Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Red Link Recovery

message: When will be the next dump?Smallman12q (talk) 19:49, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've worked up a newer method of generating links directly from the live database, rather than relying on the periodic database dumps.  See: Red Link Recovery Live tool. - TB (talk) 14:34, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Database dump 

message: Is it possible to have the punctuation test check for replacement of single quotes (’) with apostrophes (')? I have done this roughly myself (example here) and discovered it is quite common. If the red link check can be expanded to deal with double quotes etc. that might also be useful. Tassedethe (talk) 14:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well spotted.  When we find a mess of apostrophes and quotes, what should we change it to?  Wikipedia:MOS#Apostrophes suggests that we replace single quotes by apostrophes everywhere, and even ’ (that's a quote not an apostrophe) redirects to Apostrophe.  Do we simply get rid of all quote characters other than ' and " as found on the keyboard?  Certes (talk) 14:52, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Red links containing unusual quotes (left and right single, left and right double, apostrophes, acutes and graves) can now be see in the Unlikely Links tool.  Some quite interesting hits in there. - TB (talk) 22:14, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extra test for punctuation errors 

message: I've generated a fresh set of a few thousand suggested fixes for red links.  As is my intention from now on, these are available from through the Red Link Recovery Live system on the toolserver. - TB (talk) 20:37, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  New data added to RLRL 

message: I've fixed all the incorrect "double quotation marks" links that I felt were wrong.  Is there any way to mark the others as valid, so that people fixing future errors don't waste their time rechecking them?  (Sorry if this is a perennial FAQ; I've been away for a while.)  I'm not sure how to escape quotes in Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery/Exceptions, or whether the Unlikely Links tool would look there. Certes (talk) 01:24, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The unlikely tool doesn't use Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery/Exceptions, largely because I too struggle to escape all those mis-matched quotes.  I look into adding a mechnism for white-listing unlikely links as time permits - something akin to a button beside each listing would I think work best.  All suggestions welcome. - TB (talk) 06:59, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you.  I think a whitelist button would be useful if it's not too much trouble.  Alternatively, the tool could make its own list if the technique worked well for RLRL and is easy to copy.  Certes (talk) 09:34, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sadly, while the RLRL tool is able to 'detect' a red link being fixed by examining the live Wikipedia database, the same is not possible for unlikely links.  A button it'll have to be. - TB (talk) 13:26, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

text: Okay - try that now please.  It's a little clunky but seems to work. - TB (talk) 17:10, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The whitelist button works well for me.  Thank you. Certes (talk) 21:19, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marking false positives 

message: Thanks to all the project members who have used the above tool and more thanks still to those what have provided feedback regarding its operation.  Pretty much all of the rough edges have I now beleive been dealt with, and the majority of features I'd hoped to put into the tool are complete.  Re-reading the "add a note saying why" thread above, I'm particularly pleased that almost all of the overhead in the old system of wiki-based lists has vanished - the setting up of lists, 'scoring out' of fixed entries and marking up of entries as 'wrong' is all entirely automated, and the '<SPAN style="color: green">AUTOFIX'</SPAN>' links remove much pain of hunting down the position of red links in articles and filling in a decent edit summary.
There's now a full set of 70,000 or so suggestions posted there to work on, so have at them please.  I've some interesting ideas (of my own and others) for new facilities and improvements, and will continue to warmly welcome feedback from project members.
- TB (talk) 22:17, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  [http://toolserver.org/~tb/RLRL/index.php Red Link Recovery Live] 

message: PanydThe muffin is not subtle 22:59, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've read through the project's page and, while its goals are sensible and worthwhile, wouldn't myself consider our red-link lists to be a 'backlog' in the sense used there.  Our corrections to red links are useful in that they improve Wikipedia for readers (making it more likely they'll find material related to their area of study rather than blank pages) and editors (making it less likely they'll spend time and effort creating duplicate articles), the overall result is more of a slight imrpovement to the encyclopedia rather than bringing an espect of it 'up to standard' as it were.  Far better that those with the time and inclination work through the other tasks being promoted by the TGBL2010 than our lists here, IMHO. - TB (talk) 23:16, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Great Backlog Drive 

message: I have been removing red links on pages, unaware that this project existed. Would it be possable to join this project and if so, how?Oddbodz (talk) 21:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello, welcome and thanks for your improvements.  I see you've found the list of participants and userbox.  There's no formal membership process, so just keep on linking and do use the project talk pages if you want help with anything.  Certes (talk) 20:38, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Joining The Project 

message: Well, the toolserver based portion of this project has now been running for a year.  Time for a quick summary of what's been achieved:
# Participation:  We've had around 300 editors use the tools of whom 20-mumble spent considerable time working through the lists of red links there.  This is a historical low for the project (we had around 90 active red-link-fixers a few years back).  I suspect a combination of attrition from the burgeoning number of alternative fixup projects, a general dislike of using sites 'outwith' Wikipedia. All suggestions for increasing our numbers welcome.
# Results:  41813 red links fixed.  14462 (35%) of these were generated using the live 'check this page for red links and suggest alternate targets for them' tool with the remainder coming from the more carefully pre-prepared lists.  This is down a bit on last years figure (46800), but in the same ballpark we're still doing good.
# Lists:  Of the 70290 pre-prepared suggestions, 49128 (70%) were looked at.  As the new system makes it much easier to try out new methods of suggesting alternate targets for red links, I've probably gotten a little carried away and put too many up this year.  I'll adjust the quantity/quality parameters a bit to give fewer but hopefully more accurate suggestions for the upcoming year.
# Innovation:  The new system has made it a lot easier for me to generate and manage lists of suggested alternate targets for red links, including a few new and interesting methods.  I'll be producing full lists of red links containing 'fancy' quote characters and selected genitive-forms. regularly from now on.
- TB (talk) 22:27, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Red Link Recovery Live - 1 Year In 

message: Posted for interest only - have been doing a little analysis of where the red link are in the namespaces.  Italicised figures are expressed as a percentage of all red links in the english-language Wikipedia.  By way of an explanation, the figure 793 (middle column, 4 rows down) indicates that there are 793 links from pages in the Template namespace to User pages that do not exist.
       	             	From namespace                      	From namespace                    	From namespace                  	From namespace
       	             	Main (0)                            	Template (10)                     	Portal (100)                    	Book (108)
To namespace	                  	                                    	                                  	                                	
To namespace	Main (0)          	17446072     (89.28%)	498968     (2.55%) 	37755     (0.19%)	89
To namespace	Talk (1)          	16287                               	635                               	3847                            	0
To namespace	User (2)          	17                                  	793                               	1754                            	2
To namespace	User talk (3)     	11                                  	372                               	208                             	0
To namespace	Wikipedia (4)     	1023                                	5006                              	397                             	820
To namespace	Wikipedia talk (5)	3                                   	262                               	56                              	0
To namespace	File (6)          	45062     (0.23%)    	4665                              	1906                            	1
To namespace	File talk (7)     	0                                   	41                                	14                              	0
To namespace	Mediawiki (8)     	0                                   	77                                	0                               	0
To namespace	Mediawiki talk (9)	0                                   	18                                	0                               	0
To namespace	Template (10)     	141915      (0.73%)  	257437      (1.32%)	296                             	0
To namespace	Template talk (11)	875040      (4.48%)  	46873     (0.24%)  	213                             	10
To namespace	Help (12)         	0                                   	7                                 	0                               	0
To namespace	Help talk (13)    	0                                   	2                                 	0                               	0
To namespace	Category (14)     	47746      (0.24%)   	30891      (0.16%) 	2114                            	0
To namespace	Category talk (15)	3                                   	34                                	111                             	0
To namespace	Portal (100)      	3828                                	1147                              	62097     (0.32%)	0
To namespace	Portal talk (101) 	0                                   	8                                 	5002                            	0
To namespace	Book (108)        	139                                 	10                                	0                               	25
To namespace	Book talk (109)   	0                                   	3                                 	0                               	1
- TB (talk) 21:52, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Where are the red links?

message: I am very happy to join this Wikiproject. I had actually written a plea on the Villiage pump for this very idea - to sift through the pages upon pages of endless red-links for notable subjects, and try our best to clear Wikipedia of as many of these as possible, via stubbing if necessary. I think we should aim to just get the articles done in any shape or form (quality may very well be reminiscent of a first draft, as per WP:IMPERFECT and WP:DEV. i.e. building laterally before building vertically. At the moment, I am in finishing off my Year 12 course (I'm in Australia so I finish my WACE in a week), but in my spare time I sift through Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Requests and try to make at least decent articles for them. Anyone who would like to give me a hand with this, please do. I am sure that revisiting that page after completing an article and seeing 10 or so newly-blued links instead of one would make the monstrous project seem a lot easier.
Any thoughts?--Coin945 (talk) 12:50, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Welcome to the project, Coin945.  As a starter on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Requests list, running it through the Red Link Recovery Live tool suggests that at least some missing films exist, just using slightly differing titles.  - TB (talk) 13:31, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Ahh cool. I didn't even know there was a tool for that. That's very helpful. Once I chose 3 redlinks that already had article written about the slightly differently named film before I chose one that didn't. So what happens to them? Is there a quick and easy way to redirect each of the redlinks to their respective film articles?--Coin945 (talk) 15:15, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

text: Oh just be careful btw. One of them is a film called "Flush" and the autocorrect thingy has "Flesh" and "Flash" - obviously different films. I had a quick search on google and it seems the film is not notable anyways.... so, yeah, we need to be careful with that.--Coin945 (talk) 15:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Happy to offer my services 

message: How do I actually get started with the project? I added importScript('User:Topbanana/RLRL_SR_Utility.js'); to my .js page, and I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Delete to bypass my browser's cache. However, I don't see the "AUTOFIX" link next to any red links.
Am I doing anything wrong? Or, is there anything else that I haven't done? Or, could the edits be required to be done from some Toolserver page that I haven't seen? Thank you for your help. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 01:22, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Welcome! The AUTOFIX button appears in the RLRL tool at http://toolserver.org/~tb/RLRL/, once you have selected a type of redlink to fix and generated some suggestions. welsh (talk) 07:34, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: So, there is no way to correct red links directly from Wikipedia? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 09:52, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The RLRL tool is just one way to find suggestions of possible alternatives to redlinks. There are many other ways, ranging from manual searching, guessing, and other tools, as explained in the project page. At its simplest you don't need any tools to edit articles with redlinks - just go ahead and make a change if you know a bluelink alternative or synonym. welsh (talk) 17:17, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I would love to pop a small icon beside each red link for which a suggested target exists.  Clicking on this would pop up a small list of possible remedial actions that might be carried out.  Selecting an action would cause it to be applied to the article text, and a preview shown, ready for approval or manual correction.  Alas, the facilities needed to make this work aren't available currently on my own servers, the Toolserver or Wikimedia Labs.  One day, perhaps.  Until then we've the RLRL tool as described by Welsh above. - TB (talk) 00:25, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: TB, that's a great idea. In fact, that's where I thought the "AUTOFIX" links were to show up, not on the Toolserver page. The only problem I have is if there are multiple red links on a page. If there is a way to implement it, I'm all for it. Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 01:08, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Getting started 

message: Is there a way to find redlinks on a page (and then strip them from the page) automatically?
I'd like to be able to build city outlines like these...
* Outline of Philadelphia
* Outline of Toronto
* Outline of Vatican City
* Outline of Macau
* Outline of Singapore
* Outline of Hong Kong
* Outline of Washington, D.C.
* Outline of Malta
* Outline of San Marino
* Outline of Monaco
...using a template (as a starting point) that lists every possible topic (like "Government of ___", "Neighborhoods in ___", "Taxicabs of ___", "Cycling in ___", "Rats in ___", "Port of ___", "Fireboats of ___", "Climate of ___", "___ City Council", "___ Board of Trade", etc.  There are hundreds of such potential links. 
The problem is, for many cities, most of the links would show up red. Yet this would be feasible if there was a redlink stripper.  Strip out the redlinked items, and leave the blue.
Of the outlines listed above, Outline of San Marino and Outline of Monaco still have a redlink problem.  The redlinks were stripped out of the other outlines by hand.  The necessity to remove template-generated redlinks by hand limits the rate at which city outlines can be created using the subst:template approach.
So the question is: Is there a way to find redlinks on a page (and then strip them from the page) automatically? The Transhumanist 05:28, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a rather manual answer, but you can use AWB to list out redlinks and bluelinks from an article and paste the answer back in. Any ordering or formatting would be lost, so this is only a sensible idea when you are first creating a page, or if the blue links are sparse. welsh (talk) 07:01, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stripping redlinks from a page 

message: Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment on the WikiProject X proposal 

message: can anyone help me by telling me what exactoy the assignment is that is due tonight ? or at least point me in the right dircti0n? there  so many links!!!  thank you, Mark  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:BD5A:740:B11C:E1AC:E4B7:ACBF (talk) 22:09, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  this is my first time taking classes online.. 

message: Hello everyone!
You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!
Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.
Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject X is live! 

message: The Red Link Recovery WP:WikiProject has now been formally active for 10 years - yay!
Over that time, over 350 volunteers have help us to turn approximately a half-million red links blue.   In the spirit of WP:WikiGnomeery, these incremental improvements to the encyclopaedia have been made with a minimum of fuss and upheaval.  Good job all.
- TB (talk) 13:50, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  And to you!
- EmanWilm (talk) 03:50, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ten Years 

message: In an effort to pick out interesting features of red links that may point towards useful RLR work to be done, I've been carrying out some mechanised clustering of the current crop of red links into related groups.  So far nothing too interesting has shown up, but I'm posting the results here in case it inspires anyone else. - TB (talk) 08:07, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clustering of red links 

message: I have compiled a list of 'lists of red links';  these can often benefit from being run through the 'checkpage' module of the Red Link Recovery Live tool. - TB (talk) 16:56, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of lists of red links 

message: I just discovered this wikiproject, but don’t have the time to study it closely. I have always wondered if there is an organized process at wikipedia for discovering, categorizing, and building redllinks. I am guilty of introducing many redliniks as I just did with Real Estate Visionary. Is this something of interest to others here? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:22, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I have also redirected the above redlink  to real estate visionary which is also a redlink. Just wondering if there are any rules here prohibiting this type of redirect? Ottawahitech (talk) 23:15, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

text: Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles seeks to identify useful articles not present in Wikipedia - in essence red links we ought to have.  Wikipedia:Most-wanted articles compiles lists of common red links and tries to classify them.  And this project (Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery) tries to remove red links by identifying ones we shouldn't have - spelling errors, typos, titles that should redirect to an existing article.   The field of completing redlinks by adding new articles is largely addressed by the many subject-oriented WikiProjects such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports, Wikipedia:WikiProject History and Wikipedia:WikiProject Spain.  - TB (talk) 09:04, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:   Thanks for explaining. So I understand that this wikiproject is only involved in the removal of redlinks which the projects members(?) deem un-encyclopedic? But I read in the   link you supplied that articles with more than 20 red-links are considered worthwhile topics, so if you remove wp:redlinks doesn't it defeat the purpose? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:46, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  New here 

message: The wonderful https://tools.wmflabs.org/tb-dev/RLRL/ is no longer suggesting any links for me to mend, and I miss it!  Further details at Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery/RLRL#Not seeing suggestions.  Please put any replies there to avoid two parallel threads.  Thanks, Certes (talk) 16:49, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Apologies, I've been inactive for quite some time.  Will try and resurrect RLRL in the next few days. - TB (talk) 21:19, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  WMFlabs RLRL not suggesting links 

message: A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.
:– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  A new newsletter directory is out! 

message: This is largely directed at @TB, but does anyone know if the Red Link Recovery Live and Unlikely Titles are still maintained? The current links listed in this project give this 410 Error saying:
: Tool disabled
: The tool responsible for the URL you have requested, https://tb-dev.toolforge.org/unlikely/, has been disabled as a part of the Toolforge Grid Engine shutdown.
: If you have reached this page from somewhere else
: This URI is managed by the tb-dev tool, maintained by Tb.
: If you maintain this tool
: You need to migrate your tool to the newer Kubernetes runtime. For more details, see the instructions on Wikitech.
If not, the links should probably be removed from the project overview. Thanks! TB5ivVaO1y55FkAogw1X (talk) 17:41, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are The Red Link Recovery Live And Unlikely Titles Tools Maintained?