''I click, and I get 404 - something better will do '' ThinkingOutLoud.DonaldNoyes.20140810
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This is particularly true for links made to servers which have removed the poster's account and pages, such as those provided for students, staff, and faculty of educational institutions.

No automatic scheme is provided by most people for link artifacts which locations, (if not the content) will die when the url posting them no longer exists. 

In the near future (2 to 5 years) I expect something will be done to make links live beyond their serving sites via a PermanentLink. The internet archive is a site which has attempted to do this, but a scheme to navigate to such archives automatically instead of receiving 404 messages does not yet exist, leading to frustration and bewilderment by the link-follower.

This happens not only when the artifact has disappeared from its moorings, but also when is moved to another location, directory or site, and the pages linking to the old location are left as-is.

A way comes to mind where instead of pages being served via the url mechanism, another could be invented to take its place, such as pages being placed in a location which exists, and stuff can reside there. Something like putting something at a GeoLocation.
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CategoryOrganization