1118318 - Serve 4xx response status code for deleted documents

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Wiki pages, enhancement)

Description

[Florian Scholz (Open Web Docs)]

What feature should be changed? Please provide the URL of the feature if possible.
==================================================================================
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Watch_Lost_Girl_Season_5_Episode_6_:_Clear_Eyes,_F

What problems would this solve?
===============================
I am not sure, but I guess to prevent indexing of deleted but not yet purged docs, we could send a 404 header. Alternatively, noindex meta tag (or both).

Who would use this?
===================
Spam fighters.

What would users see?
=====================
Hopefully even less visible spam.

What would users do? What would happen as a result?
===================================================
I guess it would make deleted docs even less prominent for humans and search engines.

Is there anything else we should know?
======================================

Comment 1

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

Blocking the spam tree bug.

We may also use a 410 Gone status code if that's better to get the urls out of search indices.

Comment 2

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

+1 to 410.

Comment 3

[Jean-Yves Perrier [:teoli]]

Yes, 410 is better for removing info from search engines. (I've edited the title)

Comment 4

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/pull/2996

Comment 5

[Jannis Leidel [:jezdez]]

This is not a good idea, see http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2340728/matt-cutts-on-how-google-handles-404-410-status-codes

"If a page is gone and you think it's temporary, go ahead and use a 404. If the page is gone and you know no other page that should substitute for it, you don't have anywhere else that you should point to, and you know that that page is going to be gone never come back, then go ahead and serve a 410."

In other words 410 is not what we want for logically deleted but not yet purged documents. We should keep using 404 for this.

Comment 6

[MDN Team (:mdn-dev)]

Commits pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/kuma

https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/commit/2bb8b92dd8b8177541c5d0dbc7e83abeba09d4bb
fix bug 1118318 - return 410 for deleted docs

https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/commit/2f7d56dfd368b837f8ca07db1a8dd62fe4ef5c9f
Merge pull request #2996 from groovecoder/deleted-docs-410-1118318

fix bug 1118318 - return 410 for deleted docs

Comment 7

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

Updating summary to match our decisions in the PR.