Wiki science/Interwiki link standard
In a wikitext standard, an interwiki link standard refers to articles in wiki form stored in another service. Protocol and editing functions are assumed to be similar, so the interwiki link standard is a bit simpler than the standard wiki URI for linking into a wiki from non-wiki space. It consists only of:
[ [ language:service:namespace_within_service:page/subpage#section ] ]
- [ [ service:language:namespace_within_service:page/subpage#section ] ]
- This usage is clearly wrong since languages is above service in any corpus organizing scheme. The present scheme is Wikipedia-centric:
- For example Wikipedia:fr:Commerce équitable or w:fr:Commerce équitable map incorrectly to what should be at . It is not up to the service to decide what languages to serve in, nor is it up to the service to decide how to carve up space within that language. Not only that, but the name of the service is itself expressed in a language.
Regardless of the current incorrect or proper standard usage, should map to http://fr.consumerium.org/ if this domain existed and would be enabled in the interwiki maps stored in the database.
Note that, as wiki linking relies on HTTP almost by definition, it omits the "http://" protocol and "/wiki/" subprotocol designations as redundant.
Supporting the proper "language:service:" prefix radically simplifies wiki linking. Among other things, the language prefix can often be omitted or assumed, if it is the same as the language the current page is in.
Because of various uses of abbreviations for services, assumptions about services, etc., it is presently quite confusing. Mediawiki supports a deliberately Wikipedia-centric scheme in which for instance "[ [ en: ] ]" means not "in English" but "in the English Wikipedia". As a result, a reference to "[ [ en: Metaweb: phyle ] ]" will be interpreted incorrectly as a reference to English Wikipedia where there is no article, instead of correctly to English Metaweb 'phyle' where there is one. Mediawiki is likely to continue to resist and retard the development of such a standard for the usual reasons (typically software imperialism - see Wikimedia for discussion of this.) Prove us wrong?
A single standard for at least the GFDL text corpus is highly desirable, and hopefully will be supported in GetWiki_2.0, which will then hopefully displace MediaWiki entirely.
See Wikinfo:interwiki link standard for more on this and integration into GetWiki.
See Wiki linking for practical information how similar linking is done right now.