Hi all, it would be great to know if the suggested change is technically possible. The misleading name for nowiki as simply "Norwegian" has been in place for over a month now, and this needless to say causes both confusion and frustration amongst users of the other Norwegian language and nnwiki.

ll_lang is actually the interwiki prefix, it's written by LinksUpdate based on what's currently in the wikitext on the page in question, you can't just change it in the database. You'd have to change it on every page with an explicit (non-Wikidata) language link to nowiki.

As for site_language, it apparently originates in SiteMatrix, where it is derived from the DB name and langlist. There is currently no langlist entry for "nb". populateSitesTable.php (in Wikibase) pulls in the language code and writes it to site_language. But I don't think it is used for the langlinks sidebar, so even if we could change it, it wouldn't help us much. Wikibase has LangLinkHandler::getInterwikiCodeFromSite() which again simply derives the interwiki prefix from the DB name. It's a deep, scattered assumption that the language code which identifies a sidebar link is the same as the interwiki prefix.

The language name for display in the sidebar is determined by SkinTemplate::getLanguages(), which only has the interwiki prefix, assumed to be the language code, it can't easily distinguish between nowiki (which desires "Norsk bokmål") from nowikisource (which desires "Norsk").

I think the options are:

1. Break the association between DB names and interwiki prefixes. Have SiteMatrix return a different language code for nowiki as compared to nowikisource. Repopulate the sites table with this new scheme. Fix T137537 and make LangLinkHandler::getInterwikiCodeFromSite() get its interwiki prefix from Sites. Modify dumpInterwiki.php, adding a new category of language-based interwiki prefixes which can be different on different wikis. Alias no to nb on wikipedias, but not on wikitionaries. Update any wikipedia pages which use no: language links to use nb:, since language links (unlike interwiki links) cannot have aliases.
2. Move the nowiki DB to nbwiki. Add "nb" to langlist. Update language links in Wikipedia pages as in option 1. Ideally, the domain name would also be moved, that way the no: interwiki prefix can continue to point to no.wikipedia.org, which would be redirected to nb.wikipedia.org in apache config, avoiding the need to add new special cases to dumpInterwiki.php.
3. Revert the autonym change (T173602). At least we will only be breaking Wikisource in the way that it has always been broken, we won't be introducing a new UI issue to our most popular Norwegian site.
4. Hook SkinTemplate::getLanguages() to determine the site being linked to, and implement a special case for nowiki which uses the "nb" autonym for the "no" language code.

@tstarling: And what about the babel, e.g. here?

In T174160#3798821, @Liuxinyu970226 wrote:

@tstarling: And what about the babel, e.g. here?

If you're asking why {{#babel:no}} gives "norsk (bokmål)" instead of "norsk", then I don't think that is relevant to this bug. It is apparently due to deprecation of "no" as language code for MW localisation, which happened in 2011, see rMW15455a4a162982d088dcce24e83baf1bb94f9286.

@tstarling Thank you for your analysis! The community cannot accept to do anything with the domain name (I'm sorry to say).
What do you recommend among the four alternatives? Who can decide and execute the change?

In T174160#3798908, @tstarling wrote:

In T174160#3798821, @Liuxinyu970226 wrote:

@tstarling: And what about the babel, e.g. here?

If you're asking why {{#babel:no}} gives "norsk (bokmål)" instead of "norsk", then I don't think that is relevant to this bug. It is apparently due to deprecation of "no" as language code for MW localisation, which happened in 2011, see rMW15455a4a162982d088dcce24e83baf1bb94f9286.

I'm afraid my meaning is not this, is that why Category:User no still can't be merged into Category:User nb.

@tstarling Thank you very much for looking into this! It's much appreciated.

Regarding option 1, where you write "since language links (unlike interwiki links) cannot have aliases", are you sure? See this test with the codes no, nb, be-x-old and be-tarask. I might be misunderstanding what you mean by "alias" though.

I don't really have the expertise to make any judgement, but it sounds like Option 1 is the most robust one, but also the most difficult and labour-intensive to perform. Logically it makes the most sense, but pragmatically, is it worth the investment (I guess that depends on what other problems this could help solve, I imagine it might be useful for cases like zh-min-nan, etc as well?) Option 3 is a quick temporary fix, but shouldn't be a long-term solution, IMO, but could and probably should be done until a long-term fix is in place. Option 4 seems like a good and quick solution if this is the only case where this kind of fix is needed.

Since there is no development on this, I have committed a change 454700 to revert the autonym change, as outlined as option 3 by @tstarling in T174160#3798644.

This change is meant to be temporary until a better fix comes along, but since that is not trivial it might take a while. It is not ideal, and it will affect the Wikibooks, Wikisource and Wikinews in Norwegian (which are both Bokmål and Nynorsk), but since their pageviews according to https://stats.wikimedia.org/v2 are less than 0.2 % of the Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, I believe it is justified.

The proposed change 454700 to revert the autonym change will break away from use of IANA language subtag registry which, in my opinion, is a pretty bad ting to do.

Note also the consequences for minority projects.

Please provide a proper solution.

I would prefer solution number 4 from @tstarling post T174160#3798644. I believe this is good enough as a temporary fix until the necessary scripts are made, which I believe will take a lot more time.

That is; override the language code by using the hook SkinTemplateGetLanguageLink.

The callback should then override the language code when getTransWikiID() is *wiki of some kind, where * is a valid language code. The logic here is to extract a identifier for the family.

Only thing it will not solve that is somewhat important is w:Special:Sitematrix

I can write some example code, but should it go straight into operations or be an extension? Seems to be cleaner to make it as an extension, even if it would be really small?

+1 to @jeblad said above recently

Special:Sitematrix

Feel free to create another task that looks like T111876

Change 530768 had a related patch set uploaded (by Nikerabbit; owner: Nikerabbit):
[mediawiki/core@master] Add $wgInterlanguageLinkCodeMap

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/530768

Yesterday Jon Harald and I had a short meeting with Amir Aharoni, the man that knows the  preliminary solution for the no.wikipedia naming issue, while the more ideal solution need more development, and probably will not be ready this year neither.

Amir says he allready has developed the local override so that the No.wikipedia.org project can be named "Norsk (bokmål)" all though other "no Wikimedia" projects will still have the correct macro language name of "Norsk".

Our understanding is that Amir will deploy this local override this month.

Hogne Neteland

Change 530768 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/core@master] Add $wgInterlanguageLinkCodeMap

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/530768

Change 557838 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jon Harald Søby; owner: Jon Harald Søby):
[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Add no=>nb in $wgInterlanguageLinkCodeMap

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/557838

Change 557838 merged by jenkins-bot:
[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Add no=>nb in $wgInterlanguageLinkCodeMap

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/557838

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2019-12-16T12:11:24Z] <urbanecm@deploy1001> Synchronized wmf-config/InitialiseSettings.php: SWAT: 026913d: Add no=>nb in $wgInterlanguageLinkCodeMap (T174160) (duration: 00m 53s)

This is not according to what no.wiktionary and no.wikiquote announce on their main page, they say they use “norsk”. This change needs a discussion on those projects.

Change 558053 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jon Harald Søby; owner: Jon Harald Søby):
[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Remove Wiktionary and Wikiquote from $wgInterlanguageLinkCodeMap for now

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/558053

In T174160#5744352, @jeblad wrote:

This is not according to what no.wiktionary and no.wikiquote announce on their main page, they say they use “norsk”. This change needs a discussion on those projects.

Good point, I've asked at their village pumps and submitted a patch to remove them from the configuration for now.

Change 558053 merged by jenkins-bot:
[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Remove Wiktionary and Wikiquote from $wgInterlanguageLinkCodeMap for now

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/558053

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2019-12-16T19:14:05Z] <urbanecm@deploy1001> Synchronized wmf-config/InitialiseSettings.php: SWAT: 4541c4a: Remove Wiktionary and Wikiquote from $wgInterlanguageLinkCodeMap for now (T174160) (duration: 00m 57s)

Thank you for the change. This is regarded as a welcomed Christmas gift in the Norwegian Community.