docs/103807: wicontrol(8) manpage contains a broken URL

Tom Rhodes trhodes at FreeBSD.org
Mon Oct 9 16:12:58 UTC 2006


On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 13:03:29 +0300
Giorgos Keramidas <keramida at freebsd.org> wrote:

> On 2006-10-01 19:49, Daniel Gerzo <danger at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > Friday, September 29, 2006, 2:02:30 PM, it has been written:
> > >>Description:
> > > The manpage to wicontrol(8) contains an URL which point to a page
> > > which doesnt exist anymore:
> > > http://www.cs.rice.edu/~astubble/wep/wep_attack.html
> > 
> > I had a look at this one and it really seems that the URL is does not
> > exist any more. I searched webarchive for this document and was able
> > to find it.
> > 
> > The last working archive of this page is located at:
> > http://web.archive.org/web/20031211192719/http://www.cs.rice.edu/~astubble/wep/wep_attack.html
> > 
> > Next, I tried to make a simple google search for its title and I was
> > able to find a few mirrors of this document.
> > 
> > http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=Using+the+Fluhrer,+Mantin,+and+Shamir+Attack+to+Break+WEP&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
> > 
> > Now, I would like to ask you guys, what is preffered? To change the
> > reference to the existing URL, or to remove such reference? I think we
> > don't usually use URL as refences, but there are a few man pages that
> > still use it. Thoughts?
> 
> Well, opinions can vary about this topic.
> 
> I recently talked about the list of Atheros-based WLAN adapters, with
> Sam Leffler, and he prefers having a single URL in the manpage, instead
> of a wireless card list which is instantly out of date when something
> changes in the web page.
> 
> Other people prefer having as much information as possible locally, so
> they have worked and have done a tremendously good job at having our own
> web pages generated from manpage sources (i.e. the supported hardware
> lists on http://www.freebsd.org/).
> 
> I'm not sure if there is a silver bullet for deciding about this.
> 
> In this particular case, I think that web.archive.org can be used, as
> long as we have a licence to quote their stuff.  What are the terms of
> use for web.archive.org links?

This is dangerous ground to tread indeed.  Personally, I have always
looked at the idea that it would be much better to have a list in
the manual page for release information.  That and links may become
outdated, get moved or removed completely, etc.  So personally I
feel URLs in manual pages are typically a bad idea unless they are
covering a piece of information we need not or can not include;
such as a standard.

What you could do is archive the last version of it, put it into
your personal space at FreeBSD.org/~danger/XXX and link there,
otherwise I personally feel we should ask -doc and see how many
people are in favor of removing it.

I've CC:ed doc on this, where *I* would just normally remove it.
Perhaps more voices would be useful here.

-- 
Tom Rhodes



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