Lists and redlinks and link maintenance - WikiEN-l

2 Aug 2009

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_Institu…

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_art…

"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