User:Dispenser/changelink

Steps involved in fixing a bad link:
 * 1) If the connection timed out, then type link to google.com and check for a match, then check for a Google cache date. If Google saw it recently, then the server is having a short outage and it may come back.
 * 2) If you get a 404 Not Found, then see if article title is given and search for an abstract
 * 3) Prefix link with http://www.archive.org/web and take off the http:// prefix of the original link.

Use wayback if the link is not embedded. You might also want to note when Wayback last saw the server.

You can also backref to Dead external links to see if it has been missing long-term.--SallyForth123 23:51, 19 August 2007 (UTC)