Broken Links

Links are rotting, and we have pages which were created in 1993, so the links are pretty old. There are no links which are that old, because pages are overhauled, but there are old links. I started to add the date about 15 years ago, and there are numerous links without a date.

At the beginning it was hard to find links, and so there were numerous linklists. Those lists either had a single topic, or they were much bigger and had a sort of tree structure where every leaf was a topic, and contained links for this topic. Some were made by persons, some by non-profit organizations, some by universities. They are mostly gone, some are unchanged for a decade. The most famous was the Open Directory Project (ODP), better known as DMOZ. It was discontinued in 2017. The reason was the same why our links are broken.

We found that there are many broken links on showcaves.com, depending on the tool we use more than 10,000. There are 404 errors where the page was removed, or the domain was given up and there are pages which were part of a web framework, and when they changed the framework, the url changed.

We invested several weeks to remove the broken links, which is quite difficult. Its necessary to click on the link, wait what happens.

• if the page still exists anything is okay
• if the page exists but they installed https, add the s
• if the page is redirected to a  new address but has the same content, replace the old url by the new one
• if it is now a portal, or simply no redirect configured, I often try a search with the heading of the old link. Sometimes there is the content still on the site.
• if the article is behind a paywall, delete the link
• if the article is gone, delete the link 

But in the end its an outdated concept. We decided to still list the official webpage and pages by institutions like wikipedia, Atlas Obscura, mindat.org and others.

New search engine DuckDuckGo

There are numerous drawbacks with using google search engine. I used it since it was new, and the search results were great, much better than Altavista, if you rememer. However, Google seems to have a sort of problem with what is theirs and what is ours. They seem to think that all is theirs and nothing is ours.

You probably do not get what I mean, so I will try a different approach: I found out that there is a configuration in Windows to deactivate the location. Its absolute nonsense to determine the location all the time if you are actually sitting at home. So I deactivated it.

As a result numerous programs and websites got annoyed, because the first thing they do after an arbitrary request is determine the location of the caller. So I got frequent, rather massive and annoying requests to turn on the location. Actually such bullying makes me rebellious. And so I started to deactivate and replace all tools which are not willing to accept that I have deactivated the location.

And actually the most annoying of all was the google search page, which opened two popups each time, which I have to close with the mouse. The second one is actually the Windows system configuration, so I can convenintly reactivate location. However, there is no convenient way to stop this inconvenient bullying.

Except for one: stop using google search.

20 years ago there were no alternatives, but thats different today. And so I chose to replace all the google search links on showcaves.com by Duck Duck Go search, which has good results and additionally respects your privacy. shocaves.com is not affiliated with them and we do not use their logo, but we try to make a website which is as free as possible and respects your privacy, and so it is obvious to link them instead. And the annoying popups are completely gone.

Österreich nun auch in Deutsch

Als ich die Website 1993 begonnen habe, war sie Deutsch, und enthielt nur deutsche Schauhöhlen. Schnell kam ich zu der Erkenntnis, daß im Internet ein internationales Publikum unterwegs ist, und es tatsächlich keine Veröffentlichung über deutsche Schauhöhlen in irgendwelchen Fremdsprachen gibt. Ich habe mir also die Arbeit gemacht alle Seiten in Englisch zu übersetzen, die Website zweisprachig zu machen.

Der Aufwand ist deutlich größer als in einer Sprache, deshalb ist Deutschland das einzige Land geblieben, das zweisprachig ist. Als ich begann auch andere Länder aufzunehmen, tat ich dies nur auf Englisch.

Ich wurde schon früh darauf angesprochen, doch zumindest die deutschsprachigen Länder auch in Deutsch anzubieten. Ich habe das zuerst nicht gemacht, weil es sehr viel Arbeit ist, später, weil es inzwischen sehr gute Online Übersetzer gab.

Doch dieser Grund dagegen wurde vor kurzem ein Grund dafür. Durch den Einsatz von KI basierten Übersetzern werden viele Websites heute nur noch in Deutsch erstellt und dann kann man sie in ein halbes Dutzend Sprachen umschalten, was im Hintergrund durch so eine Maschine passiert. Was wie ein Vorteil aussieht, ist ein Nachteil, sozusagen die eingebaute Schwäche der KI: die Texte sind flüssig, gut geschrieben, kein Germanist könnte es besser, doch sie werden von einem Stück Software übersetzt, das keine Ahnung vom Inhalt hat.

Was meine ich damit? Hier ein Beispiel: Die Seite des Nationalparks Tauern über "Schluchten, Klammen & Wasserfälle" wird im Englischen "Gorges, gorges & waterfalls".

Jep. Peinlich. Aber da das on-the-fly von einer KI übersetzt wurde kann das Morgen schon ganz anders heißen, wenn die dazugelernt hat. Man hat ne 50:50 Chance dass es besser wird.

Aber was ist denn die Alternative? Nun, ganz einfach, man nutzt diese wunderbare Technologie und liest sich das Ergebnis durch, korrigiert was nötig ist, formuliert um, und am Ende kommt etwas heraus was Sinn macht, und das wird dann so online gestellt.

Noch vor wenigen Jahren hat das der Nationalpark Tauern auch noch gemacht, da hieß die Seite auf Deutsch Schluchten und Klammen und auf Englisch Gorges and Ravines. Die nicht ganz richtige Übersetzung ist deutlich zielführender.

Ich habe nun damit Angefangen die Österreichischen Seiten zu übersetzen. Das ist sehr aufwendig und wird wohl Monate dauern. Ich mache eine Seite nach der anderen, was immer auch gleich mit einer Aktualisierung der Seite verbunden ist. Und das dauert Stunden.

Wann immer ich damit durch bin, danach kommt noch die Schweiz dran. 

Cleaning Up Links

I am always cleaning up links, a work which is as futile as rolling a huge boulder endlessly up a steep hill in Tartarus. showcaves.com has more than 6700 [2025] underground sites, each with several links, plus links to geological and geographical info on regions or countries. Its impossible to keep then all running.

Now I identified several new dangers. So here's a list of links I will remove immediately without discussion:

1. broken links
2. links leading to a main page because the article is gone
3. links leading to the right article which now has a paywall 
4. links with some kind "protection" which does not allow to print them or copy a phone number or address by clipboard

Especially the last problem (4) is increasingly annoying. If you want to go somewhere, find an informative page, print it, pick your camera and when your almost there, and want to check the exact address you find out your printout is empty? What kind of taking the piss is this? 

If you publish a page on the internet, with content intended for the general public and freely accessible, which is actually a commercial for the described location, why would you want to hinder your potential guests and customers from finding you? Copyright infringement panic at its best. I turn off JavaScript and safe the page anyway in my archive, but I will never link such a nonsense.

If you find any such link please report by email, and I will remove them immediately.

Website moved!

The website showcaves.com has sucessfuly moved to a new provider. I did this for the first time and thought there might be some downtime, but I was able to avoid downtime completely.

The reason why I was a little nervous is the fact that the website is quite large. It took a few hours to upload the whole site.

The solution was actually quite simple, I uploaded the website first, then I transferred the domain. When I started the transfer the folder was created automatically. I simply swapped the updloaded files by renaming the two folders.

However, now it is done, the new website is up and running, the old provider is terminated. And finnally its about time: when I looked at the last invoice I mentioned the do not have an adress any more. They are now c/o at some "office space for hire" place. Have no idea how to call this. Is it a "shell company"?

In hindsight I'm glad I left.

Website moves, downtime possible...

I am using the same provider for 20 years now. They were reliable, simple to maintain and the price was acceptable. Now they replace the normal mail by Microsoft Exchange, throw away forwards, charge for mailboxes separately, increase the monthly price by 50 %. They have already increased the prices for domains considerably.

As a matter of fact the total price will be at least three times as much as I am willing to pay, about 350 € per year, but with much less comfort than before. I have no income from the website, I am personally paying for the hosting of the site and provide it for free.

As a result I decided to change my provider. I will do my best to reduce down time, but there might be a downtime nevertheless. Its possible the DNS is not working correctly for some hours. But its also possible the domain will be inaccessible for some days during the process, I have never done this before, so I do not know.

If you have problems accessing showcaves.com, please check showcaves.info. I will install a copy there before the transfer of the website.

showcaves64

My provider has updated the hosting of showcaves.com. It is now a 64 bit server, which actually makes no difference at all, you cant see the size of the words from outside ;-)

However, a new server means that any part of the server, in other words all software, was replaced by a 64 bit version. This includes web server, php, database and so on.

In other words: there is a good chance anything works as before, but if something has broken and we have not mentioned it, please send us an email with a description of the problem.

Thank you for your help!