Hi Mark :o)
To address some of the points you raised which were all fair points...
In regards to having a document that wasn't linked to, you might want to
have a documenton your site that was for internal archiving only.
For example, last year's special products or christmas deals which could be
available to those in the company with access.
Alternatively, it may be for there for storage purposes only, where the link
to the page is sent via an email, like sometimes do with clients to show
them refernce material, etc...
That brings to me to content that is 'obsolete' but not useless, like the
examples above.
Dynamic web sites with regularly updated information - again this seems like
a nomenclature issue:
For example "Latest Mars News" for NASA, might be better served with havng
an index page with a linked archive of static URLs, or permalinks for latest
articles (like "/mars/news/060320.html").
Of all the people who love reems of data, it's hard to imagine NASA happy to
just delete files when they can archive them.
However, you make some good points and I'm leaning more towards the 'delete
it only if you absolutely have to' scenario...
R :o)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 1:40 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Re: Website Directory Structure - Best Practice
Richard Czeiger wrote:
Sorry Vlad - Ithink I'm with Lachlan on this one...
Docs can be edited or re-written but if they're obsolete, you don't need
to delete them - just don't link to them...
Actually, Lachlan said "no URI should be deleted" which everybody has
taken to mean "no document left behind" or some such. If a document
becomes obsolete, remove it and redirect the URI to a page that notifies
the user of the fact and offers a newer version. How many times have you
used Google and got a 404 because someone had removed the document you
were coming for?
And why would you have a document on your site that *wasn't* linked to?
Can you please suggest a reason why there would be an absolute need to
delete a file?
Can you in turn suggest a reason why you would retain a document on a site
that was unlinked?
BTW: I'm not saying that under no circustances should precious bytes be
wiped off the grid! But unless there's a strongly powerful reason, I
would think that there's no need to delete files...
::thinks:: Dynamic website giving regularly updated information on ongoing
activities? Ohh, look, NASA...
PS: Let's point out that the article Lachlan's referring to was written
by the guy who invented the web so it's not exactly an unreliable source.
Well, I'm sure Nobel didn't envisage car bombs, either, when he invented
nitroglycerin. Things change once they're unleashed on the world.
(although I agree with the venerable Sir Tim on this, and Lachlan of
course)
But URI != document, necessarily, and an superseded document may be more
dangerous than not finding anything.
Cheers
mark
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