User:Nanite/Onion linking guidelines draft

(I'm saving this in user space due to draft quality, but if anyone wants to edit, feel free!)

Draft to be titled: "Wikipedia:Guidelines on .onion linking" or something like that?

Background: The Tor network allows the creation of hidden services at a .onion top-level-domain, that can only be accessed anonymously via the Tor software. The 16-character names of these sites are a form of public key fingerprint, making it easy to acquire a gibberish-looking address (eqt5g4fuenphqinx.onion) or with considerably more difficulty, an easier-to-read address (facebookcorewwwi.onion). By the design of the protocol, only a holder of the associated private key can serve up content on that domain name. If done with extreme care, a .onion site can operate with neither revealing either the owner's identity, nor the server's location.

In general, .onion addresses are not especially helpful as external links for a variety of reasons, and due to persistent spamming problems they have been generally blacklisted (see Blacklist section below). That said, in some cases there are good reasons to mention a .onion address and even to hyperlink them (after obtaining a whitelist exemption).

When to include an .onion address

Official sites, examples:

• The article facebookcorewwwi.onion concerns a legitimate and ordinary site run by Facebook, which provides practical access to Facebook as well as being a pioneer of Tor-related technologies. (whitelisted)
• The Daily Stormer article during the time when it the site is kicked off the clear web ([1]) contains hyperlinks both to the .onion domain as well as proxied access. Although the site is extremely vulgar, wikipedia is not censored. (whitelisted)
• Several defunct darknet markets like Silk Road and AlphaBay have their old .onion address listed for reference. (not whitelisted)

Templates

A few templates are available for the formatting of onion links, whether they are defunct, blacklisted, or whitelisted.

• {{Onion URL}} and {{Onion defunct}} for use in siteboxes.
• {{Onion Official site}} for use in External links sections.

The blacklist

Presently, almost all .onion links cannot be turned into hyperlink due to a general blacklist of the form \b[_\-0-9a-z]+\.onion\b. According to the Blacklist module documentation, this forbids all hyperlinks containing strings of the containing "<alphanumeric characters or _->.onion" except where it is immediately preceded or followed by a letter. Some special exceptions are however made in the MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist.

Reason for blacklist

It is desirable that .onion links (as well as proxy sites .onion.link, .onion.cab, .hiddenservice.net, etc.) are generally blacklisted for the following reasons:

1. Spam, malware, and illegal content (snuff / child pornography, copyright violations).
2. Difficulty of access, needing a special browser (see WP:ELNO#7). Note that neither proxy links nor WP:ELOFFICIAL are not subject this.
3. Impostor sites. Onion names have non-intuitive random characters, making it difficult to visually confirm whether the domain name is the proper one. There have been Whenever listing an onion address (whether hyperlinked or not) you must provide at least a semi-reliable reference that confirms the correct domain name.
4. The low stability of many sites.

When you can get whitelisted

Whitelisting of .onion sites is generally handled on a case-by-case basis. A good reason for whitelisting a site would be that it is the only official website for a notable article.

1. If you do not have a good source and citation for the authenticity of the onion domain name, your request will be turned down.
2. When accessed, the landing page does not immediately present illegal content, nor does it deceive the user into accessing illegal content.