User:Josve05a/link rot

The Persistent Problem of Link Rot: A Threat to Our Reliability
As many of us have experienced firsthand, link rot is an ongoing issue that can undermine the credibility of our work here on Wikipedia. A recent report by Pew Research Center titled "When Online Content Disappears" delves into this problem in great detail, providing insights that are particularly relevant to our community.

Key Findings from the Pew Research Report
The Pew Research report offers a thorough analysis of link rot, examining its prevalence and impact across various types of online content. Here are some key takeaways:


 * Prevalence of Link Rot: The study analyzed over 2 million links across news articles, blog posts, and academic papers. Alarmingly, about 25% of links in news articles from 2018 were dead by 2023. Academic papers fared slightly better, with around 20% of links rotting within the same period.
 * Impact on Content: News articles, due to their reliance on timely sources, were hit hardest by link rot. This highlights the particular vulnerability of dynamic, time-sensitive content to this phenomenon.
 * Temporal Trends: The older the content, the higher the likelihood of link rot. This temporal aspect underscores the inevitability of link rot as web pages are updated, moved, or deleted over time.
 * Sector-Specific Insights: Government and educational websites exhibited lower rates of link rot compared to commercial and personal websites, indicating that maintenance practices and hosting stability vary significantly across sectors.

Implications for Wikipedia
For us, as Wikipedians, link rot is more than just an inconvenience—it's a threat to the integrity and verifiability of our articles. Dead links weaken the reliability of our references and can cast doubt on the accuracy of the information we present.

We have several strategies at our disposal to tackle this issue:


 * Archiving Links: Utilizing services like the Internet Archive to capture snapshots of referenced web pages ensures that content remains accessible even if the original pages disappear.
 * Bot Assistance: Our trusty InternetArchiveBot has been doing a great job automatically detecting dead links and replacing them with archived versions. This has been a crucial tool in our fight against link rot.
 * Manual Intervention: Regularly checking and updating references in the articles we edit is another line of defense. Replacing dead links with valid ones or archived versions helps maintain the reliability of our content.

Steps Forward
To strengthen our defenses against link rot, we can consider the following actions:


 * Encouraging Archival Practices: Promoting the use of archiving tools like archive.today or the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine when adding new references can help ensure long-term accessibility.
 * Expanding Bot Capabilities: Enhancing our bots to proactively archive new links at the time of citation can provide an even more robust solution to link rot.
 * Educational Outreach: Increasing awareness among new and veteran editors about the importance of combating link rot and the tools available to do so can help us all contribute to maintaining the verifiability of our references.

In conclusion, while link rot poses a significant challenge, our community's proactive efforts can mitigate its impact. By archiving links, employing automated tools, and promoting best practices, we can continue to uphold Wikipedia’s standards of reliability and verifiability in the face of this ongoing threat.