, with interlanguage link data being centralized on [[Wikipedia:Wikidata|Wikidata]]. The problem with having links on each page was that each language had to maintain its own separate lists. So for example, if the name of a page on the English Wikipedia changed, then each Wikipedia article in a different language that linked to that English Wikipedia page would have to separately notice this fact and change their own links.

For most pages, these links are no longer needed and can be safely removed, but you should verify that the local list and the Wikidata lists match before doing so. There is an [[d:Wikidata:Tools/User scripts#Userscripts for Wikipedia|automated tool]] to help with that.

{{anchor|exceptions}}The local links do however still serve some purposes:

# They override the information that comes from Wikidata.
# They were required if more than one article (or redirect) in one language should point to a target article in another language. This can now be resolved by creating a redirect to a section of the article and adding the redirect to Wikidata (see [[Wikipedia:Wikidata#Interlanguage_links_for_redirects|interlanguage links for redirects]]).
# They are required for pages that are not allowed on Wikidata, such as your userpage.

==== Syntax ====
:{{A note}} The syntax for the side bar and running text are slightly different. See next section for the syntax within the running text.
Although they are useful only in rare cases, you can force the generation of one of these local interlanguage [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking|link]] overrides in the article using the following form:

<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">[[language code:Title]]</syntaxhighlight>

where the language code is the two-letter code as per [[ISO 639-1]]. (see [[m:list of Wikipedias|complete list of language Wikipedias available]]. English is "en", German is "de", etc.) So for example in the English language article on [[plankton]], which is available on many other wikis, the "local" interlanguage links (if you were to want to generate them) might look like this:

<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">
[[ar:عوالق]]
[[el:Πλαγκτόν]]
[[fa:پلانکتون]]
[[he:פלנקטון]]
[[ja:プランクトン]]
[[ko:플랑크톤]]
[[ru:Планктон]]
[[ta:மிதவைவாழி]]
[[te:ప్లవకాలు]]
[[th:แพลงก์ตอน]]
[[zh:浮游生物]]
</syntaxhighlight>

:{{A note}} '''Typically these links do not need to be generated manually like this, and will not show up in the page’s source text .''' These links are usually generated by the wiki software language selector extension in a special sidebar section or drop-down menu, "{{int:otherlanguages}}", listed by language name.

To force the "local" generation in the Languages list of the article of all the languages of a different Wikidata item, use [[:Template:Interwiki extra]]. For example, the [[Murder of Kitty Genovese]] automatically links languages listed at {{Q|Q18341392}}; to add the language links at {{Q|Q238128}},  use <code><nowiki>{{Interwiki extra|Q238128}}</nowiki></code>.  Links to non-English Wikipedia articles to both topics will then appear in the Languages list.

=== Featured articles and good articles ===
[[Wikipedia:Featured content|Featured]] or [[Wikipedia:Good articles|good]] articles are represented via Wikidata.

In an article's list of interlanguage links, featured articles are displayed with a gold star, while good articles are displayed with a gray star.