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Difficulty adding links directly in Infobox via Source Edit Mode
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Description

Naturally, if you want to add a link to any title, there is an option in the visual edit mode and the source edit mode. However, when editing directly in the edit mode in the info box, there is no option to add a link. To add a link, you have to find the title in another browser and use square brackets for it. This is very difficult.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Go to an article in wikipedia
  2. To link a wikipedia article to a word using edit mode, we can directly use the visual editor mode as shown in the image.
    Screenshot 2025-08-17 120425.png (416×677 px, 184 KB)
  3. But, there is no option to do the same in the info box. When there are red links, we wont be able to know if there is an article and its not linked properly or if there is no article at all.
  4. To link an article in info box, we need to use the source edit mode and cant be known through visual edit mode as shown in the image
    Screenshot 2025-08-17 121127.png (444×853 px, 225 KB)
  5. Currently, the users have to check if the article is present or not in a different browser and paste it properly

Expected Results:

  1. The users are expecting a feature to be able to directly link the articles in the infobox using the visual edit mode itself.

This problem is being faced by all the users who edit in wikipedia and it becomes easy for them to edit if this option is available in visual edit mode itself

This is a request from the user యర్రా_రామారావు: in telugu village pump.

MW User: యర్రా రామారావు - Thanks!

Event Timeline

Kalli_navya renamed this task from Difficulty adding links directly in Infobox Edit Mode to Difficulty adding links directly in Infobox via Source Edit Mode .Aug 17 2025, 6:48 AM
Kalli_navya updated the task description. (Show Details)

I'm extremely confident that there's another ticket out there about adding a new type to templatedata so that parameters could be flagged as expecting wikitext, in which case we could give you a VE widget in the template editor to have access to things like the link tool. But I can't find it.

Hi @DLynch ,

I came across your earlier comment mentioning a related task about adding a new type to TemplateData for parameters that expect wikitext, which could enable a VisualEditor widget for link tools. I wasn’t able to find that task either — could you please share it if you come across it?

I’m interested in contributing to this issue and would really appreciate any guidance or pointers on where to begin, as I’m still new to MediaWiki development.

I'm extremely confident that there's another ticket out there about adding a new type to templatedata so that parameters could be flagged as expecting wikitext, in which case we could give you a VE widget in the template editor to have access to things like the link tool. But I can't find it.

There is T52355: VisualEditor: Add support for editing templates' parameters as DOM elements ("visually"), including supporting nested templates and T52182: VisualEditor: Add support for making some templates directly "visually editable" in the DOM, as if they were tables (e.g. infoboxes) with the related task T53374: TemplateData: Add parameter type for wikitext