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Update

The links in the question are back. No cause for panic (at least as of now).

This might apply only to users of a particular tag (Java) in StackOverflow.

I just noticed that the Java Language Specification is no longer available on the Oracle Technology Network.

There are questions (and lots of answers; ask Jon Skeet if you must) in the Java tag that reference this specification, and may even link to it.

How does one deal with the now possibly redundant links?

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When you chance upon an answer with a broken link, by all means edit it to point to the new location. You may want to search and do a few posts at a time (search pages containing that particular link with Google). There are “about 1300” results, so if 40 people do 5 a day, this can be over in a week.

For this particular link, doing the replacement looks premature: the Oracle website still links to that place for the Java Language Specification. Wait until the dust settles, then change the links (when you find a permanent-looking new location…).

If a link disappears completely and is still helpful to understand a post, try looking if it's been archived on the Internet Archive, e.g. The Java Language Specification. In this particular instance, there's likely to be an official link again soon, so I don't think liking to the Archive is a good idea.

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This is obviously going to be a very significant resource movement - the kind that wouldn't happen terribly often, I suspect. The same may occur for JavaDoc links, of course.

I'm hoping that the structure will be preserved, and that the SO team will be happy to do a search-and-replace on links in posts. While Gilles only found 1300 links to that exact page I suspect I've posted more than that many links myself to subsections of the JLS. Automating this should be reasonably simple, and definitely worth the time, IMO.

Let's just hope it does appear in a reasonably timely manner.

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    Oddly enough I noticed some bug reports related to the JLS magically disappeared a while back too, before finally resurfacing. Given data storage is one of their core businesses, they sure seem to be misplacing things a lot. – Tim Stone Jun 11 '11 at 22:45
  • @Tim: I could rant on about for hours on how they handled the migration of forums.sun.com (formerly forums.java.sun.com) to forums.oracle.com. In short: it was not beautiful. – Joachim Sauer Jun 14 '11 at 11:29
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    Well, no more reason to panic. The specs are back at where they belonged earlier. – Vineet Reynolds Jun 15 '11 at 11:28

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