Wikipedia:Link rot/Usurpations
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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 usurpify a citation
[edit]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? If yes...
- Is it in 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...
- Wrap the archive URL (with or without square brackets) in
{{usurped}}
- Wrap the archive URL (with or without square brackets) in
- Is it in a CS1|2 template (eg.
- Is no archive available? If yes...
- 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
[edit]Bots that can usurpify automatically with the above steps:
- WP:WAYBACKMEDIC—Report usurped domains to WP:URLREQ
See also
[edit]- WP:JUDI—Ongoing mass usurpation of expired domains across all Wikimedia projects