Help:Using WebCite: Difference between revisions

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{{ambox|type=content|text='''As of July 14, 2019, WebCite does not accept any new archive requests; previously archived pages can still be accessed, but this service cannot be used to make any new archives.'''}}

[[WebCite]] is an intermittently available [[web archiving]] service located at [https://www.webcitation.org/ https://www.webcitation.org/]. The archive no longer accepts new snapshots, and usage on English Wikipedia has been deprecated ([[Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_159#RfC:_Deprecate_webcitation.org_aka_WebCite|RfC]]) ie. without good reason you should not add new archives into Enwiki, and you should try to move existing snapshots to other archive providers, or refactor the citation to a different live link. WebCite's future is uncertain, and it'sits reliability is poor. For example it was offline for 1 year and 8 months during the period 2021-2023. Outages are tracked on the talk page of [[WebCite]].

==Long-form URLs==

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==Moving to a different provider==

You can help [[Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_159#RfC:_Deprecate_webcitation.org_aka_WebCite|deprecate WebCite!]]

You can help!

Ideas to get rid of WebCite links:

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# Find a different origin URL on the live web. For example, if the origin URL is to a Reuters story published in the NYT, there is a good chance that same Reuters story is available elsewhere. Use Google to search.

# Saving the WebCite link at archive.today works well and is recommended, however .. '''do not save at archive.org''' see "Things to be cautious of" below.

# PDF files at WebCite do not save correctly at archive.today

Saving a WebCite URL at archive.today follow these steps:

== Things to be cautious of ==

# Save https://www.webcitation.org/5QE8rvIqH?url=http://www.birdlife.org at archive.today which will generate short-form URL https://archive.today/Jrvg8

# URL shortening is disallowed on Wikipedia; click the "share" button to see the long form: https://archive.today/20070710111036/https://www.webcitation.org/5QE8rvIqH?url=http://www.birdlife.org

# A potential [[SNAFU]] is there might also be https://archive.today/20070710111036/http://www.birdlife.org but this will probably contain different content then what you just saved at https://archive.today/20070710111036/https://www.webcitation.org/5QE8rvIqH?url=http://www.birdlife.org

== Things to be cautious of: ==

* It is not possible to save WebCite URLs at archive.org - it may appear to save correctly, but is an unreliable method. For why see [[Talk:WebCite#general_problem|this discussion]].

* Be aware of "content drift". When a web page has content that changes over time, such as stock prices or weather updates, this is called "drift". When the original WebCite snapshot was created it contains the intended information eg. current status of a typhoon at a certain day and hour. However, this page may change quickly, anyand any future snapshot of that same page will have different information. Thus when finding snapshots at other archive providers, be aware of content drift for certain types of pages.

==See also==

===Docs===

* [[Wikipedia:Link rot]], how-to guide for prevention of link rot

* [[WikipediaHelp:UsingArchiving thea Wayback Machine|Using the Wayback Machinesource]], how-to guide

** [[WikipediaHelp:Using Archive.is|Usingthe Archive.todayWayback Machine]], how-to guide

** [[Help:Using archive.today]]
** [[Talk:Perma.cc#Perma.cc_and_Wikipedia|Using Perma.cc]]

===Tools===

* {{tl|User WebCite}}, userbox

* [[User:UBX/WebCite]], alternative userbox

* [[User:UBX/WebCite2]], "I donated" userbox

==Notes==