Link rot

Link rot (or linkrot) is an informal term for the process by which, either on individual websites or the Internet in general, increasing numbers of links point to web pages, servers, or other resources that have become permanently unavailable. The phrase also describes the effects of failing to update out-of-date web pages that clutter search engine results. A link that does not work anymore is called a broken link, dead link or dangling link. The most common result of a dead link is a 404 error, which indicates that the appropriate web server responded that the specific, requested page could not be found.

A link may become broken for several reasons:

• the website owner finds another topic even more interesting,
• the owner changes partnership/relationship/lifestyle status,
• the costs of maintaining the site become prohibitive, and/or
• the death of the principals without having someone a plan in place to keep it running.

Web archiving

To combat link rot, web archivists are actively engaged in collecting the Web or particular portions of the Web and ensuring the collection is preserved in an archive, such as an archive site, for future researchers, historians, and the public. The largest web archiving organization is the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, which strives to maintain an archive of the entire Web, taking periodic snapshots of pages that can then be accessed for free and without registration many years later simply by typing in the URL, or automatically by using browser extensions. National libraries, national archives, and various consortia of organizations are also involved in archiving culturally important Web content.

What we do

• The staff of SM-201 actively "crawls the web" for information that we incorporate into our website.
• When we import an article, we search for information to expand the article.
• We actively seek out people to interview to gain more information about our community and our world

What you can do

• If you read an article that has an internal or external broken link, please forgive us and recognize the "ink-rot" is rampant and pervasive.
• If you know of a replacement address -- or another website we can point to -- let us know about it.

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