(2002-05-07) k

University researchers study Link Rot. After 20 months, 18.8 percent of the total links had disappeared. Over 11 percent of dot-org links, 18.4 percent of dot-edu pages and 42.5 percent of dot-com addresses were lost since the study began. But here's the really funny part: Each month, the two spend about four hours checking the 515 hyperlinks to ensure that students have up-to-date materials... In the meantime, the two researchers are writing a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation to build software that can check links for faculty, and alert them by e-mail if the URL or content changes. Have they really not discovered that such (free) software already exists?