Template talk:Interlanguage link info

Wording

Martin of Sheffield, thinking about some changes to this. The antecedent of They is "links to pages on foreign language Wikipedias", and those links are not shown in red. (In fact, they are always blue, even if there's a typo or the foreign article does not exist.) Secondly, even when that wording is fixed to refer to properly to the en-wiki page, it's still not the case that the link is red; it's blue for redirects (apparently, a behavior change in 2016). How about:

This <param-1> contains numerous links to articles that do not exist yet, but which have counterparts in one or more foreign language Wikipedias. These article links may be shown in red, with language codes in [small blue letters] enclosed in square brackets. Click on the language code to see the page in that language.

I'm also thinking of mimicking the actual appearance in the wording, like, 'article link [xx]' in order to model what to look for.

As a more minor point, I was uncertain what to do about "red links". In other contexts, we'd link that to WP:red links, and we could do that here, too, but then it would be blue, and in this case, we're trying to model (red) appearance, so it seems like we can't have both the color and the link. I've modeled one possible approach above. Or maybe leave it in plain text, and code ...contains numerous links to [[articles that do not exist]] yet instead?

Another minor point: AE brackets are BE square brackets; conversely, just plain brackets in BE are parentheses in AE, so some possibility for confusion, there. Square brackets, while a pleonasm in AE, is at least unambiguous in both. Mathglot (talk) 19:28, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No problems, thanks for your input. I'm not sure that you need the word "square" though, [] are brackets, () parentheses and {} braces, or does American English do this differently? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 19:51, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Martin of Sheffield:, What you described is the current and long-standing AE system; from everything I've learned, BE used to do it differently, but as with so many other things that were once BE usage (whatever happened to a "milliard pounds"?) they went by the wayside in the face of the juggernaut from across the pond. If 'square' is no longer necessary, we can drop it.

Btw, I've been playing with the new wording in the sandbox, and then I got an idea for a new param; it's only half done, but see testcases if interested. Mathglot (talk) 10:00, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: It's been Standard English usage since C19 at least, see Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes from The Gondoliers (1891) for example. It's certainly what we were taught in the 1960s. I think with the scrapping of grammar teaching in the 1970s some confusion has arisen in the popular press though. That apart, the work you are doing is excellent and I'd wholly support it. The single/main language is a good idea, it allows the editor to steer the reader to the best of the foreign language articles. Full marks! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:20, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Martin of Sheffield:, I think I've come to a stopping point. I'm fairly happy with it, but feedback would be good. There's some odd things with how |small= works, but since that predates my changes and I haven't made it worse, I haven't tried to fix it, either. There is one issue with |small= that is new: due to the round of changes, the text is longer than before. This doesn't matter in the wide banner, but in the |small= version, it made a box that was taller than it was wide; it was just too much text. It really didn't look good, so I just set it up so that for |small=, it just uses the original text. So the current round of text changes, and use of the new, |lang= param, is only for the wide version. A couple other issues: not sure about the use of red color now; let me know what you think. There's also one change that is a bit subtle: the use of the bracketed lang code now has an actual link to the foreign wiki's main page; but an invalid code (like, say, 'xx') shows a bracketed blue code, so it looks like an ill link, but there's no actual wikilink. I've added more test cases as well. Please tweak as needed, and then we can move to the template, when you're happy with it. Mathglot (talk) 03:56, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, I have to take it back: there's a bug with small+left, which uses the old text, but doesn't make the banner small. So, that will need to be fixed yet; review is premature. Back to the white board! Mathglot (talk) 04:02, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very happy with what I see in the test cases. I agree about the small problem, but I can't see a way around it whilst still using the Ambox template. The suggest alternative for making the box fit the text length won't work in this case. I suspect that we'll just have to leave this up to editor's discretion. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:19, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: where are we with this? From the testcases I'm happy to move the sandbox into live, what do you think? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:09, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Martin of Sheffield:, it's good that you pinged me, I constantly get sidetracked and oversubscribed (as now). There was one bug I needed to look at, remind me in a day or two if I get sidetracked again. Or, do you want to take a look on your own? I can refamiliarize myself with what the issue was, and then lay it out. Mathglot (talk) 09:25, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, I didn't want to rush you. I've used the |lang= parameter you added in the AEG article and it reminded me to ask if it could go live. Take whichever course suits you. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:36, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]