InterWiki Linking

Note: This page has been shamelessly copied from the good people at DavisWiki, and was mutated to something Rochester-eque by FarMcKon.

As you may or may not know, RocWiki is not the only wiki on the Internet. The orginial wiki was created by Ward Cunningham, at c2.com and is called the WikiWikiWeb. It is essentially a website about programming and patterns (yes, patterns), however, it has a great deal of discussion about Wiki Ethics.

A much larger site, The Wikipedia, is an online user edited wiki-encyclopedia of pretty much everything. Rather than creating a standard of links, or having to update our Wiki each time another Wiki changes, someone has been smart enough to develop interwiki links. This makes it easy to link our Wiki to other Wikis, with minimum effort.

Interwiki links look like this Rochester,NY on Wikipedia when you are viewing a page, and the look like this [wiki:Wikipedia:Rochester,_New_York Rochester,NY on Wikipedia] when you are editing a page. Pretty clear, isn't it?

See also related pages: InterWiki and Interwiki Map

(everything is case-sensitive)

• the [] indicates that what you are typing is a link.
  

• the wiki: indicates that you are creating a interwiki link, regardless of what wiki you're linking to.
  

• this can be followed by any of the names in the below "List of Interwiki places"
  

• then of course you follow with the page name
  

• A word on page names: c2.com always uses CamelCasingToIndicateSpacesBetweenWords. Wikipedia_is_a_big_fan_of_the_underscore. So [wiki:Wiki:APageInTheWiki] [wiki:Wikipedia:A_Page_In_The_Wiki]. Just using spaces will result in your crops failing and a wheel bearing seizing up on the 490.
  

• If you're really picky and anal like me, then you'll want to link to non-redirected pages. For example Wikipedia:Vacaville redirects to Wikipedia:Vacaville,_California but doesn't change the URL, you have to take the page name and add the underscores yourself.
  

• add a space, then type the description that you would like to appear with the link. if you don't add a description, you link will look like this, Poop, which isn't exactly pretty, but Wikipedia:Poop is ok if you're feeling lazy I guess...

[[InterWiki]]

If you want to add a wiki to this list, please contact a site admin. Soon you'll be able to edit the list yourself, but for now it's just crummy like that.

Well, for one, you get this cool looking interwiki link icon that lets people know they're going to a wiki and not some random page. Passing your mouse over the link tells you which wiki it links to. Furthermore, it's good for the connectivity of the wiki as a whole, the theory being that individual wikis can all link off each other. Also, they let me, a member of RocWiki, the ability to link to ArlenAbraham (some guy who accumulate a shitload of edits for changing like 80% of the outgoing links on the wiki in Davis), without opening another browser tab or anything.

The Wikipedia is an excellent resource for things that we don't necessarily talk about here. It also provides alternate explanations of thinks like Hillary Clinton for example. It also allows our community discussions to easily 'cross over' to other communities that have wikis.

The Davis Videogaming page is an excellent example of wasted effort by those suckers over in California. Why go through the trouble of writing a history of the videogaming industry when a much better version already exists on the Wikipedia? There's no need to reinvent the wheel, merely say, for a complete history of the videogame industry, see Wikipedia entry.

• Topics aren't non-RocWiki, but content might inappropriately be. When the topic relates to Rochester, put it here. When it doesn't, put it on a bigger wiki, and link, link, link like ChrisAcheson in Smash Bros.

Because the Wikipedia is edited and viewed by thousands of people each day, some people claim it is more authoritative than something like RocWiki or DavisWiki. Niche Wikis like us tend to be updated with specifics and have local information updated significantly more quickly. The accuracy of Wikipedia, like any Wiki, can be considered dubious - tests involving insertion of incorrect data shows that it does not get fixed promptly, and is thus subject to subtle trolling.

One thing I don't like about the links is that it doesn't match our internal linking style. I think the interwiki links should look like:

[wiki:nameofwiki:"Page title" alt text]

What do you guys think? (also, the name shouldn't have to be in camelcase) —PhilipNeustrom

I agree that it is a bit awkward as stands. I welcome the change you've suggested — RobertPolyn

Note: The new (better) syntax is not implemented yet, as of 2005.05.23. OR it's not working with davis wiki properly. Also the link to Arlen Abraham above appears in the 'wanted pages' list. I hope qoutes would fix that too -FarMcKon