Wikipedia talk:WikiProject External links/Geocities

Launched

Launched, but it needs some work. Somebody probably knows better than I do how to generate a link to or a list of affected articles. (Link to seems better.) And how do we check the ones that have already been redirected to archives? Or do we? Evidently there's been some mass converstion to archive without evaluation, so if we don't, a lot of unsuitable ELs are going to be remaining. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:08, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Oocities.com as linkspam

Plenty of discussion previously on whether the conversion of about 5000 links from geocities.com to oocities.com was WP:LINKSPAM. The Google ads on oocities's pages now appear whether you come in via Wikipedia or not. So, along with the other oocities problems we discussed, I think we can remove or convert any oocities links we find. Convert to what? Depends on the situation. Unless it is pretty bad, my goal is to keep the content available, using the Wayback Machine or other well-behaved archives.

• Some links were already converted to WP:WEBCITE, using templates. Then the oocities editor went in and made edits (example). The edits cause confusion, not breakage, but as with his/her edits on Talk pages, they should be reverted. So I reverted that example. Note, the example may be WP:COPYVIO. The geocities pages were scripts of a BBC show from the 1980s.
• Some pages are now full of inline external oocities links. This article is an example, and has the same WP:COPYVIO issue as the previous example. In this case, the Wayback Machine has the same content. I experimented with a few ways to convert it from oocities to Wayback, and decided to convert all the inline external links to footnotes. Otherwise it was too messy, with superscripted notes about the archived nature of the links, etc. Also, I did not use the Template:Wayback because I wanted to take advantage of Wayback's ability to link directly to the latest page. Here is my diff and the result. -Colfer2 (talk) 22:47, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I found a way to use WP:WEBCITE on my last example, the one with tons of inline external links now converted to footnotes. It performs better than Wayback, and I like the frame at the top. The Webcite author has said he/she has a complete archive of the Geocities pages linked by Wikipedia. So that is better than Wayback. May have to fake the "achivedate" attribute to edit efficiently though. My compound diff, and the result. -Colfer2 (talk) 23:09, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Two new problems:

1. WP:WEBCITE does not convert the external internal links of the archived pages from geocities.com. So a splash page like this one is a dead end. All the links go to geocities.com. Both oocites and Wayback fix the links. Furthermore, Wayback shows the archived links, but does not have them. I would like to keep the oocites.com link in this case, and provide the others as alternatives, but...
2. Oocities is now on the WP:BLACKLIST, so I cannot make any edits that retain it. Here is a sandbox version of the diff I want to make, but delete EXAMPLE.COM. And here would be the result.

In fact, WP:webcite did not archive the pages beyond the splash page in this case, for instance ..../upnke/principles.html. -Colfer2 (talk) 18:13, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I checked to see of there is a more current URL. Looks like they just have a Facebook page now. -Colfer2 (talk) 00:10, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

How funny, I just ran across this at 8th Chess Olympiad and came here to express my disappointment in how "updatehelper" had changed the 'original url' parameter to his own site. Since the webcite page annotates the original page, which is presumed to be defunct - do we need to even have that parameter on wiki? Kuru (talk) 01:17, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

It's good to have the old URL so that in the future editors can figure out the best course, as the archives may shift.-Colfer2 (talk) 17:46, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

That's pretty much what I settled on, like this. I'm just working off the link list for 'oocities' at the moment, so that should suffice. It will be more difficult to clean up the remaining geocities links later, since there will be 'legitimate' geocities links out there... Kuru (talk) 18:49, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Still wondering about the best formatting for showing multiple archive choices. Here is a response to my latest attempt at an oocities cleanup: Talk:List of A Bit of Fry and Laurie episodes#recent edit -Colfer2 (talk) 17:46, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Here are the scenarios I've run into so far and how I have approached them:

1. Crappy link / used as a reference: remove and request a new cite for non-BLPs, find new cite for BLPs or remove material.
2. Okay link / used as a reference: look for a replacement site (i.e. the author moved off geocities in time), or use webcite. Webcite should suffice even if it only captured "one deep" since the material should be linked to directly.
3. Crappy link / used as an external link: remove, a lot of this junk simply does not meet WP:EL.
4. Okay link / used as an external link: Here's where I may get kind of stuck, and it sounds like you're already there. To be honest, there simply are not many of these; most geocities links are very, very poor and do not rise to the threshold set by WP:EL, but I can see a few that are actually interesting. So far, I've been able to find the 'new home', but if I didn't WebCite would not work as it does not capture the flow through pages and that is important for a "further reading" type of link. Wayback may work, but it is likely that this content is just lost, and I'm really not adverse to simply removing the link. I do know that oocities is not the solution - I've been quite disappointed with the business model he's displayed here and I have no desired to continue to shuffle revenue his way. Kuru (talk) 19:06, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I am investigating some of the remaining 164 results of searching for "oocities" in article space. Here is the first fix I made: diff. It was a convoluted oocites link which used to be a convoluted geocities link. -Colfer2 (talk) 16:01, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Spam-blacklist: discussion about keeping or removing oocities

See here: WP:SBL#OoCities.com / OoCities.org. -Colfer2 (talk) 14:04, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I was wondering where UpdateHelper disappeared to. Kuru (talk) 15:06, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

New script; bot

I'm trying to seek a bot to convert all of the oocities links to links to Wayback archives of the geocities pages. See this thread for more information. Meanwhile, User:Amalthea has created a script to more easily help us evaluate Geocities links by taking us to archived versions. It'll also help more easily replace oocities links. See the front of this page for more information. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Excellent. Please drop a note here before you run that, though - there are a few instances I've run into where the oocities links should actually be converted back to the geocities link. Specifically, it looks like UpdateHelper's script changed warning notices on talk pages when people were trying to insert spammy geocities links. Those really should not have been touched in the first place. I can get them all by hand by just flipping through the linksearch, but I'm doing it in small chunks. Kuru (talk) 15:48, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

So, I should specify that the bot should be restricted to article pages? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, if someone is using a geocities link in a normal content discussion, it may be beneficial to have that replaced by a link to a content archive. The link warnings were the only ones that were just blatantly incorrect, as they were discussing the link itself, not the content there. I can probably finish off the visual scan for the warnings quickly enough - let me see if time frees up this evening before Monday Night Football... :) Kuru (talk) 15:57, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

No problem. :) I'm sure by the time we get consent to help and permission to run, some time will have passed anyway. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:21, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Article pages only, in my opinion. And skip the article GeoCities. Yay! -Colfer2 (talk) 01:18, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Finished the scan for warning tempalte changes; there were 190 that I restored. Kuru (talk) 19:44, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

BRFA filed Anomie⚔ 17:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Input at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 44, please. :) Amalthea 21:12, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

It seems the bot has been approved, and should start replacing links momentarily. If any major problems arise, post at User:AnomieBOT/shutoff/ReplaceExternalLinks2 to stop the bot. Anomie⚔ 03:51, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

FYI, it seems AnomieBOT is now done removing oocities links from mainspace (I had to help cleaning up a few templates). Anomie⚔ 04:45, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

As of this edit, AnomieBOT seems to have processed all Geocities links. The 8036 links remaining should either be tagged {{dead link}} or be included as the "original" URL link in combination with an archive link. If reocities.com (361 mainspace links), geocities.ws (21 mainspace links), or any other Geocities-related domain needs the same treatment, let me know. Anomie⚔ 22:19, 17 October 2010 (UTC) Or not, it started going again after seeming to do nothing on this task for 2 days. Anomie⚔ 12:42, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

How remarkably thorough and responsible of it. :D (Bots are miraculous things.) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:56, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Uh huh. This is how they win our affections; next thing you know... Kuru (talk) 16:03, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Complaints

Hi,
could someone please reply to Spacini at User talk:AnomieBOT/Archive 3#geocities errors?
Thanks, Amalthea 10:32, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up! I have. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:46, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

You are the best. :) Amalthea 14:03, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

LOL! You, too! </mutual admiration> :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:04, 8 October 2010 (UTC)