by User:Green Cardamom (en.wikipedia.org) Copyright 2015, 2017 MIT License
Backlink Watchlist monitors changes to the backlinks (aka Special:WhatLinksHere) of a Wikipedia page. It will email whenever new backlinks are added or deleted. It runs from cron, typically once a day.
BW is useful in a number of scenarios:
1. Monitor who is linking to a Talk or AfD or RfC discussion.
2. Monitor pages in your user space to see if anyone links to them.
3. Monitor File: pages to see when they are added/deleted. For example,
Fair Use images can be monitored for copyright violations.
4. Monitor Templates to see when they are added/deleted from articles.
5. Other examples.
If someone is linking to something and you want to know about it, this will silently let you know.
The program is a GNU Awk script. The install instructions and configuation parameters are at the top of the file. It will work on any Unix system that has GNU Awk 4.0+
Optionally create a symlink: ln -s bw.awk bw
Want to use MediaWiki API with Awk? Check out 'MediaWiki Awk API Library'