Solved Broken links in navigation bar

T

tiddler

I have tested all the links in the navigation bar below (at least as it appears on a desktop browser - haven't tried on mobile).
1708709365346.png


Mostly all is good but the following are broken.

Community > FreeBSD Journal links to the old URL that seems to have been defunct since 2022 based on https://web.archive.org/web/20221102182533/https://freebsdjournal.com/

The Foundation (who presumably used to own it?) seem to have lost control of that domain. They should probably have kept hold of it as a redirect to the journal's current home at https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-work/journal/ to keep out cyber-squatters ... probably worth telling them, if anybody knows an appropriate point of contact, given there will be other inbound links across the web?

About > Marketing links to https://www.freebsd.org/marketing/ which is "page not found". Note that on the main freebsd.org site, which has an almost identical navigation bar, there's no "Marketing" link under "About", although the same section does have links to "Projects" and "Ports" - I presume the forum navbar is meant to be a mirror of the main site's one, but they seem to have got a bit out of synch. The main site's link to the FreeBSD Journal has the correct URL, for example. I can't find a more appropriate link for "Marketing" since the (incredibly outdated) freebsd.org/marketing was taken down in late 2023 (compare https://web.archive.org/web/20230906155238/https://www.freebsd.org/marketing/ and https://web.archive.org/web/20231021060118/https://www.freebsd.org/marketing/)
 
Wow, that's service! :D

New links look good! I marked the main thread as solved but in case you want to get the forum and main site navbars completely in synch you might also want to look at:

Documentation > Committer's Guide is missing (main site has https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/committers-guide between Developer's Handbook and Manual Pages)

Documentation > All Books And Articles should change from https://www.freebsd.org/docs/ to https://docs.freebsd.org/en/ as it is on main site (former currently redirects to the latter anyway, but better not to rely on this)

Developers > Subversion Repository is missing (main site has https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ between Git and the GitHub Mirror) - though given FreeBSD's move to Git it might make more sense to remove from the main site than to add to the forums!

Resources > Web Resources is missing (main site has https://www.freebsd.org/support/webresources/ as last option under Resources)

Further to that, here's an issue with both the forum and main site navbars:

Community > Q&A (external) links to http://serverfault.com/questions/tagged/freebsd which is one of the sites in the Stack Exchange network, but arguably the wrong one!

Server Fault does have FreeBSD content but has a strong restriction about questions which are considered "on-topic" at https://serverfault.com/help/on-topic
Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology systems in a business environment.
Click to expand...
Unix & Linux Stack Exchange also covers FreeBSD content but with a much wider range of content accepted according to https://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic
Unix and Linux Stack Exchange is for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems.

If your question is about:
  • Using or administering a *nix desktop or server
  • The Unix foundation underlying MacOS (but generally not frontend application questions)
  • The underlying *nix OS on an embedded system or handheld device (e.g. an Android phone)
  • Shell scripting
  • Applications packaged in *nix distributions (note: being cross-platform does not disqualify)
  • UNIX C API and System Interfaces ( within reason )
then you're in the right place.
Click to expand...
This seems much more reflective of the wider cross-section of activities and use cases that crop up on this forum (and on the FreeBSD Reddit for that matter).

In terms of activity, http://serverfault.com/questions/tagged/freebsd lists 1543 questions whereas https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/freebsd lists 1716 questions. But restricting to posts within 2023, there were only 43 questions at https://serverfault.com/search?q=[freebsd]created:2023 against 139 questions at https://unix.stackexchange.com/search?q=[freebsd]created:2023

If you're going to pick one Stack Exchange Q&A site to link to, then the one that covers more use cases and has far more recent FreeBSD activity is Linux & Unix Stack Exchange rather than Server Fault. Having said that, the many FreeBSD users working in an enterprise environment may well find better support at Server Fault. So perhaps the best thing to do would be have

Community > UNIX/BSD Q&A (external) links to http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/freebsd

Community > Server Q&A (external) links to http://serverfault.com/questions/tagged/freebsd

Obviously this suggestion (and the point about the SVN repo link) is really aimed at whoever designs the main freebsd.org site, whose navbar layout the forum ought to be following, but I'm just leaving it here in case someone knows the right person to poke. :)
 
tiddler said:
In terms of activity, http://serverfault.com/questions/tagged/freebsd lists 1543 questions whereas https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/freebsd lists 1716 questions. But restricting to posts within 2023, there were only 43 questions at https://serverfault.com/search?q=[freebsd]created:2023 against 139 questions at https://unix.stackexchange.com/search?q=[freebsd]created:2023
Click to expand...
I slightly misinterpreted the search results above - the 1543 and 1716 all-time questions are correct, but the annual figures are for all posts, including questions and answers (some questions are unanswered, some have multiple answers). The number of answered questions in 2023 tagged FreeBSD was 29 on https://unix.stackexchange.com/search?q=[freebsd]+isanswered:yes+created:2023 against only 8 (!!!) on https://serverfault.com/search?q=[freebsd]+isanswered:yes+created:2023 which really calls into question whether Server Fault deserves a prominent external link these days. Note that the balance and total volume was quite different in the past (e.g. the 2012 data was 189 answered questions on Server Fault vs 89 on Linux and Unix SE) so the original decision to link Server Fault likely made sense at the time.

grahamperrin
You've probably got a better sense than most of where the FreeBSD community (or maybe more accurately "communities") is scattered these days - do you think there's anywhere outside the Stack Exchange network that might deserve an external link either from the Community section of the navbar, or somewhere else on the site?

I'm not sure if you have a way of pulling the stats from Reddit but looking at the 2023 data, https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/ must have answered far more (even two orders of magnitude?) than than the 8 FreeBSD-tagged questions on Server Fault, and a lot more than the 29 FreeBSD-tagged questions on Linux & Unix Stack Exchange. Whether quality/usefulness of the answers (or indeed questions) is comparable between the sites is a different issue - they do seem to attract different "crowds" with different needs.
 
tiddler said:
… anywhere outside the Stack Exchange network that might deserve an external link …
Click to expand...

One place comes immediately to mind, probably better to continue this conversation elsewhere (as it was Solved).

tiddler said:
… stats from Reddit …
Click to expand...

Join me here:

forums.freebsd.org

reddit vs discord

I recently posted alot of questions on reddit. And people became angry with my small questions. Now i post them on discord. And get valuable answers rather quickly. It's like reddit & discord attract another kind of public.
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

Thanks
 
tiddler said:
If you're going to pick one Stack Exchange Q&A site to link to, then the one that covers more use cases and has far more recent FreeBSD activity is Linux & Unix Stack Exchange rather than Server Fault.
Click to expand...
Note: I was a Stack Overflow mod until today.

You are correct. I often closed questions on Stack Overflow and redirected them to the Linux & Unix Stack Exchange site. The only time something would go to Server Fault is when it was specifically about server usage--which should be obvious.
 
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