Help:Sitelinks
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![]() | This page in a nutshell: Sitelinks are special links that contain a site and a page title, and go from individual items in Wikidata to pages on Wikimedia projects. |
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/WD-sitelinks2.0.png/330px-WD-sitelinks2.0.png)
Sitelinks (also known as interwiki links or interlanguage links) are special links that contain a site and a page title, and go from individual items in Wikidata to pages on other Wikimedia sites such as Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikivoyage.
Language-independent general principles
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Complete_graph_K7.svg/150px-Complete_graph_K7.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Star_network_7.svg/150px-Star_network_7.svg.png)
Usage
[edit]Typically items have at least one corresponding page on a Wikimedia site such as Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, Wikiquote, or Wikimedia Commons (however, there are some exceptions to this rule). Having at least one sitelink ensures that an item meets Wikidata's notability criteria. Sitelinks are also useful for ensuring that items in Wikidata represent only one unique concept. In cases when more than one item could reasonably correspond to the same Wikimedia page, it is likely that the items should be merged together.
Sitelinks serve as a replacement for a previous system of interlanguage links that was used to link from a page in one language on a Wikimedia site to an equivalent page in another language, for example the English Wikipedia page on Paris to the French Wikipedia page on Paris. These interlanguage links used to be stored locally on each Wikimedia site and maintained separately in each language so that if the name of a page on one Wikimedia site changed, then the other Wikimedia sites in each language would need to have their links updated to reflect the changes. Sitelinks thereby improve upon this system by having everything centralized in Wikidata. Sitelinks can have attached badges and will usually show that a page has been a featured article, or of similar status.
Linking to Wikimedia site pages
[edit]Wikidata currently supports sitelinks for most Wikimedia projects (except Incubator, see phab:T54971). The site id for English Wikipedia is enwiki, for French Wikipedia frwiki and so on and for Commons commonswiki. The site id for English Wikimedia projects are enwikinews, enwikiquote, enwikisource, enwikivoyage etcetera.
Sitelinks are for linking items to standalone pages that already exist on Wikimedia sites. Wikidata sitelinks do not support anchors (links to a specific section of a page). Anchors are preceded by the "#" character on Wikimedia sites.
For example, a sitelink for the item for The Beatles (Q1299) should only link to the Wikipedia page on The Beatles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles) — and not any sections of that page, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles#Discography. Moreover, it's not possible for any item on Wikidata to link to just the Discography section of The Beatles page because this would require an anchor link. However, it would be possible to link a different item, The Beatles discography (Q829965) to a different Wikipedia page (i.e. one that is completely devoted to The Beatles discography, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_discography).
Note that each Wikimedia/Wikipedia page can only have one sitelink to any one Wikidata item page. You will receive an error message when attempting to add a new sitelink if the page is already connected to another item page (even when trying to link to a redirect page pointing to this particular page). If you receive an error message but believe the item you are editing is the most appropriate one for a sitelink, you may need to merge two items.
Please consult Help:Merge or visit Wikidata:Interwiki conflicts to report a conflict and ask for others to look at the situation.
To connect a redirect page to a Wikidata item, you need to also add a redirect badge (usually intentional sitelink to redirect (Q70894304)) to it. To add a badge, click the icon next to the input field for the page title when adding the sitelink. Previously you can alternatively use local interlanguage links; this is no longer recommended.
A more detailed discussion on how to connect multiple related pages to two or more Wikipedia language editions: Help:Handling sitelinks overlapping multiple items.
![]() | Warning: Sometimes you will encounter multiple items with sitelinks to the same Wikimedia page. This is called a true duplicate. See that page for why it happens and how to fix it. |
Wiktionary
[edit]Sitelinks for Wiktionary have specific tools and rules described on Wikidata:Wiktionary/Sitelinks.
Languages
[edit]Sitelinks can be added to Wikimedia sites in more than 200 languages. When adding a sitelink for an item, you will need to input both the language of the Wikimedia site page that the item corresponds to and the title of the page as it appears on the Wikimedia site. You can only add a sitelink for a language and a Wikimedia site if a page on that language version of the Wikimedia site already exists.
Badges
[edit]Badges for good and featured articles are stored on Wikidata right in front of the sitelink.
-
At Wikidata: assigning Badges
Namespaces
[edit]The Wikidata community agreed in an RFC that most namespaces of Wikimedia projects other than "User" are eligible for storage on Wikidata. This means that in addition to sitelinks for pages like Wikipedia articles and Wikisource texts, sitelinks for categories, templates, and help pages can also be stored in Wikidata. For an example of a Wikidata item referring to a namespace, see item Wikimedia category (Q4167836), which includes sitelinks to w:Wikipedia:Categorization, q:Help:Category, and voy:Wikivoyage:Categories.
Note that when adding a sitelink for a page that is outside of a Wikimedia site's main namespace, you need to keep the namespace in the page title.
Examples:
Wikidata item: Wikimedia category (Q4167836)
Wikiquote page to add as sitelink: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Help:Category
Wikimedia site to add under "Language Code": English enwikiquote
Page title to add under "Linked page": Help:Category
Wikidata item: Joan of Arc (Q7226)
Wikiquote page to add as sitelink: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc
Wikiquote site to add under "Language Code": English enwikiquote
Page title to add under "Linked page": Joan of Arc
Guidelines for using sitelinks on other Wikimedia sites
[edit]Managing Wikidata sitelinks
[edit]Editors on the English Wikipedia have created a great page with all the necessary information for editors. Much of the information will be relevant to contributors on other Wikimedia projects too.
Suppression of Wikidata links
[edit]An individual page on a Wikimedia site can completely suppress Wikidata sitelinks by using the {{noexternallanglinks}} magic word. The magic word also supports suppression of sitelinks from only specific languages, for example, "{{noexternallanglinks:es|fr|it}}" would suppress only the Spanish, French, and Italian links. Neither of these uses prevents Wikidata from listing all sitelinks of an item.
Interlanguage links with anchors
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Languages_-_sitelinks.png/220px-Languages_-_sitelinks.png)
In the previous system of interlanguage links, an anchor link was used when a Wikimedia site did not have an exact match in another language for a corresponding page, but did have a page that dealt in part with the same subject. However, Wikidata does not support anchors as sitelinks. Previously, it is a practice to retain interlanguage links with anchors locally on the Wikimedia sites (not Wikidata); this is no longer recommended.
If you want to connect a section of a page (also called an anchor) to a Wikidata item, first find an appropriate redirect to that anchor (if none exists, create one), then connect the redirect to the item using Linking to Wikimedia site pages above.
Talk pages
[edit]When linking from a Wikidata talk page (or most other pages other than items) to another Wikimedia project, a prefix is used in the wiki markup. For example, if one wished to link to the documentation about JSON format on mediawiki.org, one could write [[mediawikiwiki:Wikibase/DataModel/JSON]]
and the result would be mediawikiwiki:Wikibase/DataModel/JSON
.
A table of available prefixes may be found at Special:Interwiki.
Page renames
[edit]When a page is renamed on a client wiki, the page move automatically updates the sitelink at Wikidata, if the renaming user has an active account on Wikidata.
Scenario: A new contributor at English Wikipedia, who has never visited Wikidata, renames an article. The sitelink at Wikidata will continue to point to the page title that has become a redirect.
When page moves aren't reflected on Wikidata, sometimes a second item for the new page title is created, leading to a duplicate on Wikidata. These should be merged.
A bot or Wikibase function could update sitelinks based on the pagemove log at Wikipedia (or other client wikis).
This is currently (November 2021) being done for German Wikipedia (Q48183) and English Wikipedia (Q328) by User:Krdbot.
It's appreciated if users who rename pages on client wikis log in to Wikidata once to create an account.
See also
[edit]For related Help pages, see:
- Help:Items, which explains what items are and what rules they follow
- Help:Merge, which explains what merges are and how to perform one
- Help:Badges, which explains badges
For additional information and guidance, see:
- Project chat, for discussing all and any aspects of Wikidata
- Wikidata:Glossary, the glossary of terms used in this and other Help pages
- Help:FAQ, frequently asked questions asked and answered by the Wikidata community
- Help:Contents, the Help portal featuring all the documentation available for Wikidata