Wikilinker

Auto-links 500,000 people, places and other entities, to Wikipedia in news articles.

There are two versions:

• Browser extension — a Chrome and Firefox extension that links entities to Wikipedia directly in your browser, on 19 supported news sites (with an experimental "all sites" mode).
• Server proxy — a Node.js web proxy at whitelabel.org/wikilinker that fetches news pages and injects Wikipedia links into the article text.

Both share matching logic (server/shared/matcher-core.js) and skip rules that determine which parts of a page to leave alone (navigation, headings, captions, etc.).

Extension

Build the extension (requires Node.js):

npm install
node extension/build.js            # production build
node extension/build.js --debug    # includes match logging (downloads a TSV per page)

Then load extension/ as an unpacked extension in Chrome (chrome://extensions) or Firefox (about:debugging).

A single build produces a package that works in both Chrome and Firefox.

Supported sites

The extension runs automatically on 19 news sites including BBC, NPR, CNN, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and others (see extension/manifest.json for the full list).

All sites mode

Toggle "Run on all sites" in the popup to enable wikilinking on any website. This is experimental — the extension uses fallback selectors (article, main, etc.) to find article content, which may not work perfectly on every site. The toolbar icon tints green when this mode is active.

Debug builds

node extension/build.js --debug

Debug builds include match logging that downloads a TSV report for each page, showing every candidate entity, its match rule, context, and status (linked, overlapped, not-in-db, etc.). Debug code is completely stripped from normal builds via esbuild's dropLabels.

Server

cd server
npm install
npm test
npm start        # runs on port 3000

Deploy to production: bash scripts/deploy.sh

Adding a new site

To add support for a new news site:

1. Add the site config to server/shared/sites.json:

   "example.com": {
     "name": "Example News",
     "articleSelector": ".article-body, .story-content",
     "homepageUrl": "https://www.example.com"
   }

   The key is the bare domain (no www.). The fields are:

   • name — display name, shown on the landing page and in the status bar.
   • articleSelector — CSS selector(s) for article body containers. Comma-separate multiple selectors. Use your browser's DevTools to inspect the article text on the site and find the most specific container.
   • homepageUrl — link to the site's homepage, shown on the landing page.

2. Add host permissions to extension/manifest.json — add "https://*.example.com/*" to both the host_permissions and content_scripts.matches arrays.

3. Test it — run the proxy against an article from the site:

   http://localhost:3000/proxy?url=https://www.example.com/some-article
   

   Check that links appear in the article text and not in navigation, headers, or sidebars. If links appear in the wrong places, adjust the articleSelector to be more specific.

4. Rebuild the extension: node extension/build.js

Tips for finding the right selector

• Open an article on the site and right-click the article text → Inspect.
• Look for the nearest parent element that wraps all the article paragraphs but not the navigation, sidebar, or footer.
• Common patterns: article, .article-body, [itemprop="articleBody"], .story-text.
• Test your selector in the browser console: document.querySelectorAll('.your-selector') should return the article container(s).
• Multiple selectors (comma-separated) are tried in order — put the most specific first.

More info: About Wikilinker

History

Wikilinker is an updated version of the Wikiproxy, a hack originally built in October 2004 that proxied BBC News Online, automatically hyperlinking capitalised phrases and acronyms to Wikipedia.