[boost] Re: Google links

From: Jeff Squyres (jsquyres_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-02-13 16:17:42

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_at_[hidden]>
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_at_[hidden]
{+} Research Associate, Open Systems Lab, Indiana University
{+} http://www.osl.iu.edu/