Wikipedia:Link rot/Usurpations
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Usurped domains are used by spammers, squatters, malware, SEO, phishing or other fraudulent activity. Typically they are legitimate domains that expired and were hijacked.
How to mark a citation as having a usurped domain
The following is a decision tree for each citation. It can be followed manually, or implemented algorithmically by bot.
- Does the source URL have an archive available at a web archive provider? If yes...
- Is the citation a CS1|2 template (eg.
{{cite web}})? If yes...- Add
|url-status=usurped,|archive-url=and|archive-date=
- Add
- Is it a square-bracketed or bare URL? If yes...
- Convert to a CS1|2 template and add
|url-status=usurped,|archive-url=and|archive-date=- -OR-
- Wrap the archive URL (with or without square brackets) in
{{usurped}}
- Convert to a CS1|2 template and add
- Is the citation a CS1|2 template (eg.
- Does the source URL have an archive available at a web archive provider? If not...
- Can the citation be verified if the URL was removed (e.g. newspaper or journal content off-line)?
- Remove the URL and keep the citation
- Is the citation unverifiable without a URL (e.g. web-only content)?
- Remove the entire citation per WP:V: unverifiable
- Can the citation be verified if the URL was removed (e.g. newspaper or journal content off-line)?
Bots
Bots that can mark citations as having a usurped domain automatically with the above steps:
- WP:WAYBACKMEDIC—Report usurped domains to WP:URLREQ
See also
- WP:JUDI—Ongoing mass usurpation of expired domains across all Wikimedia projects