Cleaning up the WWW

torifiletorifile
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
No, I'm not talking about getting rid of pr0n or dirty language. I'm talking about getting rid of all the crap pages out there. Not the ones that suck but the ones that are OLD. I was doing a search on frames in html (another thread) and I came across more than a few seriously outdated articles (talking about netscape 2 and ie 3, etc).



I propose that webpages should have an expiration date. Would you be for or against this? Let's get some ideas going here....

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 17
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    Any chronicle should have an expiration date. History? Pfft.
  • Reply 2 of 17
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Especially all those pages that people bought just to auction to the highest bidder. If they don't want to make a site GIVE UP THE NAME!
  • Reply 3 of 17
    silentechoessilentechoes Posts: 288member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ebby

    Especially all those pages that people bought just to auction to the highest bidder. If they don't want to make a site GIVE UP THE NAME!



    Oh man that makes me so fsking mad
  • Reply 4 of 17
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    Sites like this(www.adequacy.org) need to be removed from the net completely, even the archives of it.
  • Reply 5 of 17
    silentechoessilentechoes Posts: 288member
    EDIT: Never mind.
  • Reply 6 of 17
    merovingianmerovingian Posts: 436member
    I agree with the expiration date thing.



    I also very much wish that search engines would not hold on to site addresses that don't exist.



    Who here has ever tried to search for something obscure, and when you get 10 results, for example, and only one of those ten is worth taking a look at, takes you to a 404 or 502 error page.



    The Internet is becoming clogged with spam too, which is more of a problem, in my opinion. m.
  • Reply 7 of 17
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    Do books have expiration dates?

    Do magazines?



    No, but they are indexed...



    ...by edition

    ...by volume

    ...by date

    ...by revision

    ...by whatever



    Imposing some kind of artificial lifespan on any published work is something so crazy, it's what Michael Jackson would do if he invented the Internet.



    The friggin' solution is to improve searching/indexing techniques (on the server side and the human side).
  • Reply 8 of 17
    giantgiant Posts: 6,041member
    So much information we rely on is becoming web based, so preservation is vital. In the studies that have been done looking at references to websites used in academic, technical and trade journals, it is alarming how many of those sources no longer exist after a couple years.
  • Reply 9 of 17
    pscatespscates Posts: 5,847member
    Well, pages that no longer exist (404 stuff and whatnot), yeah, I wish they could go away.



    But other stuff - even "out of date" tech stuff - should stay, BUT somehow be flagged or noted easier.
  • Reply 10 of 17
    vox barbaravox barbara Posts: 2,021member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by torifile

    No, I'm not talking about ... Not the ones that suck but the ones that are OLD. ...



    What a fancy idea !!!



    Just state for the record, I guess one time you will be pretty much happy to get in some (perhaps outdated) resources, anyway.



    It is no great deal to skip them anyway, isn't it? But in the long run they all pay back, - mark my words.



    You should rather blame "google" and such for not performing smart searches.



    my 2c, of course.
  • Reply 11 of 17
    burningwheelburningwheel Posts: 1,827member
    yes. especially if they haven't been updated for years
  • Reply 12 of 17
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    Think about what you guys are suggesting.



    Think, if only for a second.
  • Reply 13 of 17
    pscatespscates Posts: 5,847member
    Well, I've only suggested that DEAD (as in "nothing there anymore") pages/links. A lot of dead weight and dead ends out there.



    I have to look up articles from the 1940's sometimes, so...no, I don't think "cleaning house" to any hardcore degree is a good idea.



  • Reply 14 of 17
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by pscates

    Well, I've only suggested that DEAD (as in "nothing there anymore") pages/links. A lot of dead weight and dead ends out there.



    You know what's great about these dead links though?



    Google Cache and www.archive.org sometimes gobble them up nicely. I've found the current spate of search engines and other reference tools to be more than adequate, and plenty efficient...moreso than what we had before anyway...
  • Reply 15 of 17
    vox barbaravox barbara Posts: 2,021member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Eugene

    Think about what you guys are suggesting.



    Think, if only for a second.



    Done. What happend?

























    (couldn't resist)
  • Reply 16 of 17
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    Ok, so expiration dates aren't the best way to clean things up. How about some sort of meta-tag that can be added to allow for information that's "historical" like an article about some current event. I guess I'm talking about more keeping search results relevant and not obliterating pages that haven't been updated in a long time. A smarter search technology would help...



    Of course, I don't necessarily believe that because something is old it should be taken off the web. That was more to get the conversation started.
  • Reply 17 of 17
    gargoylegargoyle Posts: 660member
    No, The old stuff should stay. What should go are all the stupid "top-sites" that just serve to pop-up a million windows.



    Secondly, there is a very good way of indexing the internet.... It's called meta tags, but greedy spanners choose to abuse these systems to make their sites "more popular" in areas that are not really related to their site.



    If people just stuck to the standards and used the technology correctly, then it would work better. But I think there will always be those that abuse the technology to try and increase their popularity.
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