This page documents my tagging of articles with the banner template {{ Cleanup Bare URLs}}.
I am using WP:AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) with a custom module to apply this banner to articles with multiple WP:bare URLs, following the criteria below.
The purpose of the {{ Cleanup Bare URLs}} banner is to draw the attention of editors to the presence in the articles of bare URL references, because they are seriously undermine the core policy of WP:Verifiability.
Criteria
I add the {{ Cleanup Bare URLs}} banner to an article which does not already have the banner, and which has :
- Five or more bare URLs, at least one of which does not have an inline tag ({{
Bare URL inline}}, {{
Bare URL PDF}}, {{
Bare URL DOC}}, {{
Bare URL image}}, {{
Bare URL spreadsheet}}, {{
Bare URL PDF}})
or - Seven or more bare URLs, even if all the bare URLs have an inline tag
Scope
On 14 June 2022, I made a list of all the 88,209 articles which had bare URL refs in the 2022601 database dump, and all ~55,000 articles which were currently tagged as having bare URLs. The two sets overlap, so the total was 134,234 articles.
My scan of those 134,234 articles found 2,831 articles which meet the criteria and not already have a {{ Cleanup Bare URLs}} banner. A further 659 articles already had the banner.
Definition
For this purpose, my definition of a bare URL is narrow:
Note that the definition of "bare URL reference" (BUR) used here is narrow: ref tags which contain only the URL, optionally preceded or followed by spaces, and/or enclosed in square brackets [].
For example:
- bare URL, with no spaces:
<ref>https://www.example.com/foo</ref> - bare URL, with spaces:
<ref> https://www.example2.com/foobar </ref> - bracketed URL, with no spaces:
<ref>[https://www.example.com/foo]</ref> - bracketed URL, with spaces:
<ref> [https://www.example2.com/foobar] </ref>
Examples of tagged bare URLs:
<ref>https://fishing.example.com/trawlers {{Bare URL inline|date=May 2022}}</ref><ref>https://surfing.example2.com/waves.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=April 2022}} </ref><ref>[https://whiskey.example.com/jamesons.jpg] {{Bare URL image|date=June 2022}}</ref>
Note that for this purpose, I do not treat as bare any URLs with other tags. The purpose of tagging bare URLs is to encourage editors to convert them to a full citation, but there is no point in asking editors to fill a URL tagged as {{ Dead link}}. Similarly, it would be silly to ask editors to fill a ref to URL which is tagged as {{ Nonspecific}}, {{ User-generated}} or {{ Better source needed}}: in those cases, the action required is to find a better source, not to polish thatP ref.
Custom module
A copy of the custom module used in this tagging is at User:BrownHairedGirl/AddBUbanner/Module.
Questions
Why are bare URLs a problem?
See WP:Bare URLs#What is wrong with bare URLs?
Why not just fill the bare URLs, instead of tagging them?
That is a false dilemma. I do both.
Since May 2021, I have been working full-time on filling bare URLs, using a variety of tools, especially Citation bot. A number of other editors have also done a lot of work. As a result, the total number of articles with bare URLs has fallen from over 470,000 at the start of May 2021 to under 130,000 as of 14 June 2022.
However, this is slow work. All the tools available have limitations, and some have serious flaws. Some websites provide no data to tools or block tools (e.g. https://www.cbc.ca, https://www.researchgate.net), others provide flawed data, and many links are effectively dead but do not provide a clear indication of their demise. Other sites are paywalled, and hence inaccessible to tools.
Additionally, some type of links are to pages which carry no reliable metadata, and cannot be filled by any tool. These include hundreds of XML files on the US Congress websites, over 40,000 references to PDF files, and a few thousand links to image files.
After all the progress in the last year, Citation bot has almost reached the limit of what it can do to clear the backlog, and is now mostly just filling newly-added bare URLs. The residue needs manual attention ... and cleanup tags help editors to identify articles which need attention.
What tools are available to fill bare URLs?
Se User:BrownHairedGirl/No-reflinks_websites#Reference-filling_tools.
Why not add this banner template to all articles with bare URL refs?
I personally think that this would be a good idea. However, when I started doing that in May 2021, a number of editors objected that on an article with few bare URLs, the banner gives too much prominence to what they see as a minor issue.
I don't see bare URLs as a minor issue, but there didn't seem to be consensus for my view. So this task adds the banner only to articles with multiple bare URLs, per #Criteria above. As of 14 June 2022, the number of articles meeting those criteria is about 3,000 ... i.e. about 2.5% of all the articles with bare URLs. I hope that this is an acceptable compromise.
Why not just add an inline template to every bare URL ref?
Because some of the tools which can fill bare URLs do not support {{ Bare URL inline}}, notably WP:REFLINKS.
Why do so many articles have inline tags on bare URLs?
Mostly because I added them.
