I agree completely with Mark Doyle and was not (in my reply to a query from a user) venturing to suggest policy. I was trying to explain to the user why one could not keep updating the same archived paper (whether metadata or text). I leave it to Mark, Chris and the experts to pick the optimal technical solution. (Chris?)
Stevan Harnad On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, Mark Doyle wrote: > Greetings, > > On Tuesday, November 26, 2002, at 08:27 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote: > > > Now it is conceivable that the eprints architecture can be slightly > > modified, so that the old, suppressed URL for the deleted paper > > automatically redirects to the new draft if someone tries to access > > the old one. That I have to let Chris reply about. Here I have merely > > explained the rationale for not having designed the archive so a paper > > could be deposited, and then modified willy-nilly under the same URL. > > For that would not have been an archive at all, and user complaints, > > about trying to use and cite a moving target, would have far > > out-numbered > > depositor complaints about what to do with after-thoughts and > > successive > > drafts. > > Well, that is one way to look at it. On the other hand, arXiv.org uses > version numbers and the persistent name/id and URL (say hep-th/0210311 > and http://arXiv.org/abs/hep-th/0210311) always points to the latest > version > with links to the earlier versions. > > I believe you are advocating a poor design choice here. One cannot > overemphasize > the importance of human-friendly persistent names that are easily > converted > to URL's for linking and quick location. Patching the system to > redirect to the > latest linked version is a hack. Is one actually able to download > the earlier version (which is what was cited)? Generally, a better > approach > is to give a good persistent name to a "work" and not a single > manifestation > of that work (whether it be a particular format or a particular > version) and > then give a reader a single point of entry into the system that can be > bookmarked > or cited reliably which gives a choice of what to download. Cutting off > access > to an earlier, citeable version is a mistake. Archives should not > delete items > or make them hard to access - rather they should show items in context > and give easy access to an item's history and versioning with a single > identifier for the work taken as a whole. > > Cheers, > Mark > > Mark Doyle > Manager, Product Development > The American Physical Society >
