[Lnc-business] LP.org website transition - missing pages (83% data loss)

Tue Nov 8 19:53:20 EST 2016

Moulton supplemented:

LNC members,

I want to follow up on this point.  I was just looking at 404 errors
before.  In fact, the problem is much, much, much, much worse.

The candidate listings that do exist (are not 404 errors, were properly
redirected) are mostly just stubs that include only their names.

These are our statewide candidates in Pennsylvania:
https://www.lp.org/candidates/edward-clifford/
https://www.lp.org/candidates/james-babb/
https://www.lp.org/candidates/roy-minet/

It might be hard to tell they are our statewide candidates because their
listings include only the following information:
* LP logo
* Name

Their listings DO NOT INCLUDE any of the following information:
* State
* Office/district
* Picture
* Biography
* Website link
* Facebook
* Twitter
* Contact info

If you think this problem is limited to states with less political
connections, you are wrong.

Here are a few listings from people running very active campaigns:
https://www.lp.org/candidates/aaron-starr/
https://www.lp.org/candidates/arvin-vohra/
https://www.lp.org/candidates/lily-tang-williams/

(Disclosure note: I donated to Aaron Starr's campaign.)

Here are a few other candidates you may recognize:
https://www.lp.org/candidates/norm-olsen/
https://www.lp.org/candidates/roland-riemers/ (404 error)
https://www.lp.org/candidates/patrick-mcknight/

Here is one of the few candidate pages with actual information:
https://www.lp.org/candidates/mark-miller/

Note that even that trails off at the end... "As an experienced PhD
petroleum engineer and former UT petroleum engineering faculty member, he
will undoubtedly be the most qualified candidate on the November 201".
Also the Facebook and Twitter links are broken.  And it doesn't mention
what office he is seeking.  Nice that the LNC donated thousands of dollars
to his campaign... too bad no one bothered to spend 5 minutes fixing the
errors in his candidate listing.

Of course, his old page does not redirect:
https://www.lp.org/candidates/liberty-candidates-16/mark-a-miller/

John Moore is a 404 page:
https://www.lp.org/candidates/elected-official/john-moore/
https://www.lp.org/candidates/liberty-candidates-16/john-moore/
https://www.lp.org/candidates/john-moore/

As is Laura Ebke:
https://www.lp.org/candidates/elected-official/laura-ebke/

TODAY IS ELECTION DAY.  What a wasted opportunity!!!

Maybe if we hadn't shut down our working website 2 weeks before the
election and replaced it with a buggy new website with 83% data loss and
long load times (using a lot of precious staff time at their busiest
period), we could have listed and promoted some of our candidates.

Please, please, PLEASE exercise some actual oversight as a board and do
something about the critical and embarrassing error torpedoing one of our
greatest assets (on the eve of the election): our national lp.org website.

I've received feedback asking me if I was being over the top or facetious
suggesting someone should be FIRED or REMOVED FROM THE LNC over this.  I
was not.  I am completely serious.  What was done to the website goes
beyond a harmless error.  It goes beyond reckless.  It was NEGLIGENT.
Someone should be held accountable for all the damage that has been done to
the Libertarian Party -- an organization we all have poured time and money
into for decades hoping to see it succeed.

Thank you for your consideration.

Chuck Moulton
Life Member & Monthly Pledger, Libertarian Party

P.S. I voted proudly for Gary Johnson and the other Libertarians on the
Pennsylvania ballot today.

On Sat, Nov 5, 2016 at 3:20 PM, Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos at gmail.com>
wrote:

> For the public's information.  A ton of ideological links are, in fact,
> broken.
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Chuck Moulton <chuck at moulton.org>
> Date: Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 5:21 PM
> Subject: Re: LP.org website transition - missing pages (83% data loss)
>
>
> Kevin Ludlow wrote:
>
>> What would be useful right now would be if you could point out the
>> broken links so that we can assign permanent redirects to them.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> So anyway, if you'd like to submit broken links, we'd love to set up
>> additional forwards.
>>
>
> Kevin,
>
> Glad to help!
>
> Obviously, it is much easier for you to see what redirects need to be
> made, as you have access to the old website, the new website, and the 404
> logs.  However, you seem to be having trouble with this, so I'll provide
> you with the information you need.
>
> It would be very difficult to compile a list of all incoming links to
> lp.org without access to the server logs.  Therefore, I used Google's
> search results, which is a reasonable proxy for outside links.  I searched
> for "site:lp.org", then I did followup searches for all directories I
> found with "site:lp.org inurl:lp.org/blog" (for example) because Google
> does not list all the results it has indexed without narrow searches.  This
> netted 2,531 unique URLs indexed by Google.  I wrote a program in Python to
> scrape that information.
>
> Next, Stewart Flood wrote a Perl program to check every URL on my list and
> find out whether it threw a 404 error.  (He also checked for load times and
> other information, which we will highlight in a subsequent report.)  Sorry
> this took so long... Stewart was busy watching the World Series.  We re-ran
> the script several times this week to see if staff added any redirects...
> they only added one page: /contribute.  The program can be re-run at any
> time to track what's been added.  Not all of the missing URLs should
> necessarily be carried forward, but a lot of historical information is no
> longer present.
>
> Our results are included in the attachments.  (Note: In the summary page,
> these are groupings by directory, not the actual URLs.)
>
> Basically, 83% of the webpages indexed by Google have not been carried
> over or properly redirected.
>
>
> In liberty,
>
> Chuck Moulton
> Life Member & Monthly Pledger, Libertarian Party
> 2006-2008 IT Committee Chair
>
> Stewart Flood
> Life Member & Monthly Pledger, Libertarian Party
> 2008-2012 IT Committee Chair
>
>
>
> --
> *In Liberty,*
> *Caryn Ann Harlos*
> Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona,
> Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann.
> Harlos at LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos at LP.org>
> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado
> <http://www.lpcolorado.org>
> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus
> <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org>
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
*In Liberty,*
*Caryn Ann Harlos*
Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona,
Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann.
Harlos at LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos at LP.org>
Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado
<http://www.lpcolorado.org>
Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus
<http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org>
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