[LINK] Link Survival

[Roger Clarke]

No, not the survival of this list.

I mean the extent to which you can rely on bookmarked links.

A week ago, I added an Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) link into:
http://www.privacy.org.au/Resources/Contacts.html#PolP

The link was:
Electoral Commission list of currently registered Parties
http://www.aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/Party_Registration/Registered_parties/Current/index.htm

I followed the link this morning, and ... it's broken.

I knew what I wanted, and the pretty clear drop-down menu system 
(which works in Safari - in which many MSIE-only menu schemes 
malfunction) enabled me to navigate through one subsidiary page to 
the information's new location at:
http://www.aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/Party_Registration/Registered_parties/index.htm

There's no indication where to send emails about web-site problems, 
but I sent one to webmaster at aec.gov.au anyway.

The good news:  The email-address exists, and is monitored, and I had 
a phone-call within minutes.

The reasonably good news:  They've just released a new site, ready 
for the election, the first re-do in 4 or 5 years.  As mentioned 
above, the first impression of its navigation design is positive, and 
the site looks functional, and pleasant-to-look-at rather than flashy 
and overdone.

The not so good news:  They took no care to sustain links, because 
that's how it is.  He very quickly lost interest when I explained the 
problem, i.e. it was a courtesy call, rather than an attempt to build 
on the previous study of user needs and learn about what the public 
thinks of the site and what can be done about the not-so-good bits.

(In a similar vein:  a financial institution called me this morning, 
asking if I was satisfied with their service.  I said 'well, it's 
working *now*, but there were about 5 things that went wrong when I 
joined up 9 months ago'.  He smiled, said 'well if anything goes 
wrong, just call us', took no notes, and hung up.  Are consumers 
*really* impressed with vacuous courtesy calls like that?  They lost 
all chance of ever getting any more business than the one mortgage 
I've already taken out with them).

It's very poor that service to existing customers is so low a priority.

Maintaining symbolic links from old URLs to new ones might seem like 
a really difficult thing to do when you've got thousands of pages; 
but if it's a requirement from the outset, it's very simple to 
structure a cross-reference table and then auto-generate symbolic 
links.

It's also easy to analyse web-logs to establish an 80/20 distribution 
(probably more like 90/10, and hence only 10% need to be maintained 
long-term).

Okay, pages that are generated from scripts require a different 
approach, and the specifics depend on the development tools;  but 
difficult?  No.

What's an the appropriate vehicle to pursue web-site consumer matters?

ISOC?

AGIMO?

IIA?

The Link Institute?


-- 
Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW