User talk:BrokenLinkFinder
Fixing Dead Links
[edit]Hello, and welcome – we could certainly use more people finding dead links, as well as other maintenance tasks!
Wikipedia referencing is a bit of a labyrinth, but it's pretty easy to get the hang of. The "dead link" parameter is probably the most confusing bit, since it's not really explained well anywhere. The best explanation I've found is the last paragraph here. Basically, it is used when a link is not dead, but an archive exists anyway, and you want to archive pre-emptively. In that case, it can be set to "no". There are a few ways to handle dead links when you find them:
- Place {{dead link}} after the reference. Make sure it is within the <ref> tags, so it will appear as part of the reference. In the visual editor, go into the reference and click "add template". If you have tried to find an archived version of the source, but none exists that you can find, add
fix-attempted=yesinto "dead link" to mark it as a "permanent dead link".- As stated at WP:KDL, "permanent dead link" is useful if the cited fact is important – it indicates that at some point a reference for the fact existed.
- If you find the same information on a new source, like in this edit, just delete the old reference and create a new one. It'll need a new title, authors, etc. as well. I couldn't find an archived version of the old reference, but I didn't try very hard, so I used {{dead link}}. I'll add yours as well, as context.
- You can look for an archived version on one of the web archives used on Wikipedia. There are some directions here.
There is also a bot that can help – to use it manually on a page, go into "external tools", and there should be an option to "fix dead links".
Here are some general guidelines that may interest or help you:
- WP:Link Rot
- WP:Footnotes (not really aimed at VisualEditor users, but a bit of background)
- Template:Citation (once again, not really necessary, but good to read if you ever want to start using more Wikicode, and move away from the VE)
Judging by your username, you may be interested in these areas:
- Category:Articles with dead external links
- Category:CS1 errors: invalid parameter value (the most common error that shows up here is URLs in "dead link")
- Category:Pages with archiveurl citation errors (a bit more technical)
- WP:WikiProject Citation cleanup
Feel free to ask any questions you may have on my talk page, here, or at the Teahouse. Regards, and good luck. Dairy{talk} 02:36, 26 September 2017 (UTC)