Antenati website changes

Question

For all researchers into Italian ancestry; the Antenati website is the latest to undergo an update to a 'new & improved' version. 

Sadly, this update has completely blown out ALL links like this and this. There have been many complaints but it currently appears there will be no fix provided for this problem. 

For all wikitreer's who've worked so hard to add source links from antenati to their profiles I can only empathize at the effort & energy lost by those now dead links.

Answer 1

Internet links simply do not last.

There have been a number of studies over the years, and an average lifetime before a link goes dead is on the order of 2 1/2 years. Some links last longer, some are almost fleeting in their existence (like news links that may last only hours).

In my experience with WikiTree, broken links are a common occurrence. If the source is properly identified, a broken link is of little to no consequence, but if the citation is only a link, then it has become of no value. There are, unfortunately, quite a number of these.

Comments

A big upvote for George. I think I've written it about two dozen times, but a full and complete source/reference citation is a must-have; a handy link to it is just a nice-to-have. I cringe at all the profiles I see where a listed "source" is just a URL with no explanation or detail. In fact, some of my own full citations have been removed and replaced with nothing but a link because it was felt that my detailed citations looked too "cluttered."

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>>Internet links simply do not last.<<
Generally I agree, I had this issue myself when my old gallery couldn't be updated anymore and I was forced to switch to another one.
But I would really expect better from a website of archives. Many archives worldwide are discussing solutions for digital preservation and this includes the question of how the documents can be used.

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There's a notice popping up today, among other things it says:

"-Stiamo lavorando al tempestivo recupero di tutti gli Archivi di Stato già presenti.

-Stiamo verificando la possibilità di ripristinare la funzionalità delle URL precedenti anche nel nuovo sistema, almeno in via provvisoria."

- We're working to retrieve all the State archives already present (in the old site)

- We're trying to recover the functionality of the old URLs also in the new system, al least provisionally.

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Thank you Cristina, this is good to know.

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• We are investigating the possibility of restoring the functionality of the previous URLs to the new system as well, at least temporarily.

Answer 2

What do the new links look like for those jpgs? If it's just a folder change or domain change, Ales et al can set EditBot to update the links

Comments

It is a more radical change...I'm not a code monkey and can't communicate it in any clear terms   but the entire website has been revamped. See this profile for samples of the 2 versions of citations previously used. I haven't tried to do any citations from the new & improved version yet---I'm still trying to figure out how to even navigate it to get to the town I want.....

ETA:

On that profile, the 1863 marriage originally linked looked like this:

 Commune di Bari, Provincia di Terra di Bari, Registro degli Atti di Solenne Promessa di Celebrare il Matrimonio, Anno 1863. No. 46, Donato Straziota and Barbara Lattanzi. Digital copy, Atenati Gli Archivi per la Ricera Anagrafica (Home › Sfoglia i registri › Archivio di Stato di Bari › Stato civile italiano › Bari › Matrimoni › 1863 › [http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Bari/Stato+civile+italiano/Bari/Matrimoni/1863/005616232_02630.jpg.html Immagine 47]), April 1, 2019.

It used to take you directly to image 47 (out of 375). The only way I've found to replace that link is to re-follow the trail completely from the beginning->get to the 1863 marriages->find that image again->then the only 'citation' I can find is to copy the link at the top of the page that looks like this    ---Which does NOT return you to the specific image but to the beginning page of ALL the 1863 marriages.

I've read some workarounds (that are beyond my current techno abilities) that involve add an extension called JSON Formatter and going into the 'manifest' data.... 

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yeah, ok, that doesn't look possible, since the source collection number isn't even in the original link. Unless that website is willing to provide old>new conversions, I think it's going to be a lot of manual corrections.

Answer 3

Yes, the new site destroyed the old links  and it doesn't provide permalinks for single immages.  We don't know at the time if it will be fixed or not, there're been tons of complains in the Facebook page and no answer from the managers so far. I encourage all of the Antenati users here to add their complain.

On the other hand, I have word that many people are working to try and find a technological workaround to this problem. 

Let's wait a bit and see what happens. The new site has been up only for two days. 

Answer 4

Antenati finally fixed their permalinks. The old permalinks of a certain page (record) now re-direct to the new permalink of this exact page.

Example:
Old url: http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Campobasso/Stato+civile+italiano/Larino/Nati/1877/007245390_00352.jpg.html
New url: https://www.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/ark:/12657/an_ua15775015/wRp6bye
Source: Archivio di Stato di Campobasso, Stato civile italiano, Larino, Nati, volume 1877, numero 56, digital page 28

There was a similar question here: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1130421/its-possible-a-massive-change-of-links

Can EditBot do this?

Comments

I revalidated all faulty links to antenati.san.beniculturali.it and almost all of them resolved to valid link after a few redirects. On this week's report, there shouldn't be any suggestions left.

Since they set up the redirects as they should be, there is no need to correct the links. Unless you expect this solution to be temporary.

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Aleš,

The Italian State Archives, in their most recent message on this issue (several months ago), said that the redirects would be temporary, so if there is a way to grep wikitree for a list of old links that could be updated, that would be the ideal solution. 

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With the new website, the old url that many genealogists saved, didn't worked anymore and then in November Antenati promised to program re-directs, but also said that they will be temporary. There was no different news until now, so we have to assume that they might be temporary. :-(

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If that is the case, we will need to get those redirects and let editBOT do the corrections.

We are talking about 15K links. I think I did something similar for the Dutch links, but there someone provided the changes in the URL.

I will see what I can do.

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Thank you very much, Aleš!
If you need anything, I'm happy to help.

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I have successfully retrieved 14K redirects

Here is the table, if someone wants to spot check a few URLs.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rprhb-iVg4fl7Hi0G-OgVUGZRIeHVd88fcb8Vm51j3U/edit?usp=sharing

I will now prepare the BOT to perform the URL changes.

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Wow, awesome, thank you so much, Aleš!

I checked a handful of lines in the spreadsheet, the url and the redirect are correct.

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Hello Aleš,

Would it be possible to share the script you used to retrieve the new links (assuming it is python or something similar)? I have a separate database with 15,000 Antenati URLs I need to update.

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Bot is now running. 

Upon completion full log will be available. It should run for 25 hours.

You can also see the bot's changelog.
https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&who=WikiTree-3

These are first few entries. 

Bot operation: Start (16.06.2022 14:49:54 - Slovenian time)

Renaming 15504 profiles

1. Changing profile:Giustiniani-21 Done.
2. Changing profile:Menza-13 Done. Correcting antenati.san.beniculturali.it+Removed empty lines at end
3. Changing profile:Diomede-18 Done.
4. Changing profile:Ferraro-504 Done.
5. Changing profile:Longo-350 Done.
6. Changing profile:Saladino-88 Done.
7. Changing profile:Borgonsoli-1 Done.
8. Changing profile:Bavetta-54 Done.
9. Changing profile:Pecoraro-1 Done. Correcting antenati.san.beniculturali.it+removed auto-generated GEDCOM line+CONT removal+http WikiTree to https
10. Changing profile:Malavasi-25 Done.
11. Changing profile:Ermeni-12 Done.
12. Changing profile:Mazzola-119 Done.
13. Changing profile:Zeoli-12 Done.
14. Changing profile:Bergamaschi-20 Done.
15. Changing profile:Buriali-1 Done. Correcting antenati.san.beniculturali.it+Removed empty lines at end
16. Changing profile:Belloni-60 Done.
17. Changing profile:Maccagno-9 Done.
18. Changing profile:Albanese-57 Done.
19. Changing profile:Cavallini-44 Done.
20. Changing profile:Ambroggio-7 Done.
21. Changing profile:Bilello-19 Done.
22. Changing profile:Trenti-2 Done.
23. Changing profile:De Bellis-42 Done.
24. Changing profile:Molinari-53 Done. Correcting antenati.san.beniculturali.it+Removed empty lines at end
25. Changing profile:Busto-14 Done.
26. Changing profile:Dalla Rosa-4 Done.
27. Changing profile:Troilo-2 Done.
28. Changing profile:Sansone Zodia-2 Done.
29. Changing profile:Fazzalari-3 Done. Correcting antenati.san.beniculturali.it+Removed empty lines at end
30. Changing profile:Lo Bello-80 Done.
31. Changing profile:Giovinazzo-5

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Frank, 

Would it be possible to share the script you used to retrieve the new links (assuming it is python or something similar)? I have a separate database with 15,000 Antenati URLs I need to update.

Unfortunately no. It is not in Phyton. I wrote it in our GIS internal "Basic". I just slightly modified the URL checker that I wrote last year and it already resolves redirects.

If you need, I can resolve those URLs for you. Just send them to me.

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This is now done. Here is the log file.

https://www.softdata.si/wt/EditBot/DNSReplace/ChangeLog%20antenati_san_beniculturali_it%2020220616%20144954.htm

I will recheck the links after the next dump.

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Thank you so much, Aleš!

Seems to have worked, my feed is full of changes from EditBot. I did test a few urls and they worked fine.

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many, many thanks! I've seen the editbot log on my profiles, checked some, everything seems working just fine!

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Aleš, you rock!