Re: Are websites closing down en masse?

[Laurent Lyaudet]

   Hello,
   Le lun. 4 déc. 2023 à 18:02,
   <[1]libreplanet-discuss-request@libreplanet.org> a écrit :

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     Today's Topics:
        1. Are websites closing down en masse? (Akira Urushibata)
     --------------------------------------------------------------------
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     Message: 1
     Date: Mon,  4 Dec 2023 12:53:57 +0900 (JST)
     From: Akira Urushibata <[6]afu@wta.att.ne.jp>
     To: <[7]libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org>
     Subject: Are websites closing down en masse?
     Message-ID: <[8]2023.12.04.12.53.56.980948660@afu.wta.att.ne.jp>
     Recently I feel I frequently encounter defunct links.  Links to
     external material toward the bottom of Wikipedia articles often turn
     out to be unavailable.
     I don't know if there is any empirical data on this.  I can provide
     an
     example from a page I help maintain.  From what I see here I am
     pretty
     sure that sites are closing down or pages are being culled en masse
     for some reason:
     [9]https://netpbm.sourceforge.net
     The ahove URL is the introductionary web page for the Netpbm
     software
     package.  At the end of the page is a list of translations of the
     same
     into various languages.
     In early May this year I found out that out of 31 translations,
     6 were not available:
       * Russian
       * Malay
       * Indonesian
       * German
       * Polish
       * Belarusian
     A recent survey (late November) showed that 4 more translations
     have disappeared:
       * Spanish
       * Urdu
       * Greek
       * Estonian
     Out of 31 translations 10 or 32.5% have disappeared.  Only 21
     remain.
     There must be an explanation for the rapid loss of sites and pages.
     Some sites hosting the translations look unrelated to system
     software.
     Netpbm is well-known and links in the official Netpbm document pages
     cause search engines to elevate the status of the liked pages and
     their links.  In other words some people add the translations to
     their
     sites for SEO.
     One possibility I can think of is that hosting services are somehow
     affected by inflation, higher interest rates and staff cutbacks at
     IT
     firms.  If anybody has better insight on the matter I'd very much
     like
     to learn.
     Thank you for reading.
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     End of libreplanet-discuss Digest, Vol 164, Issue 1
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   I have not seen a speed-up of "links death".
   But the links I consult daily are mostly "new".
   Fortunately, most of the interesting links are on the Internet Archive.
   Sometimes, when I find a nice link, I verify that it is in the Internet
   Wayback Machine just in case.
   Best regards,
       Laurent Lyaudet

References

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   2. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
   3. https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
   4. mailto:libreplanet-discuss-request@libreplanet.org
   5. mailto:libreplanet-discuss-owner@libreplanet.org
   6. mailto:afu@wta.att.ne.jp
   7. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
   8. 2023.12.04.12.53.56.980948660@afu.wta.att.ne.jp">mailto:2023.12.04.12.53.56.980948660@afu.wta.att.ne.jp
   9. https://netpbm.sourceforge.net/
  10. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
  11. https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss