My mail has been down/I have been on holiday/ .. and I apologise if this
comment is now out of date but :
Thomas Krichel commented
>
> Geoff Lane, the system guru at Manchester computing writes:
>
>> If you are a WWW data provider on the CS6400 you may be
>> delighted/uninterested/annoyed that there is a site on the Internet that is
>> taking archive copies of the *entire* web.
>>
>> They do *not* delete web pages that have been removed from their original
>> web server. So a page of old, possibly invalid information will remain
>> within their archive forever (or until they go broke.)
>>
>> In itself this is not much of a problem - it's their disk space. However,
>> they are also providing an add-on for Microsoft Internet Explorer that will
>> automatically fetch and display a deleted page, from their archive, if it is
>> requested. This could make all web pages, no matter how invalid the
>> contents, effectively immortal.
>>
>> The service is called "Alexa" and may be found at http://www.alexa.com/
>
> I am sure that many people worried about digital preservation will be
> delighted. The final solution to all their worries. :-)
>
>
Surely both the original comment from Geoff Lane, and that of Thomas
Krichel address separate issues, which both reflect a current failing of
the system of providing information on the web.
Providing out of date information is only a problem when the user of that
information is not aware that the information is out of date. Current
systems fail to manage information relating to the current/future relevance
of documents. Thus drafts of papers, papers, specifications, mail messages,
tender documents ... etc are all made available on the web - and
cached/wiped/archived in identical fashion.
In each case the document is treated as a document - and ignored as
information. Perhaps we could learn from document management and add an
html tag which provides 'use before/valid until' details. Even better, but
more problematic, there could be a reference to the source of an updated
version.
Cheers
Chris
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