Re: A question of Web entropy

From: Ziana Astralos (ziana@extrotech.net)
Date: Sat Dec 29 2001 - 10:48:09 MST


On Sat, 29 December 2001, Amara Graps wrote:
> How are folks defining 'discarded pages' ? Pages
> with links that go nowhere? Or maybe pages with
> outdated and irrelevant information?

I find link-checking programs such as
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html to be
helpful in counteracting this, to a point-- broken
links within stagnant sites remain so, as pages change
location or disappear entirely, since no-one is going
to be checking and repairing their links as resources
gradually shift; accounts expire, servers change,
sites are reorganized.

But I don't see it as much of a problem, personally.
Better that a page with outdated links be available,
than not have access to the other information on it--
and even if a link there doesn't work, it can (not
that it always does, of course) lead to the user
checking other sites and search-engines instead, thus
discovering even more information than they might have
if the link had worked. It would be better if
evvverything worked, but it doesn't and I doubt that
it will. Yet with the constant influx of *new*
information and pages, and services such as Google
making them more available, that 'entropy' is
continually balanced out and then some.

As for spam, it may increase in quantity, but
filtering capabilities increase in quality as well.
Most spam and virus mails I never even see; what isn't
automatically filtered out by the server I can set up
individual filters for.

Entropy shan't win! ;-)

Aumentar!
Onward,
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