Can we have a better 404 page?

January 30, 2002 8:26 PM

404 grammar flame? Well, hopefully a little more proactive than that. Considering the possibilities, couldn't MeFi have a more interesting "not found" message?
posted by cortex to Feature Requests at 8:26 PM (19 comments total)

"You've stumbled upon a non-existent post, or one that was deleted for various reasons." Sez our glorious warning. My stupid little complaint is that any given post was probably deleted for one reason or another, rather than for various different reasons. Yeah, bitch bitch bitch.

But, bitching aside, we could have a much more interesting error page, IMHO, and I know MeFi has enough collective brain power to deliver some real winners. But does anybody else care, or am I just trying to fix what ain't broke?

First post, btw. Be gentle?

cortex

posted by cortex at 8:29 PM on January 30, 2002

actually, the 404 page looks like this.
posted by jessamyn at 8:41 PM on January 30, 2002

Fair enough, jassamyn; I was using "404" fast and loose rather than literally. Could have been more specific. Actually, I've never even seen the honest-to-god 404 page while reading MeFi, but, hey, it's not so exciting either, again IMHO.
posted by cortex at 8:44 PM on January 30, 2002

couldn't MeFi have a more interesting "not found" message?

It could also have a flash intro. I like simple and non-bandwidth intensive pages. Considering how badly bogged down the server gets during work hours its probably a good idea to scale things down than to make them more elaborate.
posted by skallas at 8:49 PM on January 30, 2002

Matt had said he would make one a long time back.
posted by riffola at 8:53 PM on January 30, 2002

but riffola, I said "but now that you've reminded me, I will (when I get some free time)."

I'm still waiting for that Free Time to show up. The tracking number on my Free Time places it somewhere at the east coast hub facility, in Kentucky. Hopefully I see that bit of Free Time finally make its way west in a few days.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:57 PM on January 30, 2002

So how about something more interesting that doesn't have a significant effect on server load? Not Found of the Day message, swapping in a different static page each day from a pool of pithy/wacky/zenlike entries (nothing more than text, maybe a little html -- rest assured, Flash was not what I had in mind) put together by Metafilter's own pile of brains?

Maybe that would feel too much like a tired .fortune rehash, but I'd get a kick out of it. [shrug]

Here's hoping for some free time for Matt. :)

posted by cortex at 8:58 PM on January 30, 2002

Why don't you just sell it? I'm sure some of the attention seekers around here would pay to get their message on the deleted post page.
posted by iscavenger at 9:02 PM on January 30, 2002

I like the messages the way they are.
posted by rodii at 9:09 PM on January 30, 2002

Ah the elusive free time, in a way it's good I guess, you've gotta be really bored to think about making 404s.
posted by riffola at 9:15 PM on January 30, 2002

the point is to encourage people to post a little more carefully, not to entertain passerbys, is it not?
posted by th3ph17 at 9:37 PM on January 30, 2002

th3ph17: sure, but the former doesn't necessarily exclude the latter, neh?

And riffola, I think you hit the nail on the head there. Which is sad commentary on my afternoon, I guess.
posted by cortex at 12:58 AM on January 31, 2002

so has anyone noticed the thread number on cortex's 404 link yet....
posted by lotsofno at 6:37 AM on January 31, 2002

th3ph17: shouldn't that be "passersby"? Google says: "passerbys" 4,810 — "passersby" 58,300. I love grammar flames!

everyone: remember that the 404 page gets shipped out to every lost robot and spider and every Windows browser looking for "favicon.ico", so "404, yo." probably actually saves Jason appreciable bandwidth — one of my Web servers pumped out 1,626 404s yesterday and it's not as public as the MeFi server.
posted by nicwolff at 7:15 AM on January 31, 2002

MeFi has a favicon.ico, so no 404 there, alas.

That sentence is a palindrome!
posted by anildash at 7:43 AM on January 31, 2002

shouldn't that be "passersby"?

Passers-by.
posted by kindall at 8:57 AM on January 31, 2002

i'm a punctuation anarchist--what more can i say--and i tend to make up words.
posted by th3ph17 at 8:59 AM on January 31, 2002

kindall's "passers-by" gets 87,400 Google points for the win!
posted by nicwolff at 9:51 AM on January 31, 2002

lotsofno: thank you for justifying my secret shame and self-amusement.
posted by cortex at 10:44 AM on January 31, 2002