I've been doing a lot of usurpation work with 100s of domains.
There are a two problems, the template behavior, and the best practices documentation. For the later, consensus discussion has been if a URL is usurped and no archive can be found the URL should be deleted as it can't be verified per WP:V. If it's a {{cite web}} the entire citation would be deleted. Given this best practice, the template would never be needed if there is no archive URL. If there is an archive URL it would also not be need. Ergo, the template would never be needed.
However there is another problem and that is square-links that have archive URLs. The problem is there is no indication the source URL is usurped. Tools such as reFill and manual processes blindly convert them to {{cite web}} without realizing they are usurped. This is a common conversion process. There needs to be a way to indicate a square (or bare) URL is usurped (when archived) so the URL is not re-activated by accident. This template might be that solution, but, it wouldn't do much other than maybe show a sup-script "usurped" tag. -- GreenC02:16, 5 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It was leftover from the previous version of the template and I left it because it sort of highlighted the link as something of note but it doesn't have to be there since there is a sup "usurped!". -- GreenC01:15, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I only encountered this template in archived links, which are of course not usurped, so for those the "highlighting" is unnecessary, distracting, and probably misleading. I suggest to removed it. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:17, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
MOS is for text in the encyclopedia, this is a maintenance message. We also have maintenance messages in red font and/or large font which probably goes against the MOS. I don't see how it hurts anything it's a strong warning the underlying URL could be dangerous. Like "Mines!" is better than "Mines". -- GreenC02:53, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
