Wikipedia:WikiProject External links
Welcome to the External links WikiProject, a project dedicated to cleaning up overly long lists of external links and having articles conform to Wikipedia's external links guidelines! We're a relatively small WikiProject, and so we could always use some help. Feel free to sign up and help us out!
Scope
[edit]The goals of this WikiProject are
- to improve Wikipedia external links guidelines, in any way that helps better guide discussions of whether to include particular links or not
- to recover or remove dead external links
- quality control – keep lists of external links to a reasonable length and quality
- to support WikiProject Spam in their combat against external linkspam
- to attend to and sort out articles that have been flagged for external links cleanup
Related WikiProjects
[edit]How to help
[edit]The best way to show your support is to participate! This, and adding {{Wikipedia:WikiProject External links/Userbox}} to your userpage allows users to identify you as someone who helps out here, and gain some attention for the project so that others can help out, too.
Spam
[edit]Be on constant lookout for "linkspam" and adherence to the Wikipedia External links policy by keeping an eye on watchlist articles and Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages. Articles that need work can also be found by looking at random articles.
In some cases it's clear which links are 'spam', while other times it is important to defer to the content/topic experts to help discern which links are informative and useful. This could be done by copying the external links to the talk page for discussion, and for voting keep, delete, or give comments. This is particularly important for controversial topics such as Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dead links
[edit]Many dead links are tagged with a {{dead link}} template. To see a list of articles with dead links, by date, go here. There are many ways to fix them. One way is to find a copy on the Internet Archive. Do this by typing web.archive.org/web/*/ in front of the dead link. The page will display a list of archived versions of that link. Choose one that was archived closest to when your dead link was accessed (i.e. "accessdate = ...").
A useful tool to find, fix, and tag dead links is User:Dispenser/Checklinks.
Before working on this maintenance task, it is useful to read WP:DEADLINK to see how to repair deadlinks, and WP:DEADREF to understand what policy says to do with them.
In general: Do not delete a citation merely because the URL is not working. For many citations (including print sources), the reference material still exists, and can still easily be found by its title, author, publisher and other metadata. Dead links should be repaired or replaced if possible, using the steps outlined at WP:DEADLINK and WP:DEADREF.
See also
[edit]Articles that need external links cleanup
[edit]This is a short list of articles that have an excessive external links section, and might require a clean up.
 WikiProject External links
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Open Tasks:
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Others
[edit]This is a list of places you can look for articles that might require a cleanup.
- Wikipedia:Most referenced articles
- Category:Wikipedia external links cleanup
- Category:Articles_with_dead_external_links
Templates
[edit]- {{WikiProject External links}} – to use on articles that need work
| External links | |||||||||||||
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- {{Advert}}
 | This article contains promotional content. |
- {{External links}}
 | This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. |
- {{subst:NoMoreLinks}} – a substituted template, visible only while editing
<!--===========================({{NoMoreLinks}})===============================-->
<!--| DO NOT ADD MORE LINKS TO THIS ARTICLE. WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A COLLECTION OF |-->
<!--| LINKS. If you think that your link might be useful, do not add it here, |-->
<!--| but put it on this article's discussion page first or submit your link |-->
<!--| to the appropriate category at the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org)|-->
<!--| and link back to that category using the {{dmoz}} template. |-->
<!--| |-->
<!--| Links that have not been verified WILL BE DELETED. |-->
<!--| See [[Wikipedia:External links]] and [[Wikipedia:Spam]] for details |-->
<!--===========================({{NoMoreLinks}})===============================-->
- {{Refideas}}, external links moved to article talk page for future improvements
 | The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future: |
- {{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject External links/Welcome}} – a template to welcome new participants to the project
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Thank you for joining WikiProject External links, a collaborative effort to have articles comply with Wikipedia's External links guidelines. Below are some ongoing tasks for you to take part in, or you can add a task to do. Another great place to check out is Category:Wikipedia external links cleanup. Happy editing, ~~~~ | ||||||
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WikiProject External links tasks you can do:
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Userbox
[edit]Participants may add this userbox to their user page: {{Wikipedia:WikiProject External links/Userbox}}
| Userbox code | Displayed as... | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| {{Wikipedia:WikiProject External links/Userbox}} |
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See also
[edit]- Wikipedia:External links
- Wikipedia is not a link repository
- Wikipedia:Dead external links
- Wikipedia:Conflict of interest
- Wikipedia:Spam
- Wikipedia:Citing sources: external links sections
- Wikipedia:Citing sources: dead reference links