Help talk:Link/Archive 1

It's hard to understand what you meant to ask, since you didn't explain what you mean by print, or what purpose this is for. Did you mean that you want to display red links as non-linked plain text on wiki pages (not Wikipedia?)? The hypothetical syntax of your example appears to be for marking up specific links with this property – is that what you want? --83.255.55.91 (talk) 19:10, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere

Please see Wikipedia talk:Red link#Proposal regarding redlinks in navigation templates  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:50, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi! You may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Saxon genitive and piping. It is about [[George Washington|George Washington's]] administration vs. [[George Washington]]'s administration wikilinks. Thanks in advance! -- Basilicofresco (msg) 04:55, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I am attempting to make a link to a subsection of another page, and the link keeps taking me to the bottom of the page instead of the subsection. Anyone know how to fix this?

Example: {{OP|Document:MainSection#subsectiontitle|subSectiontitle}}

This link, goes to the bottom of the "Document" instead of the "subsectiontitle". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jhmechanic (talk • contribs) 17:32, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

If you give us a

OP}} apparently doesn't take any parameters. --David Biddulph (talk

) 17:41, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. See altered {{About}} template. Mathglot (talk) 20:03, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

The article needs to have a treatment of how to handle linking to section titles which have embedded slashes, and why it doesn't work "the normal way" but requires an escape; for example: #Gender identity and sexuality/sexual orientation. This arose from a question on my Talk page. I answered in part, but didn't go into detail about where the 2F escape comes from, because I was worried about burying a new user in TMI about an arcane topic. But a full explanation of the issue would be completely appropriate here at Help:Link.

There is already a section

The new treatment might also mention in passing that the Manual of Style

@Mathglot: Slashes work fine in section links: Social construction of gender#Gender identity and sexuality/sexual orientation. The problem in a question on your Talk page was wrong addition of "_2" to a link. The characters [ ] { | } do require encoding in section links. I have added mention of that.[4] PrimeHunter (talk) 13:54, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Don't know where else to take this issue, but the "Highlight duplicate links" button in the "tools" section has been malfunctioning for a while. Before, it distinguished between the lead and the article body when highlighting duplinks, but now it counts links in the article body as duplinks if they are linked in the intro, which makes the feature pretty much useless. Can someone change it back to how it was? FunkMonk (talk) 20:20, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@

WP:VPT and perhaps one of the project's scripting experts will take a look. -- John of Reading (talk

) 06:18, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! FunkMonk (talk) 14:00, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

URLs like https://www.google.com/search?q="awarded+a+royal+charter" render as:

https://www.google.com/search?q="awarded+a+royal+charter"

or, in square brackets, as:

"awarded+a+royal+charter"

Can someone add a note on how to use them correctly, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:27, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

You could try https://www.google.com/search?q=%22awarded+a+royal+charter%22 which renders as https://www.google.com/search?q=%22awarded+a+royal+charter%22 and works as a link. If you want it to display with the quote marks you can use [https://www.google.com/search?q=%22awarded+a+royal+charter%22 https://www.google.com/search?q="awarded+a+royal+charter"] which renders as https://www.google.com/search?q="awarded+a+royal+charter" --David Biddulph (talk) 08:44, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

See also Help:URL#Linking to URLs which is linked in Help:Link#External links. For Google searches we also have {{Google}}. {{Google|"awarded a royal charter"}} produces "awarded a royal charter". PrimeHunter (talk) 10:21, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi all,

I have been looking around (Inlcuding in the WP:WikiProject Red Link Recovery) for information on how to remove all red links from an article (The article in question 2002 WPA World Nine-ball Championship, was translated from the German Wikipedia; which has red links, and more pool players on), as the ones that have been translated are non-notable. The only thing I've seen is that it may be possible via AWB; but didn't go into details. Is there any way to change this information (as I may need to use this more than once, and manually it's quite the job)? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:45, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't know a tool but here is a method using regular expressions in the source editor. It skips piped links and some things can go wrong. Click "Advanced" in the toolbar above the edit area to show the advanced menu. Click the magnifying glass icon at the right to get a popup search and replace box. Enter \[\[([^\|]*?)\]\] at "Search for:". Enter {{subst:#ifexist:$1|[[$1]]|$1}} at "Replace with:". Make a checkmark at "Treat search string as a regular expression". Click "Replace all". The source should now have a lot of ifexist code but don't worry yet. Click "Show changes" to see the source changes which will be performed on save. If it looks OK then save. Otherwise abandon the edit or make manual changes. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:24, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

MY user page is Rosogolla Film, Wikipedia published my page, Rasgulla Film, Which is not correct. Page link URL is redirect with Rusgulla desert, I want ot remove this URL. How to solve my problem. Please help me. Bhattacharya rani (talk) 11:25, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Your request is unclear. Your user page is

Rosogolla, Rasgulla, but you didn't actually give the name of a single of those pages. Also be clear about whether you really want to remove a url or only change a redirect at that url into an article. PrimeHunter (talk

) 11:51, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Is there a way to have a link that could e.g. contain ~~~~? I tried the magic words like fullurl, but the only way to prevent the conversion to a signature seems to be <nowiki>. Watchduck (quack) 15:40, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

@Watchduck: No page at Wikipedia can have three or more consecutive tildes in its name; the software doesn't allow it. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Three consecutive tildes. You can place three or more tildes on the right of a piped link; one way is to use nowiki like this ~~~~, another is to break up the sequence like this ~~~~ or like this ~~~~ (view the source to see the coding). -- John of Reading (talk) 16:06, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

@Watchduck: You didn't say whether it's for external links or wikilinks. There are ways for external links. You can percent-encode ~ as %7E like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%7E%7E%7E%7E, or you can insert a comment in the url like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/~~<!---->~~ which produces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/~~~~. It's not possible in wikilinks, and there couldn't be a target page if it was possible. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Three consecutive tildes says: "Titles cannot contain 3 or more consecutive tildes". That's why https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/~~~~ or variations like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A~~~B say "Bad title" and "The requested page title contains invalid magic tilde sequence (~~~)." (this is Mediawiki:Title-invalid-magic-tilde). MediaWiki prevents wikilinks to such invalid titles. Two tildes are allowed. [[~~]] produces ~~. [[~<!---->~]] works and produces ~~, so wikilinks can contain comments. But [[~~<!---->~~]] fails and produces the unlinked [[~~~~]] with displayed brackets. It's the same for other wikilinks with at least 3 consecutive tildes, e.g. [[A~~~B]]. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:30, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the hint with <!---->. I meant external links like http://example.com?names=~~~~. I am aware of percent-encoding, but in the case that made me ask that would not help. The tildas are meant as separators of strings that may be empty, buy may also contain tildas: http://example.com?names=Huey~Dewey~Louie~non%257Econformist. This query string encodes four names, and the last one is non~conformist. Percent-encoding states that the tilda is not a reserved character, so there should be nothing wrong with this URL. It would be good to have a template that makes sure all legal URLs can actually be used. Would that be technically possible? 20:43, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

@Watchduck: I don't know how your example was constructed but it fails because double percent encoding was used on ~. First it was encoded as %7E and then % in that was encoded as %25, producing %257E. This is not a valid encoding of ~. No encoding http://example.com?names=Huey~Dewey~Louie~non~conformist or one encoding http://example.com?names=Huey~Dewey~Louie~non%7Econformist both work. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:24, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Believe it or not, but in my use case %257E is actually the right solution. I did not come up with it, it's what strict-uri-encode gives me. The two URLs you wrote "both work", but they both encode five names, the last two non and conformist.

Anyway, do you think a template could do something like including <!---->? Are there other examples of legal URLs that could be misinterpreted as wiki syntax? http://example.com?names=---- works fine (despite <hr>). Watchduck (quack) 23:56, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

@Watchduck: I don't know what your unspecified site requires but %257E is not a valid percent encoding of ~. Are you sure you used strict-uri-encode correctly? I don't have the tool but suspect you asked it to encode the already encoded http://example.com?names=Huey~Dewey~Louie~non%7Econformist. Your browser address bar may display the same for this and for http://example.com?names=Huey~Dewey~Louie~non~conformist, but they are not the same and your browser may copy-paste them differently from the address bar. Four ---- only make a horizontal rule <hr /> at the start of a line. A template could not be called with a plain text ~~~~ written in the wikitext without nowiki, comment tags or something else, because it would be converted to a signature as soon as the page is saved. Three consecutive tildes in url's is rare. A common issue is square brackets, e.g. http://example.com?[string] producing http://example.com?[string] while http://example.com?%5Bstring%5D works. See more at Help:URL. If you try to call a template with a url as a parameter then you get trouble with some allowed url characters being interpreted as wiki syntax. I don't think a general solution is possible where the wikitext can contain any valid url without modifications. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:51, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Bot requests § Fixing broken shortcuts to sections. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:54, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

I've collated and extended the available help on this worthy topic. Feel free to share your thoughts on my efforts

Question: Is there a way to create a consistent anchor or link in a Talk page so the the anchor or link still works after the relevant section has been archived? Thanks. Finney1234 (talk) 02:07, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

@Finney1234: No, that is not possible. I have occasionally made both a normal wikilink which will break on archiving and a permanent link which will continue to work but only show the page as it looked when the link was made. Example:

"As I posted to

original research

and would not belong in Wikipedia even if it was correct."

The archived section at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1089#area of a circle has two newer posts which aren't in the permanent link. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:44, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. A permanent link wouldn't be ideal, but might be semi-adequate. Finney1234 (talk) 03:07, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

None of the magic words fix this issue in any way that I could work out: Try either linking or wikilinking to this lovely Talk thread using magic words (and please post if you can): Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_41#{{Cite_book}}_and_|contribution_problems. I did it with a simple online percent-encoder, but I don't see how a magic word can do it without first encoding some of the text manually. So some kind of web app has to be linked to. If there's an appropriate tool (open source or whatever) or an alternative simple method that the community would prefer, list it or replace it later. Otherwise I'll add this one in a week or so. SamuelRiv (talk) 01:57, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

This will work: Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_41#.7B.7BCite_book.7D.7D_and_.7Ccontribution_problems, but its not an obvious solution. Another would be to edit that archive and put a sensible {{anchor}} there. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:42, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

Please post the source for how you made the substitution. It's unreasonable to ask a user to manually substitute a hypothetical Help_talk:Template#Who_decided_to_make_us_type_{{#ifeq:{{{1|{{{2|{{{3|}}}}}}}}}}}??? SamuelRiv (talk) 12:24, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

I inspected the HTML code of the target page and used the id for that section; I wrote it isn't an obvious solution. AFAICS there is no simple way (other than putting a sensible anchor there). -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 17:54, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

This combines three different tricks: Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 41#{{Cite_book}}_and_|contribution_problems. It works but is hard to do. I don't know a tool but fiddled with it manually. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:28, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

It's easier if you also post the code so that we can see it instead of checking the source page.

It works in this case of templates, but if it doesn't work for nested brackets then the point remains the same. So it's clear there's no objections to an external tool. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:45, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

My code was: [[Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 41#{{anchorencode:{<nowiki/>{Cite book}<nowiki/>} and {{!}}contribution problems}}]]. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:18, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

I reverted the supplied example. I don't have anything against it technically, but it ambushes the reader with a serious case of technobabble, and I just want us to first ask ourselves: is it worth it?

What I mean is, if we identify a real need to go into this level of detail, we must ensure we bring our readers along. As written, the section made a lot of assumptions of the technical competence of the reader, and did not introduce the problem. Also, can we come up with a less absurdly complex example to get the same point across? Isn't it much simpler to do the "try it out and see what the web browser resolves it to" method?

I'm not saying I have the answers. (I'm not even entirely sure I understand the question!) I just think a second pass on this would be worthwhile. If y'all disagree, feel free to undo the undo and not much time was lost.

The question is discussed above. It is a problem and the solution is not trivial. As to your objections: The problem was introduced and exemplified; there are a number of technical matters raised in the help page, and interested readers will find them, eh, helpful; the removed text is quite concise and not overly long and certainly doesn't "babble"; the page doesn't have to bring every reader along – those with simple questions will just skip sections they're not interested in – the page has to cater for a wide readership. I suggest to restore SamuelRiv's text. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:40, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

A second pass? You have yet to make a first pass. Please pass. Otherwise get out of the left lane (or right if you're Imperial). SamuelRiv (talk) 13:02, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

There are problems with the addition as written, most notably it ignores the fact that this is an automated version of the manual process described directly above, but if we think it's worth mentioning the W3 School percent encoder, the problems are cosmetic and easily fixed. (I'd be happy to do it.) I think it's probably worth adding. Dan Bloch (talk) 16:09, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Nowhere in the article (or anywhere on wikimedia help sites that I've found) does it mention that special characters are allowed in section headings, or how the characters should be encoded properly be encoded in wikilinks when an automated process is desired (that is, if any wiki parser functions will work, and thus maybe imply that an automated process is currently not implemented on-site as far as we know). Several parser functions are mentioned here and in other help documents, so naturally a user (template coder) would try them out. One immediate purpose is that someone who maybe wants to write a script or template to parse section links should be aware that these types of links exist.

Do you really want to just list your username on the Help page instead of W3 Schools (which specifies NC fair use, which is better than the copyright info from the other online converters I found)? Maybe we can code a template with the phrase "send all links you want parsed to Danbloch" -- I'm pretty sure there's a python library that does that. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:13, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Two paragraphs above the text you added, it says, "Some characters in a web address link need to be represented as escape characters because they are reserved for Wikipedia edits. Examples include %5B for [, ..." But also, are you replying to some other message? Mine said it's probably worth adding. Dan Bloch (talk) 18:08, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

The sentence is clearly in the context of external links, and the subject of the paragraph is external links. It is confusing because the preceding and following paragraphs then refer at least in part to wikilinks. And again, this is important to specify in one way or another and to offer a solution (or note the lack thereof) because the only automated parsing is done by MW and the local browser, and MW does not otherwise error-correct for a section heading that it cannot automatically parse in a section wikilink.

If you think it should go in but have other suggestions for how to word it, then feel free to edit the page. I don't see why it should all be removed until I can magically determine what everyone likes. SamuelRiv (talk) 15:13, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, you have a consensus. Feel free to add it back. Dan Bloch (talk) 16:27, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Wikilinks to sections of an article don't seem to work in the IOS app when the target is within the same article. Is that a known issue and if so, is there a workaround using anchors or explicit HTML? Onceler (talk) 19:27, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

On which page and which link did you observe this behaviour? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:53, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

In the following:

Article:Tim Bray

Wikilink:Antarctica Systems

Onceler (talk) 11:41, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

What do you mean by "don't seem to work"? Instead of scrolling to that section, what happens? BTW, you ought to construct intra-article links without the article name: not [[Tim Bray#Antarctica Systems|Antarctica Systems]] but [[#Antarctica Systems|Antarctica Systems]]. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:55, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

What I mean is that what happens is nothing: selecting the link takes you to where you already were. Instead of changing the focus to the linked section as expected, the view just remains the same.

Thanks for the tip. I don’t disagree about starting section links to elsewhere in the same article with the ‘#’ directly, omitting the redundant article name, but that didn’t seem to help when I tried to edit it. This link cited as an example was already in that form when I first found it. Onceler (talk) 02:47, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

I tried that link with the Android app, and behaved as expected – it scrolled to the section. The mechanism for jumping to an internal named link is the same as jumping to sections from the table of contents. Does that work? According to mw:Wikimedia Apps/iOS FAQ#Where do I report bugs?, there's a method in the app via its "Settings"/"Help and feedback"/"Report a bug" facility. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:11, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Which is preferred, a redirect (e.g. [[

WP:NOTBROKEN; that is, the redirect is preferred. Dan Bloch (talk

) 17:58, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

For me, I would prefer to use non-redirect wikilink and add the pipe link to it, so yes I'll choose the later option. Chongkian (talk) 03:04, 13 December 2022 (UTC)