[boost] Re: Google links

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-02-16 16:07:37

Raoul Gough <RaoulGough_at_[hidden]> writes:

> Jeff Squyres <jsquyres_at_[hidden]> 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