Help talk:Interlanguage links

Can't add link to Japanese ESOP article

There's a Japanese language version of this article at https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESOP but I'm unable to add Japanese as a language to this article because it says the Japanese article is already being linked to by another item. 60.102.232.135 (talk) 14:15, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Our article Employee stock ownership links to ja:ESOP and vice versa. What's the problem? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:21, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Can't remove an erroneous Interlanguage link

Was looking up the article on the German railway line Gäubahn railway line in SW Germany. It seemed pretty brief, so clicked the ILL for German looking for more info, which links to de:Gaubahn (note the lack of the ä-umlaut), which is an article to a different rail line in south central Germany along the Baden-Württemberg/Bavarian state border. The French link is also to the fr:Gaubahn.

I tried to remove the Gaubahn links from the ILL table, but then figured out it is the English link which is wrong. The ILL set is for the Gaubahn. There is no English language article for this railway line. However, the Gäubahn exists in both French and German (as well as Italian, Dutch, and Japanese). When I tried to remove the en link from the Gaubahn ILL, I get an error message that it cannot be removed unless the article has been deleted. The article is fine, but the link is to a different topic.

So, ... would someone smarter than me please fix this? The English language Gäubahn article ILL needs to be deleted from the de:Gaubahn/fr:Gaubahn ILL menu, and added to the de:Gäubahn/fr:Ligne de Stuttgart à Singen/etc. ILL for the Gäubahn Bilhartz (talk) 14:50, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Should interlanguage links be removed from this article?

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

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

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

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

H:FOREIGNLINK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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