[seqfan] Conservation of web pages linked to from OEIS

[Neil Sloane]

I just added a note to the
http://oeis.org/wiki/Suggested_Projects page on the wiki
about this, but this is important enough that I'm sending out an expanded
version to the list.

In 50 years most of the present links to personal web pages won't work any
more, unless we have a backup copy on the OEIS web site.

   1. So we should start making copies of all the private web pages that we
   link to from the sequence entries. If possible we try to get permission
   first, of course, but in many cases it may already be too late for that,
   and we will have to use the Wayback Machine to recover the page.
   What I recommend is that we have a duplicate for each link, like this:J.
   Smith, <a href="etc etc, [the original link]J. Smith, <a
   href="a123456.***> [cached copy]
   For an example where we have a successfully cached copy, see
A213000<http://oeis.org/A213000>
   .For an example of an unsuccessful cache, see
A080104<http://oeis.org/A080104>
   .

Furthermore, Hugo P. has pointed out to me that many publishers seem to
have changed their policy, and articles that were formerly free are now
hidden behind pay walls. So that links that used to work don't any more.
I'm not sure how to deal with that problem.

Anyway, there are a LOT of links in the OEIS, so this is something where
everyone can help. This "crowd-sourcing" may be the only
way to solve the problem.

If you see a link in A123456, say, to
J. Smith, <a href="http://homepage.com/file.html">Title</a>

then ask permission from J. Smith, explaining why we are doing this
(basically because we hope the OEIS will be around for hundreds of years,
and so it is to everyone's advantage to preserve these pages),

and then make a copy called a123456.html
(it should start with the A-number, with lower case a)

edit A123456 to upload a123456.html,
and create a link saying
J. Smith, <a href="a123456.html">Title</a> [Cached copy]

The same thing with jpg, gif, pdf, etc files.

Of course if there are subsidiary files called by the page,
you need to copy them too. If you have questions, ask me or David Applegate
or Russ Cox or Charles Greathouse for help.

Neil