
Wikipedia Grappling with Deletion of IHT.com - mcav
http://www.thomascrampton.com/newspapers/wikipedia-grappling-with-deletion-of-ihtcom/
======
duskwuff
> How can we count the links to the IHT in Wikipedia?

Someone didn't do their research. It's easy.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:LinkSearch/*.iht.com>

~~~
randomwalker
Looks like there are 9450 of them (as of now). Quite a lot.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&limit=500&offset=9000&target=http%3A%2F%2F*.iht.com)

------
rantfoil
This seems like a colossal waste of valuable SEO linkjuice. Good lord! Would
it be so hard to do a proper redirect showing the redesigned pages / branding?

------
ars
BTW: IHT is the International Herald Tribune (a newspaper).

(Which is not mentioned until the very end of the article, and then only
accidentally.)

------
mcav
The URL is the modern C pointer. But rather than pointing to objects we
control, we now hold pointers to anything we want. We're at the mercy of
everyone's ability to keep those objects alive, lest our URLs just become
dangling pointers.

~~~
scott_s
Which is like having a C pointer to an object controlled by a GC, and the GC
does not know (or care) that you have a reference to one of its objects.

~~~
biotech
Maybe we should use call by value: make a copy and link to the internet
archive. (When legal)

~~~
jrockway
Definitely a good idea. I personally know that it's difficult to keep links
around when they are implementation-dependent.

Look at my blog for example; with URIs like /comments/b31956d4-3dd1-11de-
ba89-db8db9812c92/b5a70270-3dd1-11de-a405-db2750a175d7/b5a70270-3dd1-11de-a405-db2750a175d7.pod,
it is going to be a nightmare to keep all links alive when I rewrite the
software. In this case, I think I'm going to just kill them, since nobody
links to individual comments. But I am not the NYT :)

~~~
ars
That'll teach you not to use GUID's for primary keys! :)

Use a regular auto incrementing number, starting over at 1 for each story, and
you'll have a much easier time transitioning software. (Plus you'll save (a
little) on bandwidth.)

They only good reason I have ever heard of for using a GUID for a primary key
is if you need to merge two databases, the GUID's will not collide.

~~~
jrockway
No, that's not the problem. I would have the same problem if I used integer
primary keys -- "/comments/4/87/98/293.txt". I would still have to somehow map
that old scheme to my new one. (If I used the same storage system for my
rewrite, my UUID keys would be fine; no need for integer primary keys.)

Additionally, the current version uses an immutable lockless storage system;
if I had to increment keys I would have to lock. (The new version will also
use UUIDs for the same reason.)

------
nopinsight
They could have redirected it to the Internet Archive version of those pages?

Why don't they do that?

