Beta Features/Other projects sidebar



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

How it works


When activated, it adds the "" sidebar section with links to related-content at other projects supported by Wikidata (currently: Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikivoyage, Wikiquote, and Commons). There is currently no way to override the link-text that is displayed. If there are no links to display, the section is not displayed (any page that does not have a Wikidata item).

It works only on projects supported by Wikidata. It is already deployed as a default feature for all users in the French and Italian Wikisources (e.g. s:fr:Auteur:William Shakespeare).

Leave feedback
You can try the feature by going to the "beta" section of your preferences (most wikis will show a "beta" link on the top-right area when you are logged-in), and enable the "Other projects sidebar" feature. You'll need to do the same process for each wiki you want to try the feature on (e.g., English Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Italian Wikisource, etc.). Then, navigate the site as usual and report any issues related to cross-project navigation.

Please leave feedback at the talk page. As additions to the already very heavy sidebar are often controversial, feedback is really needed.

Known issues

 * This beta feature only supports sites supported by Wikidata (e.g. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, Wikiquote and Wikivoyage). More projects will become available as they are added to Wikidata over the coming months.

Suggestions for improvement
Beta features are supposed to improve over time, here are our current ideas for improvement:
 * There is no way to easily edit links without leaving the current page. The "Add links" widget accessible at the bottom of the language links section that allows to easily link the current page to a page in an other language may be adapted to allow links to other projects.
 * There is no easy way to override links from Wikitext (except using bad JavaScript-based hacks).

Is this really needed?

 * The first bug about this feature have been opened in 2004.
 * Some wikis like the Italian Wikipedia currently rely on JavaScript hacks in order to add an "other projects" section.
 * French and Italian Wikisources already provide this feature by default for all users.

Code changes
This beta features is implemented as part of the Wikibase Client extension by two changes:
 * introduction of the beta feature.
 * provides a "by default" list of wikis to link to in the "Other projects" section. Useful in order to not have to configure this list for each wikis.