Wikipedia talk:Special:LonelyPages

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for the special page at Special:LonelyPages.
For general information on this and other special pages, see Help:Special page.
For recent talk about special pages, see Recentchangeslinked/Specialpages discussion

Special:Lonelypages is an automatically created list of orphaned pages. Orphan and Lonely are synonymous (they mean the same thing): pages with no parent. That is, pages without wikilinks to them.

Except for disambiguation pages (which ideally should be orphans), this could indicate one of these possibilities:

  • Articles which should link to the orphaned article need expansion.
  • Parent articles were deleted, or their references (wikilinks) were removed.
  • The article was created in error: perhaps its name is mispelled or not a well known variation of the name.
  • The article is not noteworthy.

To remove an entry from this list, boldly find and edit appropriate parent articles to reference the entry. In the latter two cases (above), the article should be deleted.

[edit] See also

Contents


[edit] What is Orphaned?

What's it? Please, someone explain. --Riceonroute66 16:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

No incoming links from other pages. Click on "What links here" in the right sidebar to see incoming links. --W.marsh 17:11, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what it is either --Souns

[edit] Links to disambig pages

I've noticed that this seems to be including disambiguation pages. Don't we want disambig pages to be orphans? Can we change this to exclude them?

Agreed, this is making clean up difficultJschwa1.

I'll third that. -- WOT 18:22, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree, there are too many disambig pages on this list, they should be excluded. --Jared Buck 19:35, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You may want to try the following two reports, supplying similar information, but not updated with the same frequency:
-- User:Docu
"Orphaned articles" is 1.5 years old by now. "not same frequency" indeed. --Alvestrand 08:15, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
By now it's even 3 years, not an option I guess Arienh4(Talk) 21:11, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Improperly included disambiguation pages

[edit] Unorphaned - (Is that a word?)

I just unorphaned a page and didn't know if I should put up a notice here or if these things got weeded out by bots... The page was the one on antisexualism. I put a link on the page for hedonism.

Dismas

try deorphanized :) Courtland

No - try "deorphanised", British spellings are always superior, everyone knows that... ;-) Manning 07:21, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
True, but "deorphaned" is neutral for everyone ;-) SalaSkan 12:52, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Something listed as an orphan really isn't - what will happen?

I found something on the list that wasn't actually orphaned. Does it automatically get removed from the list, or what?-LtNOWIS 21:11, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC) Oh yeah, also, if an article's in a category, it's not really quite the same as being unlinked. Anyone who goes to an article in the same category is only 2 clicks away from the article!-LtNOWIS 23:19, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ok long time no answer I'll give it a shot... This Special page is based on a snapshot of Wikipedia (the time and date is given on the page). I don't think there's much of a pattern to when it gets done. If an article is listed here and an editor deorphanises it, it will remain on the list till the next snapshot. Check the 'What Links Here' to check the articles current status. Suncloud 13:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What does "Lonelypages" mean?

The page should say clearly what a Lonelypage is. Maybe insiders know but the world does not and there is a link to it on the main page. Also there should be some mechanism to get down the list without downloading everything. "A"'s get all the attention now. --agr 15:11, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree, I don't know what differs a lonely page from an orphaned page. Is it something that needs to be fixed by finding something to connect to it, or "fixed" by deciding if it needs to be deleted, or what?--Dustin Asby 16:55, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
I come here to know what a "lonelypage" or a "orphaned page" is (i think they are the same thing, right?), so it would be nice if someone could write what it is (i´m very good in reading english, but i can´t write very well... not a mother language :D)--imnotregistered 3:51, 11 sep 2005 (georgetown time)
So could someone please explain? Right below this entry would be a good place. Thanks! Herostratus 04:49, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
It means that nothing links to that page. Ashibaka (tock) 04:15, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Whatever it means (I THINK it means "nothing links to it"), I think the definition should be changed. There's zero value in linking disambig pages (they SHOULD be lonely, all the links should go to the disambiguated ones), and I don't find linking stub pages a high priority activity. It would be more fun to scan the list if the disambiguation and stub pages were omitted. --Alvestrand 01:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How often does this list refresh?

I spent 20 minutes looking for something to fix, except someone else has already done the work. How often does this list update? Manning 07:24, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

I think it currently refreshes every Wednesday, sometime in the morning (US Eastern time). I'm not sure that every single orphan article is added even if it would fit alphabetically, and only the first 1,000 seem to be listed now. At least that's what I've observed. --W.marsh 18:56, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
But it did not refresh this Wednesday morning, apparently. --W.marsh 16:01, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
If they are only going to run it once a week, it would be nice it the list was longer, like make 20,000 rather than 1000. Fplay 05:57, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
I support this idea, I was trying to jump to some pages starting with something other than A, B or C and obviously got nothing. Cut at No. 1000. --Ruziklan 22:51, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
I dunno, presumably it takes up a good ammount of server time even to make the list of 1,000 orphans once a week (I say this because sometimes the list doesn't refresh, sometimes it takes until Saturday, etc.) At any rate, while it would be nice to see all orphans in one very long list, what's the point? We don't really remove all 1,000 in a weeks time, so what's it matter if we're removing orphans that start with a B or with a Z? Let's just work on fixing the 1,000 a week the WikiGods give us.
By the way, I'm thinking about creating a project to help coordinate the increasing group of people who seem to be working on the Orphan's list. When I started going through the list in October, it didn't even get to the B's. Now it gets halfway through the C's. We actually are making progress. --W.marsh 04:08, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that they are running it early on Wednesday morning and on late Friday night. I have difficulty believing that 1000 pages takes a long time: Look at how quickly the "What links here" tool can respond when the answer is "none"! Surely doing that 1000 times cannot take that much time. -- Fplay 11:04, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
You're probably right about the (lack of) server stress, though it probably has to do "What links here" several thousand times, so that's something. And you're right about when it refreshes, at least lately. A month or so ago it sometimes was missing refreshes, now it's pretty regular. --W.marsh 14:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Other pages which should remain orphaned

Pages such as Camp Lazlo Episode Ideas which are protected from recreation also create a false positive on here, as do pages whose only content is Template:wi. (ESkog)(Talk) 05:27, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Hmm... here's one thought. What if someone created a subpage of their userspace or something just listing all these links which should remain (otherwise) orphaned? Would that get them off this list? Would it be worth it? (ESkog)(Talk) 05:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Funny that you should mention that, I am trying to find out if would be a good idea to change the deletedpage template so it doesn't do that anymore (i.e. it links to itself, or some other solution is devised). It's supposed to be temporary but sometimes it is up for weeks. See discussion here Template talk:Deletedpage if you're particularly interested.
As for Template:wi, as far as I know, it creates a link to pages it's used on, so in other words, pages with it shouldn't be orphans.
I don't know that any pages should stay orphans. Though the two cases you've mentioned are ones where de-orphaning them doesn't really do much more than take them off the list... so they're not of that much concert (to me, at least). --W.marsh 05:36, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Create Category:Intentionally orphaned page? --Alvestrand 14:10, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Limited to 1000 entries?

I tried to follow Special::Lonelypages to the end. It stopped after #1000, with almost nothing but the As listed. Bug or feature? --Alvestrand 08:23, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Same prob here. Not even out of the A's. What's the deal? Marskell 11:51, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it's limited here's the complete link for all of them at once:

Lonely Pages --DBEndy 03:42, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

This page doesnt seem to have been updated in weeks, is this normal? 206.11.112.251 20:16, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Search links

It would be very helpful if the script that generated the page could also place a link beside each entry that initiates a search for the entry within Wikipedia. For example:

Abdullah Gegic Wikipedia search

Abraham Moss Wikipedia search

Also, the compilation script doesn't seem to exclude entries that have been deleted, i.e. Aaron warters

--Hooperbloob 03:33, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Not sure if it could be added to the special page, but I'm sure someone could create a page rather easilly with such links, similar to what they do with pages like Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics (10) etc. --W.marsh 03:39, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
If someone wants to do this, I recommend the {{search}} template. --Alvestrand 22:55, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I can do that in 3 minutes... hold on.... I will be useing a regex statement. so give me time to optimize the statement first. Eagle talk 07:14, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Eeeeck, I forgot it was a special page... let me make the regex, and figure out what to do next. Who or what is updating this page... is there a editable version of this?? Eagle talk 07:17, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah... I was thinking someone could just output it in their userspace, perhaps. You can use AWB to get a list of all the items on this page easilly. There is a list at Wikipedia:Orphaned Articles but it's highly out of date. --W.marsh 13:55, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted pages?

It seems like many of the pages are deleted already. Should I remove them from the list, or strikethrough? Thanks cøøkiə Ξ (talk) 02:18, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Wish you could, but it's a special page, not modifiable. It was regenerated on June 14 and June 17, so I was hoping it's on a 3-day cycle, but it's been 4 days now.... --Alvestrand 06:18, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] deletedpage tag

Is there any way the list could not include pages with the {{deletedpage}} tag? --Fang Aili talk 17:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I've started outlinking them the same way as with the disambig pages. If there's just a reference to them SOMEWHERE in Wikipedia, they presumably will disappear at the next twice-weekly regeneration. --Alvestrand 20:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hooray - outlinking the disambig pages helped!

The disambiguation pages on the list irritated me, because they didn't seem to belong there - nobody SHOULD link to a disambig page.

So rather than grumbling some more, I created User:Alvestrand/Disambig pages with no links. This is enough to get them removed from Special:Lonelypages the next time the list is regenerated - and allows people to work on the REAL orphaned pages.

It helped - for the first time I can remember, the end of the 1000-entry list is now in the B's rather than the A's! --Alvestrand 05:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

It almost made it to the D's when myself and a few others were manually de-orphaning articles a while back (November/December 2005). But it was a bit too much to handle... I've been looking at different approaches ever since. Adding a template to each page requesting links be created seems to distribute the work out a bit, to people who otherwise wouldn't even realize the article was an orphan. --W.marsh 14:39, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Link to project devoted to keeping disambig pages off Special:Lonelypages: Wikipedia:Links_to_disambiguating_pages. Carolfrog 08:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
This seems absolutely ideal for a bot: do a sweep of the category of disambiguation pages, add them all to WP:LDP, and then either monitor edits or (less work) new pages for disambiguation templates at the bottom of articles. (Alternatively, if not too much work, just rebuild WP:LDP periodically - say, once per week. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:53, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
As I recall to this (there actually was an ancient discussion on this subject), the main obstacle is that some dab pages actually belong on Wikipedia:Multiple-place names, others on Wikipedia:Non-unique personal name. I guess in late 2007 this might seem like a silly concern, since who really uses those lists... but it was a big deal in 2005 and earlier. I think one of the first disputes I ever got into on Wikipedia was someone very angry at me for adding a placename to WP:LDP. The community seems to value these lists a lot less nowadays... if they could be merged and automated, I think that'd be great. --W.marsh 04:04, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] We broke it

I'm not quite sure what's wrong with the page, but I've mentioned it to Tim Starling (a developer) so hopefully the page will again list orphan articles before too long. --W.marsh 13:30, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimedia bug: Lonelypages limited to 1,000

A bug is filed here. -- Shunpiker 03:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Avoiding Duplication of Effort

Due to the fact that this special page apparently refreshes on a weekly (if that) basis, it is entirely possible that two people could be working on the same page at the same time, or that a user could subsequently duplicate another user's efforts. To help avoid that, I propose the following procedure:

  • (1) Upon visiting a possibly orphaned page for the first time, check to see if the "discussion" tab is red- or blue-linked. If it is blue-linked, immediately visit the talk page to see if there has been any recent discussion or any recent notes added, that may shed light on the page's orphan status.
  • (2) If the discussion tab is red-linked, immediately proceed to the "history" tab. Check the history to see if any other editors have been active on the page within the last couple of days.
  • If anyone has been actively editing, you may want to check their recent contributions to see if they have made any edits that link to the supposedly orphaned page.
  • If no one has been actively editing the page recently, you're probably in the clear to do what you can to remedy its orphan situation.
  • (3) Upon succesfully uniting the page with one or more family members, leave a note on the recently de-orphaned page's talk page describing your efforts to de-orphan the page, and whether you believe your efforts have been successful or not.

If anyone has any feedback about this proposal, I welcome it. Thanks. — Carolfrog 03:17, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


Okay, maybe I just needed to write it out to see the flaws in it.  :)
Actually, I didn't realize until just now, when I read a note at the top of the page describing it, that there is a link at the side of every page ("What links here") that you can click to see if a page is really an orphan immediately upon arriving at it. So there is no need for people to go leaving notes on all the talk pages. I wondered if someone would object to creation of talk pages solely for that purpose, and now there would be more reason to. . . . But for beginners at fixing orphans, I still believe some of the steps above would be useful if a page does turn out to still be an orphan upon arrival. {sigh} — Carolfrog 03:26, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Orphans without categories should not be listed or should be marked

Orphan articles belonging to categories created by users, such as a number of entries in Category:African_Footballer_of_the_Year, should be tagged as such or not listed at all. This goes for categories implied by use of user-created templates as well. Of course it does not apply to articles that belong to "administrative" categories like "articles needing cleanup." The reason: The article may exist to "complete the set," deleting it or creating links for the sake of creating links will hurt, not help. This does not apply to "isolated categories," where neither the category nor any of its members are linked from anywhere else. These should remain on the orphan list. Note: The Category:African_Footballer_of_the_Year is a poor example, this whole category needs reorganization. I do think my point is clear though - items in categories should not automatically be assumed to be orphans. davidwr 22:06, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] redirects

does the program prevent pages that have been made into redirects from appearing here--they do appear in OrphanPages?DGG (talk) 00:56, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Only articles appear here. --W.marsh 01:01, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Turned "thin places" from Loneypage into a Stub

I have turned "thin places" from a Loneypage into a Stub. Kathleen.wright5 07:34, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Except for disambiguation pages ..."

Disambiguation pages should not be orphans, otherwise they would serve no purpose. Disambigs get wikilinked from hatnotes. - Revolving Bugbear 13:32, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

See the above thread "Hooray - outlinking the disambig pages helped!" --W.marsh 14:12, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Revolving Bugbear, please specifically see what Alvestrand wrote: "nobody SHOULD link to a disambig page."  :-)

[edit] Hi, I'm new to editing the wikis can somebody help?

Hi, I'm currently doing some clean-up work, and I've come across 'The talking asshole' which is a pointless redirect with no incoming links, can somebody delete it?

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. If you believe a redirect is unnecessary or inappropriate for a specific article, you may nominate it at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion. Cheers, - Mtmelendez (Talk) 14:28, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Easier way to find Orphaned Pages

Took me a while - it seems quite obscure to find, but Category:Orphaned articles seems a more useful way to find Lonely Pages than the Special:LonelyPages which as has been mentioned above only seems to let you get to 'B'. I don't know if a link to that could be put in the special page blurb to make that easier to find? -Hunting dog (talk) 15:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

it seems the special pages in general need some updating, the CAT:ORPHAN page is helpful Shoombooly (talk) 21:19, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Please add a line to the top of the page saying:

"Many of these articles may already have been de-orphaned, or already tagged with an {{tl|orphan}} template. [[WP:O|WikiProject Orphanage]] recommends that aspiring de-orphaners start in [[:Category:Orphaned articles]]."

Thank you.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 22:25, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Done I played around with it a little, but it still says the important things. Happy‑melon 17:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

I've noticed that several articles on the list aren't orphans. How can they be deleted? Kivar2 (talk) 18:49, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I expect you mean "How can they be removed from the list?", not deleted. I am under the impression that the list is updated automatically every few days or so. —EncMstr (talk) 18:53, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
This is correct. There's no other way to edit the page, and none is really necessary, since the problem fixes itself.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 22:28, 9 June 2008 (UTC)