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'''[[Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#rfc_54A0047|Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)]]'''
{{rfcquote|text=
Should bots like Citation bot be allowed to remove redundant 'raw' [[PubMed]] URLs, and raw [[OCLC]] URLs when pmid/oclc identifiers are present. <span style="font-variant:small-caps; whitespace:nowrap;">[[User:Headbomb|Headbomb]] {[[User talk:Headbomb|t]] · [[Special:Contributions/Headbomb|c]] · [[WP:PHYS|p]] · [[WP:WBOOKS|b]]}</span> 09:25, 17 February 2025 (UTC)}}
'''Details'''
Following the [[Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1039#Discussion_(Citation_bot_and_its_operators)|last, extremely frustrating discussion]] about the behaviour of bots wrt to links, the consensus that 'emerged' from it was that Citation both was to leave urls alone, unless it was replacing them with a free alternative (e.g. {{para|url|https://paywall.com}} → {{para|doi|10.1234/654321}} + {{para|doi-access|free}} or {{para|url|https://paywall.com}} → {{para|url|https://freetoread.com}}).
However, there are two corner case I would like to establish consensus for the ''removal'' of a link.
* Links to [[PubMed]], e.g. {{para|url|https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/123456}}, which can be given through the standard parameter {{para|pmid|123456}}.
* Links to [[OCLC]], e.g. {{para|url|https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/123456}}, which can be given through the standard parameter {{para|oclc|123456}}.
The reason is that those links will ''never'' contain free versions of articles, they will link to either the PubMed database, which only contain abstracts (free versions would be hosted at [[PubMed Central]] instead), or the OCLC database, which formerly held google book previews (then deemed useful), but no longer does.
This means that these urls make it look like a free version is accessible, when really none are, making readers click through links that lead them to nowhere useful. Note that this isn't a proposal to removal any URL covered by an identifier (e.g. {{para|url|https://www.jstor.org/stable/123456}} → {{para|jstor|123456}}) that ''may or may not be free'', only these two, known to never host free versions.
 <span style="font-variant:small-caps; whitespace:nowrap;">[[User:Headbomb|Headbomb]] {[[User talk:Headbomb|t]] · [[Special:Contributions/Headbomb|c]] · [[WP:PHYS|p]] · [[WP:WBOOKS|b]]}</span> 09:25, 17 February 2025 (UTC)}}
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