Re: flawed CVS Scripts (was Re: d.g.o/dotplan/schedule outdated!)

[Curtis Hovey <sinzui cox net>]

On Thu, 2004-08-12 at 11:23 +1200, Jack Stewart wrote:
> I'm interested in the logic behind the policy of deleting old content.
> Should
> we not retain the content for future reference but flag it to users as
> outdated
> content and provide a link to find up to date information.  If we
> delete pages
> we are just going to create more broken links.  IMHO this is a bad
> practice.

It is our general understanding that links never die, and that many
documents are valuable even after they are obsolete.  

In the case of the dead schedule, the content was moved more than a year
ago, and the current content is where the majority of users are
arriving.  If we were moving the schedule again, we would use a redirect
to keep the links alive.  If there are a lot of users arriving though
the dead link, we will put up a redirect.

> An example might be if a developer is looking for info on gnome 1.4
> cause he's
> got a discontinued gnome 1.4 app he wants to hack/port to gnome 2.0.
> If the
> informations not there he can't use it.  However, a user who stumbles
> into the
> old content via a link from an old page introducing people to gnome,
> reads that
> the content is out of date and is sent on to information about the
> latest
> version of gnome.

Yes.  This kind of content has historical value.  jdub wants to build
library.gnome.org.  Rich valuable content would be stored on this
server.  The status of the content may change from current to deprecated
to obsolete, but will always remain.  Links to these documents are
guaranteed to be preserved.  The status of documents/sections would be
managed by changing the style sheet, so no content must be edited.

The content on www, developer, and foundation would be semi-permanent.
Content will be revised to remain current.  These sites will point to
content in the library, reducing the need to grow, shrink, or change the
site structure of the main sites.  When content is removed, a redirect
will probably be used (traffic reporting would be nice to help make the
decision).

-- 
__C U R T I S  C.  H O V E Y____________________
sinzui cox net
Guilty of stealing everything I am.