Extension talk:Cognate

Cognate for Wiktionary FAQ
Hello there,

Following the announcement on all Wiktionaries, I will collect there the frequent questions that people ask me, then provide the answers for all of them :) If a question doesn't have an answer yet, don't worry: it can take some more hours to collect all the technical details to answer you properly. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 11:24, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

What kind of Wiktionary pages Cognate will impact ?
Only the main namespace pages. For all the other pages (community discussion, etc), this will in the future be organized via sitelinks on Wikidata, just as it's done for Wikipedia article and community pages. For now, all these pages are still linked via wikitext links. We will let you know once this part of the plan will start. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 11:24, 13 April 2017 (UTC) The sorting of interwiki links will occur on ALL namespaces  ·addshore·  talk to me! 14:21, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

How can we access the list of the links ?
Using an example on beta wiktionary, the page 232 contains no interwiki links in the wikitext, but interiwki links still appear in the sidebar generated by the cognate extension. These interwiki links work in exactly the same was as the links provided by Wikibase on WikibaseClients, they are added to the parser output. As a result you can see them through the API using the parse action api module (as well as other api modules that expose interlangugae links). Once the Cognate database tables are replicated to the labs databases you will also be able to query for interlanguage links there.  ·addshore·  talk to me! 14:19, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

How could we notify/filter the edits containing manual interlanguage links?
An abuse filter could be set up to detect this using a regex. en:Special:AbuseFilter/270 was a filter created to detect the removal of interwiki links on enwiki and can likely easily be modified to detect additions.  ·addshore·  talk to me! 14:21, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
 * On German Wiktionary, two abusefilters have been created: 21 and 23. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 15:14, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Does Cognate create links to redirection pages?
Not for now. It could be technically possible, and we can enable this feature, if the communities find a consensus on this and request it. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 15:14, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Wiktionary discussion
Was there any discussion about this on Wiktionary with Wiktionary people? I wrote wiktionary-l/2016-December/001376.html for now. --Nemo 16:19, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, we asked the communities and collected their feedbacks here and below. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 09:59, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a "no". I specifically wrote "on Wiktionary with Wiktionary people". --Nemo 18:01, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * We have been contacted multiple times on fr: and en: Beer Parlours, although not so much recently because the extension was in development. Darkdadaah (talk) 14:01, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Title whinge (minor)
It is usually a really bad idea to take a specific jargon and apply it as the title to something which is similar but different yet intended to be used by the audience which uses the precise jargon you are coopting. E.g. log rollers used under heavy objects to facilitate movement should be called wheels (even when adapted to factory use - Lineshaft roller conveyors should be wheel conveyors, right?) Or all systems for converting source code to commands should be called assemblers. - Amgine (talk) 20:39, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree, it is not immediately clear that all this extension does is replace interlanguage links. Darkdadaah (talk) 14:03, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I also. I was terribly confused by what this was supposed to do, even though I remember the early discussion. The extension would be better called "sametitle". --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:37, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed. The functionality has exactly zero to do with cognates.  Very poor choice of names.  &#8209;&#8209; Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:17, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Interwiki sorting
is it normal than the French interwiki link appears before the Deutsch one here: http://enwiktionary-cognate.wmflabs.org/index.php/Test ? Looks like a bug. Automatik (talk) 20:21, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I wish IW links still follow the MediaWiki:Interwiki config-sorting order on each local wiki. See also Interwiki sorting order. --Octahedron80 (talk) 08:36, 13 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Hi both!
 * The labs instance has now been turned off, I'll update the extension page shortly. This was indeed a bug and has been fixed.
 * The IW links sort order will follow the sort as defined in the configuration, this can be different for each wiki. The sort orders are defined in this file, the setting for each wiki can be found in InitialiseSettings.php under wgInterwikiSortingSort. Currently all wiktionaries will default to 'code' which simply sorts by code.
 *  ·addshore·  talk to me! 14:09, 13 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for those details. It looks like the sort order for en.wikt is not quite right: we use the sort order found at m:MediaWiki:Interwiki config-sorting order-native-languagename, which does not appear at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/source/mediawiki-config/browse/master/wmf-config/InterwikiSortOrders.php. https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php has us set to alphabetic, which is close, but has a number of differences. Can the m:MediaWiki:Interwiki config-sorting order-native-languagename order be added, and en.wikt set to that? (Or, if you believe that the order at m:MediaWiki:Interwiki config-sorting order-native-languagename is wrong and yours is right, can the order at m:MediaWiki:Interwiki config-sorting order-native-languagename be corrected?) —Ruakh TALK 18:40, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

zh.wiktionary
Hi there,

zh.wiktionary have a special way to organize pages, (/zh-hant, /zh-hans, traditional entries redirects to simplified entries, etc), pywikibot had some trouble with this, will Cognate work correctly with zh.wiktionary? Can we expect links to zh.wiktionary on traditional and simplified Chinese entries on other wiktionaries? Thanks. --Thibaut120094 (talk) 08:44, 14 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Basically, the exact name must be mapped like recent IW links, so it should work fine. I think it will not become problem. However, zh.wiktionary may already have some both simplified/traditional pages that they do not redirect each other. If you see some bug, please make a ticket at Phabricator and they will solve it. --Octahedron80 (talk) 02:29, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Can the "title normalization" feature be turned off?
Can the "title normalization" feature be turned off? It seems to be a mistake: that's not how interwikis currently work (at least on the English Wiktionary).

Thanks in advance!

—Ruakh TALK 18:32, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Removeiw bot
Good stuff from Hydriz: pywikibot extension for removing interlanguage links on Wiktionaries. --Octahedron80 (talk) 02:40, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Special:WithoutInterwiki
As Cognate is available on Wiktionaries, Special:WithoutInterwiki of each one should not populate, should it? In the other hand, I wish Special:WithInterwiki is available instead. 😅 --Octahedron80 (talk) 04:37, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
 * +1 for Special:WithInterwiki, I created a ticket: phab:T164066. --Thibaut120094 (talk) 12:08, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Wrong links on Category page
Please, have a look at wikt:el:Category:Προφορικές γλώσσες. The interlanguage links are completely wrong. It seems that this page is treated as belonging to namespace 0 and the Greek characteres are misinterpreted. Actually, there was a page in ns 0 that redirected to that category page; I have deleted it, yet the wrong links are still there. --Flyax (talk) 06:34, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * This was because of el:Πρότυπο:vsi conatining interwiki. JAn Dudík (talk) 09:02, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. --Flyax (talk) 17:44, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Mysterious malfunction
Can you please urgently look into veni, vidi, vici on WikiWoordenboek, where Cognate seems to malfunction for mysterious reasons. There are 12 other wiktionaries with this page, but none of them shows up. These pages on the other hand do show an interwikilink to WikiWoordenboek. At the Polish veni, vidi, vici where the explicit interwikilinks are removed too, Cognate seems to work fine. So why isn't it at the Dutch page? It probably does not have to do with the space or the comma, because on oog om oog, tand om tand Cognate seems to do OK. The probleem seems not to be system dependent: it shows up both on a Windows 10 laptop and an Android smartphone. --MarcoSwart (talk) 14:02, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Follow up. Cognate is not working after editing any page. So editing WikiWoordenboek now slowly leads us to losing all interwikilinks. --MarcoSwart (talk) 14:37, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * A practical interim solution was implemented. After purging a few hundred pages everything appears to be in order again. --MarcoSwart (talk) 21:58, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Links missing
Hello. It seems that Cognate extension doesn't work sometimes in certain words. Maybe this error is temorary and it will work without this kind of problems in the next few days, but I thought reporting this would be positive. For example, in the word eu:wikt:finnois interwiki links don't appear, while fr:wikt:finnois (and same word in different languages) exists. Best regards, --Enzaiklopedia (talk) 16:43, 4 May 2017 (UTC)


 * It seems that problem has been solved only in eu:wikt:finnois, while the problem still exists in lots of other pages. Also, when looking up for Basque interwiki on, for example, fr:wikt:finnois or de:wikt:finnois (or any other language), you'll find that it doesn't appear. Thank you, --Bengoa (talk) 14:18, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Statistics and tools
Hello, Thanks ! Otourly (talk) 08:27, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Will it be possible to get statistics about Cognate ?
 * A Petscan integration will be availlable ?
 * Hello Otourly, can you give some examples of statistics you would like to have? :) Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 10:27, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Hello, I am especially thinking about "most interlinked entries" & "uninterlinked entries". Otourly (talk) 11:01, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
 * It would be useful to see the "most interlinked entries not having a page at your own wiki"; presuming that if many different wiktionaries have this entry we might want to have it too. And we might detect spelling errors on WikiWoordenboek this way. --MarcoSwart (talk) 08:52, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
 * A valuable statistic to get an aspect of the relative completeness of a wiktionary would be its number of interwikilinked entries relative tot the total number of all interwikilinked entries. And in relation tot the total number of entries of a wiktionary it would give an impression how much "unique material" it preserves. --MarcoSwart (talk) 08:52, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Another interesting feature would be a matrix of the number of interwiki's between each possible pair of wiktionaries. It could be useful in the search for volunteers with particular language skills if we can give them an impression of what is possible in quantitative terms. --MarcoSwart (talk) 08:52, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I created a ticket to list all the ideas, and discuss about if and how we can provide this. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 07:59, 29 May 2017 (UTC)