Talk: InterWiki

Recent "improvements"

← Moved from Project talk:Community Portal

What's up with all the fancy new stuff? First there's new editing options like editing tips and widescreen (Maybe just in Monaco, but still). Those can be turned off, so no big deal. But why are there now little Wikipedia symbols after Wikipedia links, and how can we make them go away?Entrea [Talk] 17:17, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, those are really obnoxious. 17:18, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

And it's only for Wikipedia links. Other kinds of links are fine.Entrea [Talk] 17:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

The W's are fughleh imo --- -- (s)talkpage 17:34, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

You can adblock http://en.wikipedia.org/favicon.ico and the W will disappear, unfortunately the space remains.-- 18:24, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Or hide it with your user .css. -- AT(talk | contribs) 18:34, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

How the hell did you do that at the exact same time as me, and post it before me.....?-- 18:37, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Ninja Tricks! -- AT(talk | contribs) 18:41, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll give it to you that yours worked right the first time, my test was flawed and showed it working when it really wasn't so you beat me to the punch... Anyways putting:

 #bodyContent a[href^="http://en.wikipedia.org/"] {
 background: none;
 padding-right: 0px;
}

into your .css removes it.-- 18:45, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Will that work with Monaco? 21:50, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

That will work in Monaco. But it would only affect you and not other ppl looking at your user page. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 22:29, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I was the one who added the wikipedia icon. I feel sad that those don't have warning icons telling ppl "CLICK ON THIS AND YOU WILL LEAVE GUILD WIKI!" Well they do have a different shade of blue but most of the time it's not really noticable... The CSS rule that produced the icon is gonna change soon btw, so the workaround will needed to be changed when that happens. On your user pages, class="plainlinks" is supposed to hide it anyways, but I would advocate we DO accept the use of the mini-icon on main articles to warn users. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 22:11, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

On the plus side, pseudo external links like a link to the history of a GuildWiki article no longer needs class="plainlinks" to hide the external link icon. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 22:17, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I think it's ugly and visually disruptive, and it's breaking my userboxes. Did anyone actually complain that links were hijacking their browsers and spiriting them away to Wikipedia? 22:22, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

For your personal use, consider class="plainlinks" so the icon is hidden for everybody. Nobody complained to me, but it's an issue that has bothered me for a very long time (the question of why normal "external links" get a warning icon and interwiki links going to external sites don't). -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 22:24, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Now if I only knew how that plainlinks worked... --- -- (s)talkpage 22:30, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

If you have a table, span, div, or basically any element, and give it a plainlinks tag, then it won't have the icon even though it's an external link. We used to use it on lots of templates to hide the external link icon for edit links and history links that point back to ourselves. Now it no longer is necessary (unless you use capitalization in your external links). -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 22:37, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

The icon has been changed from Wikipedia's favicon (which is ugly) to a shrunken version of their sphere logo (which looks less bad). Refresh your cache to see the difference. I strongly advocate the use of it in the main article namespace, and I advocate that users who which to hide it on their userpages should hide it via class="plainlinks" like how we hide hide typical external link icons. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 22:27, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Also coming soon are icons for links to GWW and GW2W. By default I'm gonna take their favicon. If you have a better image to offer (at most 19 px high, like our signature policy) that clearly identifies those sites, feel free to propose to use those instead of their default favicons. I'm also gonna have *something* for any generic inter-wiki links (so links to another wiki will be different from links to a random external website). Taking graphical suggestions right now, or you have to put up with whatever my artistic ability is able to cook up. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 22:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

No matter how I say this I'm going to sound lazy and rude, so please forgive me. Why should I have to change my design because you decided to fix a problem that didn't exist? 22:44, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

it's a problem nobody complained about, but oftentimes the assumption that it can't be fixed anyways stops ppl from complaining. In fact, links pointing back to GuildWiki itself having external link icon HAS been a problem too, but you don't see anyone complaining either. Tell me, would you rather have all external link icons disappear, or do you just not like Wikipedia have its own unique icon, or do you really believe all external links should have the icon whereas all interwiki links pointing to a different website should not have an icon? -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 22:49, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the point of an external link icon is to alert the player clicking on it that it may be inappropriate content, or a rickroll. A link with no icon either means plainlinks, which is extra effort and most people don't know about it, or the content is benign. The point of using interwiki links at all is so you don't have an external link icon, because it's disruptive and annoying. I have wikipedia links on MANY userspace pages, and now I have little deflated soccer balls everywhere. 22:53, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

WARNING: THE NEXT TWO LINKS CONTAIN INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT, DON'T CLICK IF YOU WOULD GET OFFENDED. Some stuff on Uncyclopedia and even Wikipedia can be considered quite inapprorpiate from our point of view, and probably wouldn't even be allowed to be posted on our own user pages. The point of interwiki links is a way to link to another wiki using relative typical wiki-syntax (which is also usually shorter), the point is not to circumvent the icon assuming the target is benign. Otherwise, there would've been a list of benign websites (which can be updated by the wiki's administration) who are not wikis and can also circumvent the external icon by default. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 22:57, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Update: Known bug: the icon goes away when the link is "active" (such as right when you click on it). Fixing this issue will break current workarounds, so I'm not going to fix it until the next time the code gets update (when the workaround is gonna break anyways). class="plainlinks" will always hide the icons regardless. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 23:02, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, PanSola, but I also hate the icon and would like it to go away very much :/ Personally, I just look at mu browser bar before clicking almost every link to check where it's pointing me to. The icon looks very ugly in Trivia sections especially. If anything you should just change the color of the link but I don't think even that is needed... — Poki#3 , 01:05, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

If we have to have an icon after links like this, I'd prefer we stick with the standard external link icon for everything instead of trying to make customized icons for different sites. Having little custom gifs like this makes [[[Pogahn_Passage_%28Mission%29#Trivia|some|pages]]] look pretty cluttered, like Poki said. Granted, the external link icon wouldn't reduce the actual clutter, but it wouldn't seem as bad since most people are already used to it.

Also, and I'm not trying to sound spiteful here, but what happened to waiting for community consensus before implementing big changes? Something like this, that automatically affects the entire wiki whether users want it or not would be, in my mind, something that requires community approval before changing. —Dr Ishmael 01:45, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the good doctor. Unilateral action is seldom good, especially when it affects all users. This should have been discussed before implementation. I shouldn't have to use custom stylesheets to hide a feature that the majority of commenters here dislike. -- AT(talk | contribs) 02:07, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Apologies. Regarding "what happened to waiting for community consensus before implementing big changes?", I had not anticipated this to be perceived as a big change. True, it affects every user, but it only affects pages pointing to Wikipedia, which my perception at the time of implementation was a trivial minority in unimportant places. I just spent about 10 minutes hitting Special:Random, and it does seem that the impact on main space articles is fairly insignificant (with few particular cases). Image pages and user pages slipped under my radar because I'm mostly tunnel-visioned at the main articles of the wiki.

Amids the complains above, few of you have attempted to touch upon the questions I've raised (brownie points to ishmael for paying attention to them). This was what I was originally planning on having:

1. Have all links pointing to other websites have the regular external link icon.
2. Consider giving interwiki links a special icon to show they point to another "wiki", as opposed to a random website.
3. Give a few specific other wikis unique icons so they are easily recognized. Candidates include:
   • PvXWiki
   • GWW
   • GW2W
   • Wikipedia
   • others that ppl think are important enough relative to this wiki.

From the feedback of the ~7 people above, it sounds like having any icon at all is a bad idea. So now I will begin entertaining the idea of removing the icon from all external links. Removing icons to external links, from my perspective, has about 100x impact compared to adding the Wikipedia icon. Now taking comments. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 03:21, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I like a warning that its not an interwiki link. If I end up wikipedia or something thats no big deal. The external link icon is useful. If you think it would help, I would support changing the color of interwiki links slightly but otherwise I think everything is fine the way it is. —♥Jedi♥Rogue♥ 04:07, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I know that it's sort of a wiki motto to "find something and improve it," but in this case it is my honest opinion that you've happened upon a something that doesn't need to be changed. 05:27, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I also like having the regular external icon, mostly because the color difference is so minor - not to mention it's probably very useful to colorblind people. I definitely vote we should keep that. One idea I just had for interwiki icons (no clue what this would actually look like, or if it's possible) is to take the external one and simply add the wiki's acronym (GWW, GW2W, WP, PvX) to it in that "tiny-text" font people use to cram movie quotes into LJ icons. Some people may not recognize what those acronyms mean immediately, but I think they'd catch on quickly. —Dr Ishmael 05:46, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) @_@reanor 05:59, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I think Pan pulled a Warwick with this! Bad Pan!—♥Jedi♥Rogue♥ 16:28, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Pan has always been a troublemaker- When I was being bad, I was actually doing a Pan! —Warw/Wick 16:42, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, keep the external link icons. Also, since when do internal external links show up as normal links?Entrea [Talk] 22:18, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Leave the links alone! Leave 'em alone! I'm serious!! They didn't do anything to you!!! — Poki#3 , 23:02, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Entrea: since the same change I did that caused everyone to complain shit )-: -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 01:41, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Well that change at least is good. Links to the wiki always look like wiki links now!Entrea [Talk] 01:50, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Except when you capitalize some letters in the domain name. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 02:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposal

• To reduce clutter, all external links and interwiki will NOT have a warning icon.
• When the user's mouse hovers over the link, and when the link is otherwise considered active, a warning icon will appear
  • Position of warning icon can either be:
    • in the middle of the link as some sort of ambient background (in general, harder to read)
    • to the right of the link. Text right of the link will automatically move to adjust and make space
  • Specific wikis may have non-generic icons for them for easier identification.

Please comment. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 21:36, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Are the comments elsewhere? It's been a month of no comments. So it may have been decided to do what I ask for: keep the box+arrow icon for all external links (including interwiki); I can see by the URL where it goes. Making the history/diff links to our wiki looklike internal links was a very good idea and that does a lot to remove clutter. --mendel 08:04, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki links currently use the external link color, but not the icon. Personally, I like that - the different shade tells me it's not a local link, but it's also obvious that it's not a Rickroll or anything like that. I feel that using the icon for interwiki links isn't really necessary. —Dr Ishmael 15:17, 11 June 2008 (UTC)