[Chicken-users] Re: Could we keep old URLs in the wiki working?

[Alejandro Forero Cuervo]

> > When I moved all users in the wiki from /foo to /users/foo, I took the
> > time to create symlinks from the old locations to the new, so that
> > people using the old URLs would be automatically redirected to the
> > right (new) location.  People would gradually update their bookmarks
> > and search engines would gradually notice that things have moved and
> > everything would be fine and dandy.
> 
> "Gradually" would imply that eventually everything would indeed be moved.
> A look at the Trac timeline tells me that these symlinks have been there
> for over 5 months.  How much longer do you intend to keep them around?

Perhaps forever. :-)

> > I've just noticed, however, that someone went and erased all the
> > symlinks, which serves absolutely no purpose other than causing
> > headaches for systems that still use the old links.
> 
> I sent an email to this very mailinglist asking if it was ok to move
> the eggs and manual stuff:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/chicken-users/2009-02/msg00143.html
> 
> Later I sent an email asking to do the same to the user pages:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/chicken-users/2009-03/msg00048.html
> 
> Back then, nobody complained; people agreed that my changes were a good
> idea (or even necessary in the case of eggs and the manual).  You can
> see the thread's responses starting here:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/chicken-users/2009-03/msg00002.html
> (the archive doesn't show threads across "periods", but this is the
> first reply to the first message I sent to the list)

I'm sorry that I did not reply immediately to your proposals.

I have many things that I need to keep up with in my life that are
significantly more important to me than the layout of the Chicken
wiki.  For instance, in the last 3 weeks I had extremely limited
internet access.  That said, I don't think this should prevent me from
pointing out things that I consider broken in a way that affects me in
the layout of the Chicken wiki.

> I gave a clear motivation for doing this; the user pages and their
> symlinks were getting out of synch, and having two places with the same
> info that you have to keep in synch is a very bad idea (there were a
> few broken symlinks, some user pages were _not_ symlinked and I believe
> there were even regular user files in the wiki rootdir).  Also, the
> wiki provides no way to see and manage these symlinks as far as I know,
> which means that everytime someone creates or deletes a user page
> through the wiki interface, someone needs to go in and fix the symlinks.

I am *not* proposing keeping these in touch (ie. "everytime someone
creates or deletes a user page, go in and fix the symlinks").  I'm
simply proposing that if something used to be accessible at /foo and
is now accessible at /bar/foo, we create a link at /foo to /bar/foo
*unless there is a reason to use /foo for something else*.  I'm *not*
proposing that if we create a new page at /bar/foo, we create the /foo
symlink.

> Another reason to do this was to remove clutter.  There was a large
> number of files in the rootdir of the wiki.  Now it's only a handfull,
> with the manuals, eggs and users nicely separated in their own
> namespaces.  In the process of this big cleanup I found, aside from the
> broken symlinks, a few bogus egg pages and a few egg pages that had no
> "eggs" tag.  I'm not saying that this couldn't have been done by an
> audit of the existing infrastructure, but it's a nice side-effect of
> having a good look at what we had.

I agree that cleanning this up is good.  However, I would also claim
that just keeping the symlinks around doesn't really hurt anyone.  One
can simply ask for a view with symlinks removed to get exactly the
same uncluttered view we have now.  However, having the symlinks to
old pages keeps old URLs/links working.  So I see very little gain in
just removing the symlinks.

> > For example, searching for "mario domenech goulart" on Google
> > lists http://chicken.wiki.br/mario%20domenech%20goulart as the
> > second result.  This result used to work, redirecting to the
> > correct page.  Now it takes you to a stupid edit form.
> 
> Yes, and keeping it around will ensure Google never updates its links.
> We just have to wait a little longer and it will come around and
> update its links.

I do not think this process, that everything will be automatically
fixed, will be as effective and take as little time as I think you
think it will. :-(

> > So could we please just restore these links?  If the names (eg.
> > "/mario%20doemenech%20goulart") eventually gets needed for something
> > (for example, that becomes the name of something other than a user of
> > Chicken, lets say the name of the official manual or something) we can
> > *then* remove the symlink and use it for the purpose needed.  Until
> > then, why break things that were working?
> 
> Again, I provided proper motivation in my original email.  Why are you
> complaining now, over two months later, after I did all this work?

Simply because I had not seen this.  I assure you that if I had seen
it earlier, I would have pointed out its disadvantages earlier.

> > This same comments applies to URLs for eggs and for manual pages and
> > everything else.  For example, all the URLs for all my eggs in the
> > Chicken wiki were just broken when someone decided to move /egg-foo to
> > /eggref/N/egg-foo without providing symlinks.  Now most links to the
> > documentation for my eggs are broken.  Perhaps link /egg to
> > /eggref/N/egg, where N is the latest version for which it is
> > available?
> 
> I proposed making such a change, but doing this automatically instead of
> manually - ie in svnwiki itself.  This suggestion yielded no response
> from anyone with enough svnwiki knowledge to make this happen.
> 
> Keeping these symlinks updated can be a huge maintenance chore and they
> will inevitably get out of synch, just like the user symlinks did.
> We have enough infrastructural problems as it is, I don't see why we
> need more.  If it can be automated, I have no problems with it.
> In fact, I would applaud it -- nobody likes broken links.  But I don't
> have access to our web server nor the insight in how all this stuff
> hangs together, so I'm not the right person to make these changes; I'll
> have to leave that to someone who does and has.

It is very easy to do: whenever you move file foo to bar/foo, add a
symlink in foo pointing to bar/foo to the svn repos.  That's all that
is needed: the current infrastructure will act accordingly.  You don't
even need access to the server or any additional insight about how all
this stuff works to automate this.

> > No, I'm not volunteering my time to fix this mess.  I had actually
> > spent some time fixing this in the past for the users pages (which
> > involved some transformations in the names of the links to make them
> > more svnwiki-friendly).  I'm merely asking for a stop to the nonsense
> > in the way the Chicken wiki is being handled.
> 
> I don't see why you're making such a fuss about a wiki you yourself said
> you're not even using anymore
> (http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/chicken-users/2009-03/msg00039.html)
> and not even volunteering to fix it.

Fair enough.  I'm complaining because I gave some of these URLs in the
chicken wiki to a lot of people in the past years, when I thought I
could trust it a bit more than I do now.  I also thought I'd point out
that this change is harming the usability of the Chicken's wiki for
the sake of other people that use it.  I agree with you that,
fortunately, it doesn't really matter that much to me anymore and it
will matter less and less as I continue to move my information out of
the Chicken's wiki.  :-)

What's your point here, though?  That I shouldn't point out things
that I feel diminish the usability of the wiki simply because I don't
use it that much anymore?

> You were welcome to participate in said discussion, but you chose
> not to.  I don't see why we have to back out changes agreed upon by
> a democratic process at the request of one person.

I thought I was just participating in this discussion by sending this
email to the list.  But then you say that I shouldn't discuss this
about a wiki I'm "not even using anymore"?

> > Please see http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.
> 
> Maintainability trumps ivory tower "best practices" IMHO.  Also, if you
> feel so strongly about this, why not implement my suggestion to redirect
> egg pages automatically?  This will give us the best of both worlds; it
> keeps maintenance low and the URIs "unchanged".

I haven't seen this suggestion.

I would like to ask for permission to do something with regards to the
Chicken wiki: is it OK if, in URLs where I had old pages (that I've
moved or that I'm moving out of the Chicken wiki, such as
/stream-ext), I add pages with just a short text and a link to the new
location (something along the lines of “this information has been
moved to $URL”)?  I would like to keep the old URLs working at least a
bit; when I gave these URLs multiple times in the past, I assumed I
could trust the Chicken wiki not to be broken to the point were these
URLs would suddenly return 404s.  Will you grant me permission to
“pollute” the Chicken wiki / namespace for the sake of the people I
gave all these URLs to?  I think I would use about 30 or so unused
entries in the root of the wiki.

Thanks, Peter!  Even if I disagree with some particular changes, I
think you've done an incredible job in improving the Chicken wiki in
general.

Alejo.
http://azul.freaks-unidos.net/