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Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

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Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#41

Post by dublinben »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #30

I 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 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.

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#42

Post by dragonwriter »

nonchalance wrote: post #40
phogster wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Are you citing the links, or the pages they reference? What about videos?

You are citing a source. MLA and other schemes require you to give an access date, and the only way to definitively prove you saw content on a given date is to provide the content you saw. Web servers don't magically give users a way to go back in time. Whether PDF is an appropriate format is a different story.

> the only way to definitively prove you saw content on a given date is to provide the content you saw.

Providing a copy of the content that you claim is the source does not come anywhere close to definitively proving that that content is the content at the cited source on the identified date.

All it does is provide what you claim to be the original source, which, assuming that you do it honestly, provides the content backing the characterizations for which you cited, and the context for any limited excerpts you quoted. So, its useful, but not as proof that you saw the content in the cited source on that date.

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#43

Post by lifeisstillgood »

dublinben wrote: post #41
jaysonelliot wrote: post #30

I 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 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.

fantastic - simple easy solution to the basic problem, supported by a university that is not going anywhere soon. well worth getting into a habit for

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#44

Post by nitrogen »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #33
martindale wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Build awareness of the importance of the permanence of URIs and what they mean to Hypertext. The only full solution is a cultural one, not a technological one.

Sure, sure. That's comparable to how to fix communism. All we need to do is change the way human beings work, change fundamental economic incentives, and everything will be golden. It's just not possible. There's only one way to fix these problems, and it's not something most people are ready to accept. It's to turn the internet inside out, from a client-server model to a store-and-forward model. It's to treat web co…

Sounds like content-centric networking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-centric_networking

There are upsides, like decentralization, and downsides, like everybody knowing exactly what data you're asking for if it's strictly addressed by hash (no way of obscuring your political activities from an oppressive regime by using an unrelated name for common data).

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#45

Post by ademarre »

The point "about the transience of linked information" has been made. But the problem isn't new to anyone, including NYT. It should pointed out that Justice Alito included a date with the URL, which allows the URL to function as a citation even after the content changes. It's no different than citing an unpublished source.

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#46

Post by penguat »

dragonwriter wrote: post #42
nonchalance wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are citing a source. MLA and other schemes require you to give an access date, and the only way to definitively prove you saw content on a given date is to provide the content you saw. Web servers don't magically give users a way to go back in time. Whether PDF is an appropriate format is a different story.

> the only way to definitively prove you saw content on a given date is to provide the content you saw. Providing a copy of the content that you claim is the source does not come anywhere close to definitively proving that that content is the content at the cited source on the identified date. All it does is provide what you claim to be the original source, which, assuming that you do it honestly, provides the conten…

I suppose anyone who wanted to be securely citable could provide some sort of checksum?

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#47

Post by anonymoushn »

bcoates wrote: post #8

I'm more worried that the Justice Alito is apparently unaware of the phenomenon of vaporware: There are games in which a player can take on the identity and reenact the killings carried out by the perpetrators of the murders at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech. But both the news article and the now defunct website he cites clearly state that the game doesn't exist. http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/04/20/school-sh…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Tech_Rampage

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#48

Post by jaggederest »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #35
jaggederest wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That exists. Fair use covers non-profit educational uses, such as the awesome Internet Archive: http://archive.org/

Archive.org, as cool as it is, does not archive the entirety of the internet. Moreover, it's a bit silly to posit that one website that we can surely rely on to exist always! is the solution to the fact that you can never rely on the existence of any particular website in the future.

No, I'm not saying that "the internet archive completely solves this problem", what I'm saying is "there exists no legal barrier to making something like this a reality, since things like the internet archive already exist".

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#49

Post by dublinben »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #43
dublinben wrote: post #41

Earlier 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.

fantastic - simple easy solution to the basic problem, supported by a university that is not going anywhere soon. well worth getting into a habit for

It's not just supported by a single university, but multiple university libraries on multiple continents, as well as archive.org.

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#50

Post by VMG »

ynniv wrote: post #34
jaysonelliot wrote: post #30

I 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…

Except that your shortener service won't last as long as your print issues either. With the original URL there's still the hope that the Wayback Machine is still maintained and had visited the page. It's a hard problem.

They could simply list the expanded links on the last page of the magazine.
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