Last modified: 2014-07-27 22:19:49 UTC
When a pages is linked to by a template, the "what links here" page of the target page show the template and all pages containing this template. Similarly, an image which is used in a template will list all pages containing the template as using the image. To make matters worse, if the link/the image is removed from the template, the list will not be up to date until *every* page that uses the template is edited. The best solution would IMHO be to show only the template itself on the "what links here" (resp. "pages that use this image") list - we would have no superfluous links then, and no problem with keeping the through-a-tem,plate reverse links updated. If i really need all the pages that use the template, I could use the template's "what links here" page easily enough. I can't think of any situation where the current behavior would be desirable. This is espacially annoying if you try to unlink an image that has to be delete, as you have to find the few pages that use the image directly, somehow. Please consider changing this - I have heard many complaints about this behaviour, many users are confused by it (especially because the list is never relly up to date), and those who understant it find it annoying. (the URL given is an Image on ther german WP that is used by some templates which are in turn used by many pages)
Full ack. "What links here" is one of the nicest features in Wikipedia, but navigation elements make it nearly unusable due to the bug described here.
I agree that the behaviour you note is problematic. However, any change would have to make sure that it doesn't create as many problems as it solves - e.g. without a note on article page A that it includes image I (via template T), when I is updated the code would have to do a lot of (potentially recursive) checking (i.e. after checking "what links here" on I, and discovering T, it would then have to check "what links here on T", and so on) to note on all pages that (eventually) include that image that they need to be re-rendered. We have quite a number of bugs of this form with templates and/or categories - see, for example, [http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=939 bug 939]. The bug you mention, where the "what links here" list on the image is not fixed when the template is edited, is basically the same bug as the category problem in bug 939.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 939 ***
Reopened. Bug 939 asks for link tables and rendered pages to be effectively current with template changes, which is more work, whereas this request seems to ask for the Special:Whatlinkshere page to show less.
*** Bug 5691 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Navigational templates are only getting more elaborate over time. Many link to dozens of items, making "What links here" practically unusable. Fixing this problem would be a great aid to discovering and building up the web of connections among articles.
If it links from the page, it links from the page. It's not possible to determine what was "through" a template -- in particular given the complex ability to generate links out of template interactions and conditional code.
Yes, I'm aware of that by now. But I think it would be very handy to have that ability. It would become possible if/when we insist on "syntactically complete" templates, which has often be discussed, and I hope will come in the Golden Days Of The Real Parser. So, while I'm aware that it's impossible with the current database scheme and parser, and would be non-trivial to implement even if that would change, I request to leave this bug open as a desirable enhancement. I'll not reopen the bug myself though.
See also http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4588 "Group pages by templates in list of file links on Image page" and http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3241 "Transclusion should produce tree-like results in "What links here" ".
You'll excuse my programming ignorance, but could there be any way of exploiting whatever makes <noinclude></noinclude> work to prevent transcluded backlinks? Or failing that, is there any way the programming could make a checklist of what's on the transcluded templates, and then "manually" remove them from the "What links here" page?
No, and no.
Well, what if we just use an outside link, e.g. [[w:France|France]] instead of [[France]]? The only problem I can see with this would be cosmetic to the reader (different link color), and a little more wikicode. Surely it wouldn't be that hard to make a protocol that would take care of this, e.g. one could enter [[t:France]] and it would look graphically resemble an internal link while executing [[w:France|France]]? I know this is not an 'elegant' solution but I think it would work well enough for our purposes.
[Removing RESOLVED LATER as discussed in http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2012-November/064240.html and closing as RESOLVED WONTFIX as per comment 7 and comment 11]
