Link to sister project if there's a namespace for it in link

[mben42]

Hi, a suggestion from French Wikimedia Discord. We think it would be a good thing if the link to a sister project could be automatic if the expression between [[]] starts with a sister project-specific namespace (e.g. [[Wiktionary:something]] or [[WT:something]] for Wiktionary), without having to add the project before (e.g. [[wikt:WT:something]]).

Thanks in advance, and by the way, thank you for this great bot!

[stjohann]

Hello! Thank you for taking time to leave this issue.

I don’t think this would be right to do for following reasons:

1. It will add a difference in how wiki links are handled by MediaWiki and how they are handled by the bot, and I want to minimise them as far as it makes sense.
2. I don’t think there’s a way to do this without adding hacks into code (there’s no API that says, for example, that Wiktionnaire: is French or Викисловарь: is Russian for Wiktionary).

Can you tell me what was a reason for this suggestion? Do you have a channel for Wiktionary users in which you have to write [[wikt:]] too many times, or did you just think it would be convenient? I think channel-based configuration can be explored, if there’s a need for it.

I would ask for other opinions on this and will wait for your response before closing this issue.

[mben42]

Hello, actually we just think it would be convenient, yes. Someone else has also suggested a channel-based configuration, I thought it was harder to do, but it could be even better. Perhaps using config file to set channel names?

[stjohann]

Got it, thank you. Setting and respecting channel-based overrides shouldn’t be hard to do, it will be pretty similar to server configuration as outlined on Meta. I just need to think about the correct implementation (whether or not to allow overriding everything, for example).