Title
Treat deleted entries consistently to allow deletion of abusive comments
Short, concise description of the idea
If an entry does not exist, then the LiveJournal server should ALWAYS give an Error 404. Else, abusive comments are cached permanently in Google.
Full description of the idea
Currently, if the LiveJournal server is requested to display an entry of the form
http://read-us.livejournal.com/X.html If X is NUMERIC, then it displays a valid LiveJournal page with the message "Error no such entry." However, if X is NON-NUMERIC, then it gives an Error 404. Since Google caches the contents of a file prior to its deletion, it becomes practically impossible to delete abusive comments from Google searches, even if the corresponding LiveJournal entry no longer exists.
An ordered list of benefits
- Google refuses to delete an entry if an attempt to access it does not give an Error 404 ("File does not exist"). Since the LiveJournal assumes that all files of the form
- http://read-us.livejournal.com/X.html
- are legitimate if X is NUMERIC, then one is stuck with an abusive entry in Google searches forever. So, if the file does not exist in LiveJournal, one should ALWAYS get Error 404. Instead, the LiveJournal server gives a legitimate LiveJournal page (with the message "Error no such entry.") if X is NUMERIC and Error 404 if X is NON_NUMERIC.
An ordered list of problems/issues involved
- There should be no drawback to this suggestion. If a file does not exist, one should ALWAYS get Error 404. Currently, LiveJournal is responsible for perpetuation extremely abusive and even potentially criminal comments. If the file is deleted, one should always get Error 404.