Talk:Library Genesis

"Copyvio links"
While Wikipedia policy is clear on not linking to specific copyrighted materials on sites that lack permission to host them, linking to the parent site is not necessarily so clear. We can generally link to the parent site for archived material, but not to individual works. This site isn't exactly an archive site and has seen trouble, but I'm not convinced it warrants total removal. An IP has removed all of the links, claiming copyvio - this isn't necessarily policy. I don't see a clear case for removal. See WP:COPYLINK.  Acroterion   (talk)   00:45, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Libgen url
Why mentioning libgen.is as the website url? Libgen is a website that has many different urls. It changes with time and you may or may not be able to access from a country or another. To circumvent that issue, I propose to add a link to this non-profit who does the job of collecting those urls and showing its status depending on your location: http://vertsluisants.fr/index.php?article4/where-scihub-libgen-server-down If someone disagrees, please explain why.Adrien Chopin (talk) 22:35, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
 * alright, given there is no concern here, I will add it. --Adrien Chopin (talk) 08:54, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I propose that you add the link to the non-profit to the section "External links", instead of changing the website URL. Lymoz (talk) 09:01, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

The site presents non-existent real authors of non-existing books
The site is associated with some strange people, because it restricts the use of all languages except Russian and English British. In addition, the site can be found in the literature of many publishers, and this literature is foolishly pseudo-historical in nature. The authors of these publications indicate nonexistent people.That is, the publication of books along with real authors of clearly composed authors is necessary for them to link to some supposed real publishers.For example, there is more than a strange book called "Another Europe: Avars, Bolgars ..." The authors indicated some KOVALEV and ATTIL TURK. Such authors in the scientific world are not known to anyone and here it is clear to cling to the history of the Avar Kaganate, whose forced population was mostly Proto-Bulgarians. And why should Proto-Bulgarians be mentioned together with the Avars? The Avars of Europe have their own history in which the proto-Bulgarians played a treacherous role, as they contributed to the defeat and collapse of the Avar Kaganate. There is an obvious desire for pan-Turkic preoccupied citizens to misinterpret and fantasize, introducing themselves under other people's surnames--Wrkan (talk) 15:06, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

They are not Russian scholarships, but pan-Turkic charlatans
Why is it written that this site was organized by supposedly "Russian scientists"? And why aren’t they indicated from the specific names and surnames? Are they hiding? No Russian scholars have anything to do with this site. Russian scholars do not engage in such pirated underground sites at all. Pan-Turkic fantasies and quacks are behind this site.It should be pointed out that this is a PIRATE UNDERGROUND website with dubious content. For example, there’s not a single book of the world-famous archaeologist Murad Magomedov (Khazarologist), but it’s full of any pseudoscientific literature with various authors such as Kovaleva and Attila Turk--Wrkan (talk) 15:20, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
 * See . Mewulwe (talk) 15:47, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

URL doesn't redirect
The specific page on the official site you linked does not load for me, while the plain domain does. Opencooper (talk) 09:04, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , curious, it did work. The link within the document does work, but setlang.php gives me an empty document.  I have replaced it with the index.php. Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:35, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Works now, thanks! Opencooper (talk) 16:24, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Remember Aaron Swartz
Remember Aaron Swartz! ---Dagme (talk) 15:24, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

gen.lib.rus.ec is gone
Library Genesis has been subjected to repeated reverts, each without any summary, for days now. Each time, to re-include gen.lib.rus.ec as a domain name. Please understand this domain is gone for good. Up until a few days ago, Library Genesis explicitly discouraged using it. Now they still implicitly discourage using it by listing it as superseded by libgen-dot-rs and instructing everyone to change all references to either one of libgen dot rs/is/st. The original domain does, now, function as a redirect only, and sometimes only. All of these reverts were without any explanatory summaries despite clear and obvious facts. Please stop your vandalistic edit warring, explain yourself, or accept that time moves on and things change. Including domain names. Thank you. --92.195.154.56 (talk) 18:13, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * "vandalistic"? Yea, thats how most editors do with IPs deleting things. You have the patience to write this but not to just update the link instead of deleting the one that may be outdated but still take the readers to the site????.--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 05:10, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Please read the edit summaries of the edits you revert. Please stop reverting edits without an explanatory edit summary of your own. Please use this talk page to discuss your further edits in this matter, instead of continuing your vandalistic edit warring. Thank you. --92.195.226.205 (talk) 09:23, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * What is this obsession of yours? No one will engage with you as an IP deleting and reverting, thats it. You are using a reddit forum as a source? This doesnt work here. Anyway, from reddit, I could see that now we have two teams fighting for the status of the "original" LibG. Hence, add whatever links that takes our readers to the website! Add the .fun link but dont delete anything else! Otherwise the page will be protected to deny any IP the chance to revert and edit.--Attar-Aram syria (talk) 15:10, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Personally, I don't care for dotFun or dotRs, and haven't introduced dotFun to the "discussion" (if one can call this edit-warring madness that). Since 23rd of November, however, you along with a few other specialists have vandalistically reverted the URLs back to gen.lib.rus.ec a few times and without any explanation. This is what this section is about. Good luck with your semi-protection threat, by the way. Admins will never see through that... 🙄 --92.195.226.205 (talk) 19:18, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

I've removed all the site links. Using a forum post to verify them is not acceptable, and it didn't even appear to mention these sites anyway. In the meantime I'd remind people that Wikipedia is not a web directory. -- Escape Orbit (Talk) 17:44, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Are we also going to remove links of other websites that constantly change their domains (scihub, piratebay, etc) just bc there are no reliable sources? I don't agree with this. -  (talk)  18:20, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * If LibGen doesn't have a "URL" then it doesn't exist. And this article wouldn't make any sense. We would have to talk about it in the past tense. Sites like this one follow a different logic, beyond an mere "official URL", just like the piratebay, it is meant to survive by proxys. It doesn't matter which one is the official one. They're all mirrors. -  (talk)  18:39, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Whether they are all mirrors or not isn't the point. They need to be properly cited. Particularly, as is the case here, the location of the "official" cite appears to be disputed. -- Escape Orbit  (Talk) 19:21, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Screenshot and libgen.fun
The screenshot in the article seems to be taken from libgen.fun, a Library Genesis mirror, but libgen.fun itself isn't listed in the URLs section of the infobox. The screenshot is also captioned with "The project's homepage with the English interface", which might be more appropriate if libgen.fun was actually linked. CherrySoda (talk) 03:47, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Project URLs
Will you please explain why you continue to remove sourced content and don't take this issue to the talk page? According to the founder of Library Genesis in the reference given, libgen.fun is the only project that continues to be affiliated with Library Genesis. Rather it is a site with no real contents made to mock Library Genesis, and its reference to it in this article goes against the rules of wikipedia: I don't know where this statement comes from as it is just factually false. If you have evidence that there is "no real contents" or that is "mocks" Library Genesis, please provide a reference. Soapwort (talk) 05:42, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi Soapwort. My description of libgen.fun as "mocking" LG was wrong. I stand corrected (for reference libgen.life/viewtopic.php?p=80161#p80161 ), and it is not my intention to start a feud. However, since libgen.fun is not currently much in terms of actual content, I don't see the gain in eliminating the references to sites that do provide such content. (I may be missing something, I know). Best. --Danielhythloday (talk) 06:36, 6 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Why do you believe libgen.fun is different in terms of content? As far as I know it is nearly identical. Since the fork between the projects mentioned in the reference it's possible a small amount of content has been uploaded to now unaffiliated sites (e.g. libgen.rs) that have not made it to libgen.fun or vice versa.
 * I don't see the gain in eliminating the references to sites that do provide such content: Firstly because the other sites are not Library Genesis, according to it's founder, and secondly because Wikipedia is not a link farm. The site you linked is an unofficial list of mirrors, most of which were never affiliated with Library Genesis even before libgen.fun was created (the old list of official sites can be found under the mirror section here). Soapwort (talk) 07:28, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Forks of libgen
There are 4 forks of libgen: https://forum.mhut.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8371&start=100#p149165 Right now the wikipedia article mentions only one of them - libgen.fun by bookwarrior. I think all of forks should be mentioned in some way, because there is no “official” libgen and almost all of them claims that their fork is better than the others. DenBkh (talk) 22:33, 11 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I cannot access your link without registering, however bookwarrior was the founder of LibGen and author of the source code. A relevant discussion can also be found here and in this comment.
 * It's not the goal of Wikipedia to collect a list of forks or mirrors. Moreover, if we don't go off of what the founder says is and is not part of Library Genesis project, what do you suggest we go off of? Soapwort (talk) 04:46, 14 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Correct me if I'm wrong, but libgen.fun seems inferior in multiple ways: 1) some new (2021) important books in mathematics and physics are missing (e.g., 9781108854429), 2) it doesn't provide DB dumps like libgen.(rs|is|st)/dbdumps/, 3) I don't see IPFS links, or at least easily accessible IPFS links, 4) the site itself can be slow. So IMO libgen.(rs|is|st) is the main site, while libgen.fun is a recent not functional "fork" (no new books, offline DB, fast queries, or IPFS). Grbruu (talk) 14:02, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, the site is actually primarily IPFS based, as the first mirror for each book is IPFS (this is obfuscated, but you can see the books are pulled from an IPFS gateway URL if you open development tools). However after some investigation, I agree that libgen.rs is superior in terms of of recent content (apparently this is something that will eventually be addressed).
 * I think the problem remains that the article is about the Library Genesis project, not about "the best Library Genesis fork/mirror/site". Because libgen.rs is the previous official Libgen domain and because it remains popular, I do think it's worth including in the URLs, but I have specified it as "unofficial" since according to the founder it's no longer affiliated with Library Genesis. Soapwort (talk) 23:33, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Indeed the .fun domain is not being updated as quickly as other domains like .rs. A section or a note explaining the forking and discrepancy in regards to content should probably be added. -  (talk)  05:15, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The main mirror is libgen.lol, that gives away IPFS links. It is supported by Cloudflare and 2 other IPFS speed up proxies, of course ideally IPFS is like a torrent and those must not be used. Two uploaders are for libgen.rs and libgen.li. As for .fun that is not a real mirror at all. 109.252.90.143 (talk) 03:33, 2 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Now, when libgen.li changed its design, it's obvious that it is just a mirror of libgen.rs. 109.252.90.143 (talk) 09:18, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

"standarts" section
Does anybody know what happened to the standards section of libgen, previously available under libgen.rs/standarts/index.php (or some other libgen domain) ? It used to include DIN and ISO standards. 141.23.159.187 (talk) 16:01, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

WP:COPYVIOEL
Why is inclusion of an external link to current libgen URLs not a clear violation of WP:COPYVIOEL? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:12, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Good question, noting that for example The Pirate Bay and Sci-Hub have their full URLs. The way I see it, though, is that this page is not directing people to a website for a specific work (in particular, it would be unacceptable to link a citation to a particular illegal hosting of it) but merely to a parent website that is known for copyright infringement. To wikilawyer a bit, the policy states, linking to ... material that violates the copyrights of others. The copyrighted material isn't being directly linked, and the home page probably doesn't contain infringing content itself (haven't checked). This is a bad comparison/slippery slope, but an overly broad interpretation of WP:COPYVIOEL would forbid us from linking to other sites often containing infringing content in their articles, such as YouTube, Scribd, and Twitter, although those aren't nearly as severe. Ovinus (talk) 21:34, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Links in infobox
Per WP:ELMINOFFICIAL, except under a very limited set of circumstances, there should be one official link in the infobox. Currently, there are four links in the infobox, with three explicitly marked as "unofficial" or "community website" which directly goes against the guidelines of the WP:ELOFFICIAL and the infobox template. But the other issue, is that there's no indication that libgen.fun is official either and the source given in the article is a link to a webforum... It appears previous discussion on this talk page hasn't come to a consensus on this. The same issue seems to exist in the article for Z-library if anyone would like to bring it up there.

Thanks to @DFlhb for letting me know about the policy on official links in the article of a different website. : 3 F4U (they/it) 00:53, 17 March 2023 (UTC)


 * It's a decentralized project. There's surely a discussion to be had about which links are "more official" than others, but I don't think there's a point in being rigid about WP:EL here. That guideline was meant to stop Wikipedia from being deluged by advertising and junk. But these sites are inherently non-profit, and AFAIK the fact that there is no official domain is by design, to minimize the risk of lawsuits and takedowns. What we need to do is figure out which links are the most established; but keeping 2 or 3 seems acceptable in this case (and Z-lib), as an exception to the guideline. DFlhb (talk) 14:38, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
 * So I've removed .fun and .lc, and added .is. Removing .lc must not be reverted in any case, because that site has distributed malware in the past, unlike the others.There are three "official" domain: .rs, .is, and .st, as listed on the "library.lol" site, and as anyone familiar with Libgen will likely attest. They receive the most visitors by one or two orders of magnitude, according to SimilarWeb (.st less so, which is why I didn't add it to the infobox). The previous designation of .fun as "official" was based on a two year old forum post on a long-dead forum; but the current libgen forum is "mhut.org", and is clearly affiliated with .rs and the two others. DFlhb (talk) 12:22, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That does look better. What do you think about including library.lol as the link in the infobox? : 3 F4U (they/it) 12:29, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Not opposed to it, but it might confuse readers, since it's just the official list of Libgen domains, it's not Libgen itself. DFlhb (talk) 12:38, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it's a good candidate for the External links section. — kashmīrī  TALK  13:11, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I like that. DFlhb (talk) 13:17, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I've re-added .st and removed "mirror" labels, because they are not mirrors. Rather, all the three domains resolve to the same IP address 193.218.118.42, i.e., they are aliases.
 * Interestingly, http://193.218.118.42 redirects to http://libgen.rs, meaning that .rs is configured as the primary domain on the server. — kashmīrī  TALK  13:24, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * By the way, library.lol is also hosted on the same Ukrainian server, which makes it an authoritative listing IMO. — kashmīrī  TALK  13:29, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

History
It is not clear where or how exactly libgen was started. Was it started by russians? Serbians? It is not clear to me after reading the history. Could someone clarify it and restructure the article? Right now it is confusing. What does Mikhail Gorbachev have to do with libgen? File sharing wasn't that en vogue in the 1980s ... this is confusing 2A02:8388:1641:4980:0:0:0:2 (talk) 23:35, 8 August 2023 (UTC)