Talk:Beta Features/Other projects sidebar

Untitled

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.

Great feature

When will it be available? Vanished user e175adb86e72bb96a1706f7ab31b9df8 (talk) 14:02, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Micru: It has to go through 1week+ of testing at beta.wmflabs first (per Beta features#Creating Your Own), so if it goes live there within the next 7 days, it should be available on mediawikiwiki (and testwiki/test2wiki) as of June 5, and everywhere else the week after. (iiuc) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Already existing similar feature

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. André Costa (WMSE) (talk) 08:37, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

• 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. Tpt (talk) 13:34, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

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) André Costa (WMSE) (talk) 14:09, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

The icons would be nice to have. Stryn (talk) 17:03, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

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 (talk) 18:46, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Usp: The section is outdated. I've just updated it. Tpt (talk) 19:55, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Cannot find it

I would like to try this, but it's not in my list of beta features (checked both on nowiki and enwiki) Danmichaelo (talk) 13:33, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Ping Tpt Danmichaelo (talk) 12:58, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

It's not deployed yet on Wikimedia wikis Tpt (talk) 16:06, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

+1, it can't be empty... Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 07:17, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I have enabled this feature, but I cannot see any links on the left. I tried dozen of themas, but nowhere. JAn Dudík (talk) 09:57, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

JAn Dudík: You should maybe try to purge your browser cache. I believe it solves the problem. Tpt (talk) 20:57, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

As of now I can't see it on zhwiki. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 08:55, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I have investigated this and it's a bug. :( zhwiki has $wgEnableSidebarCache setting to true which I think causes some problems. We need to investigate more how best to solve this.

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70234 Aude (talk) 12:54, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

It's fixed today, but this problem still keeps... Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:21, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

You won't see a fixed bug 'fixed' on your wiki until the wiki's system administrator actually updates the version of the software they run. In this case you need to wait for the Wikimedia sysadmins to do it.

Edit: Looks like Aude will be deploying this fix to Wikimedia sites tomorrow per wikitech:Special:Diff/125872. Krenair ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:23, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

OK, so now fully fixed. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 05:27, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

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

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, Jheald (talk) 14:11, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi!

Thanks a lot for your feedback. I'll try to discuss with Wikidata development team about it in the next days. Tpt (talk) 20:49, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

See also c:Commons:Village pump/Proposals#"In other projects" sidebar thread for thoughts from Commons users. Jheald (talk) 08:17, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

"Why" remains unanswered

It has always been possible to link to other projects in the sidebar (RelatedSites, …), but some projects like the English and German Wikipedias decided to use templates placed at (or near) the bottom of each page. (Winter developers decided to place such templates in a sidebar on the right.) So … why don't just support these templates? Wikidata could make them easier to use by not requiring users to add a target parameter, in fact, a bot could just add a template to every external links section which only actually appears on the page if they sister project links are available. This would not leave the site layout untouched, and therefore shouldn't be controversial either.    FDMS  4    14:44, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

The sidebar feature in Winter can very easily be done later using the functionality provided here. Doing that with the existing templates will be a huge pain. Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:27, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

"why don't just support these templates?": because some other wikis are used to have an "other project" section in the sidebar and some others do not link at all to the other projects. So, it's useful to provide to these wikis a way to do what they are doing currently but now relying on Wikidata. To be sure to reach all communities it have been decided to deploy this as a beta feature everywhere in order to allow the

To support templates, it's already possible to do so without having to change anything in MediaWIki and I'm sure there are dozen of contributors in en and de wikipedias that are able to do such things in a couple of hours. Tpt (talk) 18:52, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

So are you globally beta testing a feature that will be useful for two non-English wikis? Or do you expect other projects to remove their on-page sister project templates in favour of the sidebar section? Wikis like the English/German Wikipedia?    FDMS  4    22:51, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

FDMS4: There is no need to remove them, but this should be way how to display links in pages where is no such template present and sisterlink exists... JAn Dudík (talk) 09:58, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I prefer this feature over the current template system at en Wikipedia, especially given it's usefulness for integration with Winter. But I don't understand why there is no need to remove the templates/stop placing them out. Wouldn't they be redundant copies of the links in the sidebar? Ypna (talk) 04:43, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Now there is problem, because this extension counts only with sitelinks. But many pages have commons/cat link not via sitelinks but via property P373 (e.g. because of duplicates).

And many other projects pages (wikinews, wikisource) cannot be linked directly, because are specific for certain language only and for another language there are different pages. JAn Dudík (talk) 19:01, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Position in the sidebar

It should be made sure, that "Other projects" are inserted adjacent to the "Languages" section in the sidebar.

E.g. on German Wikipedia, the tools menu is inserted in between both sections destroying the logical arrangement.

Without having looked at the implementation: Might it be, that is is simply inserted after the "Print/Export" section instead of putting it in front of the "Languages" section? Patrick87 (talk) 17:00, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

We had the very same problem on the Russian Wikipedia and fixed it likes this:

The sidebar's order is getting defined in MediaWiki:Sidebar. So in order to have the other project links below the toolbox it had to be explicitly positioned in the MediaWiki:Sidebar like this. Hoo man (talk) 05:49, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Why not move "Wikidata item" to "Wikidata" in other projects sidebar?

It seems odd to have wikidata item in tools and the rest of the sister sites in this new section… Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 06:51, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Though the other projects sidebar is currently a beta feature, so then only the users who have been enabled it can see the wikidata item link? Stryn (talk) 13:26, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Can the beta feature not remove it from one section and add it to the new section? Therefore it would only affect the users who have enabled the beta feature. Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 16:20, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I haven't added a Wikidata link to the "other project" sidebar yet because there remains an unanswered question: When a wiki page has its item that contains a link to a Wikidata page (like w:en:Main page which item (d:Q5296) contains as sitelink for Wikidata d:Wikidata:Main page) should we link under the "Wikidata" label to d:Wikidata:Main page or to d:Q5296, or should we have two links one "Wikidata" to d:Wikidata:Main page and one "Wikidata item" to d:Q5296? Tpt (talk) 11:12, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

This seems like a very specific edge case, I'd link to the wikidata main page in this case. Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 08:14, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

More than 200 (policy pages and templates etc) are linked to Wikidata pages while having Wikidata items. [1] For example, for "Village pump", there is d:Wikidata:Project chat linked through d:Q16503. It's still not that many compared to the 15 million items, though.

If we have to choose one, linking pages rather than items appears to be more helpful for these cases, because data items tend to be almost empty other than site links. Although, if we silently change behavior for a certain class of pages, it might be confusing. whym (talk) 00:20, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Is this change logged as a bug? Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 07:53, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

I would also support adding Wikidata link to "other projects" sidebar currently for those, who have enabled the feature and when it goes default for everyone - then also for them.

I suppose it can be achieved, as it is in this JS script (it replaced the link to Wikidata from tools to other projects sidebar, if enabled). Edgars2007 (talk) 16:09, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Wikinews

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Still in English on all wikis. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:57, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

What namespaces?

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)? Multichill (talk) 20:08, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

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. Hoo man (talk) 00:01, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Also works for me. Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:24, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Works now, probably some bug was fixed on that Monday Multichill (talk) 15:12, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Link texts on special pages

The other project sidebar is also at least on recent changes special page. The thing is that when wiki makes custom link texts they are also shown on recent changes which is not optimal. There project name would be better. Do we need per namespace link texts to fix this? Like description for content namespace and project name for all else? Or could one hack the system message with ifs? Usp (talk) 06:52, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

I believe that the simplest way to archive that is to hack the message system with the parser function #ifeq and the magic word {{NAMESPACENUMBER}} Tpt (talk) 09:31, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

como é essa função beta

se for um um projecto bom eu vou participar; Celo X (talk) 15:17, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

In Russian Wikinews

First, projects sidebar panel must be placed before interwiki. Second, projects sidebar panel must include links to Category of Commons (instead Gallery) and Wikidata item. Third, we want to enable projects sidebar panel by default in Russian Wikinews, how can we do it?

Otherwise, we will have to replace standard projects sidebar panel at a more suitable with JavaScript in Russian Wikinews, as is done in Russian Wikipedia. --sasha (krassotkin) 07:17, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

1. Agree. This will become easier after the interwiki (language links) is collapsed by default (for those people who use JavaScript, but not for those who don't).
2. Up to Commons to decide.
3. Get community consensus and file a bug at Bugzilla. Gryllida 21:03, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Commons main and category namespaces

Normally categories are used on Commons instead of main namespace articles. This means that normally there is no link to Commons in the sidebar. In our scripts on German Wikivoyage we checked both the Commons link and the Commons-category property (P373). If a main namespace article is missing the category was used instead of it. Maybe another opportunity is to show both main and category links. RolandUnger (talk) 16:37, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Additional non-Wikidata entries

Is it possible to add site links which are not stored in Wikidata? RolandUnger (talk) 16:38, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

That is currently not possible. Would be good to make that possible though as that is something Wikivoyage for example could really use. Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 20:42, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

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. RolandUnger (talk) 09:27, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Are there cases where the data couldn't go into Wikidata that is currently used in the sidebar? Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:15, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

It's possible that there are cases where there isn't a 1:1 correspondence, much like inter-language links where

en:voy:Ottawa

and

en:voy:Gatineau

were both linking to

fr:voy:Ottawa-Gatineau

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. K7L (talk) 17:18, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

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. RolandUnger (talk) 10:34, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Overwriting Wikidata interproject links

Similar to interwiki links like [[en:anything]] there should be an opportunity to overwrite entries got from Wikidata. RolandUnger (talk) 06:20, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I think it would make sense to have the Wikidata link in the "Other projects" section, under Wikimedia Commons, vs. where it is now (in the "Tools" section). Thank you for considering this request. Rosiestep (talk) 22:51, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Duplicates other functionality in Wikivoyage

In the "Additional non-Wikidata entries" thread below, RolandUnger mentioned the Wikivoyage extension that creates the "Related sites" section in the sidebar. I wouldn't want "Other projects" to go to full implementation in Wikivoyage in addition to "Related sites". I would want one or the other, not both. ~ Nurg (talk) 07:25, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes. It's just a matter of man-power at the moment. Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 10:04, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Will it be enabled by default?

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? Orlodrim (talk) 17:00, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

There are reservations against doing it everywhere. I am fine with enabling it per-project if a project requests it. Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 17:05, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. There will probably be a poll about that on the French Wikipedia in the next days. Orlodrim (talk) 00:19, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Was it enabled on frwiki? Helder 14:30, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, in January 2015 (see phab:T85971). Orlodrim (talk) 17:25, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

yes in june 2015 Sharvan us (talk) 06:26, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Regrettably, quite unusable yet

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? ŠJů (talk) 01:09, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

olá ,

eu acho que tópicos com outros projetos aceleram o entendimento,a pesquisa e ajudam na satisfação,quanto dos usuários,pois esses podem não encontrar especificamente oque desejam na primeira tentativa... Chanakirotaia (talk) 19:35, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

A good idea

Should be default, and for the old-fashioned: with an opt-out. Jack User (talk) 11:20, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Indeed! I'm working on that :) Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 18:16, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I like it.

But is there an explanation anywhere of which data it's based on, and how to correct it if it's wrong/deficient? The first article I tried looking at, w:Cat,  had only two interproject links, Commons and WikiQuote, but I'm pretty sure Wiktionary's got a Cat page, too... scs (talk) 18:25, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Oh, never mind, I see, Wiktionary's not included yet. scs (talk) 19:12, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

yes "I like it." Elias osebbo (talk) 13:35, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Language version

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. DerFussi (talk) 07:45, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much for this suggestion. I've just created a task on Phabricator for that. Tpt (talk) 08:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Mobile version

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, Nux (talk) 09:37, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Needs an update

@Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) Wasn't this promoted from Beta? If so, could you update this page? Thanks! Kaldari (talk) 19:38, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Good point! I updated the text and removed outdated stuff. Remaining: page title and category. Should it be moved? If so where? Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 15:35, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Maybe just move it to "Wikibase/Other projects sidebar". Kaldari (talk) 20:05, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Is it possible to add Wikidata link here and remove from the Toolbox?

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T223526 Theklan (talk) 09:29, 17 May 2019 (UTC)