This is an interesting demonstration of the dangers of mutability in the presence of shared state.
maybe shared state is the mistake. mutability is kind of a physical law.
Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?
61–70 of 98 posts
Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?
#62found the original page!
Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?
#63I publish a print magazine. Up to this point, we've avoided printing URLs in the magazine, because our printed issues may last longer than the links will stay live. To solve the problem, we're launching our own link shortener this month, and printing our own shortened links in the magazine. That way we can control what happens when link rot sets in, whether redirecting or caching content on our own servers if necessa…
I remember PC World started doing this back in like 2003. Makes sense, I think. But how are you solving the problem any better than a reader can armed with (1) the date on your cover, (2) the original URL, and (3) the Internet Archive Wayback Machine? Are you aggressively caching every page, even if you don’t make the cache public for a number of years?
we did that on folha de s.paulo newspaper in brazil in the late 90's
but mostly to link to the online version of the site the newspaper owned. it was a way to give out more data for a news piece that could not fit in the paper. Usually external urls were printed in the paper anyway.
Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?
#64Had to use the good old "Wayback machine" to see what was originally on that site that warranted some citing in court case. Looks like it was all about the school shootings. here's the link: http://bit.ly/1bF1kB4
I think HN recommends not using link shorteners. It's nice to know that people aren't tracking your clicks.
Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?
#65I publish a print magazine. Up to this point, we've avoided printing URLs in the magazine, because our printed issues may last longer than the links will stay live. To solve the problem, we're launching our own link shortener this month, and printing our own shortened links in the magazine. That way we can control what happens when link rot sets in, whether redirecting or caching content on our own servers if necessa…
I suppose it doesn't hurt that you can also then glean statistics over what your readers are checking out.
Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suggest you take a look at the perma.cc initative. There's no reason to reinvent the robust shortlink, and you won't be obligated to run this system forever.
Perma.cc appears to be targeted at links in published journals: After the paper has been submitted to a journal, the journal staff checks that the provided Perma.cc link actually represents the cited material. If it does, the staff “vests” the link and it is forever preserved. Links that are not “vested” will be preserved for two years, at which point the author will have the option to renew the link for another two…
I'm sure they'll be willing to work with other publishers as well. From talking to the project manager, they don't seem to have any goal of restricting this to academic publications.
Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?
#67[deleted]
Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
They could simply list the expanded links on the last page of the magazine.
Does any existing publication do this? Because providing both shortened and full URLs like this sounds like a great (i.e., retrospectively obvious) way to achieve a balance between "UX" of the magazine and longevity.
Yes. CrossRef.org, which is the registration agency for DOIs (digital object identifiers) does this for URLs in basically the entire scholarly publishing industry. This combats link rot by ensuring that the database of metadata is always up-to-date, and with other initiatives.
Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?
#69So, what's the solution, here? It seems reasonable for a court opinion to include a copy of the source, if possible. What about for something like a YouTube video, which could disappear at any time, but can't be represented on paper? How would you agree on a digital format for representing a supreme court opinion?
Put the documents on bittorrent and let the world mirror it for you.
Using DHT could be a really powerful solution for this.
Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?
#70The industry standard for citations between scholarly publications is CrossRef, which is the official DOI link registration agency for scholarly and professional publications. I don't know what the original document said, but if it was a scholarly publication, the citation should/could have been done by DOI. DOIs resolve to URLs, but publishers have a mandate to keep them up-to-date.
http://crossref.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier http://www.doi.org/
(I work for CrossRef)