I've been writing Fortnightly Mailing since 2002. I've long ago stopped keeping to the discipline of publishing a fortnightly list of posts; and @sebschmoller and FriendFeed have got a bit in the way of writing proper posts such as this one. Occasionally vanity gets the better of me and I look at the access statistics for Fortnightly Mailing. Yesterday I noticed several hits from Google to a 2006 posting highlighting an article by Paul Black and Christine Harris.
When I looked at the posting - here is an archived view of it - all of its links were broken, making it worse than useless. All readers will have experienced this problem when searching and finding an apparently relevant piece about something they are interested in, but with key links broken.
I've since fixed things in the orignal by going through the fiddly and time-consuming process of finding extant versions of the three documents in question and linking to these. Instead of storing up trouble for the future, I've linked to archived versions created in moments with the service provided by WebCite, using the free "WebCite this page" gadget that I had already installed on my browser toolbar. The gadget allows a user, in seconds, to:
- go to a URL;
- click on the gadget;
- copy and paste the WebCite archive's URL of the orginal resource to wherever they want to use it.
Obviously it is a matter of judgement when to take this approach. My ground rule is going to be: if I am linking to a resource that I think others may want to use long term, or which I fear is likely to be short-lived at its current location, then I will include a WebCite link to the resource instead of or in addition to a link to the resource itself.
Comments on the feasibility and value of this approach are welcome.
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