Wikipedia

User:Edward Z. Yang/LinkFix dump

< User:Edward Z. Yang

A LinkFix dump is a list of wikilinks that are either redirects or disambiguation pages that a bot found while scanning through an article. It is an alternative to WikiProject Disambiguation, which seeks to eliminate links on a disambiguation page basis. When the creation of dumps is automated by a read-only bot, it can serve as a good style check for pages that will hit the Main Page soon.

If you see a LinkFix dump...

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If you see one, you could be bold and fix all the links. If you can't do all of them, at least say so on the talk page, and maybe even remove the links that you fixed, so it's easier for later editors who want to help with the LinkFix. Leaving a note on the talk page that the LinkFix is done is always preferable because it helps me figure out when things are done.

How the LinkFix Bot Works

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Because it does not make any edits (indeed, it is not programmed with the capacity to make edits), it is not registered as a bot. It runs anonymously, and grabs the wikitext from the article it has been pointed to. It processes the article, and extracts a list of all links from it. It then checks each one and makes sure it is not a redirect or disambiguation page via either the syntax (#REDIRECT) or the presence of an appropriate template ({{disambig}}). It only checks one article at a time, and does some article caching to make sure it doesn't insistently call the same article many times. There are certain other types of links it doesn't check (such as articles not in the main namespace, and wikilinks of dates). I believe it does not present a great load on the Wikimedia Grid. It is programmed with PHP and handles web browsing with SimpleTest.

Inquiries about the LinkFix Bot

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Inquiries should be directed to my main talk page as I do not believe there should be too much to talk about this bot. I will occasionally drop LinkFix dumps on talk pages to encourage other people to take wikilinks into their own hand and do the job of fixing them, since it is a very time consuming process (however, I monitor all dumps I place, and if no one picks them up, I will do them myself).

Why did I make the LinkFix Bot?

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Well, I thought it would be really cool to program a bot in PHP, since I don't know Python. However, I don't have the authorization to make writes with a bot (yet), so I had to figure out some way to make the bot useful. I decided that this would be a good way to extend the parsing capabilities of the bot and also serve the Wikipedia community in a useful manner.

Disambiguation pages are a big problem in many articles, and many featured articles I have performed LinkFix Dumps on have several links to disambiguation pages. Since the job for those involved in the WikiProject Disambiguation is so large, with certain redirects having hundreds of inbound links, I'm trying to meet them on the other side of the bridge, so-to-speak. And of course, redirects are a logical side effect of this process. I have encountered some mentalities in the community that say "What's wrong with linking to redirects?" but I think there are problems and we should do our best to correct this problem, even if it is only for Featured Articles. Long articles are also a viable candidate for LinkFixes, because they have a lot of links.

Interpreting LinkFix dumps

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I still haven't gotten down the exact formatting of the dump, but in general, it goes along the lines of this: 

{Line Number} [[{First link}]] -> ([[{Redirect}]]|DISAMBIG)

Requesting a LinkFix dump

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I'll be more than happy to run the bot on an article if someone requests so. Just drop a note on my talk page, and when I get a chance, I'll drop the dump on the article's talk page.

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Note that a LinkFix isn't permanent: the addition of wikilinks to an article leads to the readdition of the very things a LinkFix seeks to destroy. I advocate "guardianship" of articles, where several dedicated contributors review all new edits and make sure inaccuracies or stylistic anomalies aren't reintroduced into the article.

Fixing redirects

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The bot doesn't fix links automatically. That's for you. Make sure you use good taste when fixing redirects: sometimes, the distinction isn't so obvious, and you may prefer to keep the redirect as is, or link to a particular anchor in the article. This is even more so for disambiguation pages.

Articles that have been successfully LinkFixed

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Articles that are pending LinkFixes

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The format has changed to be more friendly, so articles that were previously here are now removed. I may reissue a dump eventually. Dumps that are not attended to after a while are automatically killed, as a LinkFix dump becomes less useful as time goes on.

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