Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-452-20140917000024/@comment-24473195-20160819232820

452 wrote:

Edit: Conversely, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:exturlusage is the API version of Special:LinkSearch, so this can be used to find all external links to wikia:

While some people still add either interwiki links or external links, there are also still some people who add external links instead of internal links. The cure for both is the same: education. I would say that your cure is a double edged sword. On one hand it is a good way to get people to do it using the policy of the wiki, on the other hand it is  burden of educating new users despite  both approaches yielding the exact same result for the reader (except for a little icon) and in many cases people may add such links unknowingly using VisualEditor. So in a way your cure is yet another conceivable disadvantage.

Also, although it is probably not a concern, Special:linksearch has an internal limit of 10000 pages or so, depending on what wikia set. So it might never return as many results as IWBacklinks.

Anyway good to know that linksearch API exists, it might come in handy one day.