#reference rot

For those with vivid imaginations, the terms “link rot” and “reference rot” might conjure images of moldy fruit in the back of the office refrigerator or a pungent bag of something unidentifiable pulled from under a car seat weeks after its “use by” date. But the food analogy can only go so far. What the terms are really referring to is the all-too-common problem of hyperlinked web addresses — in legal and academic writing or on web pages, for example — that fail to lead the reader to the consumable content desired, either because the link is rotten (not working at all) or because the particular item sought from the Web’s vast menu has been modified or changed.