Help:What links here

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Every page has a link labelled "What links here" (or, more generally, labelled with the text in mediawiki:whatlinkshere).

This backlink facility can be used to see which other pages in the same project contain a link to a given page.

Limitations

not listed are subpages that just have an automatic link to a page
not more than 500 pages are listed; if there are more, there is no indication that the list is not complete; only by copying the list to an editor that can count lines and concluding that there are 500 on the list, one can find out that it is likely that there are more; it is recommended to add to the text in MediaWiki:Linkshere, as has been done here on Meta and on the English Wikipedia: "(up to 500 are shown)".

Cases of transclusion

in the case of a template, referral to it is treated as link
a link from a template is only treated as such, not as link from the pages that show the link because they refer to the template
in the case of an image, using it in a page is listed in the third section of the image description page, but not in "What links here" of that page

Other uses

This facility works also for a page that does not exist. The What links here button is also on the edit page on which one arrives when following a broken link.

One can also use a link of the form Special:Whatlinkshere/John Smith, or equivalently (here on Meta) http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=John_Smith

The feature can also be applied to itself and other special pages, e.g.:

Order

When the link tables in the database are rebuilt, the lists are alphabetically ordered. However, adding a link subsequently causes it to be added to the end, and thus these occur in chronological order.

Uses

The list of links to an article is useful in a number of ways:

It gives a very rough indication of how popular a page is. Pages with many links are likely to be viewed often and should therefore be of the very best quality. Pages with few or no links may not be very popular.
Where the subject material of an article is unclear, the list of articles linking to it might provide useful context. For instance when presented with a stub about John Smith that gives only his date of birth and death, viewing the list of links to the article might reveal that he won a gold medal in the Olympics.
Facilitates disambiguation.

This facility works also for a page that does not exist (there may be links to it, which makes it extra useful to create it). The What links here button is also on the edit page on which one arrives when following a broken link. Thus, for example, if film articles are linked to the actors, one can find the films an actor has played in even if there is no article about the actor.

Direct link

To invoke a what links here list directly, use e.g.

[[Special:Whatlinkshere/Help:What links here]]

resulting in Special:Whatlinkshere/Help:What links here".