Rob Church wrote:
On 06/09/07, lapsap7+mwiki wrote:
I've seen links at the beginning of pages, probably because the one whoput it found it easier to look for them (instead of going a long way down the page). But if they're in "strange places", I'm not sure if their reason is valid because what it counts is the rendered HTML page. Wherever they're put, they're always grouped inside the "in other languages" box. So, I don't think you have to care about keeping them in their original location in the text.
You are of course correct; since such links don't produce a visible result on the actual rendered page (i.e. no inline link), then it doesn't matter where the link goes, although I think the general feeling might be one that it's desirable to avoid changing the position of elements in page text too much if it can be helped.
Rob Church
Don't be so sure. For instance, i have found "See the policy [[en:Wikipedia:Foo policy|on English Wikipedia]] about Foo." on a page about Bar. This is wrong, as it should be [[:en:Wikipedia:Foo policy|on English Wikipedia]]. But adding just the colon instead of having to relocate where it was supposed to be is much helpful.
We should check how pywikipedia bots handle it, as they change link position, and are so used, that if code mimics its behaviour, the same would have happened next time an interwiki bot visited the page.