Tim Starling wrote:
I can see that is convenient, but I think it should be replaced even in that use case. UI convenience, link styling and rel=nofollow can be dealt with in other ways.
Re: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map
It's not just convenience. Interwiki links are an easy way to implement global (across all Wikimedia wikis) templates. They're very simple linker templates, but templates just the same.
Instead of {{bugzilla|}} for Bugzilla, you use [[bugzilla:]]. Instead of updating dozens of templates on hundreds of wikis indefinitely, you can update a centralized interwiki map. The centralized map also helps avoid conflicts. And if one day one of the targets moves and doesn't leave a redirect (boo!), we can theoretically update the interwiki map and all of the links across Wikimedia wikis will continue to work. I believe we use this feature occasionally.
We could make parser functions such as "{{#bugzilla:}}", but depending on who you ask, wikitext as a written form is on its way out. I'm not sure the investment is worth the return.
I suppose it's possible that people are using interwiki markup to disable the typical link icons, but instead we should be discussing link icons generally in the user interface. This is pretty far removed from interwiki links, in my opinion. I do know that people occasionally use redirection to get around weird link generation behavior when using interwiki markup. As I recall, space interpretation was the center of that (i.e., query paths containing "_" v. "+" v. "%20" v. " " &c.).
Regarding rel=nofollow and link trustworthiness: I'm not sure any sane search engine continues to trust user input these days. I thought lessons of the past taught developers that people are pretty unscrupulous. :-)
MZMcBride