Problem: When a talk page thread gets archived, all incoming links into the thread get broken, making it very difficult to follow old threads, which often contain useful information for current discussions. In the English Wikipedia we have ClueBot III which claims to fix up links while archiving (en:User:ClueBot_III#Keeping_linked), but in reality it unfortunately does this only to a very limited extent (links from other pages). The more important links from the same page (from other threads or from inside the very thread to be archived, as well as links from threads already archived) don't get updated.
Who would benefit: All Wikipedians participating in talk page discussions
Proposed solution: Enhance ClueBot III or provide a new universal archiving bot fixing up all links while archiving automatically. While detecting links from the same page might be more difficult than to detect links from other pages, it certainly isn't impossible.
As an alternative, there's also w:User:SD0001/find-archived-section which very conveniently searches archives when following a broken link. It's available as a gadget on English Wikipedia. I'm not sure something like this belongs in MediaWiki and/or an extension, but we could globalize/localize the gadget to make it more easily available to all wikis. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, thanks for providing the link. Unfortunately, scripts like this cannot be used by people who (must) have JavaScript disabled for security reasons (or are using browsers not supporting it). So, a more general solution is still needed, ideally one which fixes the problem at its root (that is, in the moment when the problem is created), not at a later point in time when it may be difficult to put the pieces together reliably.
Support Shoeper (talk) 18:45, 8 December 2020 (UTC)