User talk:Edward/Find link

Feedback
I would eliminate instances where the article name is within the = signs of a header, such as == ArticleNameToBeLinked ==, per WP:MSH. Otherwise, looks neat. =) --Izno (talk) 18:37, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Feedback2
I tried it on one instance ("kolkhoz"), with great results. I will soon try it on a wider range of articles, including tougher titles. First impression: very useful nifty tool. Congratulations, good job. --Zlerman (talk) 23:29, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Citation templates
It seems to find potential matches in fields that need to stay unlinked, e.g. the authorlink field of Template:cite book. I think it's a very useful tool otherwise. Tjarrett (talk) 16:34, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Please fix this problem. Here it is a decade+ on and still, there are matches within cs1|2 templates that should remain unlinked by this tool.  For example:
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:15, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:15, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:15, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:15, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Adapting...
Hi - thanks for a great tool.

Is there a way we could set this up for Appropedia?

Also, what language is it written in? (If in Python, that leads to some code-sharing possibilities with Pywikipediabot. I'm not a coder myself, but I am learning to use Pywikipediabot.) --Chriswaterguy talk 12:09, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Doubled instances in results
FYI, I just got results with two instances of The Social Construction of Reality. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 06:59, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for spotting that. Just to be clear, it appeared twice in the list of example searches, not in the results. This is now fixed. Edward (talk) 08:12, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

finds already linked; needs to find unlinked

 * Suggests links that already exist. Needs to parse for existing wikilinks and ignore page if found. Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 04:28, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion to reduce abuse
I suggest that it require clicking on view article (perhaps somehow viewed with the suggested text to link highlighted) before presenting the edit ready to complete. Viewing the source isn't always adequate to get the full context. And that would encourage more measured use. Ccrrccrr (talk) 00:41, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Question
How does this tool improve upon Wikipedia's search function? -- &oelig; &trade; 11:11, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Because, when you click on the name of an article that includes the orphaned article, it automatically adds a link to the article and denotes that in the edit summary. Logan Talk Contributions 02:04, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Usage on other wikis
Great tool! It's possible to use it in other wikis? --Esculapio (talk) 17:54, 18 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Good idea. I'll add support for other Wikis. Sorry I didn't reply sooner. Edward (talk) 23:16, 23 June 2011 (UTC)


 * , any success on this task? I would love to see it on pl.wikipedia... Is the code available somewhere for localisation?  // Halibutt 10:41, 3 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the prodding, this is now implemented. There is a language drop down to select which Wikipedia to edit. You can also set the language with a 'lang' parameter, for example: https://edwardbetts.com/find_link?lang=pl This will search and apply changes to the specified Wikipedia. The user interface hasn't been translated, it is always in English. The change summary is also in English. Edward (talk) 10:01, 13 October 2016 (UTC)


 * You're my hero, thank you!  // Halibutt 10:06, 13 October 2016 (UTC)


 * In case you wanted to translate the tool to Polish completely:

 // Halibutt 10:21, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
 * langauge: => język:
 * Find link is a tool written by Edward Betts. => Find link to narzędzie autorstwa Edwarda Bettsa.
 * searching for XXX 0 found (6 total) => Szukam powiązań dla hasła XXX, 0 znalezionych (6 w sumie)
 * Longer titles found: XXX (view), YYY (view) => * Znaleziono dłuższe tytuły: XXX (zobacz), YYY (zobacz)
 * alternate case: XXX => inny zapis: XXX
 * XXX (124 words) [view diff] / exact match in snippet / view article find links to article => XXX (124 słów) [poprz.] / dokładne powiązanie w podglądzie zobacz artykuł / znajdź linkujące
 * /case mismatch in snippet/ => /w podglądzie zapis inną literą/
 * (in edit summary): link XXX using Find link => link do hasła Biskup Albano za pomocą narzędzia Find link

Getting shorter redirect name?
I'd like to look for situations where "Phi Beta Kappa" is unlinked, but because Phi Beta Kappa redirects to Phi Beta Kappa Society, it will only look for Phi Beta Kappa Society and won't look for Phi Beta Kappa. Any way around this?Naraht (talk) 21:25, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

problem edit
Hi Edward! I enjoy using Find link, but had a problem with this edit. Why would Find link change other punctuation to # signs? I'm using Windows 7 and IE8. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 17:12, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Add to Toolbox
Is it possible to add Find link to my Toolbox menu? Roger (talk) 13:20, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

find link. Redirect to Section.
Right now Interact Club is redirected to Rotary International However when I use the findlink tool on Interact Club, the links created are to Interact Club rather than either to Interact Club or Interact Club. Can this be fixed?Naraht (talk) 14:41, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

bug reports
I used the tool and clicked on the link for https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nishiki+%28bicycle%29&action=edit -- but when I click save, it doesn't actually save but instead refreshes the page with a URL of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nishiki_%28bicycle%29&action=submit (note that wikipedia uses underscores for spaces instead of plus signs and the action should be submit, not edit). If you could fix this so I don't have to click save twice for every one, that would be great.

I've also had other issues with various types of punctuation in titles such as "&" like in Hotel & Motel Management or the "-" in gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid, but they only cause issues sometimes. 3gg5amp1e (talk) 19:44, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Source code of the Find link tool
I want to contribute to the maintenance of this project, if possible. Has its source code been published anywhere? Jarble (talk) 06:43, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The source code is available on GitHub here – wbm1058 (talk) 03:10, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Find link Bug.
It does not change Delta Upsilon to Delta Upsilon, it changes industry to inDUstry. It *sort of* makes sense given that Delta Upsilon is one entry in the DU disambiguation page, but the result is really screwy.Naraht (talk) 15:32, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) Do a findlink look for "Delta Upsilon" http://edwardbetts.com/find_link/Delta_Upsilon
 * 2) Go to Peter R. Dolan. Click the name (http://edwardbetts.com/find_link/?q=Delta+Upsilon&title=Peter+R.+Dolan).


 * I can confirm that this bug still exists as of now as can be seen at http://edwardbetts.com/find_link/?q=Delta+Upsilon&title=Peter+R.+Dolan Daask (talk) 19:08, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

What about a mode that also shows articles that include just part of the article name?
What about some kind of "lax" (not sure what the best term for it would be) mode of the tool that can be activated by checking a checkbox and is suggested to the user if no or very few entries are found which also brings up articles that only include a part of the article title (not sure which part at minimum - e.g. always at least the first 2 words or a user-specified number of them or maybe the required words could be configurable) ?

Relevant: Template_talk:Orphan

Also: the tool seems to be down right now.

--Fixuture (talk) 01:14, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
 * It's back online now. wbm1058 (talk) 15:20, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Does it take redirects into account?
Does the tool also search for all the redirects to a page? If not this functionality should be added as it would be very useful to have it also bring up synonyms and the like (redirects to an article's sections could be treated differently - e.g. be displayed in an extra section of the results page).

--Fixuture (talk) 21:16, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Could references get excluded from the search?
Could an option be added to the tool for excluding references from the search?

Words of references titles shouldn't be linked (they should only get linked to the URL of the reference and nothing else). However the tool still brings them up in the results which often makes it hard to go through all the results.

(it could also be implemented without being an option of course)

--Fixuture (talk) 21:23, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Please add Tulu in languages
Hi,

It is really a good tool. I used it on Kannada Wikipedia and the results are encouraging. I am requesting you to add Tulu Wikipedia (tcy.wikipedia.org) also to the list of language Wikipedias at your web version.--Pavanaja (talk) 17:11, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Using a list as an input
It would be helpful to use a list (of orphaned articles) as an input in some way. To copy&paste all articles of such a list individually is cumbersome if the list contains e.g. more than 100 articles. --Leyo 12:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages
Hello Edward and thanks for making this useful tool available. Would it be possible to warn users when they're about to add links to a disambiguation page rather than an article? For example, well-meaning editors have added lots of wikilinks by putting brackets around the existing text energy efficiency, when they might better have linked to one of the articles listed on that disambiguation page (usually efficient energy use). Thanks, Certes (talk) 16:48, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Anchors in redirects?
Hey, i just discovered your great tool. One bug i noticed: if one chooses a page like subsessile that redirects to Sessility (botany) the too drops the #subsessile from the piped link. Why is that? Nessie (talk) 21:35, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There's also a small typo on the page; says "langauge" instead of "language". --77.173.90.33 (talk) 00:54, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Ignoring duplicate entries
- could the search methodology of the tool be refined so that it will ignore pages where the term is already linked? e.g. Attempted_acquisition_of_Tribune_Media_by_Sinclair_Broadcast_Group returns a result for master services agreement, because the page contains the text twice. Clearly we should only link it once, though. Best, Darren-M   talk  03:34, 25 July 2020 (UTC)


 * The find link tool is designed to ignore existing links. The attempted acquisition of Tribune Media by Sinclair Broadcast Group article doesn't link to master services agreement, but it does includes a link to local marketing agreement with the link text as 'master services agreement'. The suggested edit is replaces master services agreement with master services agreement . I hope that answers your query. Edward (talk) 08:17, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , Clearly editing at 4am is not my strong suite. Thanks for spotting the obvious mistake! Darren-M   talk  14:36, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Regular expression search
Does the Find Link tool have an option to search for titles using regular expressions, to generate search queries like this one? I often type these queries manually, so I wish the Find Link tool could generate them automatically. Jarble (talk) 00:34, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Findlink within citations
Hi Edward! I've noticed that FindLink often struggles when names appear within CS1 citations (it normally just reopens the findlink list page, not presenting an error and not going to the article with a preloaded change). I'd love to see more names linked in references (since it helps readers better assess their reliability), so I was just curious if there are any plans to better handle this functionality. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 23:20, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Find Link adds redundant links
The Find Link tool sometimes adds redundant links to articles: when I used it here, it added a link to a page that was already linked there. (Climate change refugee is a redirect to Environmental migrant, which was already linked in this article). Jarble (talk) 12:16, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Reporting 503 Service Unavailable
From sometime yesterday (or maybe longer) getting the 503 error. I also reported at WP : VPT JoeNMLC (talk) 15:13, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Edward Bett's Find Link Tool
 * I had the issue as well, but it seems to be resolved now. GoingBatty (talk) 06:03, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It seems to be down again. Jarble (talk) 18:25, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Confirmed  Hope it's back up soon - I use it on a regular basis.  GoingBatty (talk) 21:52, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
 * - 503 error today. JoeNMLC (talk) 19:09, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Find link is still "down"; on going issue? Since 30 November... Will now report at WP VPT. JoeNMLC (talk) 14:59, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It's working again today. GoingBatty (talk) 16:35, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Error - Find link results
While working on Orphan articles, from Find Link Tool, with search Free Youth Movement article, it shows "120 found" but from "view article" link, FYM is not within article. Looked at several articles & same error. Articles not contain "Free Youth Movement". JoeNMLC (talk) 00:01, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
 * On those, it appears that "Free Youth Movement" is part of the Template:Kurdish–Turkish conflict (1978–present) that they all share. So I think it is OK.Naraht (talk) 14:24, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It now shows 5 found, so must be fixed. JoeNMLC (talk) 23:38, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Removal off watchlist
I like this tool, but when a page is on my watchlist, it is removing the page there. Is it possible to not change the mark of the watch list? Ymnes (talk) 08:44, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Lourdes adaptation
Hi Edward,

At the See also section of User:Edward/Find link you mention User:Lourdes/Backlinks. Now as I stripped Lourdes of the unnecessary restriction to enwiki half a year ago and have found it working like a charm I wondered if it could also be mentioned.

My version works in all language versions and actually even in projects like Meta and Wikidata although I never intended to use it there; in Commons it proves surprisingly useful howerver. I fancy a mentioning like this: You may want to adapt this line or request a bit of documentation. Could you drop me a line here? Thanks a lot!
 * nl:User:Bertux/Backlinks.js - Lourdes adapted to work in all Wikimedia projects instead of just enwiki

(Btw, having read the previous topic I 'm pinging @Ymnes. FYI: Like Lourdes this simple script will not touch the watchlist although editing the links will. The results list is not as compact as Edward's though.)

Kind regards  →bertux 07:30, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Link added to URL
Whatever caused this to happen, if it is still in the code, please make it less likely to happen. This edit happened in December 2022. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:40, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Fair enough; but code can hardly be expected to properly deal with improper inline external links. The editor applying "Find link" ought to have dealt with that. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:27, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Website not working properly?
I've noticed for the last few months, this website hasn't been working properly. For example when I used this for CITIC Capital, many of the links it says it cannot find the term in the article when its clearly there. Ive decided to let these articles remain unlinked for now so maybe we can see what the problem is with the website. - Imcdc  Contact  16:53, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm having similar issues. More than half of the occurences of a link in the text are generating the tab which is back and findlink rather than the page with the change. Note, this text is often *not* in a reference or infobox.Naraht (talk) 19:56, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the messages. I'll take a look. Edward (talk) 18:13, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
 * @Edward
 * Hi. Did you manage to find what was causing the issue yet? - Imcdc  Contact  11:43, 11 May 2024 (UTC)