Why are links removed after transliterating usexes?

Thanks. And you should also consider my side note if you ever have time (i.e. remove_links("foo[[Category:Bar]]baz") should really return "foobaz" and not "fooCategory:Barbaz").

Done.

Well that's only one case. It also needs to make sure that "[[:Category:Bar]]" becomes "Category:Bar" and also handle interwikis the same way. And the regular expressions would need to account for cases like "[[category:Bar]]" and "[[ Category  : Bar]]" or worse. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm demanding things. These are just suggestions for when you have time, since it might take some work to figure out all the cases.