Thank you for a glimmer of hope on this issue.
http://radioscanningtw.jidanni.org/index.php?title=Special:Categories&us... and http://taizhongbus.jidanni.org/index.php?title=Special:Categories&uselan... are perfect for thousands of radio frequencies and bus stops respectively.
Currently I must use in LocalSettings.php: function fnmybla1($text,$title){global $wgSitename; switch($title->mNamespace){case NS_CATEGORY:case NS_CATEGORY_TALK: $text=" Hi. This is the site manager. Even though you are looking at this big edit window, could you please enter the radio frequency you wish to contribute, directly on that page. E.g., On the [[Nurdsome Hills Fire Department]] page, just write {{c|422.8375}} and the template ( http://radioscanningtw.jidanni.org/index.php?title=Template:C&uselang=en ) will take care of the rest, adding that frequency to its category automatically! Sorry that you see this message sitting inside of an edit box, but the software is like that. ";}return true;}#also tried $wgNamespaceProtection but it is yucky
OK, so my wikis are special, and I don't want to modify MediaWiki or even my personal copy of it (beyond LocalSettings.php and templates) just for me. Nor does even adding one character to thousands of non existent database records make any sense.
OK, I'll just keep on making external links (with fullurl) to what are really internal links, because there is no way to even add an &action=view and get an internal link.