Wikipedia:Link rot/URL change requests/Archives/2020/November
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EBSCOhost Connection
- Post copied here from Village Pump Technical
At Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2020 November 8 § Broken EBSCOhost Connection links, I noted that there are many broken links to EBSCOhost Connection in cited sources in Wikipedia articles. Samwalton9 (WMF) did some research and reported that EBSCO says that EBSCOhost Connection is deprecated and there is no way to remap the broken links to new URLs. Would someone be willing to write and run a bot to remove the broken links to EBSCOhost Connection (URLs beginning with http://connection.ebscohost.com) from cited sources in Wikipedia articles? Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 16:48, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
- This something for WP:URLREQ. I'd like to do more research and verify there is another way to save them. Worst case are archive URLs so they wouldn't need to be removed. Example. -- GreenC 17:13, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks. In my opinion, it would only be necessary to save the URLs if they were bare URLs without any of the other information required to locate the source. EBSCOhost is just a provider of article databases, like JSTOR or ProQuest. It's one of various ways to access the cited source; it's not the cited source itself. Another example would be how I recently added a JSTOR number to a citation in an article. The citation was fine without the JSTOR number; the addition of the JSTOR number just gives another way to access the source. The EBSCOhost Connection URLs are analogous to the JSTOR number, except that now EBSCOhost Connection does not give another way to access the source, so the EBSCOhost Connection URLs should be removed unless they are bare URLs. Biogeographist (talk) 17:31, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
- I can save links with archive URLs, but as for deleting all of these links that is beyond the bot's approval. There is an argument for keeping the links, they contain metadata that may not be in the citation itself allowing for easier verification of the source, they also indicate the source is available in the EBSCOhost database which is useful to know (even if the direct link no longer works at least it informs the right provider). I don't want to be in a position where links are deleted and someone complains and we have an argument and I have to restore etc.. it should be discussed first. Since they currently exist in the system and are dead I will go ahead and save them with archive URLs. But to delete them from Wikipedia is a separate idea, if there is consensus let me know I will go back and unwind the archives, except for the bare and square links. -- GreenC 18:28, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
- OK, thanks for adding the archive URLs. I agree that the archive URLs do somewhat usefully indicate that the source is (or, perhaps in some cases, was) available in an EBSCOhost database, but it also seems a little silly to archive an URL that is not the cited source but just another citation of the cited source (so it's a citation of an archive of a citation). But it's the easiest way to handle the situation. Biogeographist (talk) 18:50, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
- I can save links with archive URLs, but as for deleting all of these links that is beyond the bot's approval. There is an argument for keeping the links, they contain metadata that may not be in the citation itself allowing for easier verification of the source, they also indicate the source is available in the EBSCOhost database which is useful to know (even if the direct link no longer works at least it informs the right provider). I don't want to be in a position where links are deleted and someone complains and we have an argument and I have to restore etc.. it should be discussed first. Since they currently exist in the system and are dead I will go ahead and save them with archive URLs. But to delete them from Wikipedia is a separate idea, if there is consensus let me know I will go back and unwind the archives, except for the bare and square links. -- GreenC 18:28, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks. In my opinion, it would only be necessary to save the URLs if they were bare URLs without any of the other information required to locate the source. EBSCOhost is just a provider of article databases, like JSTOR or ProQuest. It's one of various ways to access the cited source; it's not the cited source itself. Another example would be how I recently added a JSTOR number to a citation in an article. The citation was fine without the JSTOR number; the addition of the JSTOR number just gives another way to access the source. The EBSCOhost Connection URLs are analogous to the JSTOR number, except that now EBSCOhost Connection does not give another way to access the source, so the EBSCOhost Connection URLs should be removed unless they are bare URLs. Biogeographist (talk) 17:31, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
Bot results:
- Added 1,069 new archive URLs
- Added 371
{{dead link}}(list on request)
Thank you, Biogeographist, for discovering this. Whenever or if, the bot can delete the URLs and remove "EBSCOhost" from fields like |publisher=, |via= and |work=. -- GreenC 03:04, 20 November 2020 (UTC)