Thanks Ran! Yes, that makes perfect sense. I was unclear about what exactly a portal is, whether it is like more like a category or more like a page. My hope was that it included the notion of "containing" other things, like categories do, but you've clarified that portals do not include that, and that categories list=backlinks&blnamespace=14 and prop=categories return two distinct relationships.
Thanks again,
Robert
-----Original Message----- For categories, list=backlinks&blnamespace=14 returns the categories that *link to* the specified page -- that is, categories whose *descriptions* link to that page -- whereas prop=categories returns the categories that *contain *the specified page. These are two distinct relationships.
For portals, the software has no built-in notion of a portal "containing" a page, but you've defined it this way:
The <links> element contains <pl> items in namespaces 0 (articles), 14
(categories), and 100 (portals). I interpret that as "Portal:Novels contains these items", meaning that in tree terms it is the parent of those items, or that those items "belong to Portal:Novels".
That is, by your definition, "portal X *links to* page Y" and "portal X * contains* page Y" are the same relationship. So list=backlinks&blnamespace=100 (which returns the portal pages that *link to * the specified page) is equivalent to your hypothetical prop=portals (which would return the portal pages that *contain* the specified page).
Does that make sense?
-Ran Ari-Gur (user "Ruakh" on WMF projects)