h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

With h2g2 on reactive moderation, should broken links in postings be reported by the Yikes button?

If so, perhaps there should be a way, when reporting postings with broken links, to make these a lower priority than a posting that breaks the House Rules.

RhoMuNuQ

Hi RhoMuNuQ,

Technically, broken links are against the House Rules - "Only include suitable URLs in your contributions". Although I can't imagine that many Researchers would be deliberately posting broken links. We can't prioritise complaints that come in via the complaints button, they all go into the queue in time order.

However, I'd suggest that if you come across a broken link, you tell whoever posted it, rather than complain. If they come back and fix it (or repost a fixed one in a conversation), then it's okay to leave it. If it's something that can't be fixed because the website isn't active anymore, then use the complaints button. A certain kind of site has a habit of snapping up old domains and turning them into something entirely unsuitable, so we'd like to remove those before that happens.

Does that help?

Thanks, Mina!

I was thinking more of conversations where a link such as http://www.google.com, (that was deliberately broken ) is broken but seems too trivial to complain about. So could I just post a new message such as "The link in Post # should have been to http://www.google.com " rather than using the complaints button?

RhoMuNuQ

Yes that's fine.

Thanks