J.R. Molloy wrote (in response to Robert Coyote):
> and broken links might be annoying to someone who doesn't care about
> unsolicited email.
A lot of pages have a "webmaster" address attached to the bottom.
If there is no email address found within the page, then one
backtracks up the tree until one finds a page with an email
address in it. Relatively simple algorithms could explore
"typical" pages, e.g. .../~name/ -- simply scan the tree
for an email address or try name@...; Corporate pages --
look for URLs with phrases like "Contact", search within
such for phone numbers or email addresses. I'd suspect
that a 1 month scan over the net-tree could come up with
a good set of heuristics as to maintenance strategies.
E.g. one directs email to *support* rather than *sales*
when such choices are available.
One could obviously issue a proposal for page-formats
(including meta-tags for administrator email addresses)
that expressly addresses the problem of notification of
problems regarding page formatting/links, etc. This would
drive pages in the direction of "usefulness" rather than
decay.
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:11 MDT