Forum Usage

[eteam00]

I tried my best to generate a long list of useful links to forum threads and tutorials, for new users.  Sometime in the last 24 hours, a few of the links went 'Page Not Found'.  I have manually fixed them, but this should not be happening -- right?

Here is an example:

before fix --

If you are new to Xilinx FPGAs and design tools, these online beginners' tutorials may be particularly helpful.

after fix --

If you are new to Xilinx FPGAs and design tools, these online beginners' tutorials may be particularly helpful.

At least 3 of my posts were affected, probably more.

-- Bob Elkind

[chughes]

Bob,

I will investigate this today.

Sorry for the extra work this has caused you.

I have no idea what could have caused the links to break.

Regards,
Caroline

[chughes]

Bob,

Had you edited your post at all between the links working and them breaking?

Or did you notice they had gone to 'page not found' even though you had not been working on your post?

It seems that you may have noticed the problem quite quickly. Are you able to provide me with the rough date and time of when they were correct and also the date/time of when you noticed they had changed, please? (Although I assume the latter is very similar to the date/time of when you posted this Topic!)

Thanks,

Caroline.

[eteam00]

Here is the URL (post #3 in the thread) for the original post with the link which changed.  I edited the post to update the link.

I did verify the original link was correct at the time of the original posting.  After the thread originator reported the link failure, I verified the apparent failure.

The only clues I can offer are the timestamps of my original post and the followup post reporting the failed link.

By the way, this is not the first incident of forum-related URLs changing (for user pages, for example).

-- Bob Elkind

[eteam00]

Had you edited your post at all between the links working and them breaking?

Yes, and I believe there is a "smoking gun" here. (note: I use the "Rich Text" editor).

Here is an experiment to try:

• Create 3 forum posts, each with a link to another forum thread.
• First forum post is a link created by copying a browser URL and pasting the URL into the "link" popup.
• Second forum post is identical to the first forum post, but perform "edit reply" on the post (change any text it doesn't matter).
• Third post is a copy/paste from the first forum post, including the link.

After all three posts are completed, see which of the three forum posts still has working links.

-- Bob Elkind

[eteam00]

This is a link to this forum thread.

-- Bob Elkind

[eteam00]

This is another link to this forum thread.

After posting this (and verifying the link works), it will be edited once using the "edit reply" button from the drop-down menu.

UPDATE: link in original post was verified, and now this post is being edited.

-- Bob Elkind

[eteam00]

This is a direct cut and paste from post #6 in this thread:

This is a link to this forum thread.

-- Bob Elkind

[eteam00]

As this is being written, all three of the experiment posts have a functioning link.  In other words, I cannot get the links to break.

On the other hand, one of my recent thread posts resulted in non-working links (which I have since corrected).  Here is the link to the post (#2 in this thread).

Note the report (post #3 in the thread), 11 days or so after the original post, that the links were not working.  I confirmed that the links in post #2 were indeed broken.

Something very strange is happening with links in forum posts, and I believe (but cannot prove) that links are changing even after the posting.  In other words, a working link in an existing post can "go bad" without intervention from the user who originally wrote the post.

Perhaps this is affecting only me, but I do not understand how this can be true if I am not opening and editing the post to provoke the changing link.  Here is an example of a working link:

http://forums.xilinx.com/t5/New-Users-Forum/verilog/m-p/224547#M161

I believe the form of a broken link is:

http://forums.xilinx.com/New-Users-Forum/verilog/m-p/224547#M161

Even if the problem is explained as the result of copying and pasting a 'broken' link, the questions remain why and  how would such a 'broken' link be created in the first place?  After all, a broken link must exist before it can be copied and pasted, right?

UPDATE to Caroline:  Please check the first post in this thread.  There should be two links, one broken and one fixed.  As this is being written, the "fixed" link is corrupted.  Notice that the original post was not edited!

Here is the "fixed" second link after it was corrupted:

http://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Forum-Usage/URLs-changed/Spartan-Family-FPGAs/Xilinx-Training-on-Spartan...

UPDATE #2 to Caroline:  Without editing the first post in this thread, the second link in the post seems to have self-repaired!!  The link is now:

http://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Spartan-Family-FPGAs/Xilinx-Training-on-Spartan-Family-FPGAs/m-p/134440/...

UPDATE #3 to Caroline:  The link in post #8 was broken around 20:13 local time, and around 21:27 local time the link was correct again.  Fortunately, I captured screen grabs of both events, and I have emailed them to you.

I'm just dying to hear what the explanation for this is.  Perhaps it is swamp gas fumes?

-- Bob Elkind

[chughes]

Bob,

Thanks for your thorough investigation into this.

As I am writing this, Experiments 1 and 2 are fine, but 3 is corrupted.

It is taking me to: http://forums.xilinx.com/Forum-Usage/URLs-changed/m-p/224615/message-uid/224615#U224615, which is missing the /t5/ bit of the link, which is where this is going wrong.

The big question is....why? (Obviously!)

I find it particularly odd that broken links are somehow fixing themselves on occasion!

I am about to go through your emails now.

I'll re-post once I have done that.

Regards,

Caroline