Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery

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Active Wiki Fixup Projects
Leading the charge in the War on Error!
Must be active, systematic, have lists, & need help.
Writing
Articles that need to be wikified

Massive backlog.
(Category, live update)

Dead-end pages

These pages are not wikified.
(Updated 2007 Nov 3)

Most wanted stubs

(Updated from 2006 Jan 25 dump, still active as of 2007 May 4)

Most wanted articles

(Updated 2007 Sep 8)

Missing articles

Wikipedia is not as complete as you might think!
(ongoing)

Other
Disambiguation pages with links

Directing ambiguous links to the intended articles.
(Updated 2008 March 12)

Templates with red links

Help solve red links in templates through writing or repair.
(Updated 2007 December 5)

Interlanguage links

Add and improve interlanguage links in articles.
(Updated 2007 August 25)

Red Link Recovery

Repair red links in articles.
(Updated 2007 July 2)

Unreferenced articles

Ensuring articles include at least one reference or source.
(Category, live update)

Articles needing geo-coordinates

Help locate places. See WP:GEO
(Category, live update)

Uncategorised articles

Help categorise articles.
(Category, live update)

Orphaned articles

Help link to these orphaned articles.
(Category, live update)

Linkrot

Fix broken links to external websites.
(Updated 2007 Jan 13)

Transwiki log cleanup

Articles that have been transwikied and need to be checked for possible merging or deletion.

Main - Inactive - Mini
Shortcut:
WP:RLR

Contents

[edit] Introduction

This project is looking at methods of transforming red links (links to articles that do not exist - like this one) into blue ones - links to articles that do exist. See Wikipedia:Red link.

It will look at all methods of transforming red links into blue ones, including but not limited to:

  • Creating missing articles or redirects for which many red links exist
  • Automatically suggesting alternate targets for red links
  • Identifying and removing red links to topics for which no article will ever exist

In order to help people find this project, consider using an edit summary like the following: link repair ([[Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery|You can help!]])

In addition to fixing red links by altering the article in which the link appears, it is often worthwhile to make a redirect from the old target to the new target in case anyone makes the same mistake again.

[edit] Status

New reports being generated from 2nd August 2007 database dump - TB 20:17, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] To do

Current lists of things to fix are:

Category Last updated Status Description
Repeated letter suggestions 2008-05-24 Recently updated Suggestions for turning red links blue by changing repeated letters
Initialisation suggestions 2008-05-24 Recently updated Make red links blue by using middle names or just their initials
Diacritic suggestions 2008-05-24 Recently updated Suggestions for turning red links blue by changing diacritics
Unlikely links 2008-05-24 Recently updated Red links to topics that are unlikely ever to exist
Punctuation suggestions 2008-05-24 Recently updated Suggestions for turning red links blue by altering punctuation
Capitalisation suggestions 2008-05-24 Recently updated Suggestions for turning red links blue by changing the case of letters
Unwanted articles 2007-09-08 Ongoing Articles that have been deleted but still have many incoming links
Vowel transposition suggestions 2006-07-28 Completed Turn red links blue by transposing vowel combinations
Numeric suggestions 2005-06-30 Completed Turn red links blue by changing numbers to words or vice versa
Pluralisation suggestions 2005-06-23 Completed Suggestions for turning red links blue by making words plural
Sounds-like suggestions 2007-09-08 Completed Suggestions for turning red links blue by replacing similar sounds

[edit] Related

[edit] Participants

The list of past and present participants in this project can be found here. Add your name to the list if you consider reducing the number of red links in Wikipedia a useful task.

[edit] Userbox

I've made this userbox. Feel free to use it!
{{User:JackSparrow Ninja/Userboxes/User Redlinkrecoveryteam}}

This user is part of the WikiProject Red Link Recovery.





[edit] Scripts and tools

  • The exception list - this is a list of previous suggestions that project members have marked up as incorrect. Suggestions on the list won't be made again.
  • The script used to generate lists of suggested corrections for red links
  • Random additional SQL scraps used in/by this project.
  • Hint: Where there is a suggestion, and it's hard to spot because the relevant page has lots of Red Links, try using Find in this page (from the Edit menu in your browser or by pressing ctrl F) to find a keyword. thisisace 22:21, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] General strategy and discussion forums

[edit] Stats

The first iteration of this project (in mid-2005) succeeded in 'fixing' over 50,000 red links. While this is a vanishingly small proportion of the red links in the whole of wikipedia, this nevertheless represents 50,000 improvements in nearly as many wikipedia articles. Additionally, a lot has been learned, particularly about the sorts of typos, assumptions and mental farts in general that lead people to add red links to articles that needn't be. A list of 5000 or so 'false positives' (that is, suggested alternate targets for red links that were not correct) have been collected and are available to 'fine tune' the next iteration of the project.

Iteration 2 began in mid-2006 and resurrected the most successful mechanisms for detecting 'easily fixable' red links and introduced a few new ones. Many more suggestions were created (about 95,000 in total). Thankfully many new faces joined the project to help work through them - thanks to you all, you know who you are! The average quality of suggested fixes was higher than in phase one (9.3% false-positive compared to 10.1% last time around).

Iteration 3 was started in mid-2007 tackling over 140,000 new and existing red links. While the lists are completed, the stats for this are not yet compiled - watch this space.

Iteration4 of the red link recovery project is now underway.

[edit] Templates

Languages