Defunct, but still accessible.
I suppose that I'm not a characteristic example. After all (as I've noted too
many times already), I save things. Including old web sites.
Is there any logical reason (assuming that vanity isn't exactly logical) for copying
a few very old web sites from their original servers, scouring numerous hard drives
for copies of pages from these sites which somewhere along the line were lost
or became inaccessible, reconstructing them as authentically as possible, and
posting these on a section of my present site on the outside chance that somebody
might want to take a look at them (not to mention discover them by mistake, or
near-mistake)? Probably not.
On the other hand, as this was being written I baked some cookies that have, over
the years, become associated with me, and the people for whom they were prepared
loved them and wanted the recipe. It was certainly nice to be able to say that
it's available (and has been for years) on my (old and archived, but still accessible)
web site.
Even though access to that
recipe, and the site on which it sits, is almost exclusively through a link
to old sites on my site, it's still a web site. That recipe can show up on a search
engine if anybody runs a search for, say, its ingredients. Therefore, I certainly
couldn't have left it as it was when I discovered that some of the ingredients
had their quantities listed incorrectly. And if, even for that reason, the site
isn't completely dormant, there's no reason not to add another recipe now and
then, is there?
So perhaps I'm proving to myself not only that a public declaration of the end
of a particular web site is illogical, but also that it a very hard promise to
keep. Or at least not when you become hungry for cookies.
Go to: On completing a web site