Wikipedia:Bare URLs
 | This is an information page. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, but rather intends to describe some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Simply copying and pasting the URL of an online reference is not ideal, exposing the reference to linkrot. It is preferable to use proper citation templates when citing sources. |
A bare URL is a URL cited as a reference for some information in an article without any accompanying information about the linked page. In other words, it is just the text out of the URL bar of a web browser copied and pasted into the Wiki text, inserted between <ref></ref> tags or simply provided as an external link, without title, author, date, or any of the usual information necessary for a bibliographic citation or helping to fix external links that no longer work because the linked web pages or complete websites disappear, change their content, or move without HTML redirection—so-called link rot.