Last modified: 2013-11-12 16:23:42 UTC
mediawiki tracks interwiki links in the iwlinks table per default. for consistency, wikibase should track sitelinks defined in items in the same way. They *are* interwiki links, after all.
Similar should be kept in mind for pagelinks table and backlinks.
I think sitelinks should be langlinks and not interwikis and so tracked by langlinks table and not by iwlinks table. Interwikilinks: inline links on pages having an external target e.g. [[:de:A]] Langlinks: links to local sites shown on the sidebar e.g. [[de:A]] (without first colon) The word "interwiki" is also used for the combined case. Interwikibots mostly modifies langlinks only but can also modify interwikis to species and commons (normally using a local commonscat template). The backlink on commons is added as langlinks again.
this has been fixed for a long time.