{"id":33009,"date":"2021-07-02T14:59:05","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T18:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=33009"},"modified":"2021-07-06T14:43:50","modified_gmt":"2021-07-06T18:43:50","slug":"link-rot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/02\/link-rot\/","title":{"rendered":"Link Rot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Graham<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

As part of the Internet Archive’s aim to build a better Web<\/a>, we have been working to make the Web more reliable — and are pleased to announce that 9 million formerly broken links on Wikipedia now work because they go to archived versions in the Wayback Machine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Jonathan Zittrain<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

It turns out that link rot and content drift are endemic to the web<\/a>, which is both unsurprising and shockingly risky for a library that has “billions of books and no central filing system.” Imagine if libraries didn’t exist and there was only a “sharing economy” for physical books: People could register what books they happened to have at home, and then others who wanted them could visit and peruse them. It’s no surprise that such a system could fall out of date, with books no longer where they were advertised to be—especially if someone reported a book being in someone else’s home in 2015, and then an interested reader saw that 2015 report in 2021 and tried to visit the original home mentioned as holding it. That’s what we have right now on the web.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In 2010, Justice Samuel Alito wrote a concurring opinion in a case before the Supreme Court, and his opinion linked to a website as part of the explanation of his reasoning. Shortly after the opinion was released, anyone following the link wouldn’t see whatever it was Alito had in mind when writing the opinion.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

We found that 50 percent of the links embedded in Court opinions since 1996, when the first hyperlink was used, no longer worked. And 75 percent of the links in the Harvard Law Review<\/em> no longer worked.<\/p>\n

People tend to overlook the decay of the modern web, when in fact these numbers are extraordinary—they represent a comprehensive breakdown in the chain of custody for facts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Glenn Fleishman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

My first essay about the dangers of link rot appeared in Adobe Magazine in 1997. The link died and the location of the essay changed within a year or so. Now it’s entirely lost.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n