Ask HN: Why has Stanford killed the home page of John McCarthy?

#1

Post by Lindemann » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 8:50 PM UTC

Since a few weeks http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc is down. This is super annoying, because tons of links pointing to this site and didn't work anymore. Why would Stanford want to destroy all that knowledge?

You can visit a capture of JMCs site here: http://web.archive.org/web/20131011125002/http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/

Re: Ask HN: Why has Stanford killed the home page of John McCarthy?

#2

Post by ggchappell » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 9:01 PM UTC

It was probably done by someone who'd never heard of Dr. McCarthy, as a matter of standard procedure. Stanford hosts websites for employees. Is one J. McCarthy still an employee? Nope, so kill the site.

You might want to send a formal request (to whom I don't know) to have the page permanently hosted. Possibly some form of petition might help.

Re: Ask HN: Why has Stanford killed the home page of John McCarthy?

#3

Post by kennethtilton » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 9:03 PM UTC

Thanks, your query led to my belated discovery of http://cs.stanford.edu/jmc

And this: http://library.stanford.edu/collections/john-mccarthy-papers...

Agreed, tho, the links should be salvaged.

Re: Ask HN: Why has Stanford killed the home page of John McCarthy?

#4

Post by Lindemann » Sun, Dec 15, 2013, 1:54 AM UTC

Update:

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc is back...finally!