[seqfan] Handling dead links

[Robert Munafo]

I have been recently been checking and updating the sequences that have me
as the author. I have a question about whether to use archive.org links.

When I find a link that doesn't work, I usually:

  1. Use archive.org to find and view the text

  2. Perform a Google search to find out where the page is hosted now

  3. Make sure the new URL is still the most appropriate one on the website
for the sequence in question

If the Google search reveals that the content is truly gone (no current
version exists) there are two options:

  a. Delete the link

  b. Supply the archive.org link

For example, for sequence A006886 I determined that the Villemin page
http://www.multimania.com/villemingerard/Iteration/Kaprekar.htm is now at
http://villemin.gerard.free.fr/Wwwgvmm/Iteration/Kaprekar.htm

However the Schneider link
http://www.wschnei.de/digit-related-numbers/kaprekar-numbers.html is gone
for good and can only be viewed through archive.org, for example at
http://web.archive.org/web/20020128002823/http://www.wschnei.de/digit-related-numbers/kaprekar-numbers.html

For A006886, I decided to take the Schneider link out (in particular because
it supplies no information beyond what is available on the other links).

However, for the other 29 sequences that have Schneider links, I am not the
author so I don't feel I should make the decision to actually delete them.
But putting in an archive.org link seems like a reasonable compromise. (This
would be a lot of work for me, and since most of the sequences are base 10
digit-specific and don't interest me much)

Here is a related question on translation server links:
  I have submitted edits to fix the Villemin links (there were only a total
of 4 A-numbers to edit) and in the process I also noted that one Villemin
link used the translation service at www.t-mail.com/cgi-bin/tsail

So if translation service links are acceptable, then perhaps
archive.orglinks are as well?

-- 
 Robert Munafo  --  mrob.com