E-Media Tidbits reader
Steve Bridger, editor of
After Wilma ("The Story of Cancun and the Riviera Maya getting back on its feet") wrote to ask:
"Something that really bugs me is linkrot on blogs, especially my own. What should the convention be? Strikethrough formatting for the text link, greyed-out formatting, or other cascading stylesheet (CSS) style?"
That's a great question, especially for news sites and blogs. First let me clarify the jargon: Linkrot happens when hyperlinks cease to function because the destination content has been deleted, moved, hidden behind an access gate, or significantly altered.
On my own blogs, if I find that one of my links has gone dead, I look
to see if the same content exists at a new location and I update my
link. If the destination content is completely gone, generally I just
remove the link from my story. If that link was significant to the
point of the story, I'll note in an update "This page no longer
available online as of DATE." After all, everyone knows the Web is a
moving target.
Linkrot is one of the main reasons I'm an avid user of Furl, a free social bookmarking tool that saves a private copy of any page you bookmark there to create your own private, permanent, downloadable, and searchable library. Furl is a great tool for any journalist -- or anyone -- to use routinely. You never know when the online source you cite will disappear or alter its message. It helps to have a copy of what you saw at the time you cited it.
How do you handle linkrot on your sites? Please comment below.
Robert: I've heard good things about Xenu's Link Sleuth software...
