Incident Report X041201 Bogus Recent-Post Links Phantom Pages

orcmid> sostegno> 2004> X041201B> 2005-04-17-20:54 -0700

This is a form of tombstone page.  Tombstone pages are usually "ghost" pages that are left in place of pages that have been removed, whether or not moved elsewhere.  The idea is to ensure that any links that have been made to the tombstone page in the past are not "broken" and arrive at the tombstone instead of have no place to land any more.  A tombstone might also initiate a redirection to the proper location.  These pages don't do that because there is no proper location.

This page is a new kind of tombstone.  There are links to pages that never existed in the Orcmid's Lair Blog.  I don't know how that happened or whether there was something odd that I did that led to it.  All I know is that the results are invalid links to nonexistent blog entries interspersed with legitimate ones.  

The links showed up in the "Recent Postings" column for articles posted in the November 7 - November 10, 2004 time period.  The titles of these phantom pages are

• Link to Dean Landsman

• Emotional Life of Blogs

• Smart Mobs: BBC Wikiproxy and the Issue of Accuracy

• More WS-* Questioning

• Zombie Hacking

• Securing Safety-Critical Operating Systems

• Winning Hearts and Minds

and if you follow one of those links, you will encounter a version of this phantom pages placeholder.  No article with those titles was ever posted at those places.

I suspect I know where the bogus links came from.  There is more analysis at Incident Report X041201, Bogus Recent-Post Links.

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created 2005-01-22-15:23 -0800 (pst) by orcmid $$Author: Orcmid $ $$Date: 05-04-17 20:55 $ $$Revision: 6 $