On 12/5/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/5/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
Due to the way the mediawiki database is set up, it'd be extremely difficult to check whether or not there were links from the history, though. The only practical definition of orphaned I can think of would be "containing no links in the 'what links here' section".
Anthony
You forget there is a way to do this that doesn't involve any database quires. Simply change [[MediaWiki:Nogomatch]]. Makes it pretty much imposible to create an orphan without messing with the address.
-- geni
I didn't forget about it. This is actually the way it's set up on jnanabase, which is one of the wikis I use regularly. I've found that I usually just type in the address manually to start a new article there, though. It's easier to "mess with the address" than it is to add a link to the article from somewhere else.
It'd probably be useful to put something in the software to actually force people to make the link, first. Of course, then people will just put it in the sandbox or on their user page or something. Maybe a force to put a link *from article space* when creating a page in article space. I can't think of any example where you wouldn't want to have such a link. This would slightly increase the difficulty of creating a new page, but that could be seen as a feature rather than a bug.
Anthony