Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links/Maintenance

message: For a maintainence project like this, do we want a separate list like the one in the Specific Lists section?  IMHO those should be wrapped up into the main project list.  That way, if this project can gain traction, they'll get regular attention simply by the mechanics of the project. TexasAndroid 21:05, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't quite follow you.  Are you suggesting we inject all disambiguated pages into the Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links Specific Lists section?  Josh Parris ✉ 00:53, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Mostly just the tem in the first section.  If they're in the main list, *and* in the Special list, they're double covered.  I guess that's not a horrid thing, but it seems a bit overkill. TexasAndroid 11:12, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roman/German 

message: sometimes articles link to the disambiguation page purposely, because the alternative meanings cover the actual usage. these links cannot be disambiguated without loss of coverage. 
70.29.131.204 07:12, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I agree with that. I've seen several other editors agree with it too. Maybe we should put something explaining this at the begininning of this project page. --Commander Keane 13:22, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

text: In those cases, link to Foo (disambiguation).  If that's not the disambiguation page, create a redirect from Foo (disambiguation) to Foo. Josh Parris # 00:51, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  coverage 

message: This project pages needs some organisation. At the moment there are three sections for links: General, Country adjectives or Non-unique names. I am thinking of adding Acronyms, are there any other notable sections we should have? --Commander Keane 09:51, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Organisation 

message: This page isn't really "Disambiguation pages maintenance". It really just the broom closet for Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links. 
I think a new page location of Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Maintenance would be appropriate. 
It also make more sense with things like Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Guide applying to this page just as much as WP:DPL.
*Support and propose.--Commander Keane 18:42, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page move proposal 

message: Dictionary of languages must be one of the most useless lists ever. Unfortunately, it's not quite nonsense and not quite original research. Can anyone think up a good reason for deletion so we don't have to fix all its dab links? Bo Lindbergh 02:11, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Shouldn't these have been added to List of languages? You can't just make a parallel article like this. I'd say move it to a subpage or even the Wikipedia: namespace (which would stop the need for link repair) and drop a note at List of languages to see if anyone feels like adding appropriate entries.--Commander Keane 06:30, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: So nominated. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dictionary of languages. BD2412 T 05:00, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ... and it's gone, per the above AfD. Cheers! BD2412 T 20:27, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dictionary of languages 

message: Everything that links to ISO and is in a subcategory of :Category:ISO standards should link to International Organization for Standardization. Can/should this be done by a bot? Kusma (talk) 21:02, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Forget about that. I just changed ISO into a redirect to International Organization for Standardization, which fixes the problem. Kusma (talk) 17:51, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Robot help for ISO? 

message: It is not clear to me, what is the purpose of this page. How does it differ from Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links? I finished Kingdom on that page and marked it with a strikethrough. What should be done with Kingdom on this page? •DanMS 00:18, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Purpose of this page

message: Is there at least a semi "quick" or "easy" way for me to tally all the links to a specific disambig page? I know I can click on "What links here" and see everything that  ...links there, but I'd like to be able to get a total so I can see how much of a dent I'm making doing DAB fixes.  Any help would be appreciated! Thanks, --Naha|(talk) 23:52, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a MATLAB script that I use to count up the links, and seeing the dent can be very satisfing. If you happen to have MATLAB I can give you the script, or if you use msn/icq/yahoo/irc chat (and I'm awake) then I could do the count for you. The pywikipedia bot can also count them up, although using it just for that purpose is a bit clumsy (ie: hard to do) in my opinion. Lightdarkness has some php to do the count, useful if you can use php (he can also count up how many of your contribs are link repairs - if anyone is interested he's happy to check for you).--Commander Keane 12:37, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks :) --Naha|(talk) 05:17, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Counting

message: i've noticed sometimes users associating themselves with this project disambiguating links on talk pages e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_%28China-related_articles%29&curid=372158&diff=39697521&oldid=38767448
i feel somewhat uneasy about the idea of people editing others signed comments like this even if they aren't making any substantial changes Plugwash 11:40, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't like the practice either. Maybe we could discourage it more in the instructions. I have come across some very experienced editors who see no problem in changing others signed comments, so I don't bother complaining.--Commander Keane 12:37, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see no problem with it. I do it for one reason: So I have less pages to sift through while trying to maintain particular disambig pages.  Cutting out all the mislinks from talkpages makes this so much easier for me its incredible. Also, I've done it to dozens of pages and I've had zero complaints and 2 or 3 "thank yous."  If it ever becomes a problem, I will not continue, or at least make a note not to do it to that particular user's page.  I also have no problem with anyone editing any of my user space or any of my comments on any talk pages as long as the edits are of a productive nature and do not change the context of anything that has been written. --Naha|(talk) 05:20, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ideally we would have a namespace selector (like "my contributions" has). The feature probably exists but is turned off for performance (=server load) reasons.--Commander Keane 10:00, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be great. --Naha|(talk) 23:00, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  talk pages 

message: Yes we have a new tool to filter out the talk namespaces when doing link maintenance. Here are the details.--Commander Keane 07:24, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New tool - filtering out the main namespace in "Whatlinkshere" 

message: hi, is there any way for the 'what links here' tool to not count links in templates, should links in temlates even lead to Disambiguation pages?--Johnny 0 22:01, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  templates 

message: I've just added a workaround section in the page for "Ford". Some <put your favorite offence> have moved the disambiguation page and is edit-warring to protect the redirect. As result hundreds of links point to Ford but it is a redirect and nobody cares. I've trimmed them down to 681 by now but started well above 750 (keeping the silver medal). The moved "Ford (disambiguation)" is having just few links and therefore is not caught by the scanner. For me this is a temporary solution until the problem is fixed. Hope this case is an exception but who knows, more AI to the scanner might help (as well as may not). -- Goldie (tell me) 16:39, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Hidden" disamBUGuation 

message: There's a CFD on Category:Lists of ambiguous place names. --Dhartung | Talk 12:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  CFD 

message: I'm wondering if it would be possible (or worthwhile) to use the same processes that generate the reports on this page in order to to format the Wikipedia talk:Adopting disambiguation pages in such a way that the "adopted pages" table is read, dab page names are picked off, and then a (currently non-existing) column is written to... the data written out would be the current number of links in the main namespace for that dab page...
Thanks for your time --Ling.Nut 15:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Could be.  I wrote the script that maintains this page, so I will take a look at the new project and see if it's do-able.  --Russ Blau (talk) 15:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Tks for taking a look! --Ling.Nut 15:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dynamic Custom reports? 

message: Do the numbers on this page include the talk/user/wikipedia pages?  For example Dutch shows over 300, but there was only around 70 if not including talk/user/wikipedia pages.  Since most disambiguation work does not touch those pages, doesn't it make sense to not include those pages in the count, so that we have a better idea of how we are doing? -- Jeff3000 04:38, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the numbers on this page are main-namespace links only.  They may look wrong because the link counts can change between the time the bot runs (once a week) and the time you access the page -- in the case of Dutch, I was working on that page myself at the same time you were!  --Russ Blau (talk) 13:28, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Counting 

message: A potentially stupid question from a new editor... I've repaired a few links ("article" to "article (publishing)", for instance) over the last day or so, each time marking it as a minor edit.  Anyway, it just now occurs to me that this might not meet the criteria for a minor edit.  Would a more experienced editor give me his/her opinion on this matter?  I'd like to follow wikiquette.  Thanks.  Wayne Miller 14:29, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Adding or fixing a link is a minor edit.  You'll find more information about what is a minor edit at Help:Minor edit. CarolGray 08:30, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor Edits? 

message: I understand what causes the number of active articles or the number of total links to rise and fall (hopefully fall), but what has been causing the number of "total articles" to fall? Do they then reappear when their maintenance becomes a problem, or are they manually added? Dekimasu 06:26, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Articles can "fall off" the list if they have fewer than 25 incoming links for five straight weeks; or if they have been edited so that they are no longer disambig pages.  In either case, they will reappear on the list if they show up on a future database dump. --Russ (talk) 14:58, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So does the large jump in new pages this week after several weeks of slow decline mean that all of those "new" pages became problems just in the last week? It seems more like there are two steps here... a crawler that finds new pages, run irregularly, and a separate analysis of the contents of the pages that are already in the list, run weekly. Is that right? Dekimasu 05:22, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What happened this week was the November 30 database dump.  The weekly script scans two sources: this page (well, actually Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Current list) and User:RussBot/DPL.  The latter page only changes when there is a new database dump to download, which happens irregularly.  --Russ (talk) 10:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Disambig pages maintenance: total articles

message: The link to a page for the 2006 statistics has a problem. Has the 2006 data gone to Wikipedia heaven, or can it still be seen somewhere? Dekimasu 09:22, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  2006 statistics 

message: There's a long-standing request above to make DPM a subpage of DPL. It had a lot of support at the time it was proposed, but we never followed through on moving it to Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Maintenance. Any problems with making that move? Is it too much of a pain to alter the target for the bot? Dekimasuよ! 07:46, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *I'll switch it over after I see the next run go up. Dekimasuよ! 08:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  DPM vs. DPL/M 

message: Do completed dab links automatically get the bullet and bold text, or should the editor(s) responsible for the disambiguating do it? --Milton 23:31, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question 

message: I will not be able to run the bot next week (15 July) for the regular weekly update, and the following week (22 July) may be somewhat delayed.  However, if someone else would like to run it in my absence, and has the PyWikipediaBot framework, you are welcome to do so using the script available at User:RussBot/dabmaintbot.py.  Just be prepared for the script to run for 6 hours or longer!  Also, be aware that there is a little problem with Python's networking code; on relatively rare occasions, a call to socket.get() simply hangs indefinitely and never returns.  This is not usually a problem, but when you are loading several thousand URLs as this script does, there is a not-insignificant risk that you will hang at some point.  I have a kludgy fix for this that allows you to Control-C out of the socket call and retry the URL, but this means (a) you have to monitor the script while it is running and (b) you have to be patient and be really sure that the program really is hanging before you hit Control-C or you may abort the whole thing and have to start over!  If it sounds like a pain in the neck, well, it is, but at least you've been warned.  --Russ (talk) 19:53, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  No update next week -- and bot source code available