Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

Maybe I'm missing something, but why would you expect en: on Wikibooks to link
to Wikipedia?

I think the source of misunderstanding here is the behaviour on meta:, predating
the existence of multiple multilingual projects - from meta, any language code
alone is presumed to be a link to that *Wikipedia*. But in a multilingual
project, a language code logically refers to that language *within that
project*. So [[en:foo]], on *any* English project, should be equivalent to
[[foo]] - in other words, the link in question should in fact be treated as a
self-link.

To link to the English Wikipedia, you need to link to [[w:en:User:Maveric149]].

There are still 2 bugs here, though, since it shouldn't be a red link, it should
be bolded as a link to itself. 
1) It seems capitalisation isn't being normalised properly when checking for
self-links: [[en:user:Maveric149]] (upper case 'M') and [[user:maveric149]] both
get bolded, but [[en:user:maveric149]] (lower case 'm') is treated as
non-existent, even though it leads to the same page.
2) Interwiki links to the same project, but not the main namespace (e.g.
[[en:User:Maveric149]] or [[en:Wikibooks:FAQ]] anywhere on en.wikibooks) are not
recognised as being existent pages, and thus are rendered as new-page links.

Both of these seem to me to be parser issues, rather than configuration ones, so
I'm changing the bug headers appropriately; I should probably split them into 2
different bugs, but ... well, I can't be bothered this minute.

Until recently wikibooks wasn't multilingual and en: used to link to
en.wikipedia. Now that should link to en.wikibooks itself. I somehow forgot that
change while filing the bug.

But I'd think a link with en: would be treated as an "interlanguage" link
(though it could be to the same wiki), since a link with w: in wikipedia is
always highlighted as a normal link, & never as a broken link (for inexistant
pages) or bolded (for self links). So I'd expect a normal link to
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Maveric149, not bolded text.

(In reply to comment #3)
> But I'd think a link with en: would be treated as an "interlanguage" link
> (though it could be to the same wiki), since a link with w: in wikipedia is
> always highlighted as a normal link, & never as a broken link (for inexistant
> pages) or bolded (for self links). 

Personally, I'd consider that a bug: it links to the page it's on, so it's a
self-link; and if it links to a non-existent page, a redlink seems appropriate.
Not that it matters, as long as a) the behaviour is consistent, and b) a link to
an existing page is *never* treated as a redlink.

Please see for http://de.wikipedia.org/ also:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gangleri/tests/de_colon
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer_Diskussion:Gangleri/tests/de_colon

(In reply to comment #5)
> Please see for http://de.wikipedia.org/ also:
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gangleri/tests/de_colon
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer_Diskussion:Gangleri/tests/de_colon

Note that some of the links therein use the de.wikipedia.org/wiki/foo format
whereas some use the de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=foo format, another
inconsistency. It looks like what users perceive as similar links are expanded
in different parts of the software, which are inconsistent with each other.

Should separate bugs be opened for each of the inconsistencies?

I'm fairly certain this is a bug I've just fixed in 1.4: on self-interwiki links the namespace 
isn't correctly parsed.

Ok, I've backported the fix into 1.3 and 1.3a branches and the fix is live.

Some affected pages may have bogus entries in the brokenlinks table, which can probably be 
cleared by editing. (action=purge doesn't do it)

Related bugs filed: bug 953, bug 954, bug 955.