[Labs-l] Backlinks counter for Wikipedia articles?

Tue Sep 9 14:35:52 UTC 2014

That's great to know, thank you.

We'll make sure we only use the API within that limit - basically just for
individual calls when a user adds a new event to our database.

For the bulk processing, we would need to update the backlinks information
as a monthly maintenance task, so I wouldn't want to trouble you with this
each time.

Would you rather we stick with data dump processing for the large scale
stuff?

On 9 Sep 2014 15:05, "John" <phoenixoverride at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you want a report on that many pages drop me a list of those titles and
> and I can write a report for you given that volume of affected pages.
>
> I would say 1-2 seconds between quires should be reasonable for a moderate
> volume of quires. Any large scale request I will do server side and avoid
> hammering the web-servers for something that is better batched.
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Navino Evans <navino at histropedia.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Once again, a huge thank you for taking the time to do this John - That's
>> exactly what I was looking for!  - the helpfulness of this community never
>> ceases to amaze me :)
>>
>> Hopefully I haven't initiated a journey down the rabbit hole into a fully
>> fledged muliti-language counting machine ;)
>>
>>
>> Can I just ask what the limit of reasonable use would be for making API
>> calls to this new tool? (e.g. number of calls per day)
>>
>> It would be incredibly useful if we could use it to update the events in
>> our database once a month (we are using it to rank historical events by
>> 'importance'), but we are already have approximately 1.5 million events so
>> am aware this may be way beyond what would be acceptable.
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 2:56 PM, John <phoenixoverride at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> That's doable, however it will require a little more time as I need to
>>> unearth some old code to handle multi-projects/languages
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 9:51 AM, Jan Ainali <jan.ainali at wikimedia.se>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Awesome John!
>>>>
>>>> Now I only wish that one could specify language code also ;)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *Med vänliga hälsningar,Jan Ainali*
>>>>
>>>> Verksamhetschef, Wikimedia Sverige
>>>> <http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Huvudsida>
>>>> 0729 - 67 29 48
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *Tänk dig en värld där varje människa har fri tillgång till
>>>> mänsklighetens samlade kunskap. Det är det vi gör.*
>>>> Bli medlem. <http://blimedlem.wikimedia.se>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 2014-09-09 15:34 GMT+02:00 John <phoenixoverride at gmail.com>:
>>>>
>>>>> Per request, its no frills but what you what you asked for:
>>>>> http://tools.wmflabs.org/betacommand-dev/cgi-bin/backlinks
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 8:32 AM, Navino Evans <navino at histropedia.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> That is fantastic news... I'm incredibly grateful for the help and
>>>>>> advice.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 1:27 PM, John <phoenixoverride at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Given the overhead of the API and that he only needs a count getting
>>>>>>> that info should be fairly easy via a python cgi wrapper around an sql
>>>>>>> query.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The only thing that I cannot do is #3 since the software does not
>>>>>>> differentiate between links in templates and links not in templates. Its a
>>>>>>> requested feature for years now.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Give me a few hours and ill get you the tool you want. This should
>>>>>>> be less than 30 minutes work
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 7:55 AM, Jan Ainali <jan.ainali at wikimedia.se>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Related tip: In the API you can get a list of backlinks (but you
>>>>>>>> have to count them yourself) from the main namespace including all
>>>>>>>> redirects by a query like this:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=backlinks&format=json&bltitle=Example&blnamespace=0&blfilterredir=all&bllimit=250&blredirect=
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> More info at: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Backlinks
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> *Med vänliga hälsningar,Jan Ainali*
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Verksamhetschef, Wikimedia Sverige
>>>>>>>> <http://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Huvudsida>
>>>>>>>> 0729 - 67 29 48
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> *Tänk dig en värld där varje människa har fri tillgång till
>>>>>>>> mänsklighetens samlade kunskap. Det är det vi gör.*
>>>>>>>> Bli medlem. <http://blimedlem.wikimedia.se>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 2014-09-09 13:41 GMT+02:00 Navino Evans <navino at histropedia.com>:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Wow! That would be awesome :)
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The API we are looking for can be as simple as sending a GET
>>>>>>>>> request to a url (
>>>>>>>>> http://www.somewhere.com/api/count?t=wikipedia_title_goes_here),
>>>>>>>>>  returning a number in "text/plain" format.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The actual count that we're interested is for English Wikipedia
>>>>>>>>> only, and would ideally include the following, all added up into a single
>>>>>>>>> number:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> 1) All links from articles in Main Namespace only  (for our
>>>>>>>>> purpose it would be better to not include links from User pages, Talk pages
>>>>>>>>> etc if possible)
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> 2) Including links from Redirect pages (e.g. counting a link from
>>>>>>>>> "Michel Jackson" redirect as part of the count from the article "Michael
>>>>>>>>> Jackson")
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> 3) Excluding links that are within a template transcluded in an
>>>>>>>>> article (so we don't need to count the links inside Navboxes within an
>>>>>>>>> article for example)
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> 4) For our purpose, it doesn't really matter whether transclusions
>>>>>>>>> of the actual page that is called are included in the count (we generally
>>>>>>>>> won't be using it for checking templates, timeline and list articles).
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Just to give the full picture for this request -  my use of this
>>>>>>>>> tool will be for a company (www.histropedia.com), so I wouldn't
>>>>>>>>> want to take up your time with this unless it's something you feel should
>>>>>>>>> be available for wider use. My plan was to get the developer working on our
>>>>>>>>> site to make this tool for the community if it didn't exist somewhere, but
>>>>>>>>> we would be reliant on datadumps so could not get live information (which
>>>>>>>>> would be incredibly useful for us, and I hope many others).
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 8:10 PM, John <phoenixoverride at gmail.com>
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> What numbers/data do you want? I can whip up a replacement for it.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Monday, September 8, 2014, Navino Evans <
>>>>>>>>>> navino at histropedia.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Hi All,
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Hi all, does anyone know if there is a tool currently available
>>>>>>>>>>> for counting backlinks to Wikipedia articles via an API? I have been using
>>>>>>>>>>> this tool
>>>>>>>>>>> http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/backlinkscount.py
>>>>>>>>>>> - but it seems to have finally gone offline completely following some
>>>>>>>>>>> recent controversy with user:Dispenser.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Any advice much appreciated!
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Navino
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>> ___________________________
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Histropedia
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>>>>>> ___________________________
>>>>>>
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>>>>>> The Timeline for all of History
>>>>>> www.histropedia.com
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
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>>
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