Challenge of the Week: Help repair or resolve broken links

+17 votes
1.1k views

Hi WikiTreers!

imageWikiTree+ data analysis has found thousands of broken links inside profiles.

Sometimes it's just because there is a typo in the URL. More often, the webpage or website has moved, or no longer exists.

Each one needs personal attention from someone like you.

We want to correct/update the link if possible. If an updated link can't be found, we want to delete it and leave the rest of the source/reference, or the name of the website.

Fixing bad links helps all of us. Broken links make WikiTree look unreliable and out-of-date. Google ranks all our ancestor profiles lower in search results because of them.

Will you help fix some of these?

Please post an answer below if you'll be joining us, or if you have questions. Thank you so much!

in The Tree House by Eowyn Langholf G2G Astronaut (2.7m points)
retagged by Eowyn Langholf
Challenge is active.

You can ask Aleš any WikiTree+ or Data Doctor question here, to be answered live on April 5, or in our live Discord party on March 29.

Is the latest report Mar 19 as the link indicates?
Later today the 26th report will be published. Without the main wikitree+ server the things run much slower.
I thought it would be delayed. If it came up this week. Good luck with the new setup.

12 Answers

+14 votes
I'm happy to help. Sounds like fun.

Steph
by Stephanie Hill G2G6 Mach 6 (68.0k points)
+12 votes
I will help
by Liza Gervais G2G6 Pilot (538k points)
+11 votes
I would be happy to help.
by Lorraine Betts G2G5 (5.1k points)
+11 votes
Tip: try looking up the site for the broken links on the archive.org wayback machine
by Michelle Ketcham G2G6 Mach 2 (29.3k points)
+10 votes
I can help.
by Ralph Geer G2G6 Mach 5 (54.4k points)
+9 votes
Willing to help
by Laura Nixon G2G6 Mach 3 (35.3k points)
+7 votes
Wow! That is alot of broken links! I will try and fix some also :)
by Karyn Homburg G2G6 Mach 3 (33.0k points)
+6 votes
I'll do what I can. :-)
by Sandi Strong G2G6 Mach 3 (31.3k points)
+8 votes
It seems relatively important to point out that in many cases, someone may have archived the link that is now broken.

I would suggest that the first step to take when attempting to resolve a broken link, if its new location is not obvious, is to check archive.org.

If the broken link is https://xyz.example.com/somepage.html, you can go to:

https://web.archive.org/*/https://xyz.example.com/somepage.html

(i.e., prepend https://web.archive.org/*/ to the address) to get a list of the instances of that page which have been previously archived. If there are any, find the best one, and replace the original address with the archived address and put some notation, perhaps appending "(archived)" in the link text.

(And if you are making new links to external sites in your profiles, always archive the page you're citing, so that in the future, if the page disappears, there will be a backup!)

Cheers!
by Daphne Maddox G2G6 Mach 3 (32.8k points)
+5 votes
I'll help as much as I can.
by Gina Jarvi G2G6 Pilot (175k points)
+6 votes
I'll do what I can. I am, of course, most concerned about the profiles I manage, but there are so many that I need help. Is there a way to filter out only those profiles from the list that I manage? This would be a great tool for me to prioritize my efforts.
by Gus Gassmann G2G6 Mach 6 (67.1k points)
Gus, if you look at your own Suggestions link towards the bottom of the My WikiTree menu on any profile, I think you will find that you do not have any suggestions on profiles you manage in the Error 96x classes for broken links.
That is good to know. I will then focus attention on fixing orphaned profiles, which are a generally neglected group, pretty much by definition, and deserve at least this much attention.
+3 votes
I’ll help fix some!
by Paul Brown G2G2 (2.1k points)

Related questions

+12 votes
10 answers

WikiTree  ~  About  ~  Help Help  ~  Search Person Search  ~  Surname:

disclaimer - terms - copyright

...