Wikipedia talk:Templates with red links

Template:VfD's
I've noticed a large number of Template:VfD headings - I'm guessing that before my time, that's how VfD's were done. I'm removing all of them to a separate page, as they appear to be intentional redlinks (i.e., the deleted article itself). -- BD2412 talk 03:56, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Those need to be re-corrected to their appropriate moved VFD location. --AllyUnion (talk) 09:35, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

What to do with checked templates
Is there an agreed systen for noting templates that we have checked and found to be OK - ie. if you investigate a template and discover it is correct with all the red links. Otherwise it'll just keep cropping up and people will repeat the work. Kcordina 09:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete them from the list - if they're fixed, they won't show up in the next dump. bd2412  T 05:12, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I've been deleting the entry for templates which are fixed, and striking templates which contain valid redlinks (i.e. there is no appropriate article for the links to point at). SeventyThree(Talk) 19:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

What about template doc pages that are supposed to have links to non-existing pages, maybe to show examples of how to use the template? (For example, Template:Mypages has redlinks to "ExamplePage", "ExamplePage2", and "ExamplePage3" to show how it works.) --98.114.243.75 (talk) 21:20, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Sections
I've been bold and split the subpages up into sections of ~100 entries each. It's now much easier to find and remove fixed entries, but the numbred lists have been split so it's a little harder to find out how far through we've got. Hope this doesn't cause too many problems - should be easy to undo if it turns out to be a bad idea. SeventyThree(Talk) 08:01, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I think it was a fine thing to do - ease of use trumps numbering. bd2412  T 18:49, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Enacted (old) suggestions for improvement

 * Suppress listings of "Template:VfD-*" -- Beland 08:04, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Suppress listings of links containing "W:*" (indicates an external link to another wikiproject)
 * Suppress listings of links containing "Mail:*" (indicates an external Mail link)
 * Suppress listings of links containing "talk:", as a redlinked talk page does not indicate a missing article.
 * Separate templates with names including "Campaignbox" and "Olympic_Games" into their own categories - these are areas for specialists.
 * I've refined this somewhat - it should actually separate out all templates with "olympic" in the name, as there are many olympic templates that do not say "olympic games"; also separate out another category for templates with names containing "election".
 * Suppress listings of links containing "User:", as a redlinked user page does not indicate a missing article, and user templates should not be a primary concern. bd2412  T 15:21, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions moved from project page

 * Count multiple instances of the same redlink in a template only once. bd2412  T 00:49, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Suppress listings of WikiProject Opentasks and similar - these pages should have lots of redlinks on them. SeventyThree(Talk) 09:28, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * User: redlinks are still coming up, e.g. Template:PhilosophyTasks/vote SeventyThree(Talk) 09:31, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Something fails on (valid) foreign language links, listing them as invalid links ending in an ampersand (&) - this is probably becasue of HTML code for foreign letters in the links. Example: Template:Presidents_of_Romania -> Nicolae_Ceau& Traian_B&.
 * Source within  tags isn't formatted, so  thing1  shouldn't be counted as a redlink. SeventyThree(Talk) 02:41, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Suppress listing templates in the Number xxx series, e.g. Numbers (3 E2) and Numbers 190s. SeventyThree(Talk) 14:49, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Some interwiki links are being counted, e.g. MeatballWiki and searchterm on Template:H:Interwiki_linking. SeventyThree(Talk) 17:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Some redlinks which are occuring twice appear not to have been used twice on the page during it's history, e.g. Template:London_Underground_rolling_stock -> London_Underground_N_Stock London_Underground_N_Stock. SeventyThree(Talk) 03:22, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

New Suggestions

 * Suppress template sandboxes and documentation pages. (ie. In /Ships II, there is currently Template:LST-542 class tank landing ship, Template:LST-542 class tank landing ship/sandbox, and Template:LST-542 class tank landing ship/doc.) --vgmddg (look &#124; talk &#124; do) 21:48, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Good idea, we do have a number of those, and they are not likely to be addressed through this project. We should also avoid listing taskboxes for portals. bd2412  T 00:17, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It might also be a good idea to make a separate section for "Settlements". Most of the ones in the last couple sections are settlement related and there may be more sprinkled throughout the other sections. I also think that the more we separate templates from the main list the more we can reduce the "OH CRAP! THEY HAD TO DIVIDE IT INTO 116 SEPARATE UNSORTED SECTIONS?!?" factor for new people who come to this page. It also means that if there's a person who's really good at finding links about a certain subject (i.e. Chemistry), they can go directly to that page instead of having to scour the entire list for templates about chemistry.--vgmddg (look &#124; talk &#124; do) 01:34, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * We had a separate section for cities, but it's much harder to find parse out all the city-related templates than it is to parse out, for example, all the Olympic templates, or all the MLB templates. bd2412  T 02:29, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Suppress relative links. For example, Archive-inline has a link to the relative link /Archive. This causes a redlink on the template page, which caused it to be added to the list. --vgmddg (look &#124; talk &#124; do) 00:39, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

New Suggestion
I would like to help on this but the query is so old it doesn't seem like it would be any fun. I have been helping out on the Stub Sensor project that is a fairly recent query and they way he organized it makes it stay relevant longer.

Railroads and Mayors
Needs the following sections:
 * Templates with red links/2008-Jan-Railroads (done). bd2412  T 07:11, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Templates with red links/2008-Jan-Mayors

WAIT a minute! What?!?
Wait a minute! I'm confused! This page is currently in Category:Wikipedia missing topics. If this page is here, then it's actually NOT missing, is it?--vgmddg (look &#124; talk &#124; do) 00:07, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know why it's there, but all the red links contained in the templates listed here are missing topics. bd2412  T 02:27, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposed Mergers

 * Templates with red links/2005-09-09.1-2 with Templates with red links/2005-09-09.3-5
 * Templates with red links/2005-09-09.6-10 with Templates with red links/2005-09-09.11-20

Overall, most of them are pretty small, and can probably be grouped together. Eventually I'd like to bring the pages in Templates with red links/2007 out to the main page.--vgmddg (look &#124; talk &#124; do) 21:11, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Templates with red links/2006jan25-TV-radio with Templates with red links/2007/TV and Radio
 * Possibly Templates with red links/2006jan25-elections with Templates with red links/2007/Elections
 * With these, I usually don't propose, I just merge when they're mergeable. I'll have a look at what is left from the 2007 dump, as many of those subsections will have been superseded. bd2412  T 22:47, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I've decided to merge the 2007 page list into the main page. Did I do this right?--vgmddg (look &#124; talk &#124; do) 22:26, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

3 templates for the same thing, delete/merge/transclusion?
There are three listed templates here.

Template:Kansas State football seasons - Template:Kansas State Wildcats football seasons - Template:KansasStateWildcatsfootballseasons

These are practically identical, and I would normally just put two up for tfd, but since there were three of them (which is kind of unusual) I thought there might be some kind of redirect or transclusion thing that I was missing... anyone... Bueller? —Preceding unsigned comment added by EmanWilm  (talk • contribs)  21:32, 30 May 2010
 * They all seem to be separate templates. Go to WP:TFD, nominate 2 of them for deletion, and remember to sign your posts.--vgmddg (look &#124; talk &#124; do) 21:22, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Serious concerns over stripping redlinks from nav box templates
I've raised some discussion of this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains Andy Dingley (talk) 10:53, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

2008-Jan Redirects Still Active
According to the Special:PrefixIndex page, all of the /2008-Jan-*** pages (eg. Templates with red links/2008-Jan-001) as well as many other obsolete pages are still functioning as redirects. Can you please delete some of these redirects? Thanks. --vgmddg (look &#124; talk &#124; do) 22:44, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I will take care of them - eventually. bd2412  T 21:27, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * --vgmddg (look &#124; talk &#124; do) 21:36, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

2011 Database Dump
It looks like the 2011 Database Dump for the project is up. - User:RussBot/Templates with red links
 * I'm going to start moving them in unless someone objects. EmanWilm (talk) 14:43, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

2013 Database Dump
I have noticed a sharp increase in completed/deleted templates while sorting the project. The last database dump was 18 months ago if someone wants to run the Russbot for a 2013 Database Dump, I'll take care of all of the manual stuff. Thanks EmanWilm (talk) 21:25, 25 December 2012 (UTC)