Re: Firefox addin to replace 404 pages with archived pages from wayback machine

Just to be clear, I said in my initial post that as long as the addin or 
feature was running at the user's request with clear indication of which 
content is from 404 pages, I don't think there's a violation of Web arch.

My point was that: whether or not deleting pages (I.e. taking URIs that 
were 200 or 3XX and making them 404) is something we discourage on policy 
grounds, it's a supported and important part of Web arch. When I make a 
page 404 I usually have good reasons, and in general I expect users to see 
the page I return with the 404. I believe that's that the pertinent 
specifications call for, and should remain the default behavior of user agents.

Thank you.

Noah

On 8/5/2016 4:58 PM, Herbert Van de Sompel wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 10:23 AM, Noah Mendelsohn <nrm@arcanedomain.com
> <mailto:nrm@arcanedomain.com>> wrote:
>
>     See [1].
>
>     I thought this might be of some interest to the TAG. Seems to me that
>     this is OK insofar as the addin is a modification to a user agent, and
>     is presumably activated only with the user's consent.
>
>     Nonethess, this seems to embody a slightly skewed view of Web
>     protocols: if I as a URI authority serve a new or updated page, your
>     browser will do what I intend and show the user that new content. If I
>     delete a page, the browser will not honor that deletion, but will show
>     content anyway. This seems to me just a bit of a slippery slope. A 404
>     is just as meaningful in Web protocols (no such page) as a 200 IMO.
>
>
> The Memento Extension for Chrome (http://bit.ly/memento-for-chrome) handles
> 404 and much more. It covers archived resources in many web archives, see
> http://timetravel.mementoweb.org/about/. And its behavior is completely
> under control of the user because it works by right-clicking links or pages.
>
> Right clicking yields a Memento menu with several options:
> * Get near current date: Retrieves the most recently archived resource, and
> hence can be used to address 404.
> * Get near saved date: retrieves an archived resource with archival
> datetime closest to the date set in a calendar picker
> * Get near memento-datetime: if the page is itself an archived resource in
> a web archive, retrieves an archived resource of a linked resource with
> archival datetime closest to the date expressed in the page's
> Memento-Datetime header.
> * Get near page date: retrieves an archived resource with a datetime
> closest to the page datetime if it is provided in a machine-readable manner
> * Get near link date: retrieves an archived resource with a datetime
> closest to date expressed in the data-versiondate link decoration
> attribute, as defined in http://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/spec/
>
> Note that the Memento protocol is not only for web archives. It can also be
> supported by version control systems, wikis, etc. For example, the W3C wiki
> and all versions of the W3C specs are accessible using Memento. Using, e.g.
> Memento for Chrome, one can seamlessly navigate to the version of a wiki
> page or W3C spec as it was at a certain date. And, of course to versions of
> linked resources, using right-click as described above. Using the Time
> Travel API, see http://timetravel.mementoweb.org/guide/api/, one can use a
> URI of this form to get to a version of a W3C spec as it existed at a given
> date:
> http://timetravel.mementoweb.org/memento/20031112/https://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/
>
> Cheers
>
> Herbert
>
>
>
>
>     I'm not proposing that the TAG do anything about this or devote
>     significant time to it right now, just pointing it out in case it's of
>     interest.
>
>     Thank you.
>
>     Noah
>
>
>     [1]
>     http://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/firefox-will-try-to-show-you-saved-archive-of-a-page-instead-of-404-error-869482
>     <http://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/firefox-will-try-to-show-you-saved-archive-of-a-page-instead-of-404-error-869482>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Herbert Van de Sompel
> Digital Library Research & Prototyping
> Los Alamos National Laboratory, Research Library
> http://public.lanl.gov/herbertv/
> http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0715-6126
>
> ==

Received on Tuesday, 9 August 2016 03:05:51 UTC