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Archive 5←Archive 8Archive 9Archive 10Archive 11Archive 12→Archive 15

New dump in progress

Continuing the string of quick dumps, there's a new one dated September 8 that's in progress right now. If Russ processes it, it'll be interesting to see what it does to WP:DPM. DPM is currently showing the lowest number of active links on record and is close to going south of 50,000. On the other hand, I don't think there's anyone who would argue we that we should stop work on the current dump when it's only half done. At the current rate, we're on track to be all through with this one when the hypothetical October dump rolls around.... Dekimasuよ! 14:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

For anyone wondering, there were 66,895 active links in the September dump. Dekimasuよ! 07:51, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm guessing the October 18 dump will show a jump in links. I'm in favor of getting it up as soon as possible because work has slowed considerably on this list. Other opinions? Dekimasuよ! 02:53, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Go for it! --Russ (talk) 10:44, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, the jump in links puts us within .2% of where we started on the August dump... 73,515 links versus 73,386. I fixed about 5,000 links from the new dump through altering redirects. It's ready to be transcluded. Dekimasuよ! 01:22, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm all for transcluding the latest run. Mostly because I don't particularly enjoy doing the small ones, so that's one reason why I haven't been fixing that many links the last couple of months. --Bobblehead (rants) 15:05, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

The most recent dump attempt appears to have failed. Dekimasuよ! 04:16, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Maybe not ;) -- Russ (talk) 13:48, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

New template - feedback?

Currently, dablinks are a hidden problem - as long as the page is in accordance with WP:MOS-DAB, the average editor visiting an overloaded dab has no reason to suspect that anything is wrong. To help raise awareness and cut the backlog here, I have been working on a maintenance template to be added to disambiguation pages that have a large link backup (it's currently at User:Dekimasu/Incoming links). I've done my best to conform to the rules for formatting templates and make it look as official as possible, and it comes out something like this when applied to articles: Congo, Athletics, Newfoundland. I have a few questions before transferring this to the template namespace, though.

  • Is this a good idea? If so, how widely should the template be applied (or should it just be at the discretion of the individual editor)?
  • I've set the template up to add categories similar to the ones applied to {{disambig-cleanup}}, but would a new category be advisable?
  • I'm not a template expert. I've already made several attempts to fix markup, but Rich Farmbrough has left me several recommendations at User talk:Dekimasu#Incoming links related to ways to improve the template. I managed to un-subst the {{ambox}}, but adding the date parameter and such is taking me a long time to figure out. Can I have a little help?

Thanks in advance for feedback. I've had less internet access lately, but I'm still trying to think of ways to help out DPL. Dekimasuよ! 12:52, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

  • I think the template is a great idea. I don't know whether we need categories since the pages turn up either at dab pages with links or at maintenance. Also, I wonder if a more permanent variation of the template for pages like bass and Britain that grow new links quickly would be useful. Thanks for starting this process. (I'm afraid I can offer you no assistance on the technical aspects of making this happen.) -- SteinbDJ · talk · contributions 13:13, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
  • If there was to be a more permanent version, I think that would have to be relegated to the talk page. I'll see if I can work something up - talk page templates are a lot easier than amboxes. Dekimasuよ! 13:28, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I like the template. The fact that it is at the top of the disambiguation page attracts more attention to the "problem". However, I think that the information in the box is largely the same as what it in the {{dab}} template at the bottom of the page. The main difference being that the {{dab}} template is at the bottom of the page and it is less conspicuous. Some time ago I floated the balloon that the {{dab}} should be put at the top of the disambiguation in order to attract more attention to it. However, that balloon was quickly deairated. :-) So, is it a good idea? It would get my vote, but what to do with the {{dab}} template? ʍαμ$ʏ5043 17:16, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't think the intent of Dekimasu's template is to replace the dab template, but rather to identify dab pages that have a large number of links to them in a more prominent fashion than {{disambig-cleanup}}. A test run of the template on Newfoundland seems to have had a margin of success in cleaning up the 1,000+ main space links to the page as shortly after Dekimasu applied the template to the page[1] another user commented on the number of links[2] and then within a few days I removed the template because the mainspace links to Newfoundland had been cleaned.[3] --Bobblehead (rants) 18:18, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I just added the date parameter. Also, I'd use the cleanup type for ambox rather than the merge template, seems more appropriate to me? --Bobblehead (rants) 18:44, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I beg to differ. I cleaned up the majority of the Newfoundland links and was not triggered to do so by the template on the article page but by the fact that it was at the top of the collaboration list on the WP:DPL project page. However, I was only trying to point out that IMHO (apart from the graphical differences and the location) Dekumasu's template and the existing {{dab}} template are marginally different and wondering if others see that too. ʍαμ$ʏ5043 06:27, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
  • The text is more similar than I had realized, although {{disambig}} deals with a potential condition rather than with recognition of an existing one. Redundancy isn't necessarily bad; we have {{talkheader}}, for example, but any time you edit a talk page a similar message is shown above the edit box. Dekimasuよ! 06:35, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree. As I said before, I support the initiative. Nevertheless, you might want to reconsider rephrasing the text. Onto another subject: Are there any ideas already on how to distribute the template? Is this going to be a manual addition to all the articles listed on WP:DPL or will there be a bot created? ʍαμ$ʏ5043 09:58, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
There's some discussion related to that on the template's talk page. Dekimasuよ! 08:01, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

← Is this a date based template for tracking purposes? It seems like the systems in place do a pretty good job of that. Beyond that function, I don't know how I feel about the tradeoff of visually distracting elements on the tops of pages vs. recruiting people to help on disambiguation. Do people think seeing these will help get the page delinked, or is it just template creep? - cohesion 01:13, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The template itself is for tracking and the date based formatting is more for aging. Granted, aging and tracking are intertwined quite a bit, but most (if not all) cleanup templates should have date formatting just to make things easier so those that do go through the cleanup templates know where the backlogs are. The idea is to get people that are familiar with the subject to cleanup the links to the page in order to cut down on the number of errors and hopefully speed up the cleanup by getting more editors involved in the cleanup than the few that watch this page. Of course, whether that is effective or not is up to the editors of that page. --Bobblehead (rants) 15:54, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Batavia

Today I disambiguated Batavia. The original article on Batavia had disambgiguation links added to the end of it. I kept the Batavia article and moved the disambiguation links to a new article: Batavia (disambiguation). I then set out to disambiguate the original article as several links to it needed to point to one of the alternative pages. ʍαμ$ʏ5043 11:26, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I was just cleaning up List of botanists by author abbreviation when I realized that there were times that it could have been a useful resource when I was fixing links. Let's say an article on conifers linked to Gordon; checking this list would probably be faster than looking at names on the Gordon page (in this hypothetical case the right guy isn't on the Gordon page anyway). These might also be useful:

Hope some of you find this useful. Chris the speller 16:14, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I remember having used some of these pages before, too. Good to point them out. Dekimasuよ! 04:54, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Rampant delinking.

I'm an extremely new wikipedian, and I thought I'd try and help with "concave". However, I've so far the vast majority have been people talking about things that are just generally concave-shaped (like kidneys, or electorates after gerrymandering, or whatever) and seem to simply refer to the general meaning of the word - the articles on "concave" refer to mathematical concavity.

Now, the guide says that delinking is probably the best bet here, and the manual of style for linking seems to agree. As far as I can tell, my only other option is to create whole loads of red links to something like Concave (basic shape), which would seem to be a definition - which is bad, right?

I was worried, though, because I don't want my first contribution to be rampant, mistaken delinking. I'm still happy to deal with all the links to the dab pages, but could I get some advice here? Tweetlebeetle367 11:52, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

WP:MOSLINK and WP:CONTEXT say not to link to words that are commonly known by English speakers and I would think this is one of those cases, so delink away. Otherwise you can link to [[wikt:concave|]] but that would be a last resort, IMHO. --Bobblehead (rants) 17:26, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
I find that there are a lot of cases where pages can be over-wikilinked: links are designed to add context and link to related subjects. As a term gets progressively vague (e.g. device) or progressively simple (i.e. horizontal) it gets less and less likely that the link a) is relevant to the context and b) that we will actually have an article dealing specifically with the idea in question (that is, more than a dictionary definition at the top of a disambiguation page). My take on it is that if it does not specifically add value to the article to have the link, and the ambiguity of the term cannot be easily resolved, I will unlink it unless it is a word which I suspect is more advanced (that is, is it likely that the majority of people reading the article would not be familiar with the word?), in which case I consider linking instead to Wiktionary. Nihiltres(t.l) 18:26, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

In the last few days, Liberal has been redirected to Liberal (disambiguation) instead of Liberalism and Conservative has been redirected to Conservatism (disambiguation) instead of Conservatism. Together they account for 1500-2000 links. There is a move request underway to send Liberal (disambiguation) to the plain title, and Conservatism (disambiguation) has also become a likely move candidate. Feel free to help fix links and/or comment with your thoughts at Talk:Liberal (disambiguation). Dekimasuよ! 02:45, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Liberal seems to be pretty stable and pointing at Liberalism right now and so far you're the only one that has even responded to the move request. I'm not sure this would have been an issue if the one user hadn't done a copy/paste from Conservapedia. I'd move the link to completed until the move request is closed. *shrug* I also don't see a problem with it pointing to Liberalism. The article covers the big hitters on the disambiguation page acting as child articles. Not to mention it'd be a @#%!@ to maintain with all the new links that'll be created each month. --Bobblehead (rants) 14:59, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
I threw this post up before the dump went through, so it wasn't directly related to the new list. I don't have a strong opinion about whether it should be in the new done section, but I hope the redirect holds up. There are many fewer editors involved now that the AfD has concluded. Dekimasuよ! 16:06, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Brazil

There's probably a guide on this somewhere, but I'm just wondering when it's appropriate to link to Brazilian people. In the sentence, "He is a [[Brazilian]] politician" or some such, does it go to Brazil or Brazilian people? --Closedmouth 08:06, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

This particular sentence means "he is a politician from Brazil", therefore you shoulf link to country. Only link to nationality when it's about somebody's origins, not citizenship or place of living. MaxSem 09:10, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Only link to ethnicity (e.g. Brazilian people) when it's about somebody's origins. Nationality or citizenship should be linked to Brazil. Dekimasuよ! 12:24, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
That's what I thought, thanks guys :) --Closedmouth 12:37, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Congo

I've been spending the last couple of days on this and I've done about 300. Most of the rest should be left pointing to the disambiguation page because they refer to the Congo region in general rather than one of the countries named Congo, but these still need disambiguating because I can't find sources to help me decide which way to go:

List of camouflage patterns
Patrice Bouédibéla
Ärsenik
Dornier Do 27
Ponta da Fragatas
Tone Brulin
Willie Brigitte
Farai Sevenzo
Sans Pression
Sacrifice Day

and these spiders:

Myrmarachne
Alfenus
Belippo
Dasycyptus
Hasarius (now ok, as of 2008-04-10)
Hyllus (genus)
Pharacocerus
Simaetha
Deinopis
Thelcticopis

Phil Bridger 16:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a belated reply, but I disagree that these articles should remained linked to a dab page. That's not what dab pages are for. For a discussion of the very few instances in which links to dab pages are correct, see Wikipedia:Dab#Links_to_disambiguation_pages. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 07:25, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

CorHomo

Anyone have any idea if the recent bugs have been worked out of CorHomo? I'd like to give it a go, but I know absolutely nothing about java, so I just need it to work (vs. me actually working on it). Cheers, PaddyM 03:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

It's fine. Use the version noted at WP:DPL#Tools. Dekimasuよ! 06:21, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't know about the bugs being fixed, but CorHomo is not written in Java. Try Wikipedia Cleaner if you want a Java program . --NicoV 05:29, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
See, that just shows you how little I know. I'll see if I can figure it out. Thanks much, PaddyM 15:02, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
OK, does anyone actually use CorHomo? B/c I'm having some trouble getting the interface to work. I'll take any advice I can get. Cheers, PaddyM 15:54, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, Chris the speller set me down the right path. Apparently there is a version 1.3.3 that is currently working. Whatever is linked on the project-page no longer works. Cheers, PaddyM 18:17, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
The working version is linked where I said it was.... Dekimasuよ! 01:03, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I have no idea what was happening yesterday while I was trying to get it to work. I am wracking my brain right now to figure out why I kept getting the wrong version... Sigh... PaddyM 16:05, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
You can use AWB. MaxSem(Han shot first!) 16:31, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
PaddyM, you probably made the same mistake I made after clicking on the link at WP:DPL#Tools – clicking on the link that said "CorHomo" instead of "http://personales.ya.com/osiris/CorHomo1.3.3-JJvaca.exe" or whatever. Hmmm... you and I might not be the only ones... Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 14:09, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

CorHomo redirect trick

I wanted to outwit CorHomo when I discovered several dozen links to "Grants", which is a rdr to "Grant". Most of these links should be directed to "Grant (money)", so I added fake disambig lines below the #REDIRECT line in "Grants". Anything below that line does not show up when the rdr is viewed (except while editing), and does not affect the function of the redirect. The only indication that something extra is there is the revision history. You can even put these lines within an invisible comment if you like; CorHomo seems to go line-by-line, not properly parsing long multi-line comments. After I added "* [[Grant (money)]]" and "{{disambig}}" to the "Grants" rdr page, CorHomo zipped through the incoming links very nicely. You can probably get away with leaving these extra lines in a rdr page if it is one where you frequently need to clean up links with CorHomo. Adding a disambig template within a multi-line comment should also work for pages that use the hndis template, which CorHomo doesn't recognize as a dab page. Have fun! Chris the speller (talk) 00:36, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

That was really helpful for "Native American" (a redirect to "Native Americans") - thanks a lot! WolfgangFaber (talk) 22:21, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Georgia

Please could someone keep a regular eye on Georgia? I have been doing this (it attracts links every day) but unfortunately I am no longer able to. Thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 18:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Fullback

I have ran across a something that I'm not sure how to fix while working on Fullback. For an example see Justin Green (American football) it uses Template:Infobox NFLactive with a parameter "currentposition" and makes the value of the parameter a link. How can I change the Fullback link to Fullback (American football) without changing the text that is displayed? Note: a piped link like the one used for college parameter does not seem to work. Ryan Roos (talk) 04:09, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

You're most likely going to have to take it up with the people who maintain the template to change the template. Otherwise, I don't see how it's possible. --Squids'and'Chips 04:24, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Use |currentpositionplain=[[Fullback (American football)|]] instead of |currentposition=fullback older ≠ wiser 04:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

List of exceptions?

Ideally, Wikipedia articles should not link to disambiguation pages (with rare exceptions where the ambiguity of a term is being discussed)

An obvious exception to this is where "partitions" redirects to partition (etc.). Another is boilerplate "otheruses"-type links. Has anyone compiled any list of such clear exceptions? Michael Hardy (talk) 01:08, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Not that I've heard of. Here's another case: sometimes you really want to refer to all of the meanings rather than the ambiguity. Example: List of Sweden-related topics#See also. Bo Lindbergh (talk) 19:20, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Please take a look at this text which I posted to Talk:Editor several months ago:
With very few exceptions, creating wikilinks to dab pages is erroneous. Wikilinks are not supposed to take the user to a dab page. They're supposed to take the user to a relevant article. The purpose of a dab page is to give a user who has typed an ambiguous term into the search box a list of articles that are likely to be what he's looking for. The exceptions to this are:
There is currently a major project underway to repair links to disambiguation pages. You can find out about it here. Creating links to disambiguation pages only results in the page on which they're created showing up on a list of pages that are in need of repair, bringing an editor to the page to repair it.
Please don't deliberately create links to disambiguation pages.

There is also a category called Category:Disambiguation which was created specifically to prevent dab pages from showing up on lists of orphaned articles.

Actually, I've been thinking of incorporating some version of this text in the WP:DAB guideline. Comments? --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 04:29, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. If it doesn't cover every possible exception, it can always be edited, but it seems to cover most likely cases. --Russ (talk) 14:00, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Can anyone think of any other exceptions that should be mentioned? Steven J. Anderson 14:27, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Can someone disambiguate a template?

Could someone who knows something about templates go to Template:Infobox Dotcom company and disambiguate the word "services" by piping it to Service (economics). "Services" is a redirect to "Service," the top page on our list. For an example of how this link looks on a page, see Scrabulous.

--Steven J. Anderson (talk) 15:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Done. MaxSem(Han shot first!) 16:14, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

They need the definition, not the article

Hi, new here, trying to help...I killed all the mainspace Disamb for CINEMA and now I'm working on ALIENATION...many times it seems there isn't really a good place to link them, more like they need a dictionary definition than, say, the Social Alienation page...do I just delink, or do I link to wiktionary?

Also, I went to work on Aquatic, but it seems that all the aquatic critters are listed as such and I'm not sure if I should link them over to "ocean" "aquatic ecosystem" or once again, just the definition of Aquatic. I'm hesitant to link to just Ocean as the critters could live in lakes/rivers/small mud puddles.

Help :) Legotech (talk) 18:50, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

It's really up to you on how you take care of links that are intended for the definition rather than an article. I tend to delink the words, but alienation might be word that might be confusing for a person whose main language is not English, so I might make an exception and link to the wiktionary. As far as aquatic goes, you could link to Water --Bobblehead (rants) 19:31, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your QUICK help! I've been kind of nervous making all these edits...nice to know I'm on the right track! Legotech (talk) 19:43, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think you are, Lego. Generally, there's no need to link to a dicdef unless you think the word is particularly obscure. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 20:18, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Teflon

Can someone take a look at the dab page for Teflon? An anon user says don't redirect, someone else suggests non stick surfaces which seems to make sense because it links to all three chemicals...I'll happily tackle it if someone smarter than I am can help me figure it out :) Legotech (talk) 19:34, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

That page is a real problem and should probably be restructured in some way. In my opinion there should be a non-dab page for Teflon, a commercial product and trade name, with a hatnote at the top and separate pages for the three polymers. As it is, there's almost no way of knowing how to disambiguate and delinking doesn't seem like a good option, because there really should be a relevant article.
Maybe your time would be better spent working on a different dab page for now until it can get sorted out, or trying to do the sorting yourself.
--Steven J. Anderson (talk) 21:23, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Just as a note here, the article Polytetrafluoroethylene says that it is the actual name of Teflon (trademarked name), but so do the other two so that does make disambiguating articles that reference the actual Teflon material rather cumbersome. I agree with Steven J Anderson about the "wait and see". Keeper | 76 21:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! I'll pick something else to poke at :) Legotech (talk) 22:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Please take a look at my proposal on the talk page of Teflon and, if you see fit, add your thoughts. --AndrewHowse (talk) 17:34, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Independent

Can anyone see why Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley and Mississauga—Streetsville still link to Independent? I think the former has to do with Template:Infobox Canada electoral district, and so the latter might be driven by its infobox, but I've exhausted my knowlege, and my patience. It's only 2 links, so it's not a matter of importance, only a matter of curiosity. Thanks in advance. --AndrewHowse (talk) 17:00, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Fullback

I see that User:Pinkkeith has redirected Full back to Fullback which is a dab page, instead of having [Full back]] point to a soccer page as it used to do. I suppose it's a more logical approach, but it's added a couple of dozen links to the dab page, in effect. I've asked him to clean up after himself - we'll see what happens. --AndrewHowse (talk) 15:26, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Request for comments on Wikipedia Cleaner

Hi,

In the last days, I have worked on Wikipedia Cleaner mainly to improve performance (when gathering informations from Wikipedia servers) and I am pretty happy with the result (auto-congratulations ;) ).

If people are using it from time to time, can you tell me if you see a notable difference in performances compared to previous versions ?

For others, can you tell me what tools you are using for this project, and why ? That will probably give me good ideas for future evolutions of my tool. --NicoV (talk) 19:04, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I hadn't used it before (so this comment may or may not be helpful), but it's absolutely flawless for me. Loads quickly, pinpoints what I want to see, very simple interface. I'm impressed! Duncan1800 (talk) 17:13, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Good to hear, but I don't see WikiCleaner comments in your contributions. Are you also using it for saving modifications to articles ?
I have just done some performance testing on the French Wikipedia: I have disambiguated links to fr:Calvados in the 240 articles with name beginning with a C in less than 30 minutes (see here), so about 8 articles per minute for easy disambiguations. --NicoV (talk) 10:25, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
First off, amazing tool, makes DABbing easy. I was just wondering if its possible to have it make links to the actual wiktionary definition rather than just to the front page? The links look like this: [[wikt:concave|]]. Its not often I'd like to do it, but there are some cases where it really does make sense. THANKS! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Legotech (talk • contribs) 17:45, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Linking to wiktionary definition is on my TODO list, but I have to do several modifications before that one. --NicoV (talk) 19:04, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you! And thank you for your work on this program and project. Legotech (talk) 20:25, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Talk, User, and Archive pages

Should talk, user or archive pages be corrected to point to the correct article when fixing disambiguation links? Andareed (talk) 23:23, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not necessary to correct talk pages and it's probably inappropriate to alter someone else's comments in any way. Archives of talk pages should be left alone, too. It's not always a bad idea to correct user pages. Some users even invite corrections to their user pages. However, it's best to use a little judgment. Does it look like he's intentionally linking to the DAB page? If, so leave it alone. If I fix a link in a user page, I usually leave a self-effacing edit summary, like "Hope this is okay". Remember, the main purpose of the dab project is to make certain that articles have good links to useful articles that contain relevant information instead of dab pages. Hope this helps. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 04:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
It is generally preferred if cleanup of dab pages stay to main space, image, category, template, and portal pages. You shouldn't fix dabs on any talk pages, user pages, or Wikipedia pages. Dab links on talk, user, or Wikipedia pages are not included in the counts and cleaning up these links is a waste of your time and, in some cases, it is considered poor form to edit them.--Bobblehead (rants) 04:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

In the Tools section of this page there is a link for downloading CorHomo from this page. From there, the most obvious place to click was, to me at least, the hyperlinked word "CorHomo". But this downloads version 1.3.2, which no longer works on the English Wikipedia. The functional Version 1.3.3 can be downloaded by clicking the link http://personales.ya.com/osiris/CorHomo1.3.3-JJvaca.exe on the same page. There's also the link http://personales.ya.com/osiris/CorHomo1.3.3-Jjvaca.tcl, though I have no idea what this is. I've updated the project page to better guide editors to the correct link, but still it's a bit confusing. Is there any reason we can't link version 1.3.3 directly from this page? I'd add the link myself, but I'm not sure whether I'm missing something, nor what the tcl file is for. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 14:31, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The .tcl file is the source code and runnable directly on Unix-type systems. The .exe file is just a compiled version that works under Windows. It's useful to link to both (with an explanation given) if you're going to link to one. Andareed (talk) 17:35, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks Andareed. I've linked both versions. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 14:25, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Well - definition

Hi I think this is the best place to ask my question, I've been working on fixing links to well but there are a few pages that I'm not sure what to change the link to. I think they need more the deffinition than a dab page, see Borehole and Polaron there are a few more but I'm really not sure what to do. Thanks in advance Ayls (talk) 21:08, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Ayls. I moved your question to the bottom of the page under a new heading, which is usually the best thing to do with a new question. In answer, I looked at the Borehole and Polaron pages, and it looks to me like the best thing to do in both cases is delink. Both water well and oil well are already adequately linked at Borehole, for example, and when using an ordinary English word that has no Wikipedia article of its own, the best thing to do is not link, unless you think that the word is obscure enough that the reader will need a dictionary definition. Hope this helps. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 21:43, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
I just took another look at Polaron. That article had "potential" and "well" each linked as separate words. Potential well is a separate article, so I linked there instead. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 21:47, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick responce! One other question, Rocky Mountain Arsenal? I'm not sure what kind of well it is. (and you wouldn't believe how long it took me to figure out how to indent) Ayls (talk) 23:04, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
My opinion on that would be delink. It's not a water well or an oil well. There doesn't seem to be any obvious wikilink and I don't think a wiktionary link is necessary. As an aside, the way I usually figure out formatting is to click on "edit this page" and see how other people do it. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 02:12, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

API

API is back as a DAB, someone undid the redirect...there's over 500 links to the DAB and 99.9% of them are for the programming language. Anyway we can do it and then protect it? I think that sometimes people don't understand that we aren't saying one deifinition is more correct than another, but its just the one that most people are looking for. I think 500 DAB links proves which one people are looking for :) Legotech (talk) 17:45, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Someone undid it, but Application programming interface also needed a hatnote linking to the dab page, which I added. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 20:21, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Semi-automatic fixing

Hi,

I have just released a new version of WikiCleaner which can do semi-automatic fixing.

An example on the french Wikipedia with the dab page Gironde :

  • Open the Disambiguation window for the Gironde article
  • Click on Add expression to replace « |département=[[Gironde]] » by « |département=[[Gironde (département)|Gironde]] »
  • Click on Add expression to replace « |département]] de la [[Gironde]] » by « |département]] de la [[Gironde (département)|Gironde]] »
  • Select the 1150 articles linked to Gironde in the list on the left
  • Click on Fix selected pages.
Eventually, run the fix a first time on only a few pages.
  • Let WikiCleaner do its job
  • Once the modifications are done, the Disambiguation window is updated.

In my test, fixing started at 12:51 with 1150 linked articles and ended at 13:58 with 664 linked articles. So, 486 articles fixed by themselves in 1:07 (and also about a hundred articles partially fixed). I could probably speedup the fixing, but I am not sure it's necessary.

PS: I don't know the policy on the English Wikipedia, but this kind of feature may require the bot flag to be used. On the French Wikipedia, I am using a dedicated account WikiCleanerBot for WikiCleaner.

I hope this feature will be useful for you.

--NicoV (talk) 13:15, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

If it is really 100% unnecessary to look at the contents of the article to determine the correct link, then there should be a redirect in place (or the article should be at the linked location). I don't see that there is really "disambiguating" going on here. Dekimasuよ! 05:10, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Redirect is not an option in this situation because the 1150 articles already contained a link to fr:Gironde without more precision. fr:Gironde is two things: a subdivision of France, and the end of a river; no meaning is really prevailing so fr:Gironde must stay as a dab page.
When you see département de la fr:Gironde, then you are sure it's the first meaning, so you can safely replace it by département de la fr:Gironde (département) or by fr:département de la Gironde; when you see estuaire de la fr:Gironde, it's the second meaning and you can safely replace it by fr:estuaire de la Gironde.
Redirect or not, you still have to modify the hundreds of articles to link to the correct meaning, this is the goal of this feature. Do you understand ?
--NicoV (talk) 06:39, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
An example on this wiki for Georgia:
--NicoV (talk) 13:28, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for the explanation. I understand now - thank you. Dekimasuよ! 03:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
As wikicleaner is availiable to the general public the concerns Deki raises is still important. Assuming that everyone will use the software as intended is a dangerous assumption to make. Taemyr (talk) 23:21, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I didn't see any concern in Dekimasu anwsers. What protection do you think should be added ? (bot flag, user contributing for some time, ... - what to do if previous constraint is not met: totally prohibit use, throttle speed to x modifications per minute, ...) --NicoV (talk) 06:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
In the case of Wikipedia-EN, the functionality as you describe would either have meet the bot requirements, or each edit would have to be validated by the human operator before they can be completed. I do something similar with AWB when I clean up dab links, but since I'm not a bot, I have to validate each update before it is saved. --Bobblehead (rants) 17:58, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
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