Zexono

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Your thread has been archived

Hi Zexono! You created a thread called How to search broken links or citation needed for wiki articles at Wikipedia:Teahouse, but it has been archived because there was no discussion for a few days. You can still find the archived discussion here. If you have any additional questions that weren't answered then, please create a new thread. Archival by Lowercase sigmabot III, notification delivery by Muninnbot, both automated accounts. You can opt out of future notifications by placing {{bots|deny=Muninnbot}} (ban this bot) or {{nobots}} (ban all bots) on your user talk page. Muninnbot (talk) 19:02, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

questionable removal of dead and unfit links

Can you please explain your basis for believing that it's appropriate to remove a link which has either gone dead or for which the content of the linked page has been modified? I do not believe this is proper.

If you determine there is no satisfactory archive link (I'm not quite sure at what point we reach that conclusion), you would just change it to "dead link". If the link is not dead but the content is no longer applicable, then if an archive link can be found, create an archive link and specify url-status=unfit. If the page content is no longer applicable but an archive link cannot be found, I'm not sure what the right answer is, but I think it should be something other than removing the link. Fabrickator (talk) 06:01, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Some things you need to stop doing

• Stop marking all of your edits as minor.
• Stop removing dead references and try to replace them with Internet Archive Wayback Machine links if possible, or another source with the same information if possible. Even then, try to tag dead links with {{dead link}} tags.
• Stop using the term "vandalism" all willy-nilly. Dead links are not vandalism. See WP:NOTVAND for more information.
• Stop ignoring requests for communication.

If you don't stop those things despite users telling you to, your actions could be interpreted as vandalism. Even if you are doing them in good-faith, they are still disruptive and not how things work here. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:13, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I will support Ian.thomson in these concerns. I have reverted a number of your edits because the rationale for them is totally invalid. If you feel you have good cause to make an edit and to remove citations, justify it with an appropriate edit summary please (e.g. spam link). Failing to do otherwise is disingenuous and quite disruptive. That way only has one ending for you. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:51, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

All the edits were within wikipedia guidelines of vandalism which are classified as follows :

Spam external linking

Adding or continuing to add spam external links is vandalism if the activity continues .

Link vandalism

Adding or changing internal or external links on a page to disruptive, irrelevant, or inappropriate targets while disguising them with mislabeling.

I am unfamiliar with Internet Archive Wayback Machine links , If you feel that there is any other way to proceed please reply back. For future , can certainly make sure to add appropriate edit summary for all contribution with justifiable rationale Ian.thomson Nick Moyes

As per WP:NOTVAND

Lack of understanding of the purpose of Wikipedia

Some users are not familiar with Wikipedia's purpose or policies and may start editing it as if it were a different medium—such as a forum or blog—in a way that it appears as unproductive editing or borderline vandalism to experienced users. Although such edits can usually be reverted, it should not be treated as vandalism.

Considering, novice user Zexono his actions could not be interpreted as vandalism. Regards, Zexono (talk) 11:51, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

What was stated was that "If you don't stop" doing these objectionable things, then such edits could be interpreted as vandalism, which is not inconsistent with your quotation from WP:NOTVAND to the effect that objectionable edits by inexperienced users should not be considered vandalism.

But let's shift from "process" to substantive issues.

* Editing Wikipedia properly is difficult. I have been doing it for 10 years, figuring out how to do everything right is very difficult.

* How to mitigate this problem ... well, while one model of operation is to be BOLD, this needs to be tempered, You won't know that you're doing something objectionable until somebody alerts you to that.

BTW, things are going to be contentious. Other editors don't know what your intention is. Other editors (myself included) only have a limited grasp of the rules. So if I see something that's wrong, I don't know whether I'm encountering somebody who has interpreted some rule in a way differently than I would, or if they've found some rule I've never heard of, if they're up to no good, or if they just don't know any better.

So my point would be to tread a little more cautiously, one way to do this is to not jump in and make numerous changes. But another guideline I'd give is to consider that the text you're editing has been available for others to see for a while. Doesn't it seem curious that you're suddenly finding some link spam that may have been online for months or years?

Of course, as it turns out, there is "bad stuff" that stays on Wikipedia for years, but that's no assurance that some issue you have found has actually been "bad" for all that time.

As to references, I'm going to take the position that they're the most valuable content within a Wikipedia article. Of course, when you delete a reference, it still exists in the history, but it is quite onerous to dig references out of the history. So when you delete a reference, a reference which may have been good at one time, it's possible that will never turn up again, but if it does, it will only be because somebody went through considerable extra effort.

Short and long of it is deleting a reference that was probably good at one time can be really harmful. If you were unaware of the Wayback machine (and numerous other archives), you're not any more.

I sense that you're anxious to make contributions, and understandably, you would like to do it efficiently. Your efforts are welcomed, just appreciate the fact that doing the job well is not as easy as you would like it to be. Fabrickator (talk) 01:21, 10 October 2019 (UTC)