mmcirvin: (Default)
mmcirvin ([personal profile] mmcirvin) wrote2004-12-04 02:35 pm

Common failure mode

An amazing number of old Web pages have links apparently rotted not by file disappearance, but by file permission problems.

[identity profile] mmcirvin.livejournal.com 2004-12-05 02:19 pm (UTC)(link)
What makes you assume that's accidental?

I've seen a lot of situations in which, say, the home page is still there and all the links still exist, but 68% of the locally stored stuff it links to has broken permissions. It happens a lot on rarely-maintained university pages. I'm guessing that in many situations, the page is really the walking dead; the author went away years ago and the linked material is subject to entropic variations in site maintenance.