Wikipedia:Shallow references
 | It has been suggested that this page be merged into Wikipedia:Citing sources. (Discuss) Proposed since March 2025. |
 | This is an information page. It is not an encyclopedic article, nor one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Link directly to documents cited, not to higher-level pages on websites where they are hosted. |
When citing a reference, with a URL, the URL should link to the document (web page) cited, not just the home page (or some other high level page) on the site which hosts that document. That is, please:
Link to this: https://www.ExampleNews.com/exact-link-to-individual-story
Don't just link this: https://www.ExampleNews.com/
However, sometimes it is impossible to link to the individual document (e.g., Damage Assessment Toolkit; see {{Cite DAT}}), or it is preferable to link elsewhere (e.g., news aggregators with short-lived links). Try to provide the most useful citation you can, even if an ideal link isn't possible.
History
[edit]This page was created because a music website declared that they didn't want anyone linking to individual webpages on their website. Editors disagreed that Wikipedia was required to remove deep links to that website in a 2013 discussion.