Wikipedia talk:Blank page idiomatic link

But it´s very usefull for people looking for translation for the words in the title that can use a search machine to find content in its native language ( what it´s not possible if wouldn´t exist blank page idiomatic links with the words of the title translated to the user´s native languge). Mac

But Wikipedia is not for helping translation. Google or Babelfish can do that. The aim is to make encyclopedia articles, and I don't think blank pages help that, particularly if they just point to more blank pages on other Wikipedias. This would appear to be very time wasting for readers trying to find some information. Angela 23:42, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You also don't know what the yet-to-be created page will actually be called. Therefore it could be completely futile. Secretlondon 23:46, Nov 30, 2003 (UTC)

Nonexistent interwiki links

Someone has written new policy, wikipedia:blank page idiomatic link, about adding interwiki links to pages that don't exist. I think this is a bad idea. Having a link to a page in another language at the top, only to click on it and find that there is actually no such page is annoying and a waste of time, I really wish they would stop adding such links. Maximus Rex 18:41, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree - it should be policy that at least a stub should be created when adding a interwiki link to a not yet existing article. As interwiki links cannot be red it is not possible to see that the article exists or not. But even worse than a interwiki link that points into nothing is a page which only contains the interwiki link back - that one will make the red links in that language disappear with brown small article links. What I do when I have a interwiki link which will exist soon (e.g. the german districts which are created on both de: and en:) is that I add the interwiki link with HTML comments around it like , so they are easy to activate once the target is created. This can also be useful for animals or plants - if one knows the name of an animal in the other language then a commented link can help to avoid that link being missed later. However too many commented interwiki links cluttering the beginning of the article is a drawback. andy 21:48, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hmmmm... are policies on instant deletion of sub-stubs and similar issues the same in all the various languages? It seems to me that such policies should to some extent reflect the culture associated with the particular language. Is this how it works?

I've watched with interest the development of this new policy. There are more issues here than might at first meet the eye IMO. Andrewa 22:59, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it a new policy. More like one person's ideas on how these links should be treated. The policies on sub stubs are certainly not the same across different Wikipedias. For example, on the Arabic Wikipedia, pages with no text at all, but some interlanguage links are not deleted, whereas here they usually are. There seem to be objections to the creation of these empty pages at the Hungarian, French and Dutch Wikipedias that were expressed on the mailing list when a Polish was sent round to create these, but it's unclear whether the issue was more with the fact it was a bot than the pages per se. Angela 23:37, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

We need a tittle index. So, the user knows the translation of the title article to his/her own native language and look for information in a search machien (Yahoo and similar) in his/her own language. This would be a great service to knowledge and to user. This can include or not links to existing wikipedia articles in another languages. For sure, we need a better wikipedia software for this indexesMac 10:58, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)