Worldcat Entity links all changed?

I noticed the Edgar Broughton Band has a Worldcat link to https://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n91086058 which no longer works.

The replacement seems to be Edgar broughton band

Would this mean all Worldcat links need to be updated?

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According to Wikipedia:

Maintenance of WorldCat Identities was suspended and the service will be discontinued as it is being replaced by WorldCat Entities

… and apparently this means breaking the old URLs and identifiers entirely. Since the old URL does not redirect, it’s not really feasible to automatically update them to the new ones.

The worst possible thing for a provider of stable identifiers to do.

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From our ticket https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-13016 WorldCat Identities are discontinued since March 26th and MusicBrainz supports the new URLs since April.

Worldcat Identities are supposed to redirect ot Worldcat Entities.
For example Sting’s Worldcat Identity correctly redirects to his Worldcat Entity.
So the missing redirects are probably bugs, let’s hope that those are exceptions.

Absolutely but there are ~50k Worldcat Identities in the MusicBrainz database so it has better to be done by a bot, for those that redirect to Worldcat Entities at least; See https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBBE-78

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I only add Worldcat links when they come from the Wikidata page (via a userscript). I assume that now means all of their data is also duff?

Could I suggest to bump a warning on screen when we add data that tells us if it is old format? Then it can at least nudge the human to go check and fix.

It isn’t. I checked the 3 last such links you added, they all redirect correctly to Worldcat Entities.

We could do that but I expect that broken Worldcat redirects are just a few exceptions, editors shouldn’t really bother about this issue, and the bot will ultimately update those links.

Also the longer term plan is to make the editing form smart enough to help with checking for a redirect.

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Excellent. They would have been added while paying little attention to them. Usually I just give them a quick glance over to make sure Wikidata had the right entry (some lesser known people, common names can be wrongly linked in Wikidata)

That makes sense. If there are few errors then no point wasting time on them. :slight_smile:

I have no idea who the Worldcat is, but as I know Cats rule the internet I assume it is important for something. :smile_cat:

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The following discussion from Wikidata may be useful: Property talk:P10832 - Wikidata.