Seventy-one people have written back so far. I don't copy anybody's letter onto my page
without asking, so these are in my own words, with first names only and no page names. The
dead addresses are written out as plain text. There's no use linking to them; they go
nowhere.
Victor keeps a page about model railroading. The link to his railroad club had
gone to a 404 Not Found at http://www.geocities.us/Route66/Crossroads/9431/. He wrote back
within the hour. The club's old secretary had kept the club page, and when a new secretary
took over, the page moved and nobody told anyone. Victor found the new address in the club
newsletter, fixed his link that night, and then telephoned the new secretary to tell him
about forwarding pages. I liked Victor very much.
Miriam wrote that she had forgotten the page existed. She'd made it in college,
three years ago, and her links went to her friends' student pages, which had all been
closed when they graduated. Every one of her eighteen links was dead. She said reading my
letter was like finding an old diary in her mother's attic. She took the whole page down
and put up a new one, and sent me the address. Its links all work.
Eileen wrote to ask how in the world I had found her page. (Through a ring of
gardening pages, one to the next.) Then she asked if I would look at her other two pages.
I did, and found nine more dead links between them, including one to a hiking page at
http://www.geocities.us/Yosemite/Lodge/8857/ that was gone without a trace. She fixed them
all, and she now checks her links on the first of the month. She says she thinks of me
when she does it.
Derrick's first reply was two lines long and not friendly. He hadn't asked
anyone to check his page, he said. I didn't answer, as is my rule. A week later he wrote
again to apologize. He'd been having a bad week, he said, and then he'd sat down and
clicked through his own links page for the first time in a year and found eleven dead ones,
not just the three I'd told him about. He fixed them all and added a line at the top saying
when he'd checked them. I wrote back that time, to thank him.
Roger's links page had a link to his brother's page about fishing the lakes up
on the Iron Range. It gave "server can't be found." Roger wrote that his brother had died
in the spring, and that the Internet company had closed his account, and that he hadn't
known the page was gone until my note. He asked whether there was any way to get it back. I
had to tell him I didn't know of one. Unless someone saved a copy, a page that's gone is
gone. A week later he wrote again: his niece had printed out most of the pages a year ago
to show her grandmother. Roger is typing them in and putting them up on his own page, under
his brother's name. I've offered to check every link when he's done.
Amy is eighteen. Her links page dated from her sophomore year of high school, and
the link I wrote about, to a friend's page at http://www.geocities.us/Heartland/Valley/9612/,
had been an "I've moved!" page for a year, with no new address. She wrote back that she was
mortified, then that she'd fixed it, and then that she'd asked her friend where she'd moved
to and her friend didn't remember. That's link rot in one sentence.
Save your pages, all of you. Keep a copy on a disk. If Roger's story teaches anything,
it's that.
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