Help:Lint errors/multi-colon-escape

Wikitext's wikilink syntax is overloaded. will produce an image. In order to link to the page File:Test.png,  should be used. However, if a link is prefixed with multiple colons, (i.e. ), every colon after the first is considered part of title. These are invalid links and will be rendered as plaintext.

Till recently (before https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/361597/ was deployed), there was some leniency around the number of prefix colons permissible in wikilinks, but this is no longer the case. See the email>mailarchive:wikitech-ambassadors/2017-September/001675.html|discussion on wikitech-ambassadors.

This linter category will uncover wikilinks using multiple colons as a prefix so editors can inspect and fix them, as required.

Tools
The following tools can help fix multi colon escape:


 * WPCleaner: see instructions on how to use WPCleaner for fixing errors detected by Linter. Multi colon escape may be reported by WPCleaner as part of CheckWiki error #533.