w points to a central place so you can put additional language prefixes on it and have it redirect to each
language Wikipedia.

bugzillas+padREMOVETHISdu wrote:

Then why doesn't b: point to a central place? The inconsistency should be
resolved one way or the other.

[[meta:Help:Interwiki linking]] says this:

w:Main Page - Wikipedia in the same language as the project the link is from (if
that is multilingual, then English)
b:Main Page - Wikibooks in the same language as the project the link is from (if
that is multilingual, then English)

That's why I chose to say "w: should link to de.wikipedia" rather than "b:
should point to www.wikibooks (central place)". Also, the central place looks
too English-centric.

1. b: has no bearing on w:
2. w: exists independently so that you can use it to bounce to any language in Wikipedia, as a shorthand for the

WikiPedia: interwiki which works on various other non-Wikimedia wikis as well.

gangleri wrote:

marking
Bug 3861: at wikimedia foundations projects in languages others then English the
interwiki prefix w: is not an equivalent of wikipedia:
as a duplicate of this bug

gangleri wrote:

*** Bug 3861 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***