Wikipedia:Wikilinks from the Commons

A well written image description or gallery on the Commons will have plenty of links to the appropriate language Wikipedia. But interwiki links are always one colour: they do not indicate whether the target article exists and so they need to be checked by hand. Here is a technique to simplify the task.

Come to the language Wikipedia and open an edit box. Special:Mypage/sandbox is recommended so that you can save the text if necessary but any edit box will do.

Create your text. Begin each wikilink with :en: and pipe it, either explicitly or by auto-piping. For example:

[[:en:Coulsdon Town railway station|Coulsdon Town station]] • [[:en:Coulsdon|]] • [[:en:Chistpead|]]

Click on "Show preview". The example above will render as:

Coulsdon Town station • Coulsdon • Chistpead

Fix any red links. Then copy the text from the edit box you have been using and paste it into the edit box on the Commons. Click on "Show preview" there. If any links have turned to red, you have omitted the :en:

Gallery bug edit

There is a long-standing bug in the MediaWiki software such that auto-piping does not work in galleries - see the second image in this gallery. Trick to work around: spoil the <gallery> tag, e.g. delete the < temporarily; do your edits using auto piping and save the page; re-edit to restore the <gallery> tag.