Archival References to Web Pages

On several occasions, I’ve had to refer to a web page in a published article. The problem is that articles remain on library shelves for many decades, while URLs are notoriously transitory. This short note describes a little trick of mine for referring to a web page by something more permanent than a URL. You can discover the trick by viewing the link. Although my idea is ridiculously simple and can be used by anyone right now, I’ve had a hard time convincing anyone to use it. (Because it’s only a pretty good solution and not perfect, people prefer to do nothing and wait for the ideal solution that is perpetually just around the corner.) Since I was going to be in the neighborhood, I decided to try to publicize my trick with this poster at WWW9. Some people I spoke to there thought it was a nice idea, but I’m not optimistic that anyone will actually use it.