Anti-Wikia Alliance:Link rot

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Like most large websites, Anti-Wikia Alliance suffers from the phenomenon known as link rot, where external links, often used as references and citations, gradually become irrelevant or broken, as the linked websites disappear, change their content, or move. This presents a significant threat to Anti-Wikia Alliance's reliability policy and its source citation guideline.

The effort required to prevent link rot is significantly less than the effort required to repair or mitigate a rotten link. Therefore, prevention of link rot strengthens the alliance's wiki. This guide provides strategies for preventing link rot before it happens. These include the use of web archiving services and the judicious use of citation templates.

Editors are encouraged to add an archive link as a part of each citation, or at least submit the referenced URL for archiving,[note 1] at the same time that a citation is created or updated.

However, link rot cannot always be prevented, so this guide also explains how to mitigate link rot by finding previously archived links and other sources.

Do not delete cited information solely because the URL to the source does not work any longer.

Except for URLs in the External links section that have not been used to support any article content, do not delete a URL solely because the URL does not work any longer. Recovery and repair options and tools are available.

Notes[edit source]

  1. Using the web form at https://archive.org, enter a URL and click "browse history". This will either redirect to show the latest previously archived copy, present a box near the bottom of the page with a link inviting the user to "save this URL in the Wayback Machine", display a calendar showing the extent of previously archived content for that URL, or show an error message explaining why the URL cannot be archived. If archiving is attempted and ultimately successful, the archived copy usually becomes available within minutes.

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