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My own research (which I hope to publish soon) shows a slightly better link rot rate for bookmarked URLs (which are presumably ones people are most interested i

My own research (which I hope to publish soon) shows a slightly better link rot rate for bookmarked URLs (which are presumably ones people are most interested in keeping). The attrition rate I see so far is roughly linear and about 5% a year. Which is still shocking by any non-web standard, but a little better than the figures cited above.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
You do research using bookmarks on Pinboard as your dataset? May I ask how this data is used and disclosed to others?
- idlewords 12y ago
  https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/08/researching_link_rot/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/08/researching_link_rot/
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    To run the experiment, I am going to be drawing a few thousand links at random from the entire pool of Pinboard bookmarks. This will include private bookmarks, which make up about half the Pinboard collection. You chose to include everyone's private bookmarks in your research without asking their consent? What? I will publish some aggregate information about what I find, and use it to seek glory, and persuade people to sign up for archiving. But I won't release anything that could lead back to specific users or links. There is roughly a boatload of evidence that anonymized datasets can be deanonymized in unexpected ways. Even if you don't release any anonymized datasets, it's really not good that you decided to take such liberties with people's private links in the first place.
    - idlewords 12y ago
      Why would I need consent to study the global link rot rate? Publishing it reveals no information about users, either individually or in the aggregate. I've made an effort to let anyone who wants to opt out of the research, because I know people can have strong feelings about privacy. I agree with you that publishing an 'anonymized' dataset would be a violation of privacy guarantees. I wouldn't even do it for public bookmarks.
      - sillysaurus3 12y ago
        "Private" means "private," not "private unless Maciej wants to study them." I didn't get an email saying "There's a chance I might select your private bookmarks and examine them." A blog post doesn't count when you're messing with people's private data. Certainly it should be opt-in, and not opt-out? You're doing this for a noble purpose, but for what it's worth, this is the first time my trust in you has ever felt violated. People have entrusted you with years worth of private data, and you just asked, "Why should I ask permission to study their private links?" Actually, as far as I can tell, your comment seems to implicitly assume that you already have consent to examine all private links, and that asking consent would only be necessary if you were planning on publishing something that might reveal some of their private links. Isn't that the opposite of privacy?
        c_c_c 12y ago
        I don't share your outrage. The blog post linked clearly states the scope and purpose, the researcher says aggregated data will not be released and individual user data is unnecessary for the purposes described. He then offers those that are still wary of the research an option to not have their data used. Maybe I have a blind spot but this seems pretty straightforward and harmless to individual privacy.
        sillysaurus3 12y ago
        Is it okay for any owner of a website to go through their userbase's private data, simply because they own that website? I don't mean "okay" in a legal sense, but rather a moral sense. It reminds me quite a lot of http://i.imgur.com/5quY1Iq.png http://i.imgur.com/5quY1Iq.png except that the difference is that Maciej is a researcher and isn't disclosing the data to people. However, he's still going through people's private stuff. Notifying them that you're planning to go through their private stuff is the most basic common courtesy; it's why landlords can't simply walk in to a tenant's house whenever they feel like it, even though they own the property. Let's put it another way: I didn't know Maciej was the type of person to trawl through people's private information that they trusted him with. If I did, I would've investigated other options for a bookmarking site a couple years ago, or would've written my own, and I wouldn't have breathlessly recommended Pinboard to whoever would listen. The recommendation would be more like "Pinboard is great, but the owner likes to look at your stuff, even if it's marked 'private,' so keep that in mind."
Houshalter 12y ago
That's consistent with most of those studies. The next paragraph does an interesting experiment showing a very conservative rate of 3% per year: >My specific target date is 2070, 60 years from now. As of 10 March 2011, gwern.net has around 6800 external links (with around 2200 to non-Wikipedia websites)4. Even at the lowest estimate of 3% annual linkrot, few will survive to 2070. If each link has a 97% chance of surviving each year, then the chance a link will be alive in 2070 is 0.972070−2011=0.16 (or to put it another way, an 84% chance any given link will die). The 95% confidence interval for such a binomial distribution says that of the 2200 non-Wikipedia links, ~336-394 will survive to 20705. If we try to predict using a more reasonable estimate of 50% linkrot, then an average of 0 links will survive (0.502070−2011×2200=1.735×10−16×2200≃0). It would be a good idea to simply assume that no link will survive.

sillysaurus3 12y ago

You do research using bookmarks on Pinboard as your dataset? May I ask how this data is used and disclosed to others?

idlewords 12y ago
https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/08/researching_link_rot/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/08/researching_link_rot/
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  To run the experiment, I am going to be drawing a few thousand links at random from the entire pool of Pinboard bookmarks. This will include private bookmarks, which make up about half the Pinboard collection. You chose to include everyone's private bookmarks in your research without asking their consent? What? I will publish some aggregate information about what I find, and use it to seek glory, and persuade people to sign up for archiving. But I won't release anything that could lead back to specific users or links. There is roughly a boatload of evidence that anonymized datasets can be deanonymized in unexpected ways. Even if you don't release any anonymized datasets, it's really not good that you decided to take such liberties with people's private links in the first place.
  - idlewords 12y ago
    Why would I need consent to study the global link rot rate? Publishing it reveals no information about users, either individually or in the aggregate. I've made an effort to let anyone who wants to opt out of the research, because I know people can have strong feelings about privacy. I agree with you that publishing an 'anonymized' dataset would be a violation of privacy guarantees. I wouldn't even do it for public bookmarks.
    - sillysaurus3 12y ago
      "Private" means "private," not "private unless Maciej wants to study them." I didn't get an email saying "There's a chance I might select your private bookmarks and examine them." A blog post doesn't count when you're messing with people's private data. Certainly it should be opt-in, and not opt-out? You're doing this for a noble purpose, but for what it's worth, this is the first time my trust in you has ever felt violated. People have entrusted you with years worth of private data, and you just asked, "Why should I ask permission to study their private links?" Actually, as far as I can tell, your comment seems to implicitly assume that you already have consent to examine all private links, and that asking consent would only be necessary if you were planning on publishing something that might reveal some of their private links. Isn't that the opposite of privacy?
      - c_c_c 12y ago
        I don't share your outrage. The blog post linked clearly states the scope and purpose, the researcher says aggregated data will not be released and individual user data is unnecessary for the purposes described. He then offers those that are still wary of the research an option to not have their data used. Maybe I have a blind spot but this seems pretty straightforward and harmless to individual privacy.
        sillysaurus3 12y ago
        Is it okay for any owner of a website to go through their userbase's private data, simply because they own that website? I don't mean "okay" in a legal sense, but rather a moral sense. It reminds me quite a lot of http://i.imgur.com/5quY1Iq.png http://i.imgur.com/5quY1Iq.png except that the difference is that Maciej is a researcher and isn't disclosing the data to people. However, he's still going through people's private stuff. Notifying them that you're planning to go through their private stuff is the most basic common courtesy; it's why landlords can't simply walk in to a tenant's house whenever they feel like it, even though they own the property. Let's put it another way: I didn't know Maciej was the type of person to trawl through people's private information that they trusted him with. If I did, I would've investigated other options for a bookmarking site a couple years ago, or would've written my own, and I wouldn't have breathlessly recommended Pinboard to whoever would listen. The recommendation would be more like "Pinboard is great, but the owner likes to look at your stuff, even if it's marked 'private,' so keep that in mind."

Houshalter 12y ago

That's consistent with most of those studies. The next paragraph does an interesting experiment showing a very conservative rate of 3% per year: >My specific target date is 2070, 60 years from now. As of 10 March 2011, gwern.net has around 6800 external links (with around 2200 to non-Wikipedia websites)4. Even at the lowest estimate of 3% annual linkrot, few will survive to 2070. If each link has a 97% chance of surviving each year, then the chance a link will be alive in 2070 is 0.972070−2011=0.16 (or to put it another way, an 84% chance any given link will die). The 95% confidence interval for such a binomial distribution says that of the 2200 non-Wikipedia links, ~336-394 will survive to 20705. If we try to predict using a more reasonable estimate of 50% linkrot, then an average of 0 links will survive (0.502070−2011×2200=1.735×10−16×2200≃0). It would be a good idea to simply assume that no link will survive.