Template:W

Template documentation

This documentation is transcluded from Template:W/doc. (edit | history)

update use count

{{w}}
non-local links 13,119	local links 4,423	forced links 336
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This template generates a conditional link — either to a local target if it exists, or to (ordinarily) Wikipedia if the local target does not exist.

{{w|target}}

{{w|target|label}}

{{w|target|anchor=section|label}}

Optional named parameter anchor links to a specific section of a Wikipedia page, and does not attempt to autodetect a local target. It should be rarely used; eliminating template calls that use it requires idiosyncratic remedies.

Examples

Code	Result	Note
{{w|Australia}}	Australia	links to the local category (Category:Australia), because it does exist.
{{w|Australia|Australians}}	Australians	links to the local category (Category:Australia), because it does exist.
{{w|Department of Immigration and Border Protection}}	Department of Immigration and Border Protection	links to the Wikipedia article, because a local category (Category:Department of Immigration and Border Protection) does not exist (as of this writing, anyway; if it gets created someday, we'll need a different example here).

Removing

Exercise care when removing calls to this template from a page: it is used, in part, to keep track of page categorization.

• If the local target doesn't exist, you probably shouldn't be removing the template call.
• If the local target does exist, consider whether the calling page should belong to some category associated with the local target, and if it should belong but doesn't, add it to that category. Then eliminate the locally linking template call by changing {{w|...}} to [[...]].

This template populates three hidden categories: when linking to Wikipedia (without an anchor), it adds the calling page to Category:Pages with defaulting non-local links; when linking to the local target, it adds the calling page to Category:Pages with categorizable local links; when linking to Wikipedia with an anchor, it adds the calling page to Category:Pages with forced foreign links.

A gadget is provided to complement this template, "Underline in green categorizable {{w}} links". The gadget also puts a dashed underline on forced foreign {{w}} links.

Other parameters

Optional parameter nocat can be set to any non-blank value to suppress categorization of the calling page based on this template call.

Optional parameter foreign can be set to either of two values to cause specialized effects. This optional parameter is ignored if anchor is used.

• foreign=force  links to Wikipedia, without checking for a local target. Categorizes to Category:Pages with forced foreign links.
• foreign=suppress  behaves as usual for local links, but if the link would be to Wikipedia, the label is unlinked. Does not affect categorization, which is still to Category:Pages with defaulting non-local links.

Optional parameter sister can be set to the wikilink prefix of a sister other than Wikipedia, to override Wikipedia as the choice of non-local target when wikilinking non-locally. It has no effect on whether a non-local wikilink is provided, only on the target when used. Omit the trailing ":" from the prefix. For example, {{w|Somalia|sister=wikt|foreign=force}} would link to wikt:Somalia. There's a table of the prefixes for various sisters at meta. For non-English languages, use the sister prefix, a colon, and the language code; for example, {{w|sister=w:fr|Souhail Alouini}} would link to Souhail Alouini (as of this writing, Souhail Alouini has no local target and no en.wp target).

See also

• {{wikt}}

TemplateData

A template to generate a conditional link - link to a local target if it exists, else link to Wikipedia.

Template parameters[Edit template data]

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
target	1	Page to link to	String	required
label	2	Text to display instead of the target link	String	optional
anchor	anchor	Link to a specific section of a Wikipedia page	String	optional