[LINK] Fixing Broken *External* Links

[Roger Clarke]

>>  From: Roger Clarke
>>  Downside:  lazy webmasters who break lots of links every time they do
>>  a refresh of the colour-scheme and/or navigation on their site would
>>  be rewarded for their laziness and sub-professionalism.

At 13:45 +1100 1/3/09, Ash Nallawalla wrote:
>I don't think a significant part of the web will participate in this idea
>unless this is limited to the home page URL. The non-lazy webmasters who
>know about 301 redirection will enable it properly so that link juice is
>transferred to the new URL and anyone trying the old link will get to some
>usable page, if not the exact replacement.

Ash, you must be much more of a glass-half-full kind of person than me.

And/or you must experience a different sub-set of webmasters  (:-)}

 From what I see of web-sites, I doubt if all *that* big a proportion 
would even notice that such a thing was going on.

However, back to the main point:  That's fine;  because 'the good 
webmasters' (nomatter what proportion it is) have the problem covered 
already.  This is all about 'the bad webmasters' (whatever 
proportion, number, and number of URLs that may represent) and 
contriving a way to cope with their inadequacies.

Jan, PURLs are for 'the good webmasters' (which, I regret having to 
admit, doesn't include me);  but by definition they aren't used by 
the bad ones.
http://www.purl.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_Uniform_Resource_Locator


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

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