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Having been hanging around here for a few months, I feel it is high time that I suggest some way in which the Halfbakery could be made "better". (Next week: improvements will be suggested for sex and chocolate.)
Due to the dynamic nature of the net, many of the older links are now broken or incorrect.
This links cannot be found automatically as they seldom end in a 404, more usually they end in an irrelevant page or "This domain name has been registered by..." message.
A [Broken?] button after links could provide a quick way to alert a moderator that a link has expired and can be deleted. It would be better to avoid bombarding the moderators too much by alerting the link's original author, but I can't see any viable way of doing that.
(??) A Broken Link
http://www.brokenlinkemporium.com
To test with. [contracts, Nov 12 2004]
Halfbakery spring cleaning.
Halfbakery_20spring_20cleaning
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 13 2004]
Jutta's stale links
http://www.halfbake...27s_20stale_20links
An example use of the "flagged links by ..." filter option. [jutta, Nov 16 2008]
[link]
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//I can't see any viable way of doing that.//
How about a note saying "Hey, [wagster], your link is broken"? Even if the link doesn't get mended, at least people are less likely to follow it. |
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Actually, something akin to that is probably a very good idea. I've posted more than one link that has gone stale, bankrupted, or been vacated over the last several years, but I have had few reasons to revisit those sites and remove the reference from the halfbakery. (In at least one notable instance, I didn't know how to politely remove the dead link after the kind fixer posted his new reference link without drawing undue attention to the original idea, the fixer, or myself.) This could be a good community operated signal system. |
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you're too polite, jurist. |
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"Oye, mush,that fecking link is cra... |
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OK, I've added something. Right now, any user can click on "flag", and if anyone did that, a little (?) is drawn next to the link name until someone edits the link. That's pretty much all it does. Everybody sees the (?). |
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Once a link is flagged, it grows an "unflag" button so someone who does find the link working or just hit "flag" to see what it does can clear the flag. |
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To really be useful, it needs to be accompanied by changes to the view - to allow people to search for "my flagged links" - and we might need some safeguards to keep e.g. a runaway traversal engine from flagging everything by traversing into "flag" everywhere. I haven't done those yet. |
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Okay [wagster], you're famous now. |
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Hm, actually, that "brokenlinkemporium" gives me an idea - how about a central place on the web to collect broken destinations and suggest replacements? Kind of a Google of the Lost? Not archive.org, which looks into the past, but an (automated, webdav, published URLs, yada yada yada) service to centrally figure out where to go next. |
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I like that. Maybe as an adjunct, one could post a link that, like tinyurl or snipurl, is to a redirection service but with the difference in that if the first choice destination becomes unavailable a second choice destination is provided? |
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Would there be a possibility of misuse? |
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The second choice is a suggestion but, of course, I suppose anything can be misused, abused or weaponized in some way, even the lowly carrot. |
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[jutta] "brokenlinkemporium" - I think
that
should be a separate idea. If you owned
a site it would then be an easy task to
search for broken links whose source or
destination was on your site. |
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Note that I just flagged a broken link on
"Rain Chimes" to test this - The "(?)"
appeared and the "unflag" button, but
the "flag" button remained which is
probably not intentional functionality. |
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Actually, clicking multiple times on
the flag button makes it slightly more
flagged, it's just that the flaggedness
degree isn't displayed yet. |
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There, I've changed it to vary from ? through ??? as people hit that flag button again - but I think that'll just lead to the first person who flags something to do it three times in a row for effect, and now I need to keep track of who flagged something, and it really becomes unwieldy. |
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Jutta, I got a flag, but the link actually does work, so... I don't understand. |
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Is there a way for a link to report whether it works or not? Kind of like a backwards referrer. I guess not, though it would be kind of handy in this situation, that way, links that were tried and failed could autoflag themselves. |
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Wow - it got baked! How exciting! Nice one Jutta. <blushes with embarrassment> |
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And as a newcomer, you have no idea
just how incredibly rare an event that is
- suggesting something, having neither
me nor the collective users go ballistic
over the fact that you dare crticise the
site, and actually getting something
vaguely resembling what you ask for. |
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[dentworth], I'm not sure I get what the
problem is. Are you saying, "Hey, I
could flag
a link that worked?" Yes, you can. |
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its often the newesty freshest faces that actually spot things like that! hey, more buttons to press - wonderful! |
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[Jutta] I coincidentally had a bad link at the exact moment the flag option appeared. I thought that was how you were going to implement it. But now I understand, it would be my option to flag it; in this case the website has the problem, not the link. |
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Hey cool. I like that I can go make little question marks appear all over the bakery links now. They do sorta look like little flags, too. |
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This has already been suggested.
//Also, I wonder if there is a way to help the moderators out by flagging the dead links left by users who are no longer present with an [mfd] link tag? |
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Had to burst my bubble didn't you [2 fries]? :-( |
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It's not nearly so elegant as your suggestion [wagster]. Burst not your bubble. |
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It's a new font for blind people. You can get 'pixel-outshift' monitors that will raise the pixels on these codes so they can be read by touch. Of course it's our secret. |
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Hey [2 fries], [UnaBubba] ^((_-;-;<) ha ha ()(-_--+= fishbone {-))(=<><)+=( monkey's beard ((_-_+((0)!!! |
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Nice! Now do a croissant. |
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What a crap idea. Leave the 'bakery alone. This will be far too difficult to implement, and [jutta] has enough to do.</obligatory> |
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[jutta] I like the idea of an internet dead letter office. I'm picturing a bunch of robots sitting around reading cached web pages looking for clues as to what might have happened to them. |
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Interestingly, when you go to Deadletteroffice.com it tells you that the name has changed and directs you to another address. |
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Hey [jutta], for our new year's gift, can you add something to do with flags to the view options, so that you could have a view with all your personal flagged links. |
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Oh everything churns, churns, churns... |
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Or, as I wrote in 2004:
// To really be useful, it needs to be accompanied by changes to the view
// - to allow people to search for "my flagged links" |
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To celebrate the four-year anniversary of that annotation (sigh)
it's actually been implemented. You can now filter for ideas with flagged links by <userlist> or just links by <userlist>. |
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My God! An idea I echoed [jutta] suggesting has been implemented by [jutta] on the Halfbakery! I feel like some sort of divine being has been shining upon me. |
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[jutta], you are the Halfbakery's (demi, of course) god. |
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