Wikipedia talk:Special:WantedPages

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This is the talk page for the special page at Special:WantedPages.
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For recent talk about special pages, see Recentchangeslinked/Specialpages discussion

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[edit] Statistics for failed searches

Is there anywhere I can see statistics on failed searches? For example, I would like to contribute to Wikipedia by making a new page that doesn't exist. I'd like to choose a topic that other people need. If there was a compilation of search keywords that users had attempted to find in Wikipedia, but come out with nothing, this would give me somewhere to start from instead of looking at the "requested pages". --Tomhannen 22:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tomhannen (talk • contribs) 22:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Link count seems odd

It seems to me to be beneficial for the Wantedpages report, to exclude user pages, and when generating rankings, to exclude links from user and talk pages.

For example, The Gilded Palace of Sin has 81 links, but almost all are from the Talk pages of other albums.

True, true, BUT what if someone says "I noticed you added (data here), but should it be put into a new //different page, article name here?" or something like that? Then that linking and request is lost and no-one can fill it unless they happen across the originating talk page. Certainly User pages themselves can be excluded, but in some cases the Talks shouldn't be. Or, at least, that's my POV! Master Thief Garrett 01:09, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Similarly, nonexistent links from link-farm templates should be ignored (or, preferably, link-farm templates should be discouraged by official policy). The top 500 as of this date is overrun by half-completed obsessive-compulsive surveys of railway locomotive models and individual naval vessels, and the link counts of missing pages are being completely driven by their presense in such should-be-a-category-page templates instead of by any links in the article bodies. Jonrock 07:37, 2005 May 24 (UTC)
    • After further research, I see that navigational templates are here to stay, so I withdraw the ranty portion of the above, but I would still like the link count generated by a link in a template to be "1" rather than "number of pages the template appears in". Jonrock 07:49, 2005 May 24 (UTC)
  • Link counts seem odd on certain article subjects. For example, there are MANY pages requested that are formatted "[date, ex. January 28th] in baseball", and they all have the exact same link count (126). Maybe I'm just completely naive, but... There must be a program or something.
  • I wish the counts were simply broken out to see which actually have articles with dead links rather than talk pages. As it is, this tool is of little use to me. Kidvicious 01:35, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RSS feeds of users' watchlists

Pardon me if this request doesn't belong here (and could you tell me where I should write it up?), but I love the RSS feeds in the left-nav toolbox wherever they occur -- and one place they'd be especially fantastic would be for one's watchlist. Obviously this is a development project, so I'd like to suggest it.
i agree with yoou 100% --E123 23:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] With you on the user pages

The majority of the "biggies" seem to be user's linked in via article history. For instance, the Angella (troll) pages account for something like 1300 links. When I follow one there's no link on the page itself, so I assume it's in the history. Time for a little SQLing it seems. Maury 12:47, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why don't we just redirect them all to one page that says something like "This is a user who has deleted their account," or something like that? Would that be "against the rules" in any way? --Wolf530 03:05, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)


I think Wantedpages should show us pages which are wanted. Talk pages (unlike articles) are only wanted if someone has something to say. User pages are only wanted if the user has something to say about themselves. Both problems are self correcting.

Hence User:, User talk: and Talk: pages should be exluded from the list altogether. That's half the list right there.

A quick review of the other entries, suggests that most of the items in the top spots are there because they are linked from people's signatures in Talk pages (usually one person), which is not a measure of demand, or linked from wikiproject boilerplate templates in the talk pages.

That's fine, but just because one wikiproject choses to put boilerplate links in all the talk pages, and another does not, does not mean that the linked-to pages are in more demand. For example, Formula One Management got most of it's links from boilerplate on talk pages of other formula one pages, like this Talk:Enzo_Ferrari. Presumably the wikiproject will take care of open tasks which they have noted, so Wantedpages does not need them.

Likewise, if someone has set up a signature which links to "The Gilded Palace of Sin", links will appear in the talk pages wherever that user goes, but this does not mean that the page is in high demand, and is not useful information.

At the least, we should cap the number of links from talk pages which "count".

That's what I think, anyway. Ben@liddicott.com 11:59, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that the measure of an article's "wantedness" should be how many links there are to it in the main namespace, not on talk pages, user pages, etc. The article "AIDS kills fags dead", for example, shows up as having 30-something links, but none of them are from actual articles. Hardly a most wanted.
Also, why aren't they listed in reverse order, with the ones with the most links first? GTBacchus 19:05, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Reverse Order???

Someone mentioned it before, and I came here thinking the exact same thing. Why are the links in reverse order? Surely the pages with the most links should be shown first? Brendanfox 11:04, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ditto. –– Constafrequent (talk page) 05:22, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Just swooned in

Looks like a good den for failed linkspam ^_^ --BesigedB (talk) 23:43, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I know what you're saying. There has to be a way to prevent that. -- Jtalledo 23:43, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Filter

Would it be feasable to develop a filter whereby unwanted reds could be hidden? --Oldak Quill 17:41, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Weird spam

Why are things like Votes for Willys on this page with thousands of alleged links to them even though some (probably all) of the pages mentioned as linking to them don't contain the links??? Nickptar 18:38, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

That's what I'm coming here about. What's the deal? A lot of these seem to have no part in the "what links here" pages.
My best guess is that an admin did a DB level delete, and didn't clean up the cruft from the `brokenlinks` table at the same time. IMHO this should be deleted ASAP as it's just giving the vandals publicity. Stoive 01:30, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, every time any of those pages is "edited", it re-fixes the links. Humble users could fix it by clicking on each of the many referenced pages in turn and doing some (any) edit. Doubtless admins have some shorter less spammy method they could use. I just fixed some unrelated wikification on Talk:Peppered moth, and sure enough it disappeared from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Votes_for_Willys Presumably it will shortly cause the count on Special:Wantedpages to decrement shortly. -- Stoive 01:42, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
  • what is wrong with blank articles at the vandal pages so wantedpages functions correctly?

[edit] Update frequency?

How often is this list regenerated? I just updated most of the EMD locomotive articles to use smaller navigation templates, which should have reduced the frequency that the red links within them appear on this list. For example, [[EMD GP50]] appears at number 62 in the list with 103 links, but looking at What links here shows only 25 links. Is this list generated once a day or more frequently? AdThanksVance. slambo 15:24, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comprehensive exhaustive

Why don't we list every single red link there is? No exclusions and then categorize by topic. Medical, history, sociology, sex, technology, entertainment, etc? Jaberwocky6669 July 1, 2005 13:45 (UTC)

It seems to me that if one knows enough about the subject of a red link to categorize it, a better thing to do would be to add a sentence or two describing what it is, and then tag it as a stub. Then it can be put under the correct stub category.
It's easy to create numerically prioritized lists like this one without much effort, and people find this kind of list useful because the top ones are "important" in some ways, to the integrity of the site.
If you find manually created by-topic lists of redlinks useful, too, existing "List of __ topics" articles already collect a chunk of these, and might be a good place to start a systematic effort. It would not be hard to create a list of all redlinks, excluding a certain list of pages. It might be interesting to have a script suggest a category for each redlink, based on the category memberships of the linking article(s).
I think excluding links from talk and other meta-pages is useful because a lot of discussions happen about whether or not to delete an article, which ends up being deleted, causing a bunch of red links in the process. -- Beland 7 July 2005 02:58 (UTC)

[edit] Decommission this page!

I would actually recommend decommissioning this page in favor of Wikipedia:Most wanted articles, which is being kept up to date, is better filtered, and which is going to be much more useful. -- Beland 7 July 2005 02:42 (UTC)

replace rather than decommission. Move Wikipedia:Most wanted articles to Special:Wantedpages. Grutness...wha? 03:26, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I third this notion. thesublime514 (Talk) 01:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Fourthed! --Dwarf Kirlston 17:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Making it to show red links with only 1 link?

I run my own wiki at chronocompendium.com, and I'm about to complete it. I'd like to track down bad links, but the list terminates at the last instance of a wanted entry linked by two red links. Can I have it show wanted pages with only one link directing toward them? --Zeality 21:17, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

No, you will have to patch the software by deleting the clause "HAVING COUNT(*) > 1" from includes/SpecialWantedpages.php (but leave the trailing quote + semicolon intact). Then you'll get all red links listed. If you mind the resulting "1 links" messages, you can change MediaWiki:Nlinks to "$1 link(s)" or something. --Chrissi 14:17, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Starting from MediaWiki 1.5.7, this can be controlled by setting $wgWantedPagesThreshold, cf. Bug 5011. By default, this is 1 so all red links are shown. Cool :-) --Chrissi 10:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User pages

It would be better if it did not include missing user pages or sub pages of them, as it creates a highly placed "wanted page" for any missing/deleted user pages tahat are pointed to by multiple talk signings.

Looked at "Wanted articles" - seems to be rather thin compared to this, presumably provided by intervention rather than by automation.

Ranting on, but looking for 1-link pages does have a point - many 1-links may be mis-spellings that could be fixed by correcting the link to point to a page which is present. Ace of Risk 14:34, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I just came here to make exactly the same point. User pages and even the odd user talk page are starting to clog the list up. It would be good if they were excised from the list. Grutness...wha? 12:06, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Ditto. 71.193.99.44 04:01, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] cross out

What does the cross out mean in the list? Bud0011 21:23, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm just guessing but…it looks as if it's automatically added when an entry on the list is no longer a red-link: this is probably because the list is very expensive to refresh, so making it obvious that an entry is out-of-date is more efficient in the meantime. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 08:39, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Templates filling up list

It would be nice if links from templates would be ignored, currently the list is filled up with those .. regrettable. -- User:Docu

I agree. The current number one on the list (Peter Harvey) is actually only linked in 13 articles. With all the links from the project templates the page is completely useless when one is looking for articles that really need to be created. Right now it's really nothing more than a ranking of most used project templates. --Fritz S. (Talk) 18:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I think it should be a two-tear list, it should state links first followed by links through templates, or perhaps simplier, instead of showing every link of any given template it should just note, also apperas on template:x. any thoughts?qrc 01:20, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WHAT THE...?

HIV set point ‎(3,694 links)

I checked it out. Only 5 pages link to HIV set point. Why does it say 3k? What the heck? ---J.S (t|c) 22:17, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I noticed the same problem with a bunch of Australian related - Something seems to be wrong with the tool that creates this list :
  1. Sydney Children's Hospital ‎(4,512 links)
  2. Fairfield Hospital ‎(4,510 links)
  3. Manly Hospital ‎(4,509 links)
  4. Prospect Creek (New South Wales) ‎(4,508 links)
  5. Mona Vale Hospital ‎(4,508 links)
  6. Cumberland Plains ‎(4,508 links)
Ozhiker 20:22, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Ozhiker is correct, the australian articles claim thousands of links, but going to the pages referenced do not actually contain links to the red articles in question. What an odd bug. Salad Days 16:58, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
I see a similar problem, like "1. Original War ‎(9,110 links)". Looking at all the links; they're all talk pages of video games. Looking into it, I see the Computer and Videogame WikiProject template at the top... I edited it out and that seemed to reduce the number a great deal (MySQL still hasn't had time to completely catch up though). I reckon the same thing happened to the Australian thing.
I also vote that talk pages be removed from this count, or at least be put in a different section, e.g., "1. Original War (10 main space links, 9100 talk space links)" --DevastatorIIC 13:22, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Update, I found some things on Wikimedia's bugzilla. I hope this gets fixed soon. --DevastatorIIC 13:32, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
The reason that Australian articles rank so high is that the WP:AUS talk page template, {{WP Australia}}, transcludes a to-do list of non-existent articles on every talk page it is placed on. Other projects, like WP:NOVEL have a similar to-do list template that also gets spammed, so Special:Wantedpages is now completely obsolete. ˉˉanetode╦╩ 05:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps a notice could be placed on pages such as this one to prevent editors from wasting time creating these articles. That is, it would be in Wikipedia's best interest to direct the energies of enthusiastic editors into writing articles that really are in demand. (Thank you Anetode for tracking down this bug; your explanation makes perfect sense.) Katalaveno 21:18, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] comment & suggestion: view by category

  1. I agree on that link counts are odd : there were over 4,197 links pretended to honest leftmost branch, making it rank # 11 (at least from last update (21-Oct-06) to today), but I can't find any...
  2. I think it would be most useful if one could browse the Wantedpages by Category of articles linking to it: that way e.g. a mathematician (etc.) can see more easily what pages from his field are wanted, and maybe create them. — MFH:Talk 19:25, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Random non-fiction page link wanted on the left

Pleeeeeease can we have one! There is so much other stuff to wade through to get to a factual type non-showbiz non-fiction non-political type article. Yes: sciences pure and applied engineering, trades, construction, just useful facty stuff No: fiction, showbiz, politics, music, art, fashion, etc etc

TabbyTabby 03:37, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Soft redirect?

I suggest changing the page Wikipedia:Special:Wantedpages as follows. Full redirects to special pages do not work, so the result of the current page is the view of the redirect as shown (not redirection as was probably intended).

Markup Result
Current #REDIRECT [[Special:Wantedpages]] Image:Redirectltr.png Special:Wantedpages
Proposed {{softredirect|Special:Wantedpages}}
Soft redirect
This page can be found at Special:Wantedpages.

— BigNate37(T) 22:34, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Done —Mets501 (talk) 20:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What's up with this page?

Why are there no articles in the list? --Majorly (Talk) 17:50, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Still?Garrie 23:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Look up a bit at What THE or similar. Templates result in spamming of this page so it's been turned off. Personally - I think the spamming isn't in itself a bad thing it should just turn up somewhere else.Garrie 23:25, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Most wanted articles is a good replacement 89.0.55.96 06:23, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] wanted page

here's a article that i want: mokitown 12.216.165.50 17:53, 11 August 2007 (UTC)


I am interested in creating a catagory for PERFORMANCE ART...PERFORMANCE ARTISTS..Please! (Mmmistress 22:34, 6 October 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Can not find nothing "nada"

i tried to find some wanted article, but came up with nothing, it seems that this problem is encountered by many other users , so what is the point of having this page at all. AuaWise -Talk- —Preceding comment was added at 14:16, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The page exists because it's common to the MediaWiki software. Otherwise, yes, it's a bit silly for the page to exist as anything beyond a redirect. -Verdatum (talk) 17:45, 22 February 2008 (UTC)