User:Nickj/Link Suggester/Negative Feedback

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Please leave any negative feedback for the Link Suggester on this page. Conversely, if you have positive feedback, please leave it here.

Also if you are unhappy with the LinkBot over suggestions that you thought weren't useful (and that wouldn't be useful to anyone else either) then please let me know here which suggestions weren't useful, and I'll ensure that they aren't suggested in the future.

Please add entries to the end of this list. -- Nickj 07:01, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  1. Won't replace the real thing. I've had a look at some of the suggestion it has made for Australian articles, and it seems to come up with silly/innapropriate ones just as often (if not more) than it comes up with useful ones. An automated program simply won't replace humans looking at it and thinking "thats a good wikilink".--ZayZayEM 09:06, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Never replace, but it is certainly a good supplement. Neither Cyclone Tracy nor Australian Greens pages had inaccurate suggestions. - Aaron Hill 11:52, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)
      • I'm being turned. Some good suggestions at Triple J, however it did suggest Double J which in turn redirects back to the main article. Is there a way it could avoid self redirects. --ZayZayEM 05:14, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
        • At the time those suggestions were made (late October), it knew nothing about redirects (to self or to other pages). This has since been added though, so (I think) there now shouldn't be any self-redirects suggested. All the best, -- Nickj 07:56, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  2. Online banking suggestions were OK, but highlighted that a better vesion would automatically adjust for redirects. The Internet redirects to internet, so the the needn't be in the wikilink, but [[internet browser]] redirects to web browser, so it should suggest the wikilink of [[web browser|internet browser]]. Obviously this would be more readily implemented when the tool is integrated with the MediaWiki software (which should also handle multiple identical wikilinks in an article automatically). -- Mark Hurd 15:26, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Just removing the final link to "internet browser". AlistairMcMillan 04:31, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • Personally I prefer longer links, but I agree that it should automatically try to adjust for redirects (this also avoids the problem of suggesting a number of different wikilinks for the same article, which all redirect to the same page; And it should also prevent suggesting self-redirects which point back to the original article). So using the above example, I think it should ideally do [[Internet|The Internet]] and [[web browser|internet browser]], and I'm aiming for something that does this. - Nickj 22:37, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  3. Re your suggestions at Alphabet:
    Pjacobi 11:59, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    Thank you. I've removed disambiguation pages from the suggested links (there 44839 suggested links to disambiguation pages, around 6% of the total). Also redirects in the article will now be converted to their target location, which should prevent suggesting links where there's already a redirect in the article that goes to the same place (not doing this in the first place was a silly oversight on my behalf). I've checked what the revised suggestions for this page would be, and they would be the same minus Latin alphabet, phonetic alphabet and also middle Persian (since the Pahlavi alphabet link you already have redirects to the same location). I'll also get for languages added to the list of links to manually exclude. All the best, -- Nickj 01:35, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  4. This is going to fill up talk pages with lots of bogus links - it should leave the suggestions up for a month, then clear them out. It's not doing too well with plant links - St. Croix Agave gets a suggestion for St. Croix, but you never want to link part of a species name. Stan 16:20, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  5. I find this more annoying than useful. It seems to suggest mostly inappropriate links, and at best it suggests some obscure links that are at the margins of whether they should be included. Someone else is left to sort through them, and if that someone is an inexperienced editor, they add a bunch of dubious links to the article. I think it would be appropriate for you to make this available as a tool -- as in someone working on an article could request such a list and then follow through -- but dumping it into the talk page is almost functionally equivalent to trolling, though doubtless with better intentions. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:57, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
  6. The links suggested for anarchism...some were okay and relevant but a great deal were bad suggestions. --Fatal 21:32, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  7. I certainly don't like the way they're dumped inline on the talk page. It would be less obtrusive if your bot created a subpage of the talk page and only left a link to that on the talk page. Shane King 00:43, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)
    • That could definitely work. I've actually been quite surprised that some people were annoyed about suggestions on the talk page (it's almost like there's a suspicion the whole aim was to annoy them, rather than try and help them!) - but there have been enough responses like this to make me think that some change in approach would be a good idea. Your subpage idea is the first constructive criticism that I've received that addresses this concern, whilst still being feasible, and having the benefits of using the talk page (and the whole purpose of the talk page is to discuss and suggest improvements to the article). I'll work on something like this - for the talk page, I'm thinking something like the current section header ("Suggest 36 possible wiki links and 21 possible backlinks for XYZ") + a bit of text that says "An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the XYZ article, and they have been placed on this subpage", and link on 'this subpage' (so you'd get just 2 lines of text added to the talk page). Then the actual subpage would be just like what was previously being added to the talk page. Does that sound more reasonable? All the best, -- Nickj 05:38, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
      • That sounds good to me. If there was only a small number of links, posting inline would probably be OK. I think what most people are objecting to is the large amount of text being placed on the talk page. I've got no problem with the link bot making suggestions (of course they're not always going to be good, that's why people make links and not the wikipedia software), I just think it would be tidier if it didn't take up so much space. Hopefully it will cause other people to not complain so much too. :) Shane King 06:06, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)
  8. Did not like the ones suggested for Apartheid some of which were general South Africa and others not even that.--Audiovideo 14:42, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Thank you for the feedback. There were definitely some incorrect or over-general links suggested for this article - the worst ones I think were: election of 1948, National government, Black man, eighty-seven, modern weapons, Deputy Minister, The Truth, and Member States. I'll get these added to the list of links not to suggest in future. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 22:39, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Going to have to disagree. The election of 1948 was a turning point of Aparthied. Burgundavia 11:00, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
        • Unfortunately the election of 1948 it suggested is about a US election, not a South African one, hence the bad link :-( -- All the best, Nickj (t) 01:15, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • What about allowing the "bad list" to be ignored if the article on the list has a back-link to the article being parsed? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 18:47, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
      • That's a good idea, but it would make it a lot slower, and it's already getting dog slow, so I'm going to have to say 'no', not because I disagree with the idea (I don't), but because I think it will make it too slow. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 01:15, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • The Truth is a dab page. There's nothing wrong with linking to it, but a better hit would have been Truth and Reconcilliation Commission. Josh Parris ✉ 04:04, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
        • It would pick The Truth up as a disambig page now, and therefore not link to it (won't suggest links to dab pages); Note that the disambig was added to article on "The Truth" on the 9th March 2005 (after these suggestions were made on 18 Dec 2004). So, if was running on this article now, it would instead suggest linking the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. All the best, Nickj (t) 04:51, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  9. arable land suggestions are totally tangential, don't help the article at all (except in so far as the article needs serious work) -- Danny Yee 11:59, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • It won't suggest the link to wild animals any more, as that is now a disambig page (doesn't suggest links to disambig pages). That leaves fresh water, and the 182 backlinks to arable land; Should I get these 2 added to the list of links to not suggest? -- All the best, Nickj (t) 01:15, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  10. The suggested links for Abner Doubleday cite text that is not in the (current?) article. Hal Jespersen 15:47, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, but those suggestions were made in excess of 14 months ago. The software can't be expected to suggest links for text that hasn't even been written at the time it runs! :-) A revised approach is being considered now, whereby rather than listing suggestions on the talk page or other wiki pages (where they will become less relevant with time as the article changes, such as in this case), they will processed by a people in batches, clicking "Yes" or "No" to each suggestion. This should sharply reduce the delay between suggestion, and a human making a decision about that suggestion. It should also automate acting upon that an accepted suggestion, making the whole thing easier. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 01:06, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
  11. I also think this would be better as a tool... someone is going to have to look at every link anyway, and if we could automate the process of actually replacing the text with the link, that would be cool. moink 05:11, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
  12. In Algae article, partial differentiation is not math but completely different thing. Saimhe 18:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)