On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dal...@gmail.com> wrote: > 2009/2/17 Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipe...@gmail.com>: >> That would be interesting. I wonder if this could be something that >> could be integrated into the 1.0 rating scheme... another, parallel >> rating for "scope" or "generality". Naturally, any such >> determinations will be subjective, but so are article ratings and yet >> the semi-codified Stub-Start-C-B ratings tend to work out pretty well. >> It would be great to have the breakdown of general vs. specific >> articles not just for FAs, but for everything. > > That might be good. It would also help when determining if an article > being an orphan is a problem. Very specific articles probably won't be > linked to much, more general articles will be. So, if a general > article is an orphan, we have a problem, if a specific article is, we > probably don't.
Rudimentary suggestions based on searches can probably generate suggestions for links for practically any article. Humans could then go through those lists working out if links are needed. If you are just presented with an orphaned article, it can be a pain trying to work out where it can be linked from. To take an example, both of a low-hanging fruit and a relatively orphaned article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lister_Medal I was very surprised, back in October 2008, to discover that we didn't have an article on this prestigious award made to surgeons. So I created a list of those awarded the medal. Turns out the awarding institute don't have a handy list on their website, so that was probably the reason the article hadn't been created, but that's not the point I'm making here. The point I'm making is that I failed to link it from anywhere very much. About 4 months later, it's still not linked from anywhere much: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Lister_Medal&hideredirs=1&namespace=0 * Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister (links) * Manchester Mark 1 (links) * Regius Professor of Surgery, Glasgow (links) The first link, from Lister's article, was added by me in October 2008: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_Lister,_1st_Baron_Lister&diff=247254203&oldid=246064425 The other two links were added as follows: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Regius_Professor_of_Surgery,_Glasgow&oldid=260782369 That third link was added with the creation of that article in December 2008 (on a side-note, that list of Regius Professors of Surgery should be redlinks, not bare text, but the problem is that at least four of them are blue links to the wrong articles - this is where redlinks don't always work so well, unless the disambiguation naming is obvious enough). http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Manchester_Mark_1&diff=269866878&oldid=269866509 The second link (diff above) was added in February 2009. It was piped, though in fact a redirect from Lister Oration already existed. But two links in four months seems pretty poor to me. Or is it? What I should have done when I created the article, and what I will do at some point (if no-one else does it first), is go through the articles of the medallists linking back to the medal (and adding sources), and do a search for the various terms (Lister Medal, Lister Oration), and link them from various articles. In this case, there isn't much mention of the medal in other articles, but for other orphaned articles there can be. And I should finish writing the article as well. It's still pretty stubby. Carcharoth _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
