August 15, 2024: broken links and missing pages

[wesley-dean-gsa]

Expected behavior

Links in the markdown pages in the TTS Handbook ought to point to resources (files, pages, etc.) that exist (i.e., requesting them does not return a 404 page not found error); domain names should resolve, etc..

Current behavior

There are several broken links throughout the TTS Handbook. The attached file -- textual output of running markdown-link-check on the repository -- shows links that are broken (i.e., they return 404 (page not found), 50x (server-side error), 0 (typically meaning the hostname didn't resolve).

markdown-link-check-output-only-errors.txt

Possible solutions

Attached is a copy of the configuration file I used when scanning the repository. The command I used was:

# install the Node package
npm install -g markdown-link-check

# run this command from the repository root and put all of the output into a text file
time markdown-link-check --quiet --config .markdown-link-check.json pages/**/*.md 2>&1 | tee markdown-link-check-output-only-errors.txt

.markdown-link-check.json

It's possible to run this tool -- which only finds but does not fix -- via GitHub Action, pre-commit hook, or as a part of more in-depth CI/CD tooling (e.g., MegaLinter)

Steps to reproduce (for bugs)

Click on a broken link and see that the anticipated resource is not retrieved.

Context

I'm trying to use the TTS Handbook to find information that's relevant to my role as a technologist working at TTS. I was able to detect some of the broken links I saw by clicking on them with my web browser (Brave v1.168.137 which is built on top of Chromium v127.0.6533.100).

I added the "info is outdated / incorrect" label to this issue as the links mentioned in the report used to work just fine -- they're just no longer correct, likely as a result of resources to which the links point moving.

Your environment

The markdown lint checker (v3.12.2) was run on a Linux system (Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS) with Node (v18.19.0).

[wesley-dean-gsa]

These issues may be related:

• 404 screen #3897
• Broken links to Slack channels #3865
• broken link in handbook #3851
• Dead links on Research Guidelines page #3800
• broken link on social media page #3769
• Dead Link #3708