Wikipedia talk:Most wanted articles/Archive 1

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This page is a cache of Special:Wantedpages... that's why it's in weird HTML-like stuff that looks unfriendly... and why it's a wikipedia:protected page

This page was generated using the following SQL query (plus some spreadsheet manipualation):

SELECT bl_to, COUNT( DISTINCT bl_from ) as nlinks FROM brokenlinks GROUP BY bl_to HAVING nlinks ORDER BY nlinks DESC LIMIT 100

It is slow and puts a fair load on the server, so should be used sparingly. Only administrators can run database queries. Enchanter 18:29 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

The current version doesn't appear on Special:Wantedpages .. -- User:Docu

Why does this article's title start with an exclamation point? RickK 06:27, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Someone must have changed the page for Special:Wantedpages from Wikipedia:Most wanted articles to Wikipedia:!Most wanted articles. -- User:Docu

Most Wanted Articles

(from the village pump)

Can someone update Wikipedia:Most Wanted Articles. About half of them are created, now. Anthony DiPierro 01:45, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I have updated it, but you could just go to Special:Wantedpages instead, which is pretty much up to date and contains the same list. Angela. 03:56, Feb 9, 2004 (UTC)
If Special:Wantedpages exists, contains the same information, and is more up-to-date, then why not just make Wikipedia:Most Wanted Articles a redirect to it? →Raul654 20:50, Feb 9, 2004 (UTC)
Special:Wantedpages contains talk: and user: page links as well, which can be distracting. Radagast 19:15, Mar 10, 2004 (UTC)
Unless Special:Wantedpages is updated live, I think it's preferable to use Wikipedia:Most Wanted Articles, as there is no way to see on Special:Wantedpages which articles were already created. -- User:Docu
I've gone through and updated the list again, removing all those that weren't too stubby. ambivalenthysteria
I just updated the list again. Apparently, we're only six articles away from finishing the Wikipedia. MK 17:23, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Now down to five, and all five left have to do with music. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 17:35, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

Not a real update, but I took the top items off Special:Wantedpages, edited out the User page links and similar stuff, and pasted it on the list here. MK 03:33, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Making most wanted more useful?

At the moment, Special:Wantedpages is not updated automatically, but created only once in some days (to help the servers with their burden). That is okay -- but what is confusing is the use of edit links, because they stay red. That is no problem if Wantedpages is generated every time one calls it, but in the current state of affairs, it would be more useful if one actually can see if a wanted page (say: Toto (band), which is still listed on the top of most wanted) has been created by someone else in the meantime. So I propose to introduce another link (to the page, not to editing the page) for every item in the Special:Wantedpages to make it easier to check if the item got created meanwhile. -- till we *) 13:13, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I *STRONLGY* agree with the above - there's no way of telling which ones have been written and which ones haven't. →Raul654 16:42, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with you, the current situation for this (and other special pages) isn't that great. A solution could be to place the content on Wikipedia:Most_Wanted_Articles and edit it there. Special:Wantedpages would just suggest to look there. -- User:Docu
Additionally, the script needs some work, many many of the most wanted pages list ten or more links to the Most_Wanted_ articles page..... this is _not_ useful. I love killing wanted, it's sorta my hobby, but it's getting frustrating. Additionally, the CURRENT version has a just plain wrong wanted as the first one (Deaddead) with over 32K wants... uh No Rick Boatright 05:30, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Ouch! I suspect this of being a dummy value in the scripts that's being interpreted literally for some reason - it's even showing up as the target of a redirect from As of 2000! Perhaps a developer could look into this and find out what's going on (maybe the same bug as the other whatlinkshere problems, or an attempted fix?) - IMSoP 18:57, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Another suggestion

I have another suggestion about generating this list: could we automatically leave off all of the "List of people by name:" entries? They obviously don't exist on purpose, so there's no sense in including them. (Also, while we're at it, could we automatically leave off anything having to do with Pokemon? :-) ) -- Walt Pohl, 15 Mar 2004

I agree. Leaving user pages off the list would also be an improvement. (I would also not mind skipping over the Grammy Awards and Eurovision Song Contest pages) - SimonP 22:42, Mar 17, 2004 (UTC)
The Grammy Awards and Eurovision Song Contest pages are easy to get started (I have a perl script to extract the contestants from each country by year, to make the "Such-and-such Country in the Eurovision Song Contest" pages, if anyone wants it). Most of the necessary information is already in the Wikipedia, it's just a matter of collecting it together.--Wclark 21:27, 2004 Jul 10 (UTC)


Another suggestion

With electoral divisions etc, a country/region is included. Probably some of the people could do with indications of who is intended (eg is Peter Shore the British politician?)

Jackiespeel 17:55, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, a context for which the item is intended would be nice. I managed to create this myself for a couple, by searching, and found all the pages that linked to it, but fore more common words/names I'm finding a lot of non-linked references. So I don't know what they mean, for instance, by "Abandon". Are those 15 links all refering to Abandonment, and does it simply need a redirect, or is this some TV show or book I've never heard of?
Another example is Frank Lloyd. A wikipedia search brings up Frank Lloyd Wright, so that's out. A google search without "wright" brings up the Frank Lloyd Art Gallery and 7 different IMDB matches, including 3 actors and a director. Which Frank Lloyd is being refered to 15 times?
Some kind of link to those 15 sources would be nice.
lunaverse 02:15, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
This can be found without too much difficulty by going to the article page and then going to "what links here." - SimonP 05:57, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Time for another update?

Looks like the last time the script ran was July, 11 2004.

lunaverse 02:17, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Questions

1. What does the (# links) to the side mean?

The number of articles with links to the page of that name. --Oldak Quill 23:49, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

2. Why is there a "105. Kusu Island (41 links)" as well as a "472. Kusu Island (30 links)"? --Jwanders 21:49, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

When the page is updated the top thousand or so requests are added. The number of links required to make this cut has steadily been rising. Those pages that were on the page prior to the update, but which did not make the new cut, are not removed creating the occasional duplicate. - SimonP 22:26, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)


3. Are links from templates counted? for each instance of the template? --Rj 21:53, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, for each instance. A decision that makes this page far less useful. - SimonP 22:26, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate Entries

The entry for Julius Sang appears twice in the "General" list, once with "37 links" and once with "25 links". What's going on here? Is there a bug in the report generation process? -- Dominus 12:27, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

When the page is updated the top thousand or so requests are added. The number of links required to make this cut has steadily been rising. Those pages that were on the page prior to the update, but which did not make the new cut, are not removed creating the occasional duplicate. - SimonP 15:12, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. -- Dominus 14:37, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)


New list?

It's been more than six months since this list was refreshed. Isn't it about due for another? —wwoods 00:11, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There has been some talk about this recently at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#purposeful deadend pages. Gkhan has generated a new list at User:Gkhan/Mostwanted. However of the 1000 articles listed there well less than a hundred are not generated by massive templates somewhat reducing its usefulness. - SimonP 00:27, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)


Requests

Why did they get deleted? Do you want more information? --Helpinghands 15:33, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi. How do I send a request for a new topic? I want to send a request for the future Star Wars movies: Star Wars Episode VII, VIII, and IX. Could you please PM me some instructions on how to do this? If no PM, then could you email me? Thanks.

PS: I'm brand new here to being a member of Wikipedia. I have used this to read, study, and sponge in information for the past several months but I just made an account today, so please help me get the hang of operating the site. Thanks.

--Shultz 9 July 2005 16:28 (UTC)

Replied on User talk:Shultz. -- Beland 00:02, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Newbie Question

Many of the listed items are individuals or topics currently in "pop culture." I assume it is OK to go ahead and create articles about these items, even though a search of Google or Yahoo! might yield better results. Steven McCrary 14:34, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Certainly. -- Beland 22:43, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Time for a new list

With just about everything gone except the British Rail classes (which I'll leave to the experts), I think we need to regenerate the list. -- BD2412 talk 20:15, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Finally updated. -- Beland 07:23, 15 September 2005 (UTC)


Newbie Question

Small matter, hairsplitting perhaps, however:

Where can I find a short concise definition of 'most wanted articles'? Seems to me it should be defined at the beginning of this article or the phrase linked to the definition. Of course I will figure out what 'most wanted articles' are, but it would be nice to just read it right at the outset.

My first guess would be that 'most wanted articles' were articles most people would want to see created. Or maybe it just means an article that a single individual would most like to see created?

As a newbie, it would be nice for me if all terms and phrases were defined when they first appeared in an article or perhaps at least linked to a definition.

One thing I love about the WP is that most of the time when I'm reading about a subject I'm unfamiliar with and I come to an acronym, technical term or pharse new to me, I can usually stop reading, click on the unknown term and quickly find out what it means. This is also the reason I love a built in dictionary on my computer.

Thanks, Jim 13:22, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Excellent question, and a glaring omission on my part! I added a brief explanation to the top of the project page; hopefully it should be clear now. -- Beland 07:32, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


Old suggestions since implemented

  • Should exclude user pages. Many terms are high in the index because they were redlinks on the OPEN TASKS template at the time of arrival of a newbie. Or something like that. (cf. User talk:ManuelGR and the term Ailech --Tagishsimon (talk)
Probably only because they were added there after being listed here. -- Beland 03:50, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
They wouldn't be here if they had not been on user pages as a result of the OPEN TASKS ... such as COMMLOC on the current list. What links here points back to user pages pretty much only. Google does not know what to make of COMMLOC. We're chasing phantoms. --Tagishsimon (talk)
    • I'd go one further than Tagishsimon and say this should only count links from article-space. No user pages, no Wikipedia-space pages, no talk pages. The most important red-links to turn blue are those from other articles, surely. Grutness...wha? 03:22, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
      • definately exclude links from user and talk pages Astrokey44 15:00, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
        • User and talk page links are already excluded from the count, though they may exist independently. -- Beland 03:28, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Could you give a report for each missing link that shows all of the pages (and/or templates) from whence the topic is being linked? That'll help us track down the purpose of the link. Thanks. — RJH 23:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Is the "What links here" feature not enough for tracking down the origin of the links? An individual report for each link would cloud the list nedlessly... Celcius 19:02, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
      • That'd be fine. So why not put a "what links here" shortcut around each of the link counts so you don't have to actually start up the page to find out what links to it? For example:
        Sigtryggur_Baldursson (26 links)
        • Done! BD2412 T 20:06, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
          • Way cool! Thanks! — RJH 17:20, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
          • This is a great idea; I'll do this automagically from now on. -- Beland 09:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Just to emphasise this point; USER and TALK page links are NOT excluded from the count WHEN that item appears on the front page of the community portal . Check the "What links here" for Conrad Green for proof; not ONE legitimate link but ranked in the top 50 most requested. Alex Bartho 00:52, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Ah, I think I may have found the source of the problem. I think it was actually commented-out links (inside HTML comments) in regular articles that were inflating the numbers for certain articles, not real links from user and talk pages. This is where COMMLOC was coming from, e.g. from USS Jack Williams (FFG-24). (You have to edit the article to see the comment, though.) I think it's someone's shorthand for "location this ship was commissioned".  ::sigh:: I'm recalcating and hopefully the rankings should be accurate now. Though do let me know if there are any more anomalies. -- Beland 09:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Short pages

These are frequently there resulting from edit wars.

The thumb rule could be : try to find the latest non offensive, &c. version and protect it.

Thanks if someone can try this.

Redlinks for articles that probably should not exist

I removed those links because:

  1. Comparison_of_word_processors (28 links) (Wikipedia generally does not contain "comparison of" articles)
    There is many comparisons of...: [1]
  2. 2008_in_aviation (25 links) (Wikipedia is not a crystal ball)
    There is a Timeline of aviation, and many events are planified: first flights, etc.
  3. INSERT_IMAGE_HERE (21 links) (this is a mere placeholder)
    no links: [2]
  4. Comparison_of_news_clients (21 links) (Wikipedia generally does not contain "comparison of" articles)
    There is many comparisons of.
    --Marc Lacoste 12:18, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
With respect to the "Comparison of" articles, I stand corrected - I see, indeed, that there is a Category:Software comparison. However, I have also seen many AfD debates where the policy was enunciated that X vs. Y comparisons are bad (along the lines of Comparison of Russian and Spanish, or Comparison of Ecuador and Mongolia). I'll restore these to the list. With respect to the aviation article, the policy at issue is that Wikipedia does not predict future events. As for the image placeholder, I don't count the links, I just categorize 'em. Cheers! BD2412 T 23:21, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Extrasolar Visions is for a non-notable web site that is referenced on WP as external links on several star pages. I removed the links on all of those pages, so the link count is down to 1: this page. — RJH 23:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Corprophagy seems to me to be a misspell of Coprophagy, for which there is an article. If this is the case, someone should probably remove it from the top of the wanted list, or, perhaps put a redirect (since it appears to be a common misspelling).


Alternate most-wanted list

Folks, I'm playing about with scripts to generate useful summary reports from an offline copy of the database. There's a close analogy of the most-wanted list accessible at User:Topbanana/Reports/mostwanted. The method used to generate the list differs somewhat from the one here, I'm not sure the results are comparable enough to merge, but anyone's welcome to make use of it while I refine the scripts. Comments and ideas welcome also.

Sir Bastard the V

This isn't a most wanted article and shouldn't be on this page. Perhaps we shouldn't include links from Talk pages when deciding which articles should be on this page. Tempshill 21:27, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sort the most wanted articles

Can someone actually sort the most wanted articles by country or something like that? It's kind of annoying to go through them all. KNewman 13:15, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Links from templates

This is both useless and confusing. For example, Indian hip hop has 58 links because of Template:Worldhiphop so that every world hip-hop article links to it - otherwise it would have maybe 5. - Lev 21:24, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Templates should, ideally, not be counted in this. That may take a major software change, though, and might be impossible. Tuf-Kat 21:57, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
Template or not, that is still 58 pages linking to the page. I have come to realise that most pages on this list are caused by templates (how else do we suddenly have dozens of pages with hundreds of pages linking to them following update). The fact that they are caused by a template is not counter to the purpose of this page. --Oldak Quill 15:04, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
What is the purpose? Statistics? How does the appearance of the link in a template make a page more wanted? Lev 17:15, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
A page is more wanted by virtue of it being linked by more pages. This page is here so that people will create these article which, stastically speaking, more people encounter. --Oldak Quill 16:16, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think these templatelinks are similar to googlebombs and defeat the purpose of this site by listing many well-interconnected redlinks on obscure topics. --MarSch 15:40, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Note: The current listing counts a link from a template only once, no matter how many pages use that template. -- Beland 21:08, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Regional requests

Where information is requested for geographical places, an indication of the country would be useful.

Old suggestions

  • Being new and not understanding the term "transclusion" I have, however, become quickly aware that the counting of requests appears to be artificially inflated by "request links" that are not really there. I started looking at doing the so-called "top request" and quickly realized that the links were not there. Is this a computer or human generated request list? I'd love to help out with the "most wanted," but would rather work on real requests. Tim Graff 23:05, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, the list is accurate as of the last database dump. If you look at the top requests, the "What links here" page is flooded because they are listed on Template:Opentask. Lots of people have this template on their user talk pages (they "transclude" it). This counts for "What links here" but not this list (especially since these pages were only added to the template after the database dump was done). But I think "What links here" has a maximum number of links it will show, and they are not in any particular order, so you might not be seeing incoming links that are there. I'm sure some links have since been removed, and others added, depending on the topic. -- Beland 05:24, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Linking within each entry/article should be context-sensitive. It does a reader no good to click "1999" in every article in which an event happened in that year, only to see an entry for the year itself. One could write an entire Wiki entry with every single word linked, many to its dictionary entry. It can be frustrating for a reader who probably thinks additional information is available related to the subject. Thanks for such a great idea as Wiki! Deb
    • That's a nice idea. You can achieve the same effect right now with links like [[1999 in sport|1999]], but if you've a suggestion for a nicer way of doing this I'm sure the Wikimedia developers would love to hear about it. - TB 12:01, 2004 Oct 20 (UTC)


Articles with names no longer in use

Several articles point to titles that are no longer in general use. For example, there are requests for "Minister of Energy", "Minister of Employment and Immigration", and "Minister of Communications" -- all Canadian federal cabinet ministers. Canada changes the names of its federal departments and general titles, such as "Minister of Employment and Immigration", could be confused with cabinet ministers from other countries. How should this be addressed? Note that:

  • Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources Canada -- would now be the Minister of Natural Resources Canada
  • Minister of Employment and Immigration -- would now be Minister of Human Resources Development Canada or Citizenship & Immigration Canada
  • Minister of Communications -- may now be Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, depending on the context

Following the next cabinet shuffle, the government departments could change again. Moreover, Minister of Department XYZ is probably not important enough to warrant a separate reference in an encyclopedia. So "Minister of **XYZ Canada**" should likely be the preferred wikification. However, is there a convention for this? --Westendgirl 08:02, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It is useful to have articles on defunct cabinet positions. For instance I don't know what the responsibilities of the Minister of Communications were, and there is so far nowhere in the Wiki to find out. We do have some articles on other past portfolios such as the Secretary of State for Canada and the Secretary of State for External Affairs. - SimonP 15:55, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
I see your point. I think it would be helpful to put Canada in the title, so that there is no confusion with international titles. For example, the US has United States Secretary of State, but Secretary of State is a general article. --Westendgirl 07:39, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Defunct and current positions should both have articles - they are not identical and these articles are hence useful. On another point, they shouldn't be named "Minister of **XYZ Canada**" as this defies the naming policy and is unclear. Names such as "Minister of **XYZ of Canada**" or "Minister of **XYZ for Canada**" are far more clear and hence useful. --Oldak Quill 15:09, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
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