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