[WikiEN-l] Lists and redlinks and link maintenance

[Samuel Klein]

This is a nice writeup.  It would make a good addition to the  "lists
discussion" page you link.

An essay on this that ties into other ways to convert reliable
datasources into pages via a list-creation step (sometimes resulting
in a list, sometimes resulting in a topic outline, and sometimes
resulting in better encyclopedia articles), would also be useful.

--SJ

On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 5:44 PM, Carcharoth<carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
> I recently created three lists of winners of scientific awards, partly
> because it needed doing, partly to see how good our coverage is now
> (and how many articles remain to be written in such fields) and partly
> to take a more systematic approach to checking links.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_N._Potts_Medal
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Medal
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin_Medal_(Franklin_Institute)
>
> The year ranges are: 1911-1991, 1915-1997, and 1998-2008 respectively.
> The lists consist of scientists across a range of fields, with 99,
> 114, and 80 entries respectively. The number of redlinks vs blue links
> (at the time of writing) are: 51 vs 48, 3 vs 111, and 18 vs 62,
> respectively.
>
> The relatively high numbers of redlinks for the Potts Medal is due to
> it being a somewhat lesser medal than the other two (which are
> essentially the same medal, but the latter one arising after a
> reorganisation of the awards process of the Franklin Institute,
> Pennsylvania, USA). It was very encouraging to see that there were
> only 3 redlinks in the Franklin medal list, but given the calibre and
> stature of some of the names there, that was to be expected. 18
> redlinks (from 80) on the medal covering the last ten years is not too
> bad when you consider that coverage of current scientists is not
> always that good.
>
> I've summarised this on the talk pages, and also laid out there the
> approach I took to checking the links:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Howard_N._Potts_Medal
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Franklin_Medal
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Benjamin_Franklin_Medal_(Franklin_Institute)
>
> The process is essentially this:
>
> 1) Create list from reliable source
>
> 2) Check for typos and other mistakes
>
> 3) Check all redlinks to see if a redirect can be created
>
> 4) Check all blue links for wrong links and disambiguation pages
>
> 5) Disambiguate where possible
>
> 6) Disambiguate incorrect blue links to red links where possible
>
> 7) Leave sources behind that were found while disambiguating to redlinks
>
> 8) List redlinks on talk page and check back periodically to see if
> articles created
>
> 9) Create articles on the redlink list as alternative to waiting for
> others to create
>
> 10) Periodically repeat search for redirects to create, and checking
> that links are accurate
>
> From experience, watching a redlink list like this fill in, or
> checking a list of blue links remains accurate, the common and not so
> common changes are:
>
> A) A redlink turns blue, but the article is about someone else (turn
> back into redlink by disambiguating)
>
> B) A redlink turns blue, but it is a disambiguation page someone has
> created (disambiguate if possible)
>
> C) A blue link turns from an article into a disambiguation page (and
> someone forgot to fix the incoming links)
>
> Are there any other common situations where the status of a link changes?
>
> One of the annoying things is that sometimes you can have a grouping
> of possible titles and possble redirects (e.g. A. Other, Any Other, A.
> M. Other, Any Middle Other, Any Other (disambiguator), and so on), and
> sometimes redlinks for more than one possibility have been created,
> but until the actual article has been created, it is not possible to
> create the other redlinks as redirects because there are bots that
> will delete these as "broken redirects". I've never managed to figure
> out a satisfactory solution to this.
>
> Anyway, I did this "list maintenance" and tracking thing previously
> for the Royal Medal article, which is now (thanks to another editor) a
> featured list.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Medal
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Royal_Medal
>
> You can see on the talk page the timings of when the redlinks turned
> blue. It should be interesting to see how fast that happens for those
> three lists I've set up above, for the lists I created recently.
> Providing, of course, that I resist the temptation to create some of
> those articles myself (I will, at some point), and that everyone on
> this list doesn't rush off to create some of those articles... :-)
>
> Anyway, what I wanted to know was whether there are places on
> Wikipedia where such approaches to lists and checking links is
> documented? I do remember something about various lists of entries
> from places like the DNB.
>
> Ah here we are:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/DNB_lists_discussion
>
> "List maintenance, first pass. Add {{tick}}, {{dn}} and {{mnl}}
> templates, respectively for correct bluelinks, bluelinks needing
> disambiguation and bluelinks that are definitely wrong." [...] List
> maintenance, second pass: redirecting redlinks. Go through creating
> redirects and adding {{tick}} to new bluelinks."
>
> That comes closest, I think, to what I was describing above.
>
> Here's the example page from that project:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Charles_Matthews/DNB_Working_List_63
>
> That's getting bit away from general list maintenance, towards merging
> from public domain encyclopedias, but the list link checking and
> maintenance points are still the starting point.
>
> Thoughts would be appreciated on whether an essay or guideline on link
> maintenance in lists would be useful (or a link if it already exists
> somewhere). Or whether there are any other common things that need
> checking when working with such lists.
>
> Carcharoth
>
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