**Description from merged task:**
[[Special:Wantedpages]] show many links to pages "requested" via expressions like "{{#ifexist:}}". Query the existence of a page doesn't make it "wanted", sometimes its the exact opposite; we use this expression for filtering pages we DON'T WANT.
This affects the experience of editors that uses Special:Wantedpages to find articles or pages to work, and finds this special page full of noise.
E.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WantedPages
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spécial:Pages_demandées
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**Original (2007) description**
i've traced it down to the line $parser->mOutput->addLink( $title, $id ); that was added by tstarling in [[https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-ParserFunctions/commit/4dbc7f4d21e8c6cb54fed158bf5d4b40446ffd5c |revision 19892 on Mon Feb 12 10:24:23 2007 UTC]] with the reason "`Register a link on #ifexist. Otherwise this breaks cache coherency..`"
i can find no logical reasoning for this change. all it is doing is checking if the target exists, and outputting one of two user supplied text blocks. and that is all it should do. it is not making a link to target, nor does it display a link to target anywhere in the scope of this functions code so why does the target need to be added to the link list?
granted, i do not have a complete grasp of the internals of the parser nor the cache systems, but the feedback noise on special:whatlinkshere renders the page useless.
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**See also**:
{T18584}
{T17735}
{T12857}
{T33628}
{T73637}
This card tracks a proposal from the 2015 Community Wishlist Survey: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey
This proposal received 11 support votes, and was ranked #62 out of 107 proposals. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Community_Wishlist_Survey/Miscellaneous#Error_categorization_by_.23ifexist_bug