I totally agree; plus, instead of giving a message like you
sometimes get from a phone company, for example:
"Sorry you must NOT dial a "1" in front of this number..."
Why not just assume "no 1" and not bother with the message.
In the case of "this xxx relocated to yyy," why not just
link to "yyy" instead of bothering with the message, or,
notify with the message and still link them there.
............dennis.............
<<>>..04/14/94..13:03:13...<<>>
-------------------------------
Dennis J. Vandine at ProSysTech
prosyst@onramp.net 214.414.5302
-------------------------------
"PC Supersonic Transport"- AT&T
-------------------------------
>During a recent course on Internet, we made demonstrations of WWW and
>Gopher. Although the course participants liked the idea of the services,
>their appreciation would have been higher if so many things which looked
>to them like errors in the data bases occurred.
>
>What happended was that when I tried to follow a link, instead of
getting
>the linked document, I got either nothing, or some kind of error message
>saying for example that "this file has been moved to tape" or something
>like that.
>
>Because the person who puts in a link in WWW or Gopher, and the person
>who is responsible for the linked document, sometimes are not actively
>cooperating, this can happen. Especially when users use services like
>Veronica, links to non-existing documents can easily occur and make
>people feel that Veronica is not a good service.
>
>My suggestion for a solution to this problem is the following:
>Change the format of WWW and Gopher documents, so that there is a bit
>somewhere in the document saying that "this is a dummy document,
>the real document is not available any more". Also, always store
>in WWW and Gopher documents the e-mail address of the person responsible
>for the document. By document I mean also Gopher menus.
>
>Then create a program which runs through the whole worldwide Gopher and
>WWW data bases, in much the same way as is done when accumulating data
>for the Veronica data bases. This program should note every case where a
>Gopher menu or a WWW document contains a link to a non-existent or dummy
>document. The program should then automatically write an e-mail message
>to the person responsible for the WWW document or Gopher menu, telling
>him/her that his document/menu contains links to a certain non-
>existent or dummy document. Hopefully, the person will then remove the
>non-working link, or change it to refer to an existing document instead.
>
>(I am not a subscriber to www-talk or gopher-news, so if you write an
>answer to this message, please post a copy to my e-mail address also.)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Jacob Palme E-mail: jpalme@dsv.su.se
> Phone: +46-8-664 77 48 or +46-8-16 16 67
>Department of Computer and Fax: +46-8-703 90 25 _not very fast_
>Systems Sciences (DSV) Postal address: Skeppargatan 73,
>Stockholm University S-11530 Stockholm, Sweden
>
...........dennis.............
<<>>..04/14/94..12:55:36...<<>>
-------------------------------
Dennis J. Vandine at ProSysTech
prosyst@onramp.net 214.414.5302
-------------------------------
"PC Supersonic Transport"- AT&T
-------------------------------