Exceptions to the Backlink Rule

Whenever there's a link from an essay to another page, there's also a corresponding backlink from the other page to the original essay.

The caveat here, similar to the one in Persistence of Content, is that I was very careful to say “a link from an essay”. The links in the table of contents and index do not produce backlinks, of course, but neither do the links in the body of a page that's not an essay. Thus, the links in the search pages are excluded, as are the links on the pages for actors and works.

So much for the caveat; now for the exceptions. (If you're wondering why I like to make exceptions to everything, one of the reasons was well expressed by Catbert: “Because I can.”)

First, whenever I release a new batch of essays, I replace all the essays that are still incomplete with boilerplate that links to the standard essay Incomplete Essays. This boilerplate does not produce backlinks.

Second, the pages that describe what's new in each batch (see June (2000), for example) do not produce backlinks. That's the current situation, anyway … I'm still not sure that's the right design, and I may change my mind later. On the one hand, all that the backlinks to these pages do is tell when an essay was written, and that shouldn't matter much. On the other hand, these pages do occasionally contain interesting content, and it's a shame if that content can't be reached via backlinks.