Template talk:Tor onion services

Navbox MOS
Write the articles first, then add to the template. got it? good. I will remove the redlinks shortly. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 05:20, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Just done so. That is the preferred approach for navboxes: they're not meant to be lists of red links to articles that could be written (unless they follow some sort of regular finite structure, like Abortion in Europe or Tom Clancy), they're meant as lists of articles that already exist. Robofish (talk) 21:56, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. another editor added back some redlinks, and even external links. sad that people want to turn this into a guide for people seeking tor hidden services.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 04:12, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Historical
As with List of Tor hidden services I don't understand why we would break down by type of site and then have a separate section for "historical" indifferent to type of site. The purpose of these isn't to help people to find Tor sites, it's to help people navigate articles on Wikipedia. There's also the question of how we know a Tor site is up or down and when to believe whether the same site at a different address is actually the same site run by the same people. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  02:42, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * As a week has gone by without any additional discussion, I'm going to restore sorting by type only. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  14:05, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Note to any who care: there is a thread at Talk:List of Tor hidden services relevant to this page. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  00:18, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Listing defunct services
I reverted this removal of the defunct services from this list. A navbox is typically a navigational aid to allow a reader to find and move through articles on a particular subject, which means it's indifferent to the off-wiki status of its individual items so long as the common thread remains intact. If the navbox were about current or active hidden services, that's one thing, but those kinds of variable content navboxes are really rare. Creating another navbox wouldn't work since there's a total overlap with this one, and renaming this one wouldn't work because there's no navigational benefit to limiting its scope as such. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 02:17, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
 * On the flip-side should a navbox contain multitudes (potentially thousands of defunct items as an example)? In a somewhat similar analogy, what about adding tens of thousands of defunct company names to every business wiki page. Defunct is dated material and doesn't need to be listed everywhere in wiki—it's already listed in the List of Tor hidden services page as defunct, which there is a link to in the same navbox.--Nodove (talk) 04:06, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
 * should a navbox contain multitudes - If the number of entries becomes too large, the navbox is no longer useful. There are few enough notable hidden services that I don't foresee that becoming a problem for a long, long time. In fact this navbox feels a little sparse. What we need are a few more international police raids to get some press coverage for new ones :) The reason this navbox works (and any navbox works) is that the scope is clear and list reasonably short. Lots of navboxes could theoretically become overburdened: retired NBA team numbers, presidents of the United States, etc. When they become too cumbersome, we have a discussion and figure out how best to proceed. List of Tor hidden services, like those other two examples, is far, far away from that.
 * what about adding tens of thousands of defunct company names to every business wiki page - You say this as though businesses all have a "list of businesses" navbox such that they would all list each other. But navboxes are navigational aids for Wikipedia articles, not the yellow pages, so once a business is a pet store, it's always a pet store. If there's a navbox for pet stores without a qualifier in the name (pet store chains, current pet stores, etc.) it would include the defunct one. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 04:58, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Defunct is dated material - If a subject is notable, it's considered notable forever. Wikipedia doesn't place any extra value on what is present or current. A page's value within a category is not tied to whether or not it is presently online. This is why I object to specifying "defunct" at all (it's the result of a past compromise). Not only that, but websites like hidden services, torrent indexes, etc. are so prone to going up, down, moving, being hijacked, etc. that it's incredibly hard to even determine whether something is Current or Defunct (defunct implying it will not be returning).
 * it's already listed in the List of Tor hidden services page as defunct - The list article is probably a better place to specify that it's defunct (again, I don't like the notes in the navbox personally), but that's because they serve different purposes. That doesn't mean one covers X and one covers Y but that the list is an encyclopedic list of notable hidden services while the navbox is purely a navigational aid. And then categories are their own thing, too. (WP:NOTDUP) --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 05:08, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Darkode
Not so sure I agree with moving Darkode from markets to social media [and forums]. Most of the sources I saw focus on it being a venue for buying/selling/trading/bartering hacking services rather than a place for discussion. I don't doubt the latter happened, and the structure of the site may be that of a forum, but if we're going to classify it as one or the other it seems like the sources talk about it as a market most? &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 23:16, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * An interesting point of discussion. Unlike open darknet markets, I've never seen the Darkode forums so I'm left to speculate as to their focuses. Is/was there commercial activity on the site? Absolutely. Is is a market? I say no, for similar reasons I would argue the well known Russian Anonymous Marketplace is also not a marketplace. It's a forum that features commercial activity. Now one could argue these both fall into as special class of site, 'commercial forum' or similar, certainly I'm aware this is a common model for carders and hackers for many years. I don't know what the generic term for it is. You would argue 'market' is appropriate? Deku-shrub (talk) 23:23, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok. Well, I don't have particularly strong feelings either way, so I'm content to leave it as it is. Maybe we call it both a marketplace and a forum in prose and via article categories, but where we have to list it as just one or the other (here and at the List of Tor hidden services) it could be listed as a forum for simplicity's sake (just going by site format rather than content). Works for me. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 23:30, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Tonight I stumbled across a meaty research paper where the term 'crime forum' has been used. Lots to potentially Wikify there. Deku-shrub (talk) 01:08, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Looks like it could be useful, indeed. As far as I can tell it's more or less self-published (in that it's published as-is, the product of a grant, not peer-reviewed or subject to any kind of editorial oversight/vetting). So it probably won't help establish notability of something and couldn't be relied on too heavily for anything controversial or BLP-related, but for general informational purposes it looks good. ...Actually, I don't know why I'm complaining. It's not like we have a wealth of books published at scholarly presses about this stuff :) &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 02:08, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Fed up with this template
I don't like what this template has become, duplicating the contents of List of Tor hidden services and Category:Tor hidden services

We can't go on maintaining all three, I say it's content from this template that gets the chop as it will scale least well. I am trying to thinking a slimmed-down alternative use though. Deku-shrub (talk) 20:47, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:NOTDUP. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 20:53, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, I'm not arguing the list is contrary to WP conventions / styles, just that it is ugly and confusing. Deku-shrub (talk) 00:36, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * What about it is ugly and confusing? I say that not as a challenge -- it just looks fairly standard for a navbox to me (aside from the defunct labels which I've never been a big fan of). &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 00:43, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I probably should have listed these issues out:
 * The horrible (defunct) labels
 * The slightly arbitrary nature of the categories, e.g. Assassination market is in the same category as Agora (online_marketplace) but not Russian Anonymous Marketplace and Tor Carding Forum
 * The ghetto of Tor-related services at the bottom like Tor2web and SecureDrop
 * I will confess, I am proud of building the most verifiable list of notable hidden services on the internet, but as we keep adding hidden services this will more comical. When I finish Dark Web I may propose a more category-based approach or something. Deku-shrub (talk) 00:56, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Defunct [revisited]
I removed the "(defunct)" labels from the template the other day.

Navigational templates are just that -- navigational. They help readers to find articles on a particular topic. Navigational templates are not intended to communicate additional information about each individual subject beyond the minimum necessary to organize the template. Adding additional text like (defunct), or (year it opened), or (name of the founder), etc. isn't appropriate for the template -- that's one of the differences between templates and list articles like List of Tor hidden services. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, its priority is not to help users access these sites or serve as a directory of active sites -- we only summarize notable subjects, regardless of whether they're active.

An unregistered user reverted me, with edit summary 'so perhaps use "closed" rather than "defunct" to indicate most commerce sites are non-functional'. This seems to miss the point, but I'll bring it up here rather than removing again. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 16:44, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

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b 2804:1644:236:DF00:4C3E:A2EA:60C5:2015 (talk) 22:31, 23 March 2023 (UTC)