From d3b0359b86e3cdebc7c0467958414596184c36b8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Alex Scerba Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2025 10:23:08 -0500 Subject: Add article on broken web links --- ...10+The_Problem_With_Web_Links_In_Reporting+tech.tmpl.html | 12 ++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+) create mode 100644 html/blog/2025-02-10+The_Problem_With_Web_Links_In_Reporting+tech.tmpl.html (limited to 'html') diff --git a/html/blog/2025-02-10+The_Problem_With_Web_Links_In_Reporting+tech.tmpl.html b/html/blog/2025-02-10+The_Problem_With_Web_Links_In_Reporting+tech.tmpl.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..724a895 --- /dev/null +++ b/html/blog/2025-02-10+The_Problem_With_Web_Links_In_Reporting+tech.tmpl.html @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@ +{{ define "article" }} +
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While doing some research for my American consumer culture class, I came across this Harvard Business Review article about Intel's marketing. In it they quote intel and link to their source, www.intel.com/pressroom/intel_inside.htm.

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This article was from 2016, and I'm accessing this link 9 years later. As I expected from the language on the quote, it was nowhere to be found on today's webpage (it felt particularly brand unsafe for 2016 or 2025). Wanting to see where it came from, and to see if that link would have even worked at the time of writing, I fired up Archive.org.

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As expected, but also unfortunately, the link in 2016 redirected to something very similar to today's page. No sweeping claims relating Intel's own customers to car buyers reciting back processor speeds akin to knowing what engine configuration various cars have. This means even in the time, the source was misleading.

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Traveling back in time further, the last date I could find with the quote in the article was from Febuary 20th, 2013, right before the launch of Haswell (Intel 4th Generation Core i products for the layman).

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I find this in many articles, be it tech review or eventually my own website. Links die or redirect to new areas with different meanings than what was originally quoted in the article or blog. What is especially frustrating, however, is linking to a broken link at the time of writting and misquoting it without date clarifications, which is the case here. In the case of Harvard Business Review, they still accurately quoted the old site, but the fact that broken links are so common make it more difficult for the average reader to fact check a quote. This makes situations of intentionally fabricating misquotes to paint a narrative even easier.

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What's the solution? I believe it's sites like Archive.org. But, while this archive works today, it might not tomorrow as was demonstrated recently. There needs to be a more resilient effort made for archiving the web with many public mirrors. I'll be looking into this more in the next few months.

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