Link Rot

[ericbarbour]

The Wiki-Putzes know DAMN well it's a problem. A BIG ONE. But they do a terrible job of managing it.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/inte ... 49215.html

The effect means that vast amounts of news and important reference content are disappearing. Some 23 per cent of news pages include at least one broken link, and 21 per cent of government websites, it said – and 54 per cent of Wikipedia pages include a link in their references that no longer exists.

Bots have been written that convert a dead link to an archive.org or WebCite capture. Or something, ANYTHING. They are not used nearly as much as they should be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WebCiteBOT (see the talkpage)

And for the best evidence nobody is driving the garbage scow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ebcitebot2

Major reason is obvious: this is tedious hard work. Not nearly as much "FUN" as grinding Pokemon trivia, reverting vandalism, banning editors, and fighting with each other on noticeboards.

There is a Wikiproject. Look at the list of their participants. I figure more than 90% of them quit Wikipedia years ago or are almost inactive. A few were blocked (this one was especially "charming"). Only a few of the remainder are doing ANY dead link repair that I can see. Some of them don't even bother--they just delete the bad links and leave the references hanging.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... rticipants

The only major link-repairing bot in use today (as far as I can tell!!) is InternetArchiveBot. Co-authored by James Hare. Oh, the things I could tell you about him. The other author is Cyberpower678--a Pokemon fan whose interest in Wikipedia has been tailing off since 2020.

Both of them admit being paid by the Internet Archive to add more Archive links to Wikipedia.
Far from being enough to fix the millions of dead links.

[Strelnikov]

Co-authored by James Hare. Oh, the things I could tell you about him.

Tell us things.

[suckadmin]

Given the state of copyrights these days blindly replacing millions of dead links with internet scrappings could create a legal minefield for better or worse

[ericbarbour]

Given the state of copyrights these days blindly replacing millions of dead links with internet scrappings could create a legal minefield for better or worse

Despite endless struggle, WP still contains millions of "possible or fringe" copyright problems. Commons contains million of images scraped from sites like Flickr that have "tolerant enough" Creative Commons licensing. Often the original author was the one who reposted to Commons, but often the original owner has no idea Wikimedia grabbed their images. Threats are made routinely, the content is removed, links are broken, NO ONE talks about it publicly.

Tell us things.

James "Messedrocker (T-C-F-R-B)" Hare (later "Harej") was believed to be 14 years old when he ran for adminship in May 2006, and failed. He tried again in September 2006, and succeeded. Soon enough he was adding his incoherent and badly-typed comments to noticeboard arguments. He showed up originally in November 2004 and was a typical "gnome", with a fondness for cartoons.

A minor Wikipedia process term was named after him, as shown in the final MFD for Esperanza: "Zocky, When I said "Messedrockerify", I meant to retain the edit histories but make the pages inactive (essentially salting but not deleting). If this in any way means that the organization will be kept in its current form, then I would request my opinion to delete be taken into account. I imagine most Messedrocker supporters feel this way. So if it's deemed impossible to mark an organization inactive/historical via MFD, then this should probably default to delete. Ral315 (talk) 12:42, 1 January 2007 (UTC) " [119] He had already developed a reputation as a "process wonk" who did no content work, just tried to delete things and thereby "make policy". His August 2007 attempt to delete a raft of Simpsons articles was a failure, even though he was right about them being useless fancruft. Hare was also neck-deep in Wikipedia's useless and hopeless "Mediation" system; this is a typical example of his "work".

He ran for bureaucrat in March 2007, at age 14 or 15, and flopped; and ran for Arbcom in December 2007 and flopped horribly. In March 2009 he changed his name to Harej (T-C-F-R-B), whereupon someone usurped his old account, requiring its blockage. Hare ran for bureaucrat in August 2009 and flopped again, and ran for Arbcom again in December 2010, and flopped once more. He is presently a major "founder" member of Wikimedia DC, despite having done no substantive content work. As of 2014 he continued to make most of his "contributions" to noticeboards and talkpages. He still appears at Wikimedia meetings routinely, and as of 2018, reached the "pinnacle" of Wikipedia fanboyism, becoming a WMF employee. Unlike most other WP heelers, he has a private Commons category, full of photos....of himself.

Hare left Wikimedia in 2019 after 20 months of employment. In May 2021 he posted "I feel like shit", resulting in a Wikipediocracy thread, thence in news media coverage. [120][121] Other former WMF employees/WP insiders, including Dan Garry, Brad Jorsch, and Adam Wight, were mentioned as victims of similar bullying and negative treatment. This story was widely ignored, as Wales refused to acknowledge the problems, and the WMF closed ranks.

[suckadmin]

Given the state of copyrights these days blindly replacing millions of dead links with internet scrappings could create a legal minefield for better or worse

Despite endless struggle, WP still contains millions of "possible or fringe" copyright problems. Commons contains million of images scraped from sites like Flickr that have "tolerant enough" Creative Commons licensing. Often the original author was the one who reposted to Commins, but often the original owner has no idea Wikimedia grabbed their images. Threats are made routinely, the content is removed, links are broken, NO ONE talks about it publicly.

I'm sure.. but there was a case recently where a variety of sites such as Twitter were bring sued for using a copyrighted image inline. Scrapping has gotten alot of bad press lately but in a case by case basis if you uploaded an image with a CC license it's probably fair game. However capturing webpages to substitute for broken links might not be as clear cut. For informational purposes WP has a standing for education I guess but the courts seem to be less favorable towards granting fair use than it used to be.

I was going to mention the lawsuit against Archive.org and it looks like for the time being they are re.ovinv material publishers request be removed

https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/17/wha ... r-library/

[ericbarbour]

https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/17/wha ... r-library/

hmm, this makes me wonder if the WMF filed an amicus in the court case. There's a lot of love between them and the Internet Archive--one hand washes the other. (Remember: similar bullshit happened with Google Books. WP nits used links to scanned books as references, the publishers sued Google, Google shut it down, or tightened access, whatever.)

We may continue to display “short portions” of books as is consistent with fair use—for example, Wikipedia references (as shown in the image above). The injunction does not affect lending of out-of-print books. And of course, the Internet Archive will still make millions of public domain texts available to the public without restriction.

Plus the comments below that article are true hilarity. "Whiny little millennial communists" joke goes here. Things like this happen partly because copyright law has been twisted by decades of lobbying by large publishing firms and their little friends. Friends like Sonny "Head, Meet Tree" Bono.

The internet came as a big surprise.

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