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This page documents an English Wikipedia style guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

Shortcuts WP:SIS WP:SISP WP:SISTER

Wikimedia sister projects are all the publicly available wikis operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, including Wikipedia. This guideline covers Wikipedia's relations to the sister projects, including linking and copying content between a Wikipedia article and a sister project's article.

Sister projects

Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts a range of other projects:

Commons
Free media repository

MediaWiki
Wiki software development

Meta-Wiki
Wikimedia project coordination

Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals

Wikidata
Free knowledge base

Wikinews
Free-content news

Wikiquote
Collection of quotations

Wikisource
Free-content library

Wikispecies
Directory of species

Wikiversity
Free learning materials and activities

Wikivoyage
Free travel guide

Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus

The above list of the current English language sister projects can be easily duplicated using the {{Wikipedia's sister projects}} template.

When to link

Wikipedia encourages links from Wikipedia articles to pages on sister projects when such links are likely to be useful to our readers, and interlingual crosslinking to articles on foreign-language editions of Wikipedia whenever such links are possible.

By far the most common use of links to the non-Wikipedia sister projects is the use of images that are stored on the Wikimedia Commons site (see Wikipedia:Wikimedia Commons).

How to link

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Wind in the Willows

Links to sister projects are made in several ways:

• by linking images and other files hosted by Commons. See Wikipedia:Picture tutorial for more;


• through inline links such as this link to The Wind in the Willows ([[wikisource:The Wind in the Willows|''The Wind in the Willows'']]);


• through templates, which may produce either larger boxes or simpler one-line links. See the next section for how and where to place them; Templates are found in Wikipedia:Template messages/Sister projects and Category:Interwiki link templates;


• through standard links directly to the URL, exactly like any other website, such as The Wind in the Willows. However this form is deprecated in favour of links using [[sister-project:sister project name|display name]].

Where to place links

Sister project links should generally appear in the "External links" section, or where appropriate in citations. Two exceptions are links to Wiktionary and Wikisource that may be linked inline (e.g. to an unusual word or the text of a document being discussed).

Some appropriate material from Wikimedia Commons may also be linked within the main body of an article. See Embedding Commons' media in Wikipedia articles. Links to Wikinews should not be made within the main body of an article, being made only as per the external links guideline.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wikipedia logos.

A box-type template can result in excessive white space when the section is laid out in columns.

Most box-type templates such as {{Commons}} shown at right should be put at the beginning of the last section of the article (which is usually, but not necessarily, the "External links" section) so that boxes will appear next to, rather than below, the list items.^[1] Do not make a section whose sole content is box-type templates. Many box links can be unified to one by using {{Sister project links}} or {{Sister project}}.

Sometimes box-type templates are not aesthetically pleasing, either because there are no external links except sister project ones, or because they result in an odd layout, such as a long sequence of right-aligned boxes hanging off the bottom of the article or excessive white space when the section is laid out in columns. In such cases, consider using "inline" templates, such as {{Commons-inline}}, in the "External links" section, so that links to sister projects appear as list items, like this:

• 
  Media related to Wikimedia Foundation at Wikimedia Commons

As with standard links to other Wikipedia articles, sister project links are normally made only once within an article.

Notes

Soft redirects from Wikipedia to a sister project

Sometimes an entry is more appropriate on some other sister project than on Wikipedia because they are of a non-encyclopedic scope (e.g. they can never be expanded beyond a simple dictionary definition, or call for a level of detail more appropriate to a textbook). Normally, such articles are copied to the more appropriate sister using the transwiki process, and deleted from Wikipedia afterwards.

However, if a word or phrase is commonly wikified, it is quite likely that the deleted entry will be quickly re-created again by well-meaning users. The re-created article is likely to again become non-encyclopedic.

To avoid this, do not delete after transwiki'ing. One solution, as suggested by Wikipedia deletion policy, is to instead normally redirect the word to a relevant article within Wikipedia. For instance, Organize could redirect it to a well-developed Organization article via #REDIRECT [[Organization]].

If this is not possible, turn a Wikipedia page into a soft redirect to a sister project. This is done by replacing the page with either the {{softredirect}} template, or preferably one of the specialized templates (see below). These templates inform readers of information on the sister project: in the case of this example a link would be provided to the wikt:Organize article. This has multiple benefits:

1. It brings the sister projects closer together


2. It prevents future clean-up issues

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. You may want to read Wiktionary's entry on "Organize" instead. You can also search for Wikimedia sister projects in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings. Start the Wikimedia sister projects article, using the Article Wizard if you wish, or add a request for it; but please remember Wikipedia is not a dictionary. wiktionary:Organize

Specialized soft redirect templates

Please keep in mind that only topics with a less-than-encyclopedic scope that are commonly wikified words or that are repeatedly recreated should become soft redirects. We don't need a soft redirect for every possible word or phrase to be included in Wikipedia.

• {{Double soft redirect}}; Category:Wikipedia double soft redirects – for soft redirecting to two sister projects or two different pages within one sister project


• {{Wikidata redirect}}; Category:Wikidata redirects – a special redirect category template

Mainspace exclusive

• {{Wiktionary redirect}}; Category:Redirects to Wiktionary
  


• {{Wikibooks redirect}}; Category:Redirects to Wikibooks
  


• {{Wikiquote redirect}}; Category:Redirects to Wikiquote
  


• {{Wikisource redirect}}; Category:Redirects to Wikisource
  


• {{Wikispecies redirect}}; Category:Redirects to Wikispecies
  


• {{Wikivoyage redirect}}; Category:Redirects to Wikivoyage
  


• {{Commons redirect}}; Category:Redirects to Wikimedia Commons
  

Linking between projects

Unified login or Merged Account

Unified login is a mechanism which allows users to use a single login across the majority of the Wikimedia Foundation's sister projects. This allows users to maintain a consistent identity throughout Wikimedia, following a single sign-up. Other advantages of this mechanism include the removal of the threat that impersonation poses and the ability to visit many projects without having to go through the labors of logging in everywhere. Users can create a unified login by visiting Special:MergeAccount on a project where they already have an account, and following the prompts.

See also

• Category:Interwiki link templates


• Category:Transwiki templates


• Help:Interlanguage links


• Help:Interwikimedia links


• m:Interwiki map


• Wikipedia:List of templates linking to other free content projects