Re: Sad Day for Ada - Update your links

[David Trudgett <wpower@zeta.org.au.nospamplease>]

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/)