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Revision as of 23:39, 2 October 2017

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===How to fix bad links===
===How to fix bad links===
*In most cases, fixing an [[wikipedia:List_of_Japanese_Latin_alphabetic_abbreviations#N|NG]] link will mean finding the desired web page in the [http://www.archive.org Internet Archive] and linking to that archived page instead.
*In most cases, fixing an [[wikipedia:List_of_Japanese_Latin_alphabetic_abbreviations#N|"NG"]] link will mean finding the desired web page in the [http://www.archive.org Internet Archive] and linking to that archived page instead. In some cases, an "NG" link will not be recoverable and should be surrounded in nowiki tags [[Special:Diff/16377/26212|like this]] to prevent it from showing up in future reports.
*In some cases, an NG link will not be recoverable and should be surrounded in nowiki tags [[Special:Diff/16377/26212|like this]] to remove it from the external links table, so that it stops showing up in the reports.
*A link marked as "RD" is redirecting us to a new page. The new page should be evaluated, and if it has the content we intended to link to then we should update the link to point to the new location.
*Links marked as IW are external links that could be [[Help:Editing#Interwiki_links|interwiki links]], which make links shorter and more resistant to rot. The suggested interwiki link markup will be given in the report. For Wikipedia, you can add a language code in order to link to a page in a specific language, e.g. <nowiki>[[wikipedia:de:Test]]</nowiki>.
*A link marked as "IW" is an external link that could be an [[Help:Editing#Interwiki_links|interwiki link]]. Interwiki links are shorter and more resistant to rot. The suggested interwiki link markup will be given in the report. For Wikipedia, you can add a language code in order to link to a page in a specific language, e.g. <nowiki>[[wikipedia:de:Test]]</nowiki>.
<!--Advice for when the script detects external internals...
*A link marked as "EI" is an external link to a page on our own wiki that could simply be an [[Help:Editing#Intrawiki_links|intrawiki link]].
**Sometimes an "external internal" may seem to be necessary; for instance you may wish to link to a specific version of a page, which used to require putting the full URL, [http://wiki.oni2.net/w/index.php?title=Oni&oldid=7685 like this]. In fact, there's no need to link to any page at all, as the "id" of an edit, like the one you see in that sample URL, is unique wiki-wide. All you need to do is plug the edit ID into the Permalink page [[Special:Permalink/7685|like this]], and you're done (you'll notice that the preceding link says "Special:Permalink" in the wikitext, but "Permalink" is actually a shortcut for "PermanentLink", so that's how it shows up for the reader).
**Sometimes an "external internal" may seem to be necessary; for instance you may wish to link to a specific version of a page, which used to require putting the full URL, [http://wiki.oni2.net/w/index.php?title=Oni&oldid=7685 like this]. In fact, there's no need to link to any page at all, as the "id" of an edit, like the one you see in that sample URL, is unique wiki-wide. All you need to do is plug the edit ID into the Permalink page [[Special:Permalink/7685|like this]], and you're done (you'll notice that the preceding link says "Special:Permalink" in the wikitext, but "Permalink" is actually a shortcut for "PermanentLink", so that's how it shows up for the reader).
**Sometimes you need to link to a diff between two revisions of a page, or between two different pages. In this case you plug the old and new revision numbers into the "Special:Diff" page [[Special:Diff/21491/21492|like this]] (no need for page IDs, as explained above). -->
**Sometimes you need to link to a diff between two revisions of a page, or between two different pages. In this case you plug the old and new revision numbers into the "Special:Diff" page [[Special:Diff/21491/21492|like this]] (no need for page IDs, as explained above).
*Some links simply have to be the way that they are, or return superfluous error codes and actually work fine. These links can be listed in the [http://iritscen.oni2.net/val/exceptions.txt exceptions file] in order to hide them in future reports. Contact Iritscen to have him add new exceptions to this list.


===Background===
===Background===
While MediaWiki makes it easy to find bad links to pages on our own wiki, marking them in red and providing tools like Wantedpages, there is no automatic check of external links. MediaWiki compiles all these links into a table, but it does not ping the URLs to see if they give any response. The most you are allowed to do is [[Special:LinkSearch|search]] through the links table, and even that isn't implemented well. Over the years, many links on our wiki have gone dead as the Web has changed and various file hosts have gone out of business.
While MediaWiki makes it easy to find bad links to pages on our own wiki, marking them in red and providing tools like Wantedpages, there is no automatic check of external links. MediaWiki compiles all these links into a table, but it does not ping the URLs to see if they give any response. The most you are allowed to do is [[Special:LinkSearch|search]] through the links table, and even that isn't implemented well. Over the years, many links on our wiki have gone dead as the Web has changed and various file hosts have gone out of business.


So [[User:Iritscen|I]] have implemented an automated solution that will help us catch these problems more easily; a human hand will still be needed to fix the problems. Here's how it works: every day, a script written by Alloc dumps MW's external links table to [http://wiki.oni2.net/w/extlinks.csv this location]. My automated script walks through the table and looks for URLs that return NG codes like 404. It will also detect other problems in the future. The script and related files are found [http://websvn.chrilly.net/listing.php?repname=Oni2&path=%2FValidate+External+Links%2F here].
So [[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] has implemented an automated solution that will help us catch these problems more easily; a human hand will still be needed to fix the problems. Here's how it works: every day, a script written by [[User:Admin|Alloc]] dumps the wiki's external links table to [http://wiki.oni2.net/w/extlinks.csv this location]. My automated script walks through the table and looks for URLs that return problematic codes like 404. It will also detect other problems in the future. The script and related files are found [http://websvn.chrilly.net/listing.php?repname=Oni2&path=%2FValidate+External+Links%2F here].


===Coming features===
===Coming features===
*Detection of "external internal" links, which occur when someone puts the full URL to another page on this same wiki, like <nowiki>"[http://wiki.oni2.net/OniGalore:Current_events]"</nowiki> instead of <nowiki>"[[OniGalore:Current events]]"</nowiki>.<!--Un-comment "external internal" advice above when this is done.-->
*It seems that many external links no longer display the content that they were intended to display. In many cases, web sites are silently redirecting the user to their main page without using the appropriate code that indicates the content was not found. Only visual inspections of the pages can catch these issues. Once we have dealt with the low-hanging fruit of pages that return "NG" codes, the screenshot feature in the script will be activated, which will allow us to easily confirm if the "OK" links (and snapshots from the Internet Archive) are actually loading the intended page.
*At a cursory glance, I can see that many external links no longer display the content that they were intended to display. In many cases, web sites are silently redirecting the user to their main page without using the appropriate code that indicates the content was not found. Only visual inspections of the pages can catch these issues. Once we have dealt with the low-hanging fruit of pages that return NG codes, the screenshot feature in the script will be activated, which will allow us to easily confirm if the "OK" links (and "OK" snapshots from the Internet Archive) are actually loading the intended page.


==PlayStation 2 port==
==PlayStation 2 port==
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