Wikipedia talk:Orphan

list orphan articles
Maybe add a list of orphan articles to show what orphan articles look like? 2603:6080:2401:2AB8:C9A2:19A3:36F4:465F (talk) 19:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

WP:Orphan vs WP:ORPHAN
It is confusing that WP:Orphan directs to Orphan, while WP:ORPHAN directs to WikiProject Orphanage. Why can't they both direct to the same page? --Jameboy (talk) 17:06, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the definition of an orphan needs to be linked to, the only remaining redirect the wikiproject could have was ORPHAN. Other wikiprojects have it easy e.g. Uncat goes to the uncat wikiproject as the issue is Categorisation ·Add§hore·  T alk T o M e ! 16:19, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

tagging redirects as orphans
Another editor introduced a policy that "Neither soft nor hard redirects should normally be tagged as orphans."

Before making this into policy, I'd like to get a consensus about whether this even makes sense. I believe it's moot, because an orphan redirect page should be... deleted, shouldn't it? What's the point of a redirect that nothing leads to? --Lockley (talk) 23:31, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict, but you have seriously pissed me off) Oh, honestly, will you do your homework? WP:REDIRECT makes it clear that redirects are intended to be created (among other motivations) in anticipation of reasonable variations in ways editors might link to the primary article, whether or not anyone is using that link now, or ever does. You seem intent on justifying your increasing silliness here. Can't you just say, "Yeah, I made a mistake"? EEng (talk) 00:00, 22 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Not at all: an orphan redirect may be a likely alternative spelling or naming, which will allow a future editor to link to the article and another future editor to avoid re-creating the article. There's no reason at all to delete orphan redirects. So no point in tagging redirects as orphans.  Pam  D  23:47, 21 January 2013 (UTC)


 * very good. thanks for the response!  --Lockley (talk) 23:57, 21 January 2013 (UTC)


 * From your continued behavior elsewhere, you do not seem to have got the point: Do not tag redirects as orphams. You've now involved four or five editors in this, to no purpose. EEng (talk) 12:11, 22 January 2013 (UTC)


 * You are factually incorrect. I tagged three redirects as orphans, in good faith, once.  Since the above confirmation of policy, I haven't touched them since.  I haven't touched any other redirects since.  Yes, I've involved other editors, to deal with the insulting and gratuitous personal attacks you've made on me elsewhere, which are off topic here.  --Lockley (talk) 18:36, 22 January 2013 (UTC)


 * No, other editors were drawn in their efforts to explain to you that which you should have understood much earlier. I'm linking here what you call my insulting and gratuitous personal attack -- I have no doubt others will have no trouble discerning the truth of the situation. It's worth noting the block warning to you there from an admin. EEng (talk) 22:21, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Orphan status of pages in category "Disused trilobite generic names"
I have created several pages in the category "Disused trilobite generic names": Arionellus, Conocephalites, Entomolithus, Entomostracites, Trilobites (genus), and Trilobus. Although there is some information there (on why it is no longer used), the pages are meant to shuttle visitors away to the article with the currently accepted name. I intended these pages to function like a combined disambiguation and redirect page. I know an orphan tag bothers me, and I always try to make an edit so that I can take it away. But I also think in this case these pages should actually remain orphans as the natural thing to do is linking back from the very pages these "Disused trilobite generic names" link to. Any views on this? -Dwergenpaartje (talk) 23:24, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Per User:Magioladitis/AWB and orphans, "Articles that are themselves redirects, soft redirects, dabs, set index articles aren't considered orphans."
 * Can you set these up as set index articles?
 * Do that by putting a template on them, like Template:Plant common name.
 * See Category:Set index article templates Maybe you can create a new set index article template for this purpose, if one doesn't exist yet. – Wbm1058 (talk) 22:16, 10 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks, this is helpful. I have done so. Dwergenpaartje (talk) 17:30, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Links to user talk page
If an article only links to user page/s or user talk page/s, does it count as an orphan? -- Annonymus User 1000 (talk) 07:35, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Articles in main space generally should not link to user pages. Orphans are not determined by what an article links to; they are determined by what links to the article. There should be at least one mainspace link to the article to consider it not an orphan. – Wbm1058 (talk) 21:11, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Here's the full criteria for determining whether an article is an orphan. ~KvnG 13:31, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Criteria clarifications...
I need help in setting the criteria for the script to make it as useful as possible, please see Criteria clarifications... on the WikiProject talk page. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 18:03, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * This arises from the discussion at Teahouse/Questions In short, the project page defines an article whose links are only through a walled garden as being an orphan, but then in the criteria, states that only articles with zero links may be marked as an orphan, with x, y, z exceptions, but does not include walled garden among the exceptions. This leads to the inconsistent result that 1) an article with incoming links only only through walled garden is an orphan, but at the same time, 1) that you cannot mark a page as an orphan if it has an incoming link only through a walled garden. This can be clarified in a few ways. Simply adding walled gardens to the criteria exceptions, or explaining why even though an article with such links is an orphan, it should not be marked as one for [some reason]. Either way, or another, the inconsistency should be addressed.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:39, 28 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I think you're reading too much into Orphan which I see as an introduction/overview. What's important is Orphan and I see no inconsistency there. I don't think we can effectively address walled gardens in this project, especially not when a script is doing it. We're also not concerned with orphaned project pages or orphaned images. ~KvnG 15:21, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

What makes an article an orphan?
Both the orphan template and this page say that an orphan is an article with no links to it, but WP:NPP says that an article with fewer than three links to it should be tagged as an orphan. I've been following the second one and tagging articles with one or two links to them as orphans. This has led to some confusion. One of these conflicting definitions should be changed. KSFT 17:09, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I fixed that: diff. Feel free to use the "few" parameter if it has one or two incoming links, at your discretion. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 21:13, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
 * And disambiguation pages don't count, for determining orphan status: diff. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:22, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Help for orphan
Good evening, what do I do if the required references, but in my case, about school, where Google only details and information about it, there is not anything more interesting. What to do?--L.ukas lt 13  --Talk  Lukaslt13
 * Hello! Your question sounds like it might be more about finding reliable sources than about orphans. You might also be referring to a topic that does not meet Wikipedia's guidelines for notability. You might want to try asking your question on the Wikiepdia Teahouse. Knope7 (talk) 22:34, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

"No" or "no or few" incoming links
Please see Template_talk:Orphan. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:44, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

WP:ORPHAN shortcut target
The target of the WP:ORPHAN shortcut has an open discussion about it at: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Orphanage  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:47, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Non orphans
I'm finding a number of articles that are not actually orphans in Category:Orphaned articles from February 2009. If I remember correctly, there's a tool somewhere that can clear these out. Does anyone remember what I'm thinking about? I'll try and look a little harder later and may answer my own question here. ~Kvng (talk) 22:14, 7 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Found it an posted a request ~Kvng (talk) 20:59, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Deorphaning
Where the Edward Betts tool gives nothing, a method for deorphaning for biographies can be to check they are included on the notable alumni list of their colleges, high schools or universities. Also can check if they are on the list of notable residents of the town/village/ city they grew up in or live in now.Thanks Atlantic306 (talk) 23:47, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Categorization
Are categorized articles, even without any other links to it, orphans?Wetit🐷 0 12:16, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Categorizing an article, in and of itself, doesn't remove the article's orphan status. Otherwise, we would only have ~74 orphans, which is the current population of Category:All uncategorized pages. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:31, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

"See also" spam
I'm seeing a lot of entries being added to "See Also" section by this project, where the connection between the orphan article and the article isn't obvious to me as a reader -- the topic of the orphaned article is not mentioned at all. I presume these entries are being created because the article is the target of an outbound link of the orphan article, but Wikipedia links are not automatically symmetric. I think some consideration should be given to the relevance of the orphan to the article before adding it to the "see also" and there should be some brief annotation when a link's relevance is not immediately apparent, as per Manual of Style/Layout. I appreciate the desire to de-orphan articles but I think it should not be axiomatic that another article must be found to link to them without some actual good reason to do so. Otherwise it's just spam. Kerry (talk) 04:55, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I just wanted to write about the problem, thank you.
 * Controversial links should be referenced.Xx236 (talk) 07:27, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Hatnotes
Do incoming links from hatnotes count toward the non-orphan status of an article? Or do they not count for the same reason links on disambiguation pages don't? Largoplazo (talk) 17:55, 2 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Hatnotes are usually mini disambiguations so I would expect links in hatnotes count the same as links in disambiguation pages. ~Kvng (talk) 15:08, 5 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Now that has added this as an exclusion, I'm not sure I agree with my 2018 self. There are different types of hatnotes and not all are purely disambiguation. For instance links in the about hatnote may have a similar relationship with the subject as links you'd find in the See also section and See also links are not excluded. ~Kvng (talk) 20:16, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I made this change after a orphan tag was removed due to single link in a hatnote: This article is about the pirate, for the engineer, see..., which was a minidab. I see your point, but I wonder how much of an issue this is. I suppose the wording could be clarified with something like "Any article in mainspace that is linked only in a hatnote, when the relationship is due to similarity in name only". MB 21:56, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it can get fuzzy. I'm flippy-floppy on this probably because I don't have strong feelings. I'm fine to leave it as you have it. Better to err towards requiring more linkage than less. ~Kvng (talk) 13:56, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

AWB request to untag Feb 2009 orphans with 1 or more links
Your input is requested @ WP:AWB/Tasks. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:26, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Orphan template at TFD
Hi all,there is a discussion taking place at Templates_for_discussion/Log/2018_November_30 proposing deletion of the Orphan template. The same notice is posted over at WP:DO also. Thanks --Xaiver0510 (talk) 03:46, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Problem with using "What Links here"
Hello, I tried to find Patricia Locke in the pages that appear thru this link and many of them do not contain her name. To name a few: Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and Victoria Woodhull. In this last one it found the word "blocked" ...

This is frequent with other Wiki entries too.

Is this a software probelm or I misundersand the concept of "What Links here" ? Thx Hexagone59 (talk) 15:01, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Patricia Locke is mentioned in the "2000–2009" section of the navigation box, National Women's Hall of Fame. All the articles that end with that navigation box therefore link back to Patricia Locke. At least in Firefox, the browser's text search function won't find that link unless the navigation box is expanded first. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:11, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * John of Reading Thx. Is there a way to avoid this, perhaps using the "External tools: Show redirects only" which appears in the "Pages that link to..." ? Many thx Hexagone59 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:58, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * The "What links here" listing can't do this, but the standard search box is clever enough nowadays. Try [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=linksto%3A%22Patricia+Locke%22+insource%3A%2F%5C%5B%5C%5BPatricia+Locke%2F&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%22namespaces%22%3A%5B0%5D%7D&ns0=1 this search], which uses the efficient  keyword to find the articles that link to Patricia Locke, and then a slow regular expression to check that the article contains the exact text  . -- John of Reading (talk) 17:54, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * John of Reading Thank you so much Hexagone59 (talk) 21:18, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

and the oldest category is not the category with the most articles~!
Anyone wants to update the project page? or fervently targets the category having the most articles now to de-orphan! --Xaiver0510 (talk) 01:49, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Is there a bot to de-orphan too?
Since there is a bot to make an article an orphan if there are no links to it, shouldn’t there be one to remove the orphan tag if someone links to it in an article? People probably link to orphan articles all the time without knowing because they probably don’t check everything that they link to. It would help the backlog a lot because I’m sure there are plenty of articles that are in the orphan category but actually are linked somewhere. Twooeight (talk) 23:22, 27 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I understand WP:AWB has this capability. Only semi-automatic but seems to work well enough; I don't frequently find listed orphans which are not actually orphans. ~Kvng (talk) 20:50, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Office of the MTA Inspector General
The page Office of the MTA Inspector General is not an orphan, it is linked to 2 other places, but the orphan tag is still up. How would I fix this, or can someone help? Thanks! Dblu9494 (talk) 15:40, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

✅ ~Kvng (talk) 02:22, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you!! Much appreciated! Dblu9494 (talk) 17:06, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

George A. Lovejoy (Washington politician)
Should George A. Lovejoy (Washington politician) be de-orphaned? 2 of the incoming links are via hatnotes while one is a disambiguation page. Will hatnote links constitute incoming links and hence deorphaning it? Thanks --Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 03:31, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , links from disambig pages don't count. The hatnotes are serving a disambig role here so maybe they don't count either. There are a lot of them though... ~Kvng (talk) 15:05, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Make the orphan tag visible
For articles with Orphan tag not visible, add the "Multiple issues" tag combined with "Update" tag. For example, this contrasts the older, original orphan tag with current update.

Today, I added above section to the project page and thought to share here. I'm not sure how effective this will be, but hoping for some backlog reduction. JoeNMLC (talk) 15:54, 22 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I am also wondering, how come most articles with an orphan tag (in the code) isn't visible when viewing the page normally. My guess is that it might confuse average non-wiki users, but can someone else answer. Thanks - RandomEditorAAA (talk) 01:14, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Please don't add an Update tag if your only purpose is to make the orphan tag visible; as the documentation at Template:Update says, "Do not mark an article as needs updating, without a reason, unless it is very obvious." For the recommended way to control the visibility of the Orphan tab, and the reasoning behind it, please see the template documentation at Template:Orphan. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:25, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * - Thanks John for pointing out about "Visibility control". Being somewhat new to working on Orphan articles, I was always curious (and sometimes frustrated) as to why template was visible/invisible. Now I know-"when in doubt-read the docs". (smile) & I'm still learning. Thanks again. JoeNMLC (talk) 12:11, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I understand now. RandomEditorAAA (talk) 14:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Project page, "Various ways to de-orphan" section.
Recently I did the "Move to draft" on a couple articles. Wondering if the "Various ways" section can mention something about sending article to Draft? Not sure of exact words but this may be a valid option, especially for bare-bones articles that need a lot of expansion/improvement. May not apply to newly created articles, instead some of those back to 2010, 2011, etc. years backlog. JoeNMLC (talk) 16:00, 17 September 2021 (UTC)


 * WP:DRAFTIFY is only for articles not suitable for mainspace and is primarily for new articles. Articles that have been in mainspace for years and articles that need expansion/improvement do not qualify. If you find an older article that is not suitable for mainspace it is best to use WP:PROD or WP:AFD. ~Kvng (talk) 12:57, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Step 3: Adding links
Hi - Found an article ( Dirk Hoogendam ), that for "What links here" has an entry for "August 8" calendar date. At that page, it contains a line with wikilink in "Deaths" section. For difficult to de-orphan articles, can they include a link on "Births" or "Deaths" section? If yes & doing this is Okay, can this idea be included into "Adding links"? JoeNMLC (talk) 13:58, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikidata links
There is a problem when Wikidata references articles: while the reference shows up in templates (for example and in my case the rector of a university) but it does not generate a backlink-capable link to the article, so editors think the article is not referenced while it is referenced by both Wikidata (internally) and all templates using the data from Wikidata.

Maybe the solution is to fix up templates but I am not sure they would generate backlinable links anyway. The "best" solution would be to include Wikidata referred articles as "non-orphans". --grin ✎ 14:36, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Category:Orphaned articles from September 2021
Currently the article count now is 99 for September 2021, only category that has only 2 digits. Can we try to push to de-orphan the 99 articles to remove this category? Thanks! --Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 10:20, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

A small victory - March 2011 articles
Hi, Celebrating for yesterday, de-orphaning completed for March 2011 articles! On project page, added hilight button for current and early articles, and Purge button to show fresh numbers. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 15:21, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Update for section "Various ways to de-orphan"
Added a wikilink to Indices. "Check to see if there are any Lists or Indices of whatever subject the orphaned article is about..." JoeNMLC (talk) 18:07, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Category:Orphaned articles from March 2022
Category:Orphaned articles from March 2022 might have a lot of non-orphaned articles as there are 350+ articles out of 1300+ (roughly a quarter) which has 1 or more incoming link. Noted that the likely 200+ articles are tagged orphans by AWB on the old settings of requiring 3 incoming links. This will be a quick fix to reduce the number of orphaned articles. Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 08:01, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Article page proposal, written for new and returning members
Lately I've been thinking about how to make de-orphaning easier for both new and returning members, and new wikipedia editors who may be interested. So here's my proposal.

1. Possibly insert BEFORE "4 Suggestions for how to de-orphan an article". And change 4 to read "Details for how to de-orphan an article".

2. Add the following sections.

A beginner introduction to de-orphaning
For the de-orphaning process, it is a matter of adding a wikilink of that orphan article into another article. The main concern is where to place that wikilink.

Wikilink placement
Instead of dropping the orphan wikilink into the "See also" section (which can be done occasionally), consider using the Further template. It has an optional "topic=" parameter to even out or clarify the wikillink. "Further" can be placed into almost any article section, for example: History, Geography, Education, etc. "Further" can have multiple wikilinks to be included which is also helpful.

De-orphan process tips

 * 1) In Preferences, Gadgets, Browsing section, tick "ON" for Navigation popups. With popups activated, it is much easier to find articles of interest.
 * 2) Begin with easy-deorphan articles, especially stub, and these possible topics:
 * 3) Villages and towns
 * 4) Lakes, rivers, mountains
 * 5) Schools, sports venues, buildings
 * 6) If the article already contains a navigation box template, the article may be wikilinked there into an appropriate section.
 * 7) An orphaned article wikilink may be added into "Index of xxxxxx articles". Add Indices navbox   to your userpage for search and drill-down by topic.
 * 8) Biography articles may be difficult to impossible.
 * 9) Look for birth dates, location, death dates.
 * 10) Wikilinks can be placed in List articles, for example:
 * 11) 2018 in Romania, 2012 in association football
 * 12) Place wikilink into sections for "Births", "Deaths", or "Events"
 * 13) For non-stub articles, it's possible the article has orphan tag, and the tag is no longer needed. Press to see "What links here". About 10 to 20 percent of articles can have the orphan tag removed without any further action needed.

Discussion
If any of the above is of value, it can be moved onto the article page. But before that, any feedback is welcome here. JoeNMLC (talk) 21:34, 26 January 2023 (UTC) JoeNMLC (talk) 21:34, 26 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I support the initiative, @JoeNMLC. I think it is valuable, thank you. I would start the beginner introduction by saying that de-orphaning is important to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles. The first step is to confirm the notability of the topic. In my brief experience, 5 to 10% of orphan articles should not be de-orphaned but proposed for deletion. Quite a number of orphans have other issues as well: lack of references for example. These issues should be addressed, if possible. In some cases the page should be transformed into a redirect, or merged with another page. Only after concluding that the topic is notable and deserves a standalone article, and the quality of the article is reasonable, one should proceed to de-orphan.
 * At this stage, first check if it really is an orphan: see if the article has no valid incoming link. Next, search Wikipedia to see is the topic is mentioned but not linked in other articles. If so, add links. If not, follow the links in the orphan to see if a cross-link is useful. If this doesn´t work, the really fun part starts. Here you have to explore the topic and be creative to find meaningful places where to "drop the link". Sometimes it may require adding a phrase to the article where it would be useful to have a link to your orphan.
 * Lists are very usefull. Schools and universities often have lists of notable alumni. Places have lists of notable residents. For historical articles, the "Timeline of (place)" lists can be very useful.
 * I de-orphan very old orphans. It is great fun. More often than not, the topic is really worthwile but the article not well developed. To improve these articles is very satisfactory.
 * I enjoy this exchange of ideas among de-orphaners and look forward to further reactions. Ruud Buitelaar (talk) 02:58, 27 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Another update, as I'm working on de-orphan 2013 (ten years ago) articles. While there are many ways to do this, here is what works for me.


 * Within a specific month-year category, identify & de-orphan if possible:


 * Pass 1, "easy" articles. For example: villages, lakes, montains, schools, etc.
 * Pass 2, "more complex" articles. Biography, science, mathematics, organizations. Some of these may be tagged as "Attempted".
 * Pass 3, "difficult" articles. Add the "Multiple issues" template and any additional tags to expose the Orphan template; on Talk page, add more WikiProjects if needed; add find notice, orphan notice, Orphan article message.


 * While above may seem complicated, it works just fine while I usually work within the same category. Occasionally, I may skip though other month-year categories "just for fun". JoeNMLC (talk) 22:34, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I would support adding more guidance in how to add links. I assume we can agree that adding links to existing or added text in an article is preferred. I'm not sure I'm onboard with further over links in the See also section.
 * Your process tips may be helpful for some but adding this will bloat the instructions. We should keep it concise and as simple as possible. Consider writing an WP:ESSAY with this advice. ~Kvng (talk) 15:51, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Update - Step 1: Finding an orphaned article
Hi, Today, I added Category:All orphaned articles, then indented under that Category:Orphaned articles and indented Category:Attempted de-orphan. Within Category:All orphaned articles is a helpful Filter category by topic section.

As an experiment, I added that Filter category by topic template to Category:Orphaned articles from January 2023 and would appreciate any feedback if that is helpful. And I did add into categories with over 1,000 backlog. JoeNMLC (talk) 00:36, 4 February 2023 (UTC)


 * This discussion refers to these edits ~Kvng (talk) 17:29, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Petscan documentation
Today I created subpage Petscan documentation, then added Wikilink in "Step 1: Finding an orphaned article" section. Feel free to Edit as needed. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 01:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Added at 4.2	Step 2: Finding related articles section. JoeNMLC (talk) 14:05, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

New page feed
Today, I updated the Project page at "Step 1: Finding an orphaned article" to include New pages feed. JoeNMLC (talk) 14:11, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Category:Orphaned articles from July 2023
Yesterday, there were c. 940 articles and now today 1,070 articles backlog for this month. Overnite = 110 additions. As noted in above section Category - Orphaned articles from March 2022, articles are tagged orphans by AWB on the old settings of requiring 3 incoming links. Please check AWB settings to require 1 incoming link instead. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 15:56, 30 July 2023 (UTC)


 * @JoeNMLC Been a while since I am here. I just ran a similar query script as this DB report to detect more than 0 incoming link for Orphaned articles from July 2023. The result was 86 articles and I de-orphaned some already. Random checks on the remaining articles show they are tagged earlier in the month instead of very recent and the increase in orphaned article is most likely due to more articles being created and then tagged as orphan. Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 03:40, 31 July 2023 (UTC)


 * @User:Justanothersgwikieditor - Thank you so much for that query - a Tremendous Timesaver! I did a copy/paste into notepad and then un-tagged all articles except for 18 of them that are Disambig. Question, is there a way for me to run that script against some of the old orphan articles? (2013/2014)...just 1 category but my choice. This the first I see of any script, and I do see it to be extremely helpful. JoeNMLC (talk) 08:34, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @JoeNMLC I have another query which list all the orphans but for your specific case, click the fork button on the top right so you will create a new query for yourself, change "Orphaned_articles_from_July_2023" to "Orphaned_articles_from_MONTH_YYYY" and then click "Submit Query" button. The "Orphaned_articles_from_MONTH_YYYY" format needs to follow the same "Orphaned articles from July 2023" similar to the category name (aka full month July, September instead of just Jul or Sep). Please note the query needs the underscore as it do not understand blank spaces.
 * Let me know if that does not work for you and I try to fix it for you. Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 08:43, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, as said, I took a peek at the DB report and found out the workings, so credits to the original script writer which I shamelessly reused his/her/their script for fast de-orphaning. Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 08:45, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @User:Justanothersgwikieditor - Thanks again. Especially for above info. So far, I ran two of old Orphan months & mostly Disambig. articles, but still able to un-tag some from each. That query script is another useful tool. Using Petscan, I am able to find shortest articles within a category, which are then possible candidates for "Proposed deletion", "AfD" process - another way to de-orphan. JoeNMLC (talk) 13:18, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I had previously went through the categories with the biggest number of articles and the few oldest categories (which I am assuming u are doing similarly) so it will not yield much results for you!
 * Nonetheless as long it helped a bit for you and we can always recheck later on as people might add the links on later. Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 04:24, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @User:Justanothersgwikieditor - An update, for that query script #38614, I changed count>0 to count >1 and it removes about 90 percent of those disambiguation articles. For example, today I ran for Category:Orphaned articles from January 2014, and was able to remove orphan tag from 40 articles. And in that query list, only a small number of disamb's. Also, I bookmarked that query script website in my browser, so it's easier to go directly there. Again, I thank you so much for providing this useful tool! JoeNMLC (talk) 18:16, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Great that it helps! Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 03:17, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I did quite a big run with AWB in late July and tagged a bunch of (old/non-new) articles as orphans, so it may have been my doing that caused those +110 articles that night I'm afraid - I also only tag articles with zero incoming article links, so not the old AWB-rule of less than 3, or something like that). (On a aside-note, it seems like we've all found the same quarry - I use to run this quarry to find de-orphaned articles that can be de-tagged, which I forked/copied from this quarry by - just want to give cred. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 20:10, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Greetings @User:Justanothersgwikieditor and @PMC - Recently, for my Article cleanup sub-pages, I created another one specifically for Orphan query tracking. Each time I run Query, it saves that request and now I see 28 of them. My queston is: will those remain "forever", or expire & system will delete? Or is there something I can/should do to remove? Not a big concern, just curious & looking for advice. JoeNMLC (talk) 14:57, 11 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Sorry Joel! I have nooooo idea how to run Quarry. Anything I've done on there has been just copy pasted from someone else and half the time that doesn't work right. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 01:12, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @JoeNMLC I am not what you meant by that. Maybe because I never publish my draft query but it should be just one query. As long the url remains the same, we are just creating one query and not multiple queries. Each time we submit the query, it is just for one instance of the query (you can see here). AFAIK, there is no need to delete any queries and it get eventually flushed out of the server memory/data when the server needs it. An example or screen capture will be great. As I understand, there is no need to worry. Justanothersgwikieditor (talk) 02:37, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Category:Orphaned articles from August 2023
Hi, Being approximately mid-month, I clicked on "Show SDs" (short description) button. There are over 80 articles about India. Any editors interested in the topic are welcome to help with de-orphaning these articles. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 00:24, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Hello Hope you don't mind me asking this here, but would you mind taking a look at this article, I translated it from a persian article. could you please give me your review on this and how to remove from Orphaned tag. Regards. Balash-Vologases (talk) 17:44, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Announcement - Invitation template
Today, I posted details here about a new template that can be used to invite participants to WP Orphanage. Cheers! JoeNMLC (talk) 21:04, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:LITTLEORPHAN" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:LITTLEORPHAN&redirect=no Wikipedia:LITTLEORPHAN] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 12:16, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Links from references
This diff was recently used as basis to remove the orphan tag from AFL Tables, with the link coming from a reflist. This scenario is not outright called out in the policy, but it feels to me that linking from a reflist doesn't meet the policy intent and should carry similar deorphaning weight as linking from a hatnote. Thoughts? (I raise this because I don't see any way to deorphan this particular article without it being from a reflist, since the orphan article is about a reference database). Aspirex (talk) 13:07, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Aspirex - for article 2024 AFL season, there is no need for that "Sources" section wikilink. For "What links here" it shows many articles because of the 2024 article's entry on Australian Football League template which is sufficient for the de-orphan. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 14:17, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Why? It's normal practice to wikilink sources (books, websites etc.) in references or external links (where relevant, of course); and this may already be enough for some interested readers to follow them. Unlike hatnotes, references appear in the text. At the same time, wikilinks in external links are no different from "See also". Yes, arguably, this is an inferior way to de-orphan an article than to put the link in the main text, but, anyway, the link is there, so a reader has the possibility to reach such articles from another one (which is the goal). Oloddin (talk) 10:42, 24 April 2024 (UTC)