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Broken links to docs all over the web

    • Open Issue created by Simon Hengel @sol

    Example: https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/latest/docs/html/users_guide/type-families.html

    Trac metadata
    Trac field Value
    Version 8.2.1
    Type Bug
    TypeOfFailure OtherFailure
    Priority normal
    Resolution Unresolved
    Component Compiler
    Test case
    Differential revisions
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    • Simon Hengel changed weight to 5

      changed weight to 5

    • Simon Hengel added Tbug Trac import labels

      added Tbug Trac import labels

    • Simon Hengel changed title from Broken links all over the web to Broken links to docs all over the web

      changed title from Broken links all over the web to Broken links to docs all over the web

    • Simon Hengel
      Simon Hengel @sol ·
      Author

      This kind of links are used on stack overflow, in blog posts, other documentation, etc.

    • Ben Gamari closed

      closed

    • Ben Gamari
      Ben Gamari @bgamari ·
      Maintainer

      I really don't know what we can do about this; the /latest directory is by definition the most recent release. There is relatively little we can do if people post unstable links. The correct thing to do here is to take care that long-lived text only contains stable links (e.g. for a particular GHC version).

      Trac metadata
      Trac field Value
      Resolution Unresolved → ResolvedWon'tFix
    • Simon Hengel
      Simon Hengel @sol ·
      Author

      Well, that didn't happen in the past. It's easy to blame the content authors who linked to the users guide in the past. But that won't improve anything.

      Just one more example is here:

      https://prime.haskell.org/wiki/LiberalTypeSynonyms

      The authors of this page are Simon Peyton Jones and Simon Marlow, both also authors of the users guide. They didn't get it right, and so many others didn't.

      Literally every link to the users guide is broken right now. Closing this as "wontfix" is like pretending that there isn't any problem.

      As I see it, as a content creator it is your responsibility to keep URLs stable. If you don't do it it hurts your users, reduces your visibility and has a negative impact on your Google ranking.

      So what can we do to mitigate this situation? Here is a non-comprehensive list of two options:

      • Scan the server logs for 404, sort them by frequency and create redirects based on that.
      • Turn requests to /latest into redirects to the canonical URL so that this situation won't happen in the future (assuming that most of the time URLs are actually copied and pasted)
    • Ben Gamari reopened

      reopened

    • Ben Gamari
      Ben Gamari @bgamari ·
      Maintainer

      Thanks for the concrete steps. This helps immensely.

      Turn requests to /latest into redirects to the canonical URL so that this situation won't happen in the future (assuming that most of the time URLs are actually copied and pasted)

      Yes, this sounds plausible. I will look into what it will take to make this happen.

      Trac metadata
      Trac field Value
      Resolution ResolvedWon'tFix → Unresolved
      Component Compiler → Documentation
    • Ben Gamari added documentation label

      added documentation label

    • Ben Gamari assigned to @bgamari

      assigned to @bgamari

    • Ben Gamari added Pnormal label

      added Pnormal label

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