• RidcullyTheBrown@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    54% of Wikipedia pages contain at least one link in their “References” section that points to a page that no longer exists.

    It would be interesting to know how many of these references don’t exist anymore and how many have just moved. Web has come a very long way since 2013 and I bet that websites hosting the references have undergone several iterations altering the URLs in some way.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      That, in and of itself, is also a problem! First of all, because such pages often fail to return a HTTP 301 moved permanently response, and second (but perhaps even more importantly) the reason they move is because the site transitioned from using static, human-readable URLs to some kind of unstable CMS-managed non-descriptive gibberish that breaks caching and linking. It’s an intentional siloing and hoarding of content.