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External links
Could we please have a version of this template which can be used for bare URLs in External links? I'd tagged an article but the tag was removed on the accurate grounds that "those are not cites". Yes, they're not cites, but they are still bare URLs in an article which ought to be converted into properly formatted links. PamD 17:23, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
- PamD AFAIK the only way to have refill or reflinks format EL's is to put them inside <ref></ref> tags. Now they can also be done manually, one at a time - for example [urladdress information] or [http://getjackdempsey.com Dempsey/Goldstein Music Site]. Regards. MarnetteD|Talk 17:43, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
- Another possibility is to list an article with bare ELs at Wikipedia:Cleanup. Maybe the wikignomes that work there would like to take on that task. I don't know that for sure but it is a possibility. MarnetteD|Talk 17:47, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
- @MarnetteD: Are you saying that this maintenance tag is only for use in cases where a bot can do the work, not for tagging a fault which could be worked on by a human editor? In which case we surely need another tag and maintenance category, rather than just leave Bare URLs lying around in articles. PamD 17:49, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
- Yes this is for dealing with bare url as references not ELs. MarnetteD|Talk 17:51, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
- I restate my original request, then: Could we have a version of this template, or a new template, which will allow editors to tag bare URLS which are not refs? PamD 18:09, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Matthiaspaul: I think you were posting on the same topic above. PamD 18:10, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
- Jeepers I had a brain freeze this morning - refill will format els in the same way that manual formatting works. I just ran it on the article in question. It does not put them in a cite template as they are not references. If that is what you are aiming for you will need to ask at a village pump since there are is no one who maintains the tools has this page on their watchlist. MarnetteD|Talk 18:53, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
Excessive usage?
Not sure who has this on Watchlist, so let me first make a pinging post: @MarnetteD, PamD, BrownHairedGirl, and Matthiaspaul: - I just picked four frequent names, do feel free to ping other interested parties. CapnZapp (talk) 07:37, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
- I'm here, as summoned, but have no idea what you want to talk about. Please clarify! PamD 07:42, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Okay, so I have noticed there's a very aggressive drive (or project etc) to point to Bare URL's lately. Just in March alone there appears to have been added over forty thousand instances of this template at the top of articles.
This gotta stop.
If I assume good faith, the purpose is to help y'all to better help each other to find and fix Bare URL's. That's fine. If you didn't put the banner at the top of the article! Or, if (as is alluded to in a previous talk section) you clean up articles just as quickly as you tag them. However, as a tool for internal communication, an invisible category (or something) would work just as fine. That forces me to conclude your aim isn't (only) to coordinate your efforts, but also to shame Bare URL's.
Stop this at once! Please, and thank you.
If you wish Bare URLs to be seen by the project as something bad or shameful or insufficient, bring it up to a sitewide discussion. Until then, you simply must contain your frustrations. I am going to assume everybody reading this agrees fully to the following:
- Bare URL's are much better than no references at all, and Wikipedia thanks the users that add them. While Bare URLs aren't perfect, they sure are better than nothing at all. In fact, the Bare URL is the most valuable part of a citation - everything else is just gravy. Moreover, adding references is somewhat timeconsuming and awkward (for new and old users alike), and in practice the alternative to a Bare URL is often no contribution at all. — CapnZapp 07:52, 5 April 2022 — continues after insertion below
- I am breaking convention to interject in the middle of CapnZapp's post to note that this assumption is not only only untrue, but is known by CapnZapp to be untrue. The relevant guidance is at WP:Bare_URLs#What_is_right_with_bare_URLs?, and it notes the problems with bare URLs. CapnZapp is aware of this, since he was party to the recent discussions on the guidance, which rejected the view he asserts in the block above.
CapnZapp should not try to mislead. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:42, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
- I am breaking convention to interject in the middle of CapnZapp's post to note that this assumption is not only only untrue, but is known by CapnZapp to be untrue. The relevant guidance is at WP:Bare_URLs#What_is_right_with_bare_URLs?, and it notes the problems with bare URLs. CapnZapp is aware of this, since he was party to the recent discussions on the guidance, which rejected the view he asserts in the block above.
Feel free to discuss, but I'm asking you to stop putting this template at the top of so many articles unless you can show you are cleaning them up at the same pace. I see no greater consensus for your project where people are aware of lousing down the entire Wikipedia with this template.
In short: don't put this template on top of every article with a Bare URL - it is counterproductive and only makes Wikipedia look bad. Cleanup tags lose their value if "every" article has them.
At the very least I urge you to consider stopping (semi-automated additions through scripts and bots) until >80% of existing instances of this tag has been resolved and removed.
CapnZapp (talk) 07:52, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
- @CapnZapp writes:
don't put this template on top of every article with a Bare URL
- So, some data:
- There are currently about 170,000 articles with WP:Bare URLs. (numbers from my scans of the 20220401 database dump)
- {{Cleanup bare URLs}} currently has 2038 transclusions, of which 1,589 are in articles
- so the assertion that people are
lousing down the entire Wikipedia with this template
is utter nonsense.
- The tags are being added and removed all the time. I run a regular AWB job to remove redundant {{Cleanup bare URLs}} tags. In the last few months, the total number of pages tagged with {{Cleanup bare URLs}} has fallen from over 7,000 in mainspace to under 1,600 in mainspace.
- The background to this is that @CapnZapp refuses to fill any URLs he adds, and actively opposes cleanup efforts. For an example of CapnZapp's active efforts to oppose cleanup of bare URls, see WT:Bare URLs#"we_don't_need_this" (permalink]).
- Many editors are working hard to fill the bare URLs which newbie editors (and some lazy editors like CapnZapp) have added and left to rot. But yet again, instead of trying to help, CapnZapp is harassing those who do this cleanup work, and makes a wholly bogus assertion that the aim of tagging is to
to shame Bare URL's
. As has been pointed out to CapnZapp many times before, the aim is not to "shame" anything or anyone: it is to mark a problem which should be fixed. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:14, 5 April 2022 (UTC)- PS CapnZapp seems unaware of — or even contemptuous of — the huge work that is being done to fill bare URLs.
- MarnetteD does a lot of work on filing them. So does Derek R Bullamore, and Storchy. PamD does some too.
- And for the lst nine months, I have worked full time on en.wp doing almost nothing else but tag and/or fill bare URLs, using a huge variety of tools. Rlink2 is also doing a lot of excellent work, using skilled programming to rescue dead links and archive refs.
- The result of all this work is that the total number of article-space pages with bare URLs is has fallen by about 60%: from ~470,00 in May 2021 to to ~170,00 now.
- I do not expect CapnZapp to say "thank you all for cleaning up after me". But I am utterly fed up with CapnZapp's harassment of the editors who clean up the mess he makes, and with his endless assumptions of bad faith, and with his absurdly hyperbolic assertions such as
Cleanup tags lose their value if "every" article has them
. Thanks to the ongoing cleanup effort, {{Cleanup bare URLs}} is only on about 0.025% of articles. - Zapp, how about you stop sniping and exggerating and ABFing ... and start helping? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:30, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
- @CapnZapp, if you feel lazy to use citation templates, you could at the very least use the bracketed form (e.g:
<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia, the free Encylopedia]</ref>
. While some would prefer the usage of citation tempates, using this way is also acceptable per WP:CITEVAR (Correct me if I am wrong). Many veteran editors to this day use this style. However, bare refs (URLS with no other contextual information) are not acceptable via consensus because it leaves no information about the URL in question. Saying "Bare URLS are better than no reference at all" is like saying "Placing the links to the references in the article text itself (not even using the ref tag) is better than no reference at all" or "placing the references before the article itself is better than no reference at all, even though the readers have to scroll all the way down." - Would you like it if your job or employer only paid half of your salary, and when you confronted them, they said "Being paid some money is better than being paid no money at all"?
- BrownHairedGirl has been editing Wikipedia since 2006 - that's a long time. For perspective, In 2006, Bush was still president and Youtube/Facebook/Twitter were barely a thing. These singers were still popular as well, the iPhone didn't exist in 2006 either.
- Due to her extensive experience on Wikipedia, she's seen first hand the damage bare URLs can do to the project. So when she says Bare URLS should be filled, she's basing her opinion of a a decade and a half of experience on this website. Experience very few others have.
- Brownhairedgirl and others have given reasons for why bare URLs should not be placed in, but I can't see any reasons coming from you that show bare URLs are a good thing.
in practice the alternative to a Bare URL is often no contribution at all.
Wikipedia has tens of thousands of contributors and the majority of them are not adding bare URLS at all. The alternative to a Bare URL is a citation with the title of the source included, at the minimum.- Per Wikipedia policy:
Contributors whose actions over a period of time are detrimental to the goal of creating a high-quality encyclopedia may be asked to refrain from those actions, when other efforts to address the issue have failed, even when their actions are undertaken in good faith.
. And that's exactly what Primefac and BrownHairedGirl have done in the discussion above. What sets Wikipedia apart from other wikis (Fandom, Miraheze, RationalWiki, etc...) is the way we treat sources and citations (not to say the other wikis are low quality, its just that their goals, purpose, and focus are different). - Another relevant section of policy is :
While editors are expected to follow Wikipedia policies and practices to the best of their abilities, they are not expected to be perfect. However, they are expected to listen to feedback from others and, where appropriate, learn from it. Repeated and serious editing errors can be disruptive as they create unnecessary work for others.
and that is also what is happening here, because editors are forced to clean up after any possible additions of Bare URLs. So while I don't think adding Bare URLS is disruptive when someone is unaware of the downsides, it can be construed that that continuing to add them while knowing about the downsides, which goes against clear consensus, and while having no clear reason for doing so, is a different story. At the very least, if you are going to add Bare URLs, you should have a good reason for doing so, like I said above. - Brownhairedgirl has spent nearly 70 hours a week on cleaning up bare URLs. The mininum wage in Ireland is 12 dollars an hour. Her work is much more valuable and skilled then 12 dollars an hour, so let's say she was hypothetically being paid 25 dollars an hour for her work. 25 dollars * 70 hours * 4 weeks * 9 months is $63,000 dollars. So that means that BrownHairedGirl has peformed about $63,000 dollars worth of work on Wikipedia in the past 9 months to clean up bare URLs. That's alot of hypothetical money, and work. Combine everyone elses work on cleaning bare URLS, we are talking about thousands of hours of man time and hundreds of thousands of dollars in hypothetical money and worth.
- At the end of the day, if you still don't understand, I agree with Johnuniq's suggestion:
Please just make a proposal for a change and give a reason for why it should be implemented.
- the village pumps are always there. - cc @BrownHairedGirl Rlink2 (talk) 14:28, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
- You appear to be writing under the assumption I want to change anything - I don't. (Unless you suggest I need to go to the pumps to change how this template gets used? If so, no, the current discussion is enough for me at least) But when BHG wrote "The fact that you choose to repeatedly add bare URLs despite knowing the problems with them simply means that you are one of those selfish editors who intentionally edits in a way which requires others to clean up after them. Please stop being selfish", my response is "so you want me to stop adding references altogether?" Thus far, we haven't been able to get to the crux of the issue. BHG makes it out to be like I'm harassing her. I am not. I have no need for big emotions or drama; I just want her to understand that if she were to successfully prohibit users from adding bare URLs the alternative would most likely be that no references at all would be added, and I have a hard time wrapping my head around that thinking. To me, that indicates someone too frustrated with their (valuable) cleanup work. To me, such a person sees only/mostly problems with bare URLs instead of mostly seeing value. If you Rlink2 want to make the sitewide case that adding bare URLs is disruptive when the editor no longer is a newbie (my words not yours), you should go ahead with that. It is as far as I can see not at all the case currently. To the best of my knowledge references are only discussed on a few pages, and bare URLs are hardly mentioned at all outside of Bare URLs - which isn't even policy or guideline. I'm basing my stance on what I can read in our documentation, and what I see is
- @CapnZapp, if you feel lazy to use citation templates, you could at the very least use the bracketed form (e.g:
Adding a bare URL reference to Wikipedia is much more helpful than no reference. If you only have time and inclination to copy the reference URL you found, that is a helpful first step, and we thank you for your contribution!
- This, by the way, is the current version which BHG, Marnette and Primefac have all edited more recently than I. If you can point me to an actual policy or guideline that prohibits (does not welcome, strongly discourages, hates, finds unhelpful or disruptive, or somesuch) the contributing of references in the form of Bare URLs (and thus also the rejection of additions that thus would go unsourced) we should certainly rephrase the above. Myself I would see that as a huge blow to Wikipedia's friendliness and ease of use, and I reject BHG's view that I am somehow disruptive to the project. Now then - do you still think I don't "understand"? Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 18:37, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
- @CapnZapp
so you want me to stop adding references altogether?
- Using the previous examples, imagine if your employer said "Yeah, were paying you half of what we promised, but do you want us to stop paying you completely?"
- Imagine if you blanked the article with the ref, and a note that says "If you want the full article go to the page history", and you tell the person who reverts your edit that "so you want me to stop adding references all together"?
- Imagine if you put in the ref tag that the link to the source is on your talk page or is hidden in a comment on another article, and someone says that you should actually put in the article, would you tell them that "so you want me to stop adding references all together"?
- Imagine if you just randomly placed the link in the middle of the article, in a place where it doesn't even belong, in the middle of sentnces, and when someone asks you to do it the right way, you say: "this is easier for me; do you want me to stop adding references all together?"
- You get the idea.
want to make the sitewide case that adding bare URLs is disruptive when the editor no longer is a newbie (my words not yours)
I never said that. I quoted Wikipedia policy that states engaging in activites that go against consensus is disruptive, especially when other people have pointed out the errors in the editing.I have no need for big emotions or drama;
Me neither. I dont like drama.To me, that indicates someone too frustrated with their (valuable) cleanup work.
You opened up with this thread demanding that the cleanup work should stop. You saidStop this at once! Please, and thank you.
in your first post here.I just want her to understand that if she were to successfully prohibit users from adding bare URLs the alternative would most likely be that no references at all would be added
andMyself I would see that as a huge blow to Wikipedia's friendliness and ease of use
Reminder that 99% of the URLS added to Wikipedia daily are not bare URLs, so the result of Bare URLS being banned is that the few people adding bare URLs will learn the "right" way of doing stuff.I'm basing my stance on what I can read in our documentation
The documentation is supposed to reflect consensus. If there is a difference between what the conesnsus is and what the documentation is, the consensus wins and the documentation needs to be updated. That phrase was added in only after you started complaining about Bare URLs being a good thing.If you can point me to an actual policy or guideline that prohibits
Policies reflect conesnus, and the conensus is that bare URLS should not be added if at all possible. In this case, it is possible to not use Bare URLs, but you don't want to and haven't given a reason for why.- If you think Bare URLs are good, we would like to hear your reasoning behind it. Rlink2 (talk) 19:25, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
- I am not interested in arguing "Bare URLs are good", the Bare URL essay already tells me that (and the absence of even a mention of bare URLs in the overarching policy documents re: citations is also telling). If you believe "the conensus is that bare URLS should not be added if at all possible" you are (once again) welcome to change the documentation to "reflect" that consensus (and ideally you would edit a policy or guideline, not merely an essay). Myself, I think that if that indeed were the consensus somebody would have attempted to "reflect" that view in the documentation. Before the current spate of edits, say July last year (but do feel free to pick your own revision), the section called "What is wrong with bare URLs?" began with: "There is nothing wrong with adding bare URL references to Wikipedia. If you only have time and inclination to copy the reference URL you found, we thank you for your contribution!" I can only assume the document indeed does reflect consensus here - the meaning if not the phrasing remains essentially intact today! CapnZapp (talk) 20:41, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
- @CapnZapp
you are (once again) welcome to change the documentation to "reflect" that consensus (and ideally you would edit a policy or guideline, not merely an essay).
You are missing the point of what I am trying to say. This is not about the documentation (or lack thereof). You started the thread asking the editors working on Bare URLs to stop their work becauseThis gotta stop.
, and thatWhile Bare URLs aren't perfect, they sure are better than nothing at all.
(both of which have been addressed) We wouldn't have even known you were adding bare URLs until you decided to bring it up.- For a moment, let's ignore the documentation. Let's focus on what editors are saying, because consensus, and not necessarily a guideline document, is what we have to follow. If a guideline said
"If you don't have the time to put your reference in a ref tag, feel free to just paste it randomly in the article, we thank you for your contribution!"
it doesn't mean there is consensus for that. - Similiarly, if your paycheck said
We don't have the resources to pay you what we promised, but thank you for your service!
you would be angry, wouldn't you? Before the current spate of edits, say July last year (but do feel free to pick your own revision), the section called "What is wrong with bare URLs?" began with: "There is nothing wrong with adding bare URL references to Wikipedia. If you only have time and inclination to copy the reference URL you found, we thank you for your contribution!"
Before you started all of this, the article had no such language. You added the language here in 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Bare_URLs&diff=928389198&oldid=925793258 and its been reworded and added upon since, but that was your addition. Maybe it was an acceptable addition then, but keep in mindConsensus is not immutable. It is reasonable, and sometimes necessary, for both individual editors and particularly the community as a whole to change its mind.
Rlink2 (talk) 21:14, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
- I am not interested in arguing "Bare URLs are good", the Bare URL essay already tells me that (and the absence of even a mention of bare URLs in the overarching policy documents re: citations is also telling). If you believe "the conensus is that bare URLS should not be added if at all possible" you are (once again) welcome to change the documentation to "reflect" that consensus (and ideally you would edit a policy or guideline, not merely an essay). Myself, I think that if that indeed were the consensus somebody would have attempted to "reflect" that view in the documentation. Before the current spate of edits, say July last year (but do feel free to pick your own revision), the section called "What is wrong with bare URLs?" began with: "There is nothing wrong with adding bare URL references to Wikipedia. If you only have time and inclination to copy the reference URL you found, we thank you for your contribution!" I can only assume the document indeed does reflect consensus here - the meaning if not the phrasing remains essentially intact today! CapnZapp (talk) 20:41, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
- @CapnZapp, this is the third page on which you have tried in the last few months to create a drama about bare URL cleanup.
- In each case, your vocal complaints are based on your false premises and your endless assumptions of bad faith.
- On this page you have asserted falsely that {{Cleanup bare URLs}} is being applied on a huge scale: that
people are lousing down the entire Wikipedia with this template
. Utter nonsense: the template has less than 1,600 uses in mainspace, and that number has been falling for three months. - The second false assumption is CapnZapp's statement to me
I just want her to understand that if she were to successfully prohibit users from adding bare URLs
. - This is also utter nonsense: I have no such goal, and I have not said anything which could be interpreted as a desire for prohibition. That is a complete fabrication.
- CapnZapp has also asserted that
your aim isn't (only) to coordinate your efforts, but also to shame Bare URL's
. This too is utterly false. - CapnZapp sys
BHG makes it out to be like I'm harassing her. I am not.
. That too is utter nonsense: the harassment is CapnZapp's assumptions of bad faith and repeated false claims. I am fed up with having to waste tine rebutting this barrage of nonsense. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:53, 5 April 2022 (UTC)- All this time I'm spending talking here is time I could be using to work on BareRefBot and similar. So this will probably be my last response.
- @CapnZapp, you have every right to hold your opinions. If you want to continue using bare URLs, I will respect your decision. No one will stop you from adding bare URLs to articles, if that's what you want to do. At the same time, respect should be given to the people that fill in the bare refs, because while you say a bare ref is better than no ref, I think we are all in agreement that a non bare ref is better than a bare ref. We did not approach you to stop using Bare URLs, you approached us to stop filling Bare URLs. Rlink2 (talk) 02:14, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
- I am certainly not stopping anyone from filling bare URLs, or trying to. I did ask the question whether it was necessary to involve highly public banners in that work, since it doesn't make sense to me to first welcome the contributions only to then slap a big banner on them. I still think nothing good will come out of the present attempt to making bare URLs out to be some kind of bogeyman, and I don't see where BHG has demonstrated the need to go about it this way. Maybe the (worthy) work could be done in a less conspicuous manner, that is more in the spirit of what I can read over at Bare URLs? CapnZapp (talk) 07:19, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
- The banners are fine: there is no harm in reminding editors that bare URL refs are below the expected standard and should be improved for the benefit of current and future readers of the article, and acknowledging to readers that this article is sub-optimal in that regard. PamD 07:25, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
- @CapnZapp writes
I still think nothing good will come out of the present attempt to making bare URLs out to be some kind of bogeyman
. - Yet more hyperbolic nonsense.
- See WP:Cleanup tags: the tags are used "to inform readers and editors of specific problems with articles or sections".
The notion that there is some attempt to portray bare URLs as abogeyman
is yet another assumption of bad faith by CapnZapp - The process of tagging bare URLs to assist cleanup has been ongoing since late May 2021. In that time, the number of articles with bare URLs has fallen from ~470,000 to ~170,000, a fall of over 60%. At the end of June 2021, the May 2021 and June 2021 categories of tagged articles had a combined total of over 30K pages, but as of now the combined total is only 2,063 pages.
Note that the fall in the total number of bare URLs is way higher than 60%, because many pages which had multiple bare URLs have been partially cleaned up by filling some of those bare URLs.
So the success of this approach is proven. And CapnZapp knows that, because I explained that 60% fall to him yesterday in my second reply to him on this page.
- See WP:Cleanup tags: the tags are used "to inform readers and editors of specific problems with articles or sections".
- Note that in the last 20 days, CapnZapp has made a total of 56 edits. 17 of those 56 (i.e 30%) are to non-article pages in pursuit of CapnZapp's efforts campaign against cleaning up bare URLs.
- CapnZapp's ABF rampage across 3 talk pages is unfounded in fact, and it amounts to harassment of those who are working hard to clean up the mess which CapnZapp intentionally creates. Enough! BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:46, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
- I am certainly not stopping anyone from filling bare URLs, or trying to. I did ask the question whether it was necessary to involve highly public banners in that work, since it doesn't make sense to me to first welcome the contributions only to then slap a big banner on them. I still think nothing good will come out of the present attempt to making bare URLs out to be some kind of bogeyman, and I don't see where BHG has demonstrated the need to go about it this way. Maybe the (worthy) work could be done in a less conspicuous manner, that is more in the spirit of what I can read over at Bare URLs? CapnZapp (talk) 07:19, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
- This, by the way, is the current version which BHG, Marnette and Primefac have all edited more recently than I. If you can point me to an actual policy or guideline that prohibits (does not welcome, strongly discourages, hates, finds unhelpful or disruptive, or somesuch) the contributing of references in the form of Bare URLs (and thus also the rejection of additions that thus would go unsourced) we should certainly rephrase the above. Myself I would see that as a huge blow to Wikipedia's friendliness and ease of use, and I reject BHG's view that I am somehow disruptive to the project. Now then - do you still think I don't "understand"? Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 18:37, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
- Bare URLs are inadequate references. They are better than nothing for most readers when they are created, but they may become useless in weeks, months or years when the source goes offline or is moved to a different URL. And they do not clearly show the reader what the source is, giving an indication of its usefulness. This is all well known, and BHG is doing amazing work to increase the usefulness of these bare url refs, which may have been added by inexperienced editors who don't know how to format a reference properly, or by those who do, or should, know but choose not to do things properly for reasons of laziness or otherwise. When BHG's work shows up on my (enormous) watchlist, I support her by fixing the identified refs ( recently a couple of Jerusalem post refs she had flagged as not fixable by Refill, if I remember rightly). I fully support BHG's work. If anyone finds the link rot template on a page unsightly, the remedy is in their hands: improve the encyclopedia by mending the refs. PamD 15:19, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
Mass spamming
The community will never keepup with this mass spamming (63,051 pages)t hat has zero benefits for readers .....infact will cause readers to move to other sites. sad times Moxy- 11:35, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
Placement location
I don't mind effort being made to clean-up bare URLs, but I question whether tagging this on top of the article in the lede section is the proper place. It's not a content warning - an article could hypothetically be FA-quality and have bare URLs in references - so the non-editing reader doesn't need to be warned. And we don't even want random people to necessarily have "fix a citation" to be their first Wikipedia task when they don't know the system. Rather, the target audience is hardcore editors with an article on their watchlist. Why not add this to the top of the "References" section, or the like? It'll still attract long-term editor attention that way, at least some, and it won't encourage banner blindness by sticking some rather abstruse complaint on top of articles. SnowFire (talk) 15:04, 14 August 2022 (UTC)