Saturday, November 22, 2003

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I have an idea for a weblogging-tool feature that could help mitigate the problem of linkrot, both the intentional kind and the unintentional kind. When I post to my weblog, for each link in my post, my weblogging tool should do the following: 1) Traverse the link. 2) Copy all text on the resulting page. 3) Store said copied text “under the covers” somewhere (call this “SourceNotes”). That way, when linkrot sets in (and is discovered), I have some options. First of all, I can consult the SourceNotes, and maybe that will give me a strategy for searching, finding and re-linking the item of interest. Second, copyright be damned, I can choose to post the full-text of the linkrotted source, myself. Of course there are all sorts of considerations for fine-tuning: configurability, limiting the length of copied text, perhaps having an interactive mode (specify what you want copied). But this gives the basic idea. 5:34:46 PM    comment []