Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Link rot


 * The following discussion is an archived proposal of the WikiProject below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the project's talk page (if created) or the WikiProject Council).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The proposed WikiProject was not created. PCN02WPS ( talk  &#124;  contribs ) 21:00, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Description
This project would combat link rot, an issue that inherently plagues a project like Wikipedia – moreso than this number, rapidly approaching 300,000, would lead you to believe. I've spotted thousands of links that weren't adequately marked. The scope of the issue is growing, and it could be many times worse than the above number suggests. Editors clearly work tirelessly to find substitutes for or archives of dead articles every month, yet hundreds lapse as a new months arrive – rinse and repeat. While the InternetArchiveBot helps with both of these issues somewhat, it often lacks the sophistication of a human to actually fix them properly before marking them 'permanent[ly] dead'. Furthermore, this issue cannot be fixed unless more awareness is raised about e.g. the need to archive URLs when creating a citation.

Among this project's goals would be to:


 * Coordinate amongst each other and with other Wikiprojects on large undertakings to check for, prevent, and fix link rot


 * Provide editors with resources that teach best practices for link rot prevention


 * Advertise the issue to editors who may not be aware of its magnitude and importance to the project


 * Make Wikipedia an overall more stable resource, preserving it for future readers and editors

I've made thousands of edits dedicated solely to archiving links and finding suitable replacements or archives for dead ones. However, stopping this problem at the source would mean imbuing Wikipedia's public consciousness with a greater awareness of the issue, e.g. through new resources such as essays and tutorials – and perhaps a spot on WP:TASKS. Idealist though that may be, this project's main work in the meantime would be to stem that tide, which I would happily continue to take part in alongside the rest of this new project.  TheTechnician27  (Talk page)  00:28, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

List of example pages and primary category for this proposed group
 * (this is one I've already worked on in order to prevent link rot)
 * (I'm currently working on this one and finding plenty of seemingly irretrievably dead citations, an example of what happens if we don't prevent this)
 * articles with dead external links (number of pages in the category: 298,109)
 * (I'm currently working on this one and finding plenty of seemingly irretrievably dead citations, an example of what happens if we don't prevent this)
 * articles with dead external links (number of pages in the category: 298,109)

This would, of course, not only target large articles with hundreds of unarchived citations, but it would be an instance where editors could coordinate to chip away at it.


 * Why do you want to start a new group, instead of joining one of these existing groups?
 * While this would fit under the purview of WP:CLEANUP and WP:WCC, the scope of this issue seems too important to the project to confine to a single task force.

Support

 * Yes, for reasons above.  TheTechnician27  (Talk page)  00:38, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Could be interesting. Rlink2 (talk) 19:02, 27 February 2022 (UTC)