Some web pages are extraneous, fedundant, or only relevant for a limited period of time. A sign up page for a concert doesn’t need to exist permanently. Consolidating a large website down to fewer pages that are accessible for everyone is a good thing.
Archiving services that retain web pages that deserve saving are how we should retain that history of the web, but the actual creators don’t necessarily need to indefinitely maintain a web page that becomes obsolete.
Yes, a lot is lost that could have just continued to exist and archiving is good, but getting rid of clutter is not a bad thing.
But how do you know if it’s the clutter that is being removed? One of the indicator listed in the article is broken links from wikipedia. These links are very likely to point to informational resources or news articles, but are also being lost at a high rate.
Yeah but Amish Rakefight GFY (a dedicated page you sent someone a link to which then toñd you to Go Fuck Yourself -along with a counter to twll you how many people were told to fuck off) has been gone for a few years now…and damn i miss it.
This isn’t inherently bad.
Some web pages are extraneous, fedundant, or only relevant for a limited period of time. A sign up page for a concert doesn’t need to exist permanently. Consolidating a large website down to fewer pages that are accessible for everyone is a good thing.
Archiving services that retain web pages that deserve saving are how we should retain that history of the web, but the actual creators don’t necessarily need to indefinitely maintain a web page that becomes obsolete.
Yes, a lot is lost that could have just continued to exist and archiving is good, but getting rid of clutter is not a bad thing.
But how do you know if it’s the clutter that is being removed? One of the indicator listed in the article is broken links from wikipedia. These links are very likely to point to informational resources or news articles, but are also being lost at a high rate.
Yeah but Amish Rakefight GFY (a dedicated page you sent someone a link to which then toñd you to Go Fuck Yourself -along with a counter to twll you how many people were told to fuck off) has been gone for a few years now…and damn i miss it.
For sure, things that were not intended to be temporary or were replaced with a better version are sad to lose.
At least we still have https://penisland.net/
For consolidation, the clean thing is to introduce redirection to the new location.