Have you thought of how to address link rot? I could imagine it making sense to automatically store one archived version of each external link using perma.cc or something!
We archive every page we link to in the bibliography section as a PDF. I don’t know if the tech team has a system in place for generating dead link notifications, but I made a note to inquire further.
I don’t quite see it. For example, where are the pdfs for “Christiano, Paul (2014) Certificates of impact, Rational Altruist, November 15.” here? Ideally, a link to an archived version should be continuously available, or at least appear when the link goes down.
Coincidentally, I thought about that just a couple of days ago. An advantage is that the links could be of the form wiki.effectivealtruism.org/article whereas at present they have the form forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/article, i.e. and extra tag/ that would cease to be necessary under your proposal. Perhaps this also helps with SEO? I’ll ask the tech team.
Have you thought of how to address link rot? I could imagine it making sense to automatically store one archived version of each external link using perma.cc or something!
We archive every page we link to in the bibliography section as a PDF. I don’t know if the tech team has a system in place for generating dead link notifications, but I made a note to inquire further.
I don’t quite see it. For example, where are the pdfs for “Christiano, Paul (2014) Certificates of impact, Rational Altruist, November 15.” here? Ideally, a link to an archived version should be continuously available, or at least appear when the link goes down.
Totally separate issue: I wonder if the wiki hompage should have the address wiki.effectivealtruism.org?
I think the ideal situation is to always have the best link available, and only that link. Currently, the original links are all active, so we list those. If and when they break, we will replace them with corresponding links to the PDFs. For example, the URL
https://impactpurchase.org/why-certificates/would become something likehttps://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/certificates-of-impact/why-certificates.pdf. Does this approach address your concerns?Coincidentally, I thought about that just a couple of days ago. An advantage is that the links could be of the form
wiki.effectivealtruism.org/articlewhereas at present they have the formforum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/article, i.e. and extratag/that would cease to be necessary under your proposal. Perhaps this also helps with SEO? I’ll ask the tech team.Ah, sounds great!
Yeah, this would be more elegant!
I am told that the EA Forum has no system in place for handling link rot, so I will explore Wiki-specific solutions.