This post discusses ways to structure the content "with the grain of the Web so that it can last (a bit) longer."The web was created so that there was not a central authority to sure all the links work, and permission is not needed to link to a site. It does result in a web where about 5% of links break per year, according to one site.
"The Web dwells in a never-ending present. It is—elementally—ethereal, ephemeral, unstable, and unreliable. Sometimes when you try to visit a Web page what you see is an error message: Page Not Found. This is known as link rot, and it’s a drag, but it’s better than the alternative. Jill Lepore." If we didn’t have a partially broken Web, where content constantly change and links break, it’s quite possible we wouldn’t have a Web at all. Some things to take note of:
- problems with naming things
- web archives
- static sites
- data export
"Our knowledge of the past has always been mediated by the collective care of those who care to preserve it, and the Web is no different."