Solivagant:
There are "broken link" checkers - but how good and easy to use they are I know not. Have you ever used one to check the Web Site Els??
Yes I do have one, but it is not integrated into the "whole system". I run it once in a while, but it is a lot of work to follow-up (check whether a site has just moved instead of been deleted for example).
- We could do a periodic "clean-up", and use some community effort to find links to replace them with. Especially all links to "official" websites should be replaced.
- Others could just be deleted, we (ahum, Nan) could probably automate that some way.
Solivagant:
I guess we would not bother with correcting some long lost news item from some newspaper - most will not be recoverable anyway - perhaps at least the "title" is still of interest even if it doesn't lead to the article (though it could be worth removing the "link" aspect for such articles - then anyone really interested could do their own searches?)
Indeed. Because of that reason I always try to keep meaningful texts in the news links - they still have worth when the news item has expired on another website.