Wikipedia:Link rot/Usurpations

For other types of usurpation, see WP:USURP.

Usurped domains are used by spammers, squatters, malware, SEO, phishing or other fraudulent activity. Typically they are legitimate domains that expired and were hijacked.

How to usurpify a citation

The following is a decision tree for each citation. It can be followed manually, or implemented algorithmically by bot.

• Does the source URL have an archive available? If yes..
  • Is it in a CS1|2 template (eg. {{cite web}})? If yes..
    • Add |url-status=usurped, |archive-url= and |archive-date=
  • Is it a square-bracketed or bare URL? If yes..
    • Wrap the URL (with or without square brackets) in {{usurped}}

• Is no archive available? If yes..
  • Can the citation be verified if the URL was removed (eg. newspaper or journal content off-line)?
    • Remove the URL and keep the citation
  • Is the citation unverifiable without a URL (eg. web-only content)?
    • Remove the entire citation per WP:V: unverifiable

Bots

Bots that can usurpify automatically with the above steps:

• WP:WAYBACKMEDIC - report usurped domains to WP:URLREQ

See also

• WP:JUDI - ongoing mass usurpation of expired domains across all Wikimedia projects