[boost] Re: Google Links

From: Raoul Gough (RaoulGough_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-02-12 16:28:04

David Abrahams <dave_at_[hidden]> writes:

> Raoul Gough <RaoulGough_at_[hidden]> writes:
>
>> BTW, has anyone else noticed that all of Google's links to the boost
>> mail archive are wrong at the moment? It looks like the messages have
>> all been renumbered at some stage, invalidating all previous URLs
>> (e.g. Google thinks the above message is at
>> http://lists.boost.org/MailArchives/boost/msg09814.php). I got the
>> up-to-date link from AltaVista.
>
> They were wrong a long time ago, then we embarked on an extensive
> project to fix them, so they're broken again ;-).  But that's
> temporary, since google is "self-fixing".  The real test is whether
> links in other boost messages work.  That was our goal, and I think
> Jeff Squyres and Larry Meehan (the OSL sysadmins) actually achieved
> it.

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. It might have been
(or still be) a good idea to invalidate completely the old style URLS
to avoid confusion.  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.

BTW, AltaVista's bot seems to revisit its indexed sites much more
frequently than the GoogleBot does, which would explain why it's more
up to date.

-- 
Raoul Gough.
export LESS='-X'