Yesterday, Jay Rosen reported on Twitter that the NYT, in a redesign, had eliminated its paragraph-level permalinks (like the ones yousee on Scripting News). He was peeved, for sure, and imho had every right to be. I asked if this broke existing links, i.e. had he been using the feature (I assume so) and did the links still point to paragraphs on the NYT site (yes, of course they pointed there, but did the links work when clicked). It's hard to phrase this question for non-developers, but the issue is real.#
Users don't like steps backwards. This applies equally to word processers and websites. It's all software. Only in this case they're developers too because URLs are an API, and as we know APIs break. 💥#
Does the NYT have an obligation to continue to support this feature? Of course not. But one of the unwritten rules of the web, going way back, is that linkrotsucks and we should do everything we can to minimize it. The NYT has been conspicuously excellent at not breaking links, btw, over the 20-plus year history of news on the web. #
To get an idea of how bad linkrot is, here's an archive page for this blog for November 1999. Try clicking on some links. So many of them are broken. #
PS: As far as I'm concerned credit for the concept and the term linkrot goes to Jakob Nielsen, but it's hard to find any references to his authoritative piece on the subject. How nice that his 20-year-old piece is still there and renders nicely in a 2018 browser. It would be ironic if it had been lost to linkrot. 🚀#