Clue-point-zero

[j4]

So Department X wants a complete list of all the people who link to their site because, and I quote:

We are currently looking at updating the information on our website and we want to know who and where other departments link into our website to ensure the correct information is given.

I can't wait to find out who'd have to link to them in order for them to consider it worthwhile to provide correct information. I also wonder what they're going to do about it if the wrong people are linking to them... no, wait, I know the answer to that, and it involves the words "whinging" and "in my general direction".

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

They can get this information themselves, via google. Egotistical example (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.greenend.org.uk%2Frjk%2F). I don't know of any way of causing them not to see things they don't like in the results, though...

[erikarn.livejournal.com]

Ah, you're stuck in university website hell too? Eww.

The weboffice here has had that question pop up time and time again. They ended up making some referrer stuff plug into the CMS+weblogging they're using so website admins could check whats referencing each of their pages. It gets quite complicated too; some websites are "pulling" parts of their content from other websites on campus; so how do you know what you're actually updating when you update a page?

The weboffice answer: give the users all the tools they need; if they decide to do something stupid then there's a logfile with who did the stupid thing and when. Its then not their problem (and subsequent whinging can't be done to them. Although it still happens.)