Holy Broken Links, Batman!

[eabrace]

Oh poor, poor, little wiki.  All of your links to forum posts are now seemingly irreparably broken.  Whatever shall we do?

[TonyV]

Oh poor, poor, little wiki.  All of your links to forum posts are now seemingly irreparably broken.  Whatever shall we do?

Hmm...  Well...  Um...

[Sekoia]

http://paragonwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&target=http%3A%2F%2Fboards.cityofheroes.com&limit=600

Well, at least there's only 546 links to check...

[Blondeshell]

 

 

 

[GuyPerfect]

I've been under the impression that any quotes from posts were in the articles themselves and the posts linked as references. If this isn't the case for some/many links, someone didn't wiki very well.

Either way, the links are dead now, so there are several articles to clean up!

[TonyV]

I've been under the impression that any quotes from posts were in the articles themselves and the posts linked as references. If this isn't the case for some/many links, someone didn't wiki very well.

Well, I wouldn't say that.  There have been lots of times when I would post something like, "Such-and-such has been confirmed not to be in Issue whatever[post link]."  I wouldn't necessarily want to copy the entire post, but I would want to make it clear that it's not just what someone said that someone said that a developer said.

[Steiner]

I'm going to see if I convert these urls to the Vbullo url.

[Steiner]

Ok, might be a way "impex" but you have to be a member to get your hands on it... and even though it's really just designed to inhouse stuff. Not someone else's.

If we could get SQL access to look in the their database, that would be ideal. We would just need "SELECT" access nothing else, no harm in that right?

I don't have enough pull on the official forums for anyone to let me in, Tony... if you get us the access I can write up a script to convert all those dead links.

[GuyPerfect]

Tony wouldn't have that kind of access either, but he does have influence. Might be able to convince the board admins to dig up the posts for us.

[Steiner]

That's what I'm thinking. No that Tony ever had that access, but he has enough pull to get himself that access... maybe.

[Fleeting Whisper]

Did the post IDs actually change, or just the links? It's real easy if the post numbers are the same.

[TonyV]

Did the post IDs actually change, or just the links? It's real easy if the post numbers are the same.

No, the post ids changed too. 

In order for a correlation to happen, one would have to have access to the old forum database and the new forum database.  You could suck the post IDs, usernames, timestamps, and maybe the source BBcode from the old forum database, then match it up to posts in the new forums to have a post number to post number map.

Then you could write a script on the web server that, when it sees a link to the old forum URL (i.e. /ubbthreads/stuff), it looks up the new post number and issues an HTTP 301 to the new correct URL.

I could do it if they let me have access to the old forum database and new forum database and their forum web server, but I really doubt that I have that kind of influence. 

[Steiner]

worth a try.

[Corebreach]

What is the proper thing to do when a link goes dead? (This is a good question in general, actually.) Some articles are still in the new forum but with a different I.D., but others are gone.

[Aggelakis]

IMO:

Find the post on the forums, change the link. If you can't find the post on the forums, check the wayback machine (archive.org? I think?). It's pretty good. <----- PREFERRED



If you can't find it, change the link to a line of text with "(post purged)" at the end, if it's in See Also, just hide it with <!-- -->. Make a note on the talk page (and possibly here) for others to try and search for it also. <---- NOT PREFERRED

[Texas Justice]

On the Epic Archetypes page, the link at the bottom for Memphis_Bill's EAT at Posi's thread is still the old link.

The new link is http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=126489

It says I don't have editing rights to the page, and I'd rather not for now, but as I find other broken links I'll post the new link here if I can find it.  My search-fu on the new vbb forums isn't bad usually.

And this gets to be my first post on the Titan forums as far as I can remember.

[eabrace]

In order to edit a page on the wiki, you first have to log in using your Titan ID.

I've already gone in and fixed the link you pointed out, but if you find any others, feel free to update them.

[Texas Justice]

I did log in.  It still wasn't giving me the option to Edit.  Said I had to be a member of the group Users.

And as I said, I'd rather not have editing rights for now.

I have too much to learn of editing Wiki's and not nearly enough time.