Long message coming up... please be brave and take a look :)
This is a proposal to try and bring order to the messy area of interwiki
linking
and interwiki prefixes, particularly for non-WMF users of MediaWiki.
At the moment, anyone who installs MediaWiki gets a default interwiki table
that
is hopelessly out of date. Some of the URLs listed there have seemingly
been
broken for 7 years [1]. Meanwhile, WMF wikis have access to a nice, updated
interwiki map, stored on Meta, that is difficult for anyone else to use.
Clearly something needs to be done to sort this out.
What I propose we do to improve the situation is along the lines of bug
58369:
1. Split the existing interwiki map on Meta [2] into a "global interwiki
map",
located on MediaWiki.org (draft at [3]), and a "WMF-specific interwiki
map"
on Meta (draft at [4]). Wikimedia-specific interwiki prefixes, like
bugzilla:, gerrit:, and irc: would be located in the map on Meta,
whereas
general-purpose interwikis, like orthodoxwiki: and wikisource: would go
to
the "global map" at MediaWiki.org.
2. Create a bot, similar to l10n-bot, that periodically updates the default
interwiki data in mediawiki/core based on the contents of the global
map.
(Right now, the default map is duplicated in two different formats [5]
[6]
which is quite messy.)
3. Write a version of the rebuildInterwiki.php maintenance script [7] that
can
be bundled with MediaWiki, and which can be run by server admins to pull
in
new entries to their interwiki table from the global map.
This way, fresh installations of MediaWiki get a set of current, useful
interwiki prefixes, and they have the ability to pull in updates as
required.
It also has the benefit of separating out the WMF-specific stuff from the
global
MediaWiki logic, which is a win for external users of MW.
Two other things it would be nice to do:
* Define a proper scope for the interwiki map. At the moment it is a bit
unclear what should and shouldn't be there. The fact that we currently
have
a Linux users' group from New Zealand and someone's personal blog on the
map
suggests the scope of the map have not been well thought out over the
years.
My suggested criterion at [3] is:
"Most well-established and active wikis should have interwiki
prefixes, regardless of whether or not they are using MediaWiki
software.
Sites that are not wikis may be acceptable in some cases,
particularly if they are very commonly linked to (e.g. Google,
OEIS)."
* Take this opportunity to CLEAN UP the global interwiki map!
** Many of the links are long dead.
** Many new wikis have sprung up in the last few years that deserve to be
added.
** Broken prefixes can be moved to the WMF-specific map so existing links on
WMF sites can be cleaned up and dealt with appropriately.
** We could add API URLs to fill the iw_api column in the database
(currently
empty by default).
I'm interested to hear your thoughts on these ideas.
Sorry for the long message, but I really think this topic has been neglected
for such a long time.
TTO
----
PS. I am aware of an RFC on MediaWiki.org relating to this, but I can't see
that
gaining traction any time soon. This proposal would be a more light-weight
way
of dealing with the problem at hand.
[1] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/84303/
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:This,_that_and_the_other/Interwiki_map
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:This,_that_and_the_other/Local_interwiki_map
[5]
http://git.wikimedia.org/blob/mediawiki%2Fcore.git/master/maintenance%2Finterwiki.list
[6]
http://git.wikimedia.org/blob/mediawiki%2Fcore.git/master/maintenance%2Finterwiki.sql
[7]
https://git.wikimedia.org/blob/mediawiki%2Fextensions%2FWikimediaMaintenance.git/master/rebuildInterwiki.php
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