Interwiki

Interwiki Interwiki links allow you to easily link to other wikis or websites without having to type out the entire URL

Interwiki links are special types of links to websites off your wiki that look just like normal links.

So, MediaWiki knows where you want to link to, interwiki links need a prefix followed by the page you're linking to.

For example, if you were to link to the page "Wikipedia:Requirements for adminship" on the English Wikipedia, a direct link to it would look like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requirements_for_adminship or if you add text to it, like this. If you were to use an interwiki link, you could use [[w:Wikipedia:Requirements for adminship]] instead of the link which would result in this: w:Wikipedia:Requirements for adminship, or if you added text, like this.

How to use

Interwiki links work just like normal links, the only difference is that you need to tell MediaWiki where you're linking to. To do this, you need to add a prefix that has a website assigned to it to tell MediaWiki where to send users to.

For example, Miraheze has globally assigned the w prefix to the English Wikipedia and will redirect you to any article on there if you prefix the link with w (e.g. [[w:Wikipedia:Requirements for adminship]] will redirect you to the English Wikipedia article "Wikipedia:Requirements for adminship"). To check what websites are usable by default via interwiki, check Special:Interwiki here on Miraheze Meta.

For your safety, interwiki prefixes need to be added manually to your local interwiki table by a global Interwiki administrator to make sure no one can trick users into clicking a link which redirects them to an unsafe website. To learn how to request a new website added to your local interwiki table, see the Requesting additions section.

Linking to other Miraheze wikis

To link to any Miraheze wiki through Interwiki links, simply use the following format: [[mh:<SUBDOMAIN>:<PAGE>]]. For example, to link to the page "TestWiki:Testing pages" on the Public Test Wiki (test.miraheze.org), you can use [[mh:test:TestWiki:Testing pages]] and it would render as TestWiki:Testing pages or if you add text, as whatever you choose the text to be!

Linking off Miraheze

Miraheze also supports custom interwiki links to websites off Miraheze. For example, to link to the English Wikipedia, you can use [[w:<PAGENAME>]]. To see a full list of global interwiki prefixes, check Special:Interwiki here on Miraheze Meta.

You can also request new websites be added to your local interwiki table. See Requesting additions for more information.

Requesting additions

To request a new addition to your local interwiki prefix by a global Interwiki administrator, you may ask on the Community noticeboard, on IRC, or Discord. Make sure to include what website you want added to the interwiki table, what prefix it should use and if Forwarding or Transclusion should be enabled. Note that you can always request a global interwiki prefix be overridden on your wiki.

Forwarding and transclusion explained

What's Forwarding? Forwarding in Interwiki terms means that if another website links to your wiki and links to a page containing the interwiki prefix, should your wiki redirect them to the destination? For example, if a website links to https://wiki.miraheze.org/wiki/w:WP:1984, should your wiki redirect them correctly to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:1984? If set to no, then your wiki will return a "Bad title" error. What's Transcluding? Transclusion is what templates do; when you invoke a template on a page, it displays the content of the template on that page. In that same way, if you enable cross-wiki transclusion, you would be able to display the contents of the linked page if you used it like a template even if the page isn't on your wiki. For example, on your wiki, if you were to use {{meta::Help:Interwiki}}, it would display the content of this page on your wiki even though this page doesn't exist on your wiki!

An interwiki administrator will ensure the destination website is safe and will add it to the table. Once done, it should be usable immediately.

Eligibility

A user must meet one of the following criteria to submit Interwiki addition/removal requests:

• Have the Bureaucrat role (or equivalent) on the wiki for which the request is submitted
• Have public written permission from a Bureaucrat on the wiki (for instance, on a user talk page) to submit interwiki requests
• Have authorization to make the request via local policy (e.g. a wiki establishes policy authorizing administrators on the wiki to make interwiki requests)
• Have community consensus on specific additions/removals, e.g. by poll or discussion on the wiki for which the request is submitted

Interlanguage

Interlanguage links are special links displayed on the sidebar, menu, or somewhere else depending on the skin which link to articles in other languages. For more information on requesting it setup, please check the aforementioned article.