Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[Jeff Creem]

Oh well. It was time for my annual (or at least bi-annual) trip to the 
whois database to watch to see if the ada home dot com domain was going 
to expire (not written as a URL to avoid giving googlebot more links to 
the site than it already has).

ada home dot com was once a great site for up to date Ada information 
but about 6 years ago it stopped getting updated at all (other than the 
automated headline script at the left side of the page that shows the date).

Unfortunately it is still highly ranked in the search engines and its 
horribly stale content (some of which is still relevant of course) lends 
to the perception of a dead language.

...Well..The reason it is a sad day is tha today when I checked it had 
been renewed again but this time until 2010..

Created: September 12, 1996
Modified: September 8, 2005
Expires: September 10, 2010


So consider this a reminder for those that have Ada websites that any 
links to ada home dot com should be removed to reduce the page rank.


I am not sure we will ever get it off the first page but it would feel 
good to see "ada programming" or "ada language" drop this page down a 
few pegs.

Be sure to add links to:

http://www.adapower.com - General Ada and Ada programming information
http://www.adaworld.com - General Ada and Ada programming information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_programming_language

and of course the award winning

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming

Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[David Trudgett]

Jeff Creem <jcreem@yahoo.com> writes:

> Oh well. It was time for my annual (or at least bi-annual) trip to the
> whois database to watch to see if the ada home dot com domain was
> going to expire (not written as a URL to avoid giving googlebot more
> links to the site than it already has).
>
> ada home dot com was once a great site for up to date Ada information
> but about 6 years ago it stopped getting updated at all (other than
> the automated headline script at the left side of the page that shows
> the date).

About six years ago was 1999, the date of this post (apparently) from
Magnus Kempe, in which he claims to be happy to have a competent
volunteer maintain his FAQ (why does an individual "own" the FAQ for
Ada?):

++++++++++ BEGIN ARTICLE QUOTE +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From: Magnus Kempe <mke...@artemedia.ch>
Subject: Re: adverts on c.l.a
Date: 1999/03/04
Message-ID: <36DEE653.9042BD9B@artemedia.ch>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 451271499
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
References: <7be6nm$4b9$1@remarQ.com> <7beilk$q5a$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <7beqcd$fs8$2@plug.news.pipex.net> <7bfcfr$3h3@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com> <36DB6F31.5A35224D@Botton.com>
To: David Botton <D...@Botton.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Complaints-To: usenet@sunrise.ch
X-Trace: sibyl.sunrise.ch 920577715 23870 193.192.254.3 (4 Mar 1999 20:01:55 GMT)
Organization: artemedia online sa
Mime-Version: 1.0
NNTP-Posting-Date: 4 Mar 1999 20:01:55 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada

> ... Magnus Kempe
> has expressed that he is no longer actively working on AdaHome

You are mistaken.
Please ask me before you make such statements in public, thank you.


> or as it
> seems the FAQs.

I'll gladly leave the maintenance of the FAQs to a competent volunteer
(please contact me at edi...@adahome.com as well as Team-Ada to discuss
it).


Magnus Kempe
edi...@adahome.com
++++++++++ END ARTICLE QUOTE +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Has Magnus disappeared off the face of the earth or something? Is it
true that in six years no one has been interested enough to create
another FAQ which is up-to-date and not controlled by an individual?


David




-- 

David Trudgett
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/

Every man of the present day with the Christian principles assimilated
involuntarily in his conscience, finds himself in precisely the
position of a man asleep who dreams that he is obliged to do something
which even in his dream he knows he ought not to do. He knows this in
the depths of his conscience, and all the same he seems unable to
change his position; he cannot stop and cease doing what he ought not
to do. And just as in a dream, his position becoming more and more
painful, at last reaches such a pitch of intensity that he begins
sometimes to doubt the reality of what is passing and makes a moral
effort to shake off the nightmare which is oppressing him.

This is just the condition of the average man of our Christian
society. He feels that all that he does himself and that is done,
around him is something absurd, hideous, impossible, and opposed to
his conscience; he feels that his position is becoming more and more
unendurable and reaching a crisis of intensity. 

    -- Leo Tolstoy, "The Kingdom of God is Within You"

Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <pfmdnZ2dnZ19cd2mnZ2dnQMmvd6dnZ2dRVn-zJ2dnZ0@comcast.com>, Jeff Creem <jcreem@yahoo.com> writes:

> So consider this a reminder for those that have Ada websites that any 
> links to ada home dot com should be removed to reduce the page rank.

Why post a general request like that rather than going to the 167 people
involved ?

http://www.google.com/search?as_lq=www.adahome.com

Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[Jeff Creem]

Larry Kilgallen wrote:
> In article <pfmdnZ2dnZ19cd2mnZ2dnQMmvd6dnZ2dRVn-zJ2dnZ0@comcast.com>, Jeff Creem <jcreem@yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>So consider this a reminder for those that have Ada websites that any 
>>links to ada home dot com should be removed to reduce the page rank.
> 
> 
> Why post a general request like that rather than going to the 167 people
> involved ?
> 


1) That is a lot of people but I like the idea.
2) It won't stop new people from linking to it.
3) I was blowing off steam as a result of the long renewal period this 
time around (...never a wise thing to do...blowing off steam that is).

Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[Jeff Creem]

David Trudgett wrote:
> Jeff Creem <jcreem@yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>Oh well. It was time for my annual (or at least bi-annual) trip to the
>>whois database to watch to see if the ada home dot com domain was
>>going to expire (not written as a URL to avoid giving googlebot more
>>links to the site than it already has).
>>
>>ada home dot com was once a great site for up to date Ada information
>>but about 6 years ago it stopped getting updated at all (other than
>>the automated headline script at the left side of the page that shows
>>the date).
> 
> 
> About six years ago was 1999, the date of this post (apparently) from
> Magnus Kempe, in which he claims to be happy to have a competent
> volunteer maintain his FAQ (why does an individual "own" the FAQ for
> Ada?):
> 

Not sure what came of that but both David and I have tried to contact 
Magnus several times over the past few years about transfer of the 
entire site/domain and he was not interested. I never saw or heard of an 
offer to have someone else maintain the site until that repost (which 
was just for the FAQ as near as I could tell)

And the reason the FAQ is "owned" by a person is it is copyrighted and 
therefore can not be copied to another site.

(See the bottom of the page: This FAQ is Copyright � 1994-1996 by Magnus 
Kempe.) Of course in the US even without an explicit statement it would 
have likely been protected by copyright.

It does have fairly liberal terms for re-distribution but the part that 
says "as long as it is completely unmodified" sort of causes some 
issues. Of course most of the FAQ and answers really originally came 
froom other people so technically the individual items are actually not 
copyright'd by Magnus but by the original authors.

The fun part of his response is where he claims david is mistaken that 
Magnus no longer wants to actively work on the website...but then the 
site is never updated once after that...


In any case, it is (was) of course a volenteer effort and he is under no 
obligation to do anything....so to some extent I was needlessly venting.

Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[Mike Silva]

Jeff Creem wrote:

> ...Well..The reason it is a sad day is tha today when I checked it had
> been renewed again but this time until 2010..

Does he have some kind of a grudge against the Ada community?  This
behavior seems inexplicable.

Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[tmoran]

> Does he have some kind of a grudge against the Ada community?  This
> behavior seems inexplicable.
   He apparently isn't the only faq-non-maintainer: look at
www.faqs.org/faqs/computer

Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[David Trudgett]

Jeff Creem <jcreem@yahoo.com> writes:

> David Trudgett wrote:
>> Jeff Creem <jcreem@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>>Oh well. It was time for my annual (or at least bi-annual) trip to the
>>>whois database to watch to see if the ada home dot com domain was
>>>going to expire (not written as a URL to avoid giving googlebot more
>>>links to the site than it already has).
>>>
>>>ada home dot com was once a great site for up to date Ada information
>>>but about 6 years ago it stopped getting updated at all (other than
>>>the automated headline script at the left side of the page that shows
>>>the date).
>> About six years ago was 1999, the date of this post (apparently) from
>> Magnus Kempe, in which he claims to be happy to have a competent
>> volunteer maintain his FAQ (why does an individual "own" the FAQ for
>> Ada?):
>>
>
> Not sure what came of that but both David and I have tried to contact
> Magnus several times over the past few years about transfer of the
> entire site/domain and he was not interested. I never saw or heard of
> an offer to have someone else maintain the site until that repost
> (which was just for the FAQ as near as I could tell)

Yes, that seems to be the case. Nothing appears to have come of it
either.


>
> And the reason the FAQ is "owned" by a person is it is copyrighted and
> therefore can not be copied to another site.

I knew about the copyright issue, but my "why" was asking a deeper
question. What thought processes would lead a person to take other
people's contributions from comp.lang.ada, incorporate them into a
FAQ, and then claim exclusive ownership over it? It seems like an
inappropriate, selfish and controlling act to me. But I do not know
the circumstances, hence the question. The corollary (another aspect
of my original question) is, "Why was he allowed to do it?" (i.e., I
didn't notice any controversy about it in c.l.a archives, though it's
possible I could have missed it).


> The fun part of his response is where he claims david is mistaken that
> Magnus no longer wants to actively work on the website...but then the
> site is never updated once after that...

As someone said, it seems inexplicable.


>
>
> In any case, it is (was) of course a volenteer effort and he is under
> no obligation to do anything....so to some extent I was needlessly
> venting.

Maybe he feels he is preserving an important piece of history... but
why insist on camping on the domain name?

The real problem, though, doesn't seem to be Magnus Kempe or adahome,
but rather the fact that Google lists it right up the top of the
search results (when *I* tried it, at least). As you know, this must
have to do with how many sites link to it. Why do they link to it if
it's out of date? Perhaps it still has content that can't be found
elsewhere? If so, why is that after six years?

...and it's too bad about the American Dental Association, too! ;-)

David


-- 

David Trudgett
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/

When it is said that we disturb people too much by the words pacifism
and anarchism, I can only think that people need to be disturbed, that
their consciences need to be aroused, that they do indeed need to look
into their work, and study new techniques of love and poverty and
suffering for each other. Of course the remedies are drastic, but then
too the evil is a terrible one and we are all involved, we are all
guilty, and most certainly we are all going to suffer. The fact that
we have "the faith," that we go to the sacraments, is not enough.
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye
have done it unto me" with napalm, nerve gas, our hydrogen bomb, our
"new look."

    -- Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, April 1954
       
       (Dorothy Day Library on the Web at
        http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/)

Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[Björn Persson]

David Trudgett wrote:
> Jeff Creem <jcreem@yahoo.com> writes:
>>The fun part of his response is where he claims david is mistaken that
>>Magnus no longer wants to actively work on the website...but then the
>>site is never updated once after that...
> 
> As someone said, it seems inexplicable.

Strictly speaking, that statement only says that he's never *expressed* 
that he isn't working on the website. It doesn't really say that he's 
actually working on it, and it certainly doesn't say anything about what 
he *wants* to do.

I bet he's been wanting to get back to Ada Home all this time, and he's 
probably constantly thinking he'll soon find some time for it. I can 
understand that situation. Myself I have many unfinished projects that 
I've never consciously abandoned. They've just slipped away while other 
things kept me busy. (None of them are as public as Ada Home though.) 
Don't you have some of those too?

The only thing about Magnus Kempe that seems strange to me is that he 
doesn't want to let anyone else update Ada Home, if that is indeed the case.

> As you know, this must
> have to do with how many sites link to it. Why do they link to it if
> it's out of date?

Because they're outdated too?

-- 
Bj�rn Persson                              PGP key A88682FD
                    omb jor ers @sv ge.
                    r o.b n.p son eri nu

Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[Martin Krischik]

Bjï¿œrn Persson wrote:

> I bet he's been wanting to get back to Ada Home all this time, and he's
> probably constantly thinking he'll soon find some time for it. I can
> understand that situation. Myself I have many unfinished projects that
> I've never consciously abandoned. They've just slipped away while other
> things kept me busy. (None of them are as public as Ada Home though.)
> Don't you have some of those too?

That's one of the reasons I changed all my Web-Sites to Wiki technology - so
anybody can make a fix if I have not time. Currently WikiSpam is not a real
problem so I don't even have a password in place.

Martin

-- 
mailto://krischik@users.sourceforge.net
Ada programming at: http://ada.krischik.com

Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[Isaac Gouy]

Jeff Creem wrote:
> Larry Kilgallen wrote:
> > In article <pfmdnZ2dnZ19cd2mnZ2dnQMmvd6dnZ2dRVn-zJ2dnZ0@comcast.com>, Jeff Creem <jcreem@yahoo.com> writes:
> >
> >
> >>So consider this a reminder for those that have Ada websites that any
> >>links to ada home dot com should be removed to reduce the page rank.
> >
> >
> > Why post a general request like that rather than going to the 167 people
> > involved ?
> >
>
>
> 1) That is a lot of people but I like the idea.

It's not that many.

When Brent Fulgham re-started The Great Computer Language Shootout
there were many many links to Doug Bagley's obsolete (no longer in
existence) website - so week after week we used the search engines to
find pages that linked to the obsolete site, traced the owners and
emailed them with the URL for the new site.

Of course there still are webpages that reference the obsolete site,
but not so many that they prevent a search finding the active website.


> 2) It won't stop new people from linking to it.

Do a search every few months and contact the first 10 websites that
have linked to ada home - it's like weeding.


> 3) I was blowing off steam as a result of the long renewal period this
> time around (...never a wise thing to do...blowing off steam that is).

Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[Tarjei T. Jensen]

"tmoran@acm.org" wrote
>> Does he have some kind of a grudge against the Ada community?  This
>> behavior seems inexplicable.
>   He apparently isn't the only faq-non-maintainer: look at
> www.faqs.org/faqs/computer

There is nothing that keeps anybody from compiling a new Ada FAQ.

greetings,

Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[Björn Persson]

Tarjei T. Jensen wrote:
> There is nothing that keeps anybody from compiling a new Ada FAQ.

Except that we all have more things we want to do than we have time for, 
don't we?

-- 
Bj�rn Persson                              PGP key A88682FD
                    omb jor ers @sv ge.
                    r o.b n.p son eri nu