Wikipedia talk:Orphan

message: It is confusing that WP:Orphan directs to Wikipedia:Orphan, while WP:ORPHAN directs to Wikipedia:WikiProject Orphanage . Why can't they both direct to the same page? --Jameboy (talk) 17:06, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is that the definition of an orphan needs to be linked to, the only remaining redirect the wikiproject could have was ORPHAN. Other wikiprojects have it easy e.g. Wikipedia:Uncat goes to the uncat wikiproject as the issue is Wikipedia:Categorisation·Add§hore· Talk To Me! 16:19, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:Orphan]] vs [[WP:ORPHAN]] 

message: Another editor introduced a policy that "Neither soft nor hard redirects should normally be tagged as orphans."
Before making this into policy, I'd like to get a consensus about whether this even makes sense.  I believe it's moot, because an orphan redirect page should be... deleted, shouldn't it?  What's the point of a redirect that nothing leads to?  --Lockley (talk) 23:31, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: (edit conflict, but you have seriously pissed me off)  Oh, honestly, will you do your homework? WP:REDIRECT#Purposes of redirects makes it clear that redirects are intended to be created (among other motivations) in anticipation of reasonable variations in ways editors might link to the primary article, whether or not anyone is using that link now, or ever does. You seem intent on justifying your increasing silliness here. Can't you just say, "Yeah, I made a mistake"? EEng (talk) 00:00, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: very good.  thanks for the response!  --Lockley (talk) 23:57, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: From your continued behavior elsewhere, you do not seem to have got the point: Do not tag redirects as orphams. You've now involved four or five editors in this, to no purpose. EEng (talk) 12:11, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: You are factually incorrect.  I tagged three redirects as orphans, in good faith, once.  Since the above confirmation of policy, I haven't touched them since.  I haven't touched any other redirects since.  Yes, I've involved other editors, to deal with the insulting and gratuitous personal attacks you've made on me elsewhere, which are off topic here.  --Lockley (talk) 18:36, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: No, other editors were drawn in their efforts to explain to you that which you should have understood much earlier. I'm linking here  what you call my insulting and gratuitous personal attack -- I have no doubt others will have no trouble discerning the truth of the situation. It's worth noting the block warning to you there from an admin. EEng (talk) 22:21, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  tagging redirects as orphans 

message: If an article only links to user page/s or user talk page/s, does it count as an orphan? -- Annonymus User 1000 (talk) 07:35, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Articles in main space generally should not link to user pages. Orphans are not determined by what an article links to; they are determined by what links to the article. There should be at least one mainspace link to the article to consider it not an orphan. – Wbm1058 (talk) 21:11, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

text: Here's the full criteria for determining whether an article is an orphan. ~KvnG 13:31, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links to user talk page  

message: I need  help in setting the criteria for the script to make it as useful as possible, please see Criteria clarifications... on the WikiProject talk page. —  (e • t • c) 18:03, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: This arises from the discussion at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions#What is the correct orphan criteria? In short, the project page defines an article whose links are only through a walled garden as being an orphan, but then in the criteria, states that only articles with zero links may be marked as an orphan, with x, y, z exceptions, but does not include walled garden among the exceptions. This leads to the inconsistent result that 1) an article with incoming links only only through walled garden is an orphan, but at the same time, 1) that you cannot mark a page as an orphan if it has an incoming link only through a walled garden. This can be clarified in a few ways. Simply adding walled gardens to the criteria exceptions, or explaining why even though an article with such links is an orphan, it should not be marked as one for [some reason]. Either way, or another, the inconsistency should be addressed.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:39, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you're reading too much into Wikipedia:Orphan#What_is_an_orphan.3F which I see as an introduction/overview. What's important is Wikipedia:Orphan#Criteria and I see no inconsistency there. I don't think we can effectively address walled gardens in this project, especially not when a script is doing it. We're also not concerned with orphaned project pages or orphaned images. ~KvnG 15:21, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criteria clarifications... 

message: Both the orphan template and this page say that an orphan is an article with no links to it, but WP:NPP#Collaborate_with_article_creators says that an article with fewer than three links to it should be tagged as an orphan. I've been following the second one and tagging articles with one or two links to them as orphans. This has led to some confusion. One of these conflicting definitions should be changed. KSFT 17:09, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I fixed that: diff. Feel free to use the "few" parameter if it has one or two incoming links, at your discretion. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 21:13, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

text: And disambiguation pages don't count, for determining orphan status: diff. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:22, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  What makes an article an orphan? 

message: Good evening, what do I do if the required references, but in my case, about school, where Google only details and information about it, there is not anything more interesting. What to do?--L.ukas lt 13 --TalkLukaslt13
::Hello! Your question sounds like it might be more about finding reliable sources than about orphans. You might also be referring to a topic that does not meet Wikipedia's guidelines for notability. You might want to try asking your question on the Wikiepdia Teahouse. Knope7 (talk) 22:34, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help for orphan 

message: Please see Template_talk:Orphan#No, or few.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:44, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  "No" or "no or few" incoming links 

message: The target of the WP:ORPHAN shortcut has an open discussion about it at: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Orphanage#WP:ORPHAN  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:47, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP:ORPHAN shortcut target 

message: I'm finding a number of articles that are not actually orphans in :Category:Orphaned articles from February 2009. If I remember correctly, there's a tool somewhere that can clear these out. Does anyone remember what I'm thinking about? I'll try and look a little harder later and may answer my own question here. ~Kvng (talk) 22:14, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Found it an posted a request ~Kvng (talk) 20:59, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Non orphans

message: Where the Edward Betts tool gives nothing, a method for deorphaning for biographies can be to check they are included on the notable alumni list of their colleges, high schools or universities. Also can check if they are on the list of notable residents of the town/village/ city they grew up in or live in now.Thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 23:47, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deorphaning 

message: Are categorized articles, even without any other links to it, orphans?Wetit🐷 0 12:16, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Categorizing an article, in and of itself, doesn't remove the article's orphan status. Otherwise, we would only have ~74 orphans, which is the current population of :Category:All uncategorized pages. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:31, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorization 

message: Do incoming links from hatnotes count toward the non-orphan status of an article? Or do they not count for the same reason links on disambiguation pages don't? Largoplazo (talk) 17:55, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Hatnotes are usually mini disambiguations so I would expect links in hatnotes count the same as links in disambiguation pages. ~Kvng (talk) 15:08, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Now that  has added this as an exclusion, I'm not sure I agree with my 2018 self. There are different types of hatnotes and not all are purely disambiguation. For instance links in the  hatnote may have a similar relationship with the subject as links you'd find in the See also section and See also links are not excluded. ~Kvng (talk) 20:16, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I made this change after a orphan tag was removed due to single link in a  hatnote: This article is about the pirate, for the engineer, see..., which was a minidab. I see your point, but I wonder how much of an issue this is. I suppose the wording could be clarified with something like "Any article in mainspace that is linked only in a hatnote, when the relationship is due to similarity in name only". MB 21:56, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, it can get fuzzy. I'm flippy-floppy on this probably because I don't have strong feelings. I'm fine to leave it as you have it. Better to err towards requiring more linkage than less. ~Kvng (talk) 13:56, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hatnotes 

message: Your input is requested @ WP:AWB/Tasks#AWB Request 2.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:26, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  AWB request to untag Feb 2009 orphans with 1 or more links 

message: Hi all,there is a discussion taking place at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2018_November_30#Template:Orphan proposing deletion of the Orphan template. The same notice is posted over at WP:DO also. Thanks --Xaiver0510 (talk) 03:46, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orphan template at TFD 

message: Hello, I tried to find Patricia Locke in the pages
that appear thru this link and many of them do not contain her name.
To name a few: Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and Victoria Woodhull.
In this last one it found the word "blocked" ...
This is frequent with other Wiki entries too.
Is this a software probelm or I misundersand the concept of "What Links here" ?
 Thx Hexagone59 (talk) 15:01, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Patricia Locke is mentioned in the "2000–2009" section of the navigation box, . All the articles that end with that navigation box therefore link back to Patricia Locke. At least in Firefox, the browser's text search function won't find that link unless the navigation box is expanded first. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:11, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: John of Reading Thx. Is there a way to avoid this, perhaps using the "External tools: Show redirects only" which appears in the "Pages that link to..." ? Many thx Hexagone59 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 16:58, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  The "What links here" listing can't do this, but the standard search box is clever enough nowadays. Try this search, which uses the efficient linksto keyword to find the articles that link to Patricia Locke, and then a slow regular expression to check that the article contains the exact text [[Patricia Locke. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:54, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: John of Reading Thank you so much  Hexagone59 (talk) 21:18, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Problem with using "What Links here"

message: Anyone wants to update the project page? or fervently targets the category having the most articles now to de-orphan!  --Xaiver0510 (talk) 01:49, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  and the oldest category is not the category with the most articles~! 

message: Since there is a bot to make an article an orphan if there are no links to it, shouldn’t there be one to remove the orphan tag if someone links to it in an article?  People probably link to orphan articles all the time without knowing because they probably don’t check everything that they link to. It would help the backlog a lot because I’m sure there are plenty of articles that are in the orphan category but actually are linked somewhere. Twooeight (talk) 23:22, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand WP:AWB has this capability. Only semi-automatic but seems to work well enough; I don't frequently find listed orphans which are not actually orphans. ~Kvng (talk) 20:50, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is there a bot to de-orphan too? 

message: The page Office of the MTA Inspector General is not an orphan, it is linked to 2 other places, but the orphan tag is still up. How would I fix this, or can someone help? Thanks! Dblu9494 (talk) 15:40, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Office of the MTA Inspector General]]

message: Should George A. Lovejoy (Washington politician) be de-orphaned? 2 of the incoming links are via hatnotes while one is a disambiguation page. Will hatnote links constitute incoming links and hence deorphaning it? Thanks --Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 03:31, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: , links from disambig pages don't count. The hatnotes are serving a disambig role here so maybe they don't count either. There are a lot of them though... ~Kvng (talk) 15:05, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[George A. Lovejoy (Washington politician)]] 

message: For articles with Orphan tag not visible, add the "Multiple issues" tag combined with "Update" tag. For example, this contrasts the older, original orphan tag with current update.
{{Multiple issues


}}
----
Today, I added above section to the project page and thought to share here. I'm not sure how effective this will be, but hoping for some backlog reduction. JoeNMLC (talk) 15:54, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I am also wondering, how come most articles with an orphan tag (in the code) isn't visible when viewing the page normally. My guess is that it might confuse average non-wiki users, but can someone else answer. Thanks - RandomEditorAAA (talk) 01:14, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Please don't add an  tag if your only purpose is to make the orphan tag visible; as the documentation at Template:Update says, "Do not mark an article as needs updating, without a reason, unless it is very obvious."  For the recommended way to control the visibility of the Orphan tab, and the reasoning behind it, please see the template documentation at Template:Orphan#Visibility. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:25, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  - Thanks John for pointing out about "Visibility control". Being somewhat new to working on Orphan articles, I was always curious (and sometimes frustrated) as to why template was visible/invisible. Now I know-"when in doubt-read the docs". (smile) & I'm still learning. Thanks again. JoeNMLC (talk) 12:11, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks , I understand now. RandomEditorAAA (talk) 14:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Make the orphan tag visible 

message: Recently I did the "Move to draft" on a couple articles. Wondering if the "Various ways" section can mention something about sending article to Draft? Not sure of exact words but this may be a valid option, especially for bare-bones articles that need a lot of expansion/improvement. May not apply to newly created articles, instead some of those back to 2010, 2011, etc. years backlog. JoeNMLC (talk) 16:00, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:DRAFTIFY is only for articles not suitable for mainspace and is primarily for new articles. Articles that have been in mainspace for years and articles that need expansion/improvement do not qualify. If you find an older article that is not suitable for mainspace it is best to use WP:PROD or WP:AFD. ~Kvng (talk) 12:57, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project page, "Various ways to de-orphan" section. 

message: Hi - Found an article ( Dirk Hoogendam ), that for "What links here" has an entry for "August 8" calendar date. At that page, it contains a line with wikilink in "Deaths" section. For difficult to de-orphan articles, can they include a link on "Births" or "Deaths" section? If yes & doing this is Okay, can this idea be included into "Adding links"? JoeNMLC (talk) 13:58, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Step 3: Adding links 

message: There is a problem when Wikidata references articles: while the reference shows up in templates (for example and in my case the rector of a university) but it does not generate a backlink-capable link to the article, so editors think the article is not referenced while it is referenced by both Wikidata (internally) and all templates using the data from Wikidata. 
Maybe the solution is to fix up templates but I am not sure they would generate backlinable links anyway. The "best" solution would be to include Wikidata referred articles as "non-orphans". --grin ✎ 14:36, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikidata links 

message: Currently the article count now is 99 for September 2021, only category that has only 2 digits. Can we try to push to de-orphan the 99 articles to remove this category? Thanks! --Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 10:20, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:Category:Orphaned articles from September 2021]] 

message: Hi, Celebrating for yesterday, de-orphaning completed for March 2011 articles! On project page, added hilight button for current and early articles, and Purge button to show fresh numbers. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 15:21, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  A small victory - March 2011 articles 

message: Added a wikilink to Indices. "Check to see if there are any Lists or Indices of whatever subject the orphaned article is about..." JoeNMLC (talk) 18:07, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update for section "Various ways to de-orphan" 

message: :Category:Orphaned articles from March 2022 might have a lot of non-orphaned articles as there are 350+ articles out of 1300+ (roughly a quarter) which has 1 or more incoming link. Noted that the likely 200+ articles are tagged orphans by AWB on the old settings of requiring 3 incoming links. This will be a quick fix to reduce the number of orphaned articles. Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 08:01, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:Category:Orphaned articles from March 2022]] 

message: Hi, Today, I added :Category:All orphaned articles, then indented under that :Category:Orphaned articles and indented :Category:Attempted de-orphan. Within :Category:All orphaned articles is a helpful Filter category by topic section.
As an experiment, I added that Filter category by topic template to :Category:Orphaned articles from January 2023 and would appreciate any feedback if that is helpful. And I did add into categories with over 1,000 backlog. JoeNMLC (talk) 00:36, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: This discussion refers to these edits ~Kvng (talk) 17:29, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update - Step 1: Finding an orphaned article 

message: Today I created subpage Petscan documentation, then added Wikilink in "Step 1: Finding an orphaned article" section. Feel free to Edit as needed. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 01:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Added at 4.2	Step 2: Finding related articles section. JoeNMLC (talk) 14:05, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Petscan documentation 

message: Today, I updated the Project page at "Step 1: Finding an orphaned article" to include New pages feed. JoeNMLC (talk) 14:11, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  New page feed 

message: Hi, Being approximately mid-month, I clicked on "Show SDs" (short description) button. There are over 80 articles about India. Any editors interested in the topic are welcome to help with de-orphaning these articles. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 00:24, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:Category:Orphaned articles from August 2023]] 

message: Today, I posted details here about a new template that can be used to invite participants to WP Orphanage. Cheers! JoeNMLC (talk) 21:04, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Announcement - Invitation template 

message: The redirect Wikipedia:LITTLEORPHAN has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached.   Jay 💬 12:16, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[:Wikipedia:LITTLEORPHAN]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: This diff was recently used as basis to remove the orphan tag from AFL Tables, with the link coming from a reflist. This scenario is not outright called out in the policy, but it feels to me that linking from a reflist doesn't meet the policy intent and should carry similar deorphaning weight as linking from a hatnote. Thoughts? (I raise this because I don't see any way to deorphan this particular article without it being from a reflist, since the orphan article is about a reference database). Aspirex (talk) 13:07, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: @Aspirex - for article 2024 AFL season, there is no need for that "Sources" section wikilink. For "What links here" it shows many articles because of the 2024 article's entry on  template which is sufficient for the de-orphan. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 14:17, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

text: Why? It's normal practice to wikilink sources (books, websites etc.) in references or external links (where relevant, of course); and this may already be enough for some interested readers to follow them. Unlike hatnotes, references appear in the text. At the same time, wikilinks in external links are no different from "See also". Yes, arguably, this is an inferior way to de-orphan an article than to put the link in the main text, but, anyway, the link is there, so a reader has the possibility to reach such articles from another one (which is the goal). Oloddin (talk) 10:42, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links from references