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Link Rot on BYOAC

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Dave_K.:
First off I'd like to say I love BYOAC, and that PJay, Tom, and Saint are doing a fantastic job (especially with the latest work on the forums).  But I've noticed a lot of link rot creaping into the other neglected parts of BYOAC.  For example, I found 6 dead links in the Controls->Spinner sub-section alone.  I'm willing to bet there is a lot more in other sections.

Maybe this is the reason why more and more newbies ask so many questions that should be answered in other parts of this site...(or maybe they are just lazy and don't want to research topics :P ).  Obviously the main draw to BYOAC is the outstanding community/forum...but the rest of the site really needs to be gone through and brought up to date.  I know this is a lot of work, especially for only a few admins (who have day jobs and do this soley out of love for the hobby)... but it would be a shame to see such a great resource eventually boil down to just a couple forums.

Unfortunally I can't offer any ideas on how to help the admins get this work done (since they are soley responsible for maintaining the site).  Anyone else have ideas?

-Dave K.

gnat3y3:
 a lot of sites use a 'dead link' reporting function, which could be helpful or if saint is down with it we can all just go thru the site and report the dead ones to him, if he wants that.

i have found that too, and it is disheartening to find somehting that you were looking for and then discove rhte link is dead 8)

dag2000:
Some people may have copies of the info from dead links.  I'm going to suggest that they post here to notify the powers that be (great guys) that the information is still available.  Perhaps someone else (myself included) would would be willing to host some of the data or it could be posted on BYOAC?

-Dave

tom61:
The reason most of the links aren't updated is because they have to be modified manually. We've gotten a bit spoiled with the new database driven Examples page, as it takes only a few seconds to find and change a link (once we get around to it anyway).

It wouldn't surprise me if we (the admins) had records of every dead link on the entire multi-megabytes of text on this site. There are automated CGI trackers of 404 links running, and we get quite alot of 'dead link' reports mailed to us.

If you really want to help, choose a page(say, the spinners page, since it's already come up) , bring it up in the Netscape HTML editor (what Saint uses), and correct the links. Save it and upload it to a web space somewhere. Tell us about it, and we'll do some final editing (some of the files are named differently than are displayed) to make it ready. Of course, you still have to wait for us to get time, but the hard and time consuming task would be done for us.

planetjay:
Actually HowardC has said he'll be going through and compiling a list of dead and new links. Then I'll be fixing them. And while I don't what Howard's schedule is, I wouldn't count on the job being complete for a for another few weeks as I am really busy right now.

Also it should be concidered that saint is EXTREMELY busy in his REAL LIFE, and as such will not be making any changes until the fall. At that time however it is planned that an entire make over of the whole website will occur. Until then be patient and hope that his real life job doesn't kill him!

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