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

ssnat.com

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

#91

Post by ars »

fr0sty wrote: post #87
ars wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 necessary (and allowed by copyright). That seems worse to me. Sometimes you can gain some info by just the hostname, and pages in the URL. Now all you'll see is random numbers. And are you rea…

> You have to do it by hand you know. Periodically iterating through a set of links and comparing the returned content to a cached copy is trivial to implement.

Websites change all the time, while still having the same basic content.

So as I said, a tool can help, but it won't be trivial, and you'll still have lots of manual work.

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

#93

Post by frossie »

ademarre wrote: post #45

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 It's no different than citing an unpublished source.

In fact the actual court decision quoted has everything you would want to know about what was on the web page:

14 Webley, “School Shooter” Video Game to Reenact Columbine, Virginia Tech Killings, Time (Apr. 20, 2011), http://newsfeed.time.com/2011 / 04 / 20 / school - shooter - video - game - reenacts-columbine-virginia-tech-killings. After a Web site that made School Shooter available for download removed it in response to mounting criticism, the developer stated that it may make the game available on its own Web site. Inside the Sick Site of a School Shooter Mod (Mar. 26, 2011), http://ssnat.com.

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

#94

Post by indrax »

ynniv wrote: post #57
VMG wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think this is a great idea. The casual reader will type in the short url (giving the publisher tracking and control), but the expansion will be available long as the print issue survives. This still fails if only an article survives (by clipping, photocopy, etc), but that seems like an acceptable tradeoff. And until it's a common idea it would be helpful to annotate such shortened links so that someone unfamiliar w…

If not for copyright, a magazine page could probably store a compressed copy of every cited url.

I suppose one might argue that this is an educational use. It's for future academics and has no commercial impact.

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

#95

Post by downandout »

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 easily have a bot that checks for 404's or substantially changed content for each URL in the shortener database, and informs the shortener. When that occurs, they could have the shortener send the user to either a stored snapshot or cached version of the page that they host with a short note explaining that the content of the original link appears to be gone.

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

#96

Post by im3w1l »

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…

http://virtual-notary.org/

this was submitted to HN some time ago. It automatically pulls the website and creates a certificate of content and date that is cryptographically signed.

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

#97

Post by edsu »

dublinben wrote: post #90
jval wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is cool, do the universities digitally archive copies of the stuff themselves or just Internet Archive on behalf of them?

From what I understand, all the member libraries are storing some part of the cache. They might not all have a complete copy, but the details aren't clear yet.

I think this is science fiction at this point.

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

#98

Post by edsu »

afandian wrote: post #70

The 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.wik…

The trouble is, what is "scholarly" is a blurred line at best.
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