Talk:Beta Features/Other projects sidebar

The Other projects sidebar beta feature adds to the sidebar a section, that provides links to the other Wikimedia projects based on Wikidata data.

Please give us feedback on your experience using this beta feature so we can change and improve it.

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T223526

@Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) Wasn't this promoted from Beta? If so, could you update this page? Thanks!

Good point! I updated the text and removed outdated stuff. Remaining: page title and category. Should it be moved? If so where?

Maybe just move it to "Wikibase/Other projects sidebar".

Is it possible to add site links which are not stored in Wikidata?

That is currently not possible. Would be good to make that possible though as that is something Wikivoyage for example could really use.

At Wikivoyage we use an extension to present links to external websites like Wikipedia, Commons, DMOZ in the sidebar. In the source code you will find codings like [[wikipedia:anything]], [[commons:Category:anything]], or [[dmoz:anything]]. In the sidebar a section named "Related sites" appears giving the links to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and DMOZ, respectively.

Of course, this is similar to the section "Related projects" proposed as a beta feature. But not all properties are stored in Wikidata, and therefore we need a similar tool like {{#addproject:DMOZ|http://www.dmoz.org/World/Deutsch/Regional/Afrika/%C3%84gypten/}} or {{#addproject:Wikimedia Commons Category|https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Egypt}}. The first parameter in this example shows the link text, the second one the link itself. You can see that we need it also to present related Commons categories at least in the case of a missing corresponding Commons article. In this respect, there is no answer in the topic below "Commons main and category namespaces".

If we want to substitute the RelatedSites extension we need a tool which has in any case the same functionality.

Are there cases where the data couldn't go into Wikidata that is currently used in the sidebar?

It's possible that there are cases where there isn't a 1:1 correspondence, much like inter-language links where and were both linking to at one point. (That specific instance was resolved when fr: split its coverage of Ottawa-Hull into two articles.) Wikidata will not allow two items to link to the same target.

At the German Wikivoyage we use now "Related sites" extension mainly in the User namespace because "other projects" is not supported by Wikidata. It is no problem to link to other languages but to link to other projects.

Swedish Wikipedia already has something similar with the difference that instead of showing the project name the links default to showing a decription (e.g. "quotes" for Wikiquote, "images & media" for Commons etc.). In addition the logos for the projects are shown next to the links.

See e.g. w:sv:Pablo Picasso

So my questions are

• a) how does this fature work with the existing one (we might still want to add additional links to those in wikidata) (e.g. commons:Category:Works by Pablo Picasso‎ instead/in addition to commons:Category:Pablo Picasso‎)
• b) would it be possible to change the displayed text? "Images and media" is probably more understandable for the casual reader than "Wikimedia Commons".
• c) can the icons be added (possibly with an option to be toggled on/off) to work as a visual guide for those who know about the projects.

• a) It's doable using JavaScript that is already used by Swedish Wikipedia (French Wikisource does that already).
• b) Yes, of course. Links labels are defined by system messages like MediaWiki:Wikibase-otherprojects-wikisource).
• c) It's possible to do that using Common.css for a specific wiki. For something more global an input from Wikimedia designers is, I think, needed.

Thanks for the reply.

b) My main thought here was using different default labels (all languages) than the project names. E.g. Quotes instead of Wikiquote etc. Still since the labels are defined by system messages they could always be overridden locally (rather than by language)

The icons would be nice to have.

b) So is "There is currently no way to override the link-text that is displayed." in How it works -section out dated or should it mean that text cannot be overridden per page.

Usp: The section is outdated. I've just updated it.

ممكن طريقة تنزيل المقالات في الويكيبيدا؟

ستجدين زرا مكتوب فيه تحميل PDF

ثم اضغط عليها وبدءي منشء الكتب ثم اختاري المقالة التي تريدينها.@رضى غليض

Please also add this to the mobile version of Wikipedia/Wikimedia. BTW it's very confusing that sidebar menu (hamburger menu) doesn't provide things you have in desktop sidebar. --Nux,

Noticed that no links show up on d:Wikidata:Main_Page, d:Wikidata:Project chat and Commons:Commons:Village pump. Isn't this feature enabled for {{ns:4}} (Project)?

All the above links work for me just fine (although the place where the other project links appear varies). Please keep in mind that the beta feature has to be enabled on every Wiki, just enabling it once (on some Wiki) wont suffice.

Also works for me.

Works now, probably some bug was fixed on that Monday

Is it possible to jump into the right language version of the sister project. Currently the link jumps eg. from commons to English Wikivoyage. But my user settings are German. The feature should check it in jump to the German Wikivoyage (if exists). English could be the fallback version.

Thank you very much for this suggestion. I've just created a task on Phabricator for that.

Hello,

Is there a plan to enable this feature by default on all Wikimedia wikis in a foreseeable future? If not, could it be enabled on a particular wiki if the community asks for it, or is it impossible at the moment?

There are reservations against doing it everywhere. I am fine with enabling it per-project if a project requests it.

Thanks. There will probably be a poll about that on the French Wikipedia in the next days.

Was it enabled on frwiki?

Yes, in January 2015 (see phab:T85971).

yes in june 2015

Urgent request: for Commons, please link to *both* gallery *and* category if possible

This can (presumably?) be achieved by using Commons category (P373) and Commons gallery (P935)

Otherwise people are getting concerned that "this mean we are going to need to create hundreds of thousands of basically redundant galleries replicating categories just so that links will work? That seems insane." -- from thread at Commons:Village_pump#Interwiki_links_on_categories

Thanks, ~~~~

Hi! Thanks a lot for your feedback. I'll try to discuss with Wikidata development team about it in the next days.

See also c:Commons:Village pump/Proposals#"In other projects" sidebar thread for thoughts from Commons users.

Though most of Wikipedia articles contain link to Commonscat and the link is either local or included also as P373 in Wikidata, this "feature" ignores both those. Instead of employing all the information from Wikidata and compensating deficiencies of Wikidata, this feature does almost nothing useful.

Also the position of the link within the sidebar is not just bright. Why it is added to general tools instead to interproject links? Why the interproject link to Wikidata is in different section than inteproject links to Commons or Wikiquote?

Why were not applied and employed experiences from similar tools which were and are used on some local wikis and are better designed and more perfect?

Wikipedia disition is right.