[WikiEN-l] Serious problems with interlanguage links

[Carl Beckhorn]

On Sat, Dec 06, 2008 at 11:40:13AM -0500, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Lukasz analysis depends on linking being communicative, but this can
> only be true when there is only one kind of link (x is the same
> subject no more, no less as y).  If we limited ourselves to that it
> would preclude the "x is covered by broader article y" link which is
> absolutely necessary if we want to produce useful interwiki links from
> bigger projects to smaller ones.

I was saying in another message that this seems like a case where a 
redirect would be desirable. Instead of linking from [[en:Specialized 
topic]] to [[tlh:General topic]], we should created a redirect at 
[[tlh:Specialized topic]] and point the interlanguage link at that. Then 
human navigation will work smoothly, through the redirect. But automatic 
analysis of the interlanguage link system will not follow the redirect 
and will not think that [[en:Specialized topic]] is the same as 
[[tlh:Generalized topic]].  Especially with the advent of unified login 
there is little difficulty in creating redirects on other-language 
wikis, if you know the other language.

  - Carl