I asked my question on http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API_talk:Main_page#.22What_links_here.22_API_request and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#API_help_question
I have found that "api.php?action=query&list=backlinks&blnamespace=0&bltitle=" + wgPageName; will tell me if there are any articles that link to the page, but how can I get the full count (if greater than 500)? I don't care "what" articles link there, just how many. I'm trying to write myself a little JavaScript which in part will expand the "What links here" link in my p-tb to include an count of pages that link to a specific NS (or two or three) and a total count of pages that link to that article. I intend to use such a script to save me some time when I'm tagging articles for improvement on enwiki to quickly know if the article is an "orphan" or not. Thank you.
The response I got was: "You cant, that information is not stored in the database, the only way to do that is to retrieve the lists in chunks of 500 until you dont have any more."
I'm requesting this functionality be added to the api.
Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement