But I could put in a link to a dead site and use it to reference anything at all, true or false, and nobody would ever be able to dispute it. I think the reasonable thing to do is to leave the link in the wikitext, and comment it out with an explanation.
Out of print books, even the most esoteric, are still in libraries. Unless dead links are in an internet archive somewhere, they are nowhere at all. DGG
On 5/15/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/16/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
The objection of it being a subscription site is of course wrong, but it seems a little more complicated:
Some or all of the links reverted were to a dead site. This is a different problem. I really do not see a how a link to a site that cannot be reached by anyone at all is a reference. The only way to go would be to find it in a old file somewhere--or to have made a permanent link by one of the available methods in the first place, or to have an equivalent print link.
This is one of the known hazards of using purely online references.
The standard - and logical - guideline is to keep them as a record of what sources were used until we can find better ones. As [[WP:CITE]] notes, "When printed sources become outdated, scholars still routinely cite those works when referenced." An out-of-print book is still fair game, though if you can find a book that's still in print, you'd be an idiot not to use it.
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