Feature summary (what you would like to be able to do and where):
I would like a simple way to get a count of unique article links on a page, usually a generated report. A cached variable like {{ARTICLELINKSONPAGE: pagename}} would be called to retrieve this value, which can then be used in comparative backlog listings, such as in WikiProjects or other group efforts.
Use case(s) (list the steps that you performed to discover that problem, and describe the actual underlying problem which you want to solve. Do not describe only a solution):
The problem is that seemingly every way available to get at this number is kludgy:
- A {{Database report}} can be run with very simple SQL but its result often will lag the change in results of the page it is analyzing. That is, the reports cannot be run in tandem (as of September 5, 2025). Even running the count report on the same page as the report it's analyzing doesn't work unless one manually twice requests the page's reports to be generated.
- A bot accessing the API to gather and count the mainspace links on a page is possible but this of course requires writing a bot or asking one to be written. That is a lot of work/hassle to get at a simple value.
- Either approach above involves depositing the value somewhere to be transcluded separately, when a single call to get the links count would be obviously more convenient.
Benefits (why should this be implemented?):
For the sake of reports, a variable like this would be useful for the sake of demonstrating the relative weight of issues in comparative concerns (e.g. number of orphaned/isolated articles vs. number of articles with citation errors), demonstrating progress toward a goal of addressing issues, and/or administering backlogs of listed issues (and knowing if there is a backlog). Having a shortcut to a number showing how many unique articles are linked in a report would enhance productivity in these scenarios.