[wiki] Move instead of delete?

[Tom Davies]

Hi :)
I really like this idea!  [tips hat at Elizabeth and Gunnar]

Changing the page to a redirect and then having that redirect go to a
common page that explains the situation, and how to get at the
information that used to be on the page (via history) seems to cover
most good reasons for reluctance to delete.

I think 1 of the concerns is that over the years people might have a
stock-pile of useful bookmarks, or links that appear in old magazine
articles or even some links from other pages would be broken if the
page really was deleted or moved.  Redirects is a brilliant idea
because it retains everything, including context.

Previously i had been a fan of moving the pages and using the
robots.txt would have been a brilliant finesse but i worried about
possibly losing the history and breaking external links into our
documentation.  Sorry Jonathan!

Would it be possible to create a list of the pages that were handled
this way and the date that they were set as redirects?  Maybe a space
for people to add comments?  I think it would take quite a long time
to really notice if such pages really hadn't caused any problems and
thus really were suitable for deletion.  Perhaps more like a couple of
years rather than 6 months!  Having the list and showing the dates
would make that easier to track.

Another advantage of this system might be that in the future people
feel more comfortable about effectively getting rid of pages in this
way, allowing much more rampant pruning.
Regards from
Tom :)



On 16 December 2013 02:58, Gunnar Hjalmarsson <gunnarhj at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On 2013-12-16 03:35, Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph wrote:
>> On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 6:24 PM, Gunnar Hjalmarsson <gunnarhj at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>>> On 2013-12-16 02:41, Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Format:
>>>>
>>>> #REDIRECT PageName
>>>
>>> It sounds like that would serve the same purpose in an easier way. Are
>>> such redirects permanent HTTP redirects, so the URL of a 'deleted' page
>>> is removed from the search engine indexes?
>>
>> Good question! It's a "301 Moved Permanently" so yes, it should be
>> removed from search indexes once the redirect is set up.
>
> Nice! Then how about creating
>
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PageDeleted
>
> basically saying that the page the visitor tried to reach has been
> deleted, and informing them on how to contact the team for the case they
> want to request that it is resurrected?
>
> --
> Gunnar Hjalmarsson
> https://launchpad.net/~gunnarhj
>
>
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