HN Explorer

Ask HN: Viewing dead links

7 points by dbz ↗ HN
Hacker News, I was wondering- why can't we view dead links? I understand that some sources are auto-banned and some posts are killed; however, why not let us view the link and make judgement for ourselves on whether the link is trash or not?

8 comments

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sparky
Just a guess, but maybe it's a matter of providing traffic, PageRank, ad revenue, etc. to garbage sites. In the case of "stuff that's interesting, but not quite HN-appropriate", that argument falls down a bit. Maybe keeping the URL in text form without linking is a good compromise?
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ugh
That’s why I subscribed to the HN RSS feed. You automatically get all links with one upvote or so.

If you really want to get to submissions that have been marked dead without any upvotes a simple “site:” query usually helps. The domain is still shown, even with dead links.

dbz
That's a good idea. I can subscribe; however, it seems like it would be beneficial to HN to keep the links clickable. I still don't really understand the need to kill them though.
jacquesm
I agree, since showdead is only available to logged in users, they might as well see the links.

No 'link juice' or anything would ever flow to those sites.

And I doubt the folks that look at the site using 'showdead' need protection from malware or spam sites.

The one reason I can think of is that any clicks from HN would lead to those users re-posting under different accounts because they got some traffic. And in that way it might be beneficial to really get rid of them.

TrevorBurnham
I agree as well. This is exactly why God gave us rel="nofollow".
kobs
Anyone can view dead links -- replace "item" in the url with "edit".