This message was forwarded to the sysadmins of the boost list; Dave asked me to reply here on the list. I am not on the boost list; please CC me on any replies. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 16:02:35 -0500 From: David Abrahams <dave@boost-consulting.com> Subject: Re: [Osl-sysadmin] Care to respond? On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, David Abrahams wrote:
This showed up on the Boost list...
All the "next in thread" type links I've seen have been internally consistent. Unfortunately, this renumbering almost certainly means that external references to the old URL for a given message (e.g. on another mailing list or newsgroup) will be wrong. From what I've seen of Google's old links, you usually get a different message, not the one you expected and not a HTTP 404 for instance.
Yup -- definitely an unfortunate side-effect.
It might have been (or still be) a good idea to invalidate completely the old style URLS to avoid confusion.
In consultation with David, we decided not to do this in order to not break all the external (non-search-engine/self-healing) links.
Better still would have been to support both the old and new numberings in parallel, since you can't know what references exist for the old URLs.
So I thought that we had restored the old numbering, and I thought that Larry (the OSL sysadmin) had checked that. Is there something other than Google (which will eventually fix itself) that is pointing to an incorrect address? -- {+} Jeff Squyres {+} jsquyres@osl.iu.edu {+} Research Associate, Open Systems Lab, Indiana University {+} http://www.osl.iu.edu/
Jeff Squyres <jsquyres@osl.iu.edu> writes:
This message was forwarded to the sysadmins of the boost list; Dave asked me to reply here on the list.
I am not on the boost list; please CC me on any replies.
[from Raoul Gough earlier]
It might have been (or still be) a good idea to invalidate completely the old style URLS to avoid confusion.
In consultation with David, we decided not to do this in order to not break all the external (non-search-engine/self-healing) links.
Better still would have been to support both the old and new numberings in parallel, since you can't know what references exist for the old URLs.
So I thought that we had restored the old numbering, and I thought that Larry (the OSL sysadmin) had checked that. Is there something other than Google (which will eventually fix itself) that is pointing to an incorrect address?
Maybe I've misunderstood the whole thing - I thought the erroneous links that Google had been using were in use for a long time, in which case they could have worked their way into any number of usenet messages, personal web pages, etc. I assume that isn't actually the case - apologies for the confusion! -- Raoul Gough. export LESS='-X'
Raoul Gough <RaoulGough@yahoo.co.uk> writes:
Jeff Squyres <jsquyres@osl.iu.edu> writes:
This message was forwarded to the sysadmins of the boost list; Dave asked me to reply here on the list.
I am not on the boost list; please CC me on any replies.
[from Raoul Gough earlier]
It might have been (or still be) a good idea to invalidate completely the old style URLS to avoid confusion.
In consultation with David, we decided not to do this in order to not break all the external (non-search-engine/self-healing) links.
Better still would have been to support both the old and new numberings in parallel, since you can't know what references exist for the old URLs.
So I thought that we had restored the old numbering, and I thought that Larry (the OSL sysadmin) had checked that. Is there something other than Google (which will eventually fix itself) that is pointing to an incorrect address?
Maybe I've misunderstood the whole thing - I thought the erroneous links that Google had been using were in use for a long time, in which case they could have worked their way into any number of usenet messages, personal web pages, etc. I assume that isn't actually the case - apologies for the confusion!
They only became erroneous during a (relatively) short window after OSL admins discovered corruption in our mbox file and rebuilt it. There may indeed be some invalid links floating around out there, but the current scheme minimizes them. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com
participants (3)
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David Abrahams -
Jeff Squyres -
Raoul Gough