Re: checklink: Meaning of 401 "What to do" is unclear

On Wed, 18 Jul 2007, olivier Thereaux wrote:

> [[ The link is not public. You'd better specify it. ]]
> The message wording is awkward indeed.

Especially since the link _is_ probably public, though the linked resource 
might not, and "it" is a vague word.

> I would suggest the following wording
> [[ This resource appears to be password-protected. You may want to mention it 
> on your page linking to it. ]]

Does it just _appear_ to be? Is it necessarily password-protected, or 
could it require some other kind of authorization? Does a link checker 
need to give authors hint about authoring style - rather in the blind,
since it cannot really know much about the situation. Communication 
always fails, except by accident, and therefore any message not related to 
the very purpose of link checking can and will be misunderstood by many 
people, causing confusion and waste of time.

My suggestion:

[[ The link refers to a resource that requires authentication, such as a 
password, in order to be accessed. Therefore, the link checker has not 
checked it. ]]

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Wednesday, 18 July 2007 07:16:47 UTC