On Tuesday 27 July 2010 05:21:21 Marcus Rueckert wrote: ...
you make things really complicated.
If I would be decision maker then all would be a lot lesser complicated, but as I'm not, and trying to make everybody happy leads to complicated solutions.
no deleting redirects is not an option. you cant changed printed material ever. also you cant change all blog posts and stuff. or internal wikis of companies e.g. using the OBS. so the link has to stay forever.
For one, everything get obsolete one day. Another golden rule of the web is that published links have to be checked for validity once in a while. No one can expect that links are really forever, specially those in the old wiki that are all but designed for longevity.
But where is the problem with redirect pages? people visit the old link. get redirected to the new url and get a nice note "redirected from <oldname>".
user is happy as they find their information.
We can provide users with information in a more then one way and the most obvious is not always the best :) Henne showed with example of http://en.opensuse.org/Build_Service how it should work, redirecting to current entry points for the topic, which is solution for the problem. It prevents dead link, and at the same time makes visitor aware that wiki has changed. For me redirects are not evil per se, but problem is that if they are applied as simple solution to missing links they have potential to ruin separation of content and that is one thing that must exist. We can temporarily or partially suspend it, to give people chance to get used to new ways, but it will not go away.
If you really want we can change the message text to something like.
"Redirected from <oldname>. If you got send to the old url from an external page please update the link to the new name"
That is an option too, but as any additional text on top of the article it can be there for a limited time, and then removed. We will have to dig deeper in complex templates that Wikipedia is using that actually can display different messages if some condition is met. ...
On the other hand broken links from other sites (web and our infrastructure) can make a lot more damage to openSUSE image then not so clean separation of content. Check Distrowatch and Alexa, and give your interpretation of trends.
that is exactly my point. so can we please use the tools of the wiki to make users happy again? (and thats why we are here, arent we?
Sure :) The only problem here is that no one felt itch to get involved before change, and even now it is kind of modest. Mostly it is in different forms "give us old wiki", the same one that didn't work well for anybody, and much lesser constructive ideas having new tools and design in mind, but it will better with time.
darix
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