Challenge of the Week: Help repair or resolve broken links

Question

Hi WikiTreers!

WikiTree+ 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, there may be a copy of it on Archive.org's Wayback Machine. If nothing can be found, delete the link but retain the rest of the source/reference and 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 Broken links make WikiTree look unreliable and out-of-date.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!

Comments

Challenge is active.

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Suggestion: just comment out the broken link rather than deleting it and add a note at the end.  For example:

<!-- http://eicokoiv.com/  commented out broken link -->

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Well, that's a temporary fix, IMO. I'd rather find a working link, if possible. For example, I just fixed one by finding a link to an obituary to replace the broken link.

But then I went down a rabbit hole looking up other sources, adding them, researching what a cotton mill duffer does (out of curiosity), and adding that category, and another category....... two hours later, I had one of these broken links done. Can't help myself.

I'm sure there's a happy medium.

Answer 1

I’m happy to help fix the broken links.

Answer 2

I would love to help broken links. :)

Answer 3

I will work on this one this week. I had been working on broken links to graememoad.com recently, there are hundreds! Would be nice to get that number down.

Answer 4

Count me in!

Answer 5

Oooh, I’ll fix some Holocaust profile-related ones…. I found the new web host for an old pdf link some months ago, and archived it, I’ve been slowly fixing the profile group! I’ll try to get them done!

Answer 6

Will try to help with a few

Answer 7

A little late to the party but happy to help… I’m wondering if there’s a way to filter the suggestion report so I can focus on suggestions from Ireland?  Any help appreciated.

Thanks.

Comments

Karen,

There may be a better way, but here is my method.

Click on one of the larger groups, for example, Error 965 has over 114,000 profiles in the 1800-1899 time frame. Click that number to open them all up, then use your browser Search or Find on Page to look for Ireland. I just tried it and it found 80 instances of Ireland. That ought to keep you busy for a day or two. :-)

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Thank you Laura - that works! Also, yesterday I played around with the search fields in WikiTree+... I tried:  Suggestions - (pick the error number you want), then in "text search" I added orphan ireland 20cen to narrow the results down the way I wanted... yay, it worked!

Answer 8

I'll be happy to help with some Massachusetts ones! Some are just typos so are super-easy to fix :)