r9672 enables short interwiki links but replaces the page title to the MediaWiki:Mainpage message

• assigned_to: nobody --> xqt

• priority: 5 --> 4

Is this useful? Most mainpages are protected aren't they? Why don't we just have the bot ignore/skip mainpages altogether?

I guess it is usefull if the bot can handle with links like \[\[:en:\]\] rather than giving an error. It is able to create a page objekt. And this could be used indepedent from operating on the main page itself.

With at least https://git.wikimedia.org/commit/pywikibot%2Fcore.git/71ccd1267c2407fc3fea1210c5f442edb7f6d9c3 Link.parse supports interwiki links without any title (so [[en:]] for example). So the bot ifself should substitute '' with the mainpage. I previously wanted to add it but John pointed out that it's problematic:

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/161671/1/pywikibot/page.py,cm

So I'm not sure what we can do about that here. Maybe Page.init does change '' automatically to mainpage or so.

I can see a few ways to handle this in textlib.

1. Ignore them in getLanguageLinks() like is done for [[en:{{PAGENAME}}]] which would result in removal if calling getLanguageLinks() then replaceLanguageLinks().
2. Assume that they point to the main page in getLanguageLinks().
   • What about editing involving them?
     1. Convert to explicit form ([[en:Main Page]])
     2. Convert to implicit form ([[en:]])
     3. Track the form in getLanguageLinks() and use it in interwikiFormat()

2C is the ideal case, but I don't like the hacky implementation that I came up with (adding an attribute to the page in getLanguageLinks()).

Any thoughts on a preferred option?