Broken links to ICO guidance in the help pages following ICO website changes

[WilliamWDTK]

A user has reported that the link in the below item of the house rules is broken.

Do not make vexatious requests (requests with no serious purpose, or which are intended to disrupt the operation of a public body). The ICO has guidance on vexatious requests here.

I would propose https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guidance-index/freedom-of-information-and-environmental-information-regulations/dealing-with-vexatious-requests-section-14/ as an alternative URL, as in #1110 and #1111.

[mdeuk]

It looks like the ICO might have changed a number of their links recently - without setting up redirections (poor practice).

Perhaps we should put together a list of the URLs we use and cross reference them, so we can get any changes in one go.

[RichardTaylor]

There's a further broken link to ICO guidance at

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/help/privacy#real_name

the broken link is:

https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1043418/consideration-of-the-identity-or-motives-of-the-applicant.pdf

[RichardTaylor]

Perhaps we should put together a list of the URLs we use and cross reference them, so we can get any changes in one go.

I've changed the title of this ticket as this appears likely to be the way to go.

[garethrees]

@sagepe helpfully pointed at https://github.com/gjtorikian/html-proofer as a tool he's used.

I had a quick go at it. I was able to extract all ICO links and run the link checker against them:

gareth: ~/data/src/mysociety/alaveteli-themes/whatdotheyknow-theme (master $=)
$ htmlproofer --checks "Links" --as-links "$(~/bin/href lib/views/help/*.html.erb | grep "http.*ico.org.uk" | sed -z 's/\n/,/g')"
Running 1 check (LinkCheck) on ["https://ico.org.uk/ESDWebPages/Entry/Z9602302", "https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1199/costs_of_compliance_exceeds_appropriate_limit.pdf", "https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1164/recognising-a-request-made-under-the-foia.pdf", "https://cy.ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/your-right-to-get-copies-of-your-data/", "https://cy.ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guidance-index/freedom-of-information-and-environmental-information-regulations/dealing-with-vexatious-requests-section-14/", "https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/your-right-to-get-copies-of-your-data/", "https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guidance-index/freedom-of-information-and-environmental-information-regulations/dealing-with-vexatious-requests-section-14/", "https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/personal-data-breaches/", "https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1198/dealing-with-vexatious-requests.pdf", "https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/personal-information/", "https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1165/time-for-compliance-foia-guidance.pdf", "https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1165/time-for-compliance-foia-guidance.pdf", "https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-freedom-of-information/receiving-a-request/#1", "https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1164/recognising-a-request-made-under-the-foia.pdf#page=22", "https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1165/time-for-compliance-foia-guidance.pdf", "https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1165/time-for-compliance-foia-guidance.pdf", "http://www.ico.org.uk/upload/documents/library/freedom_of_information/detailed_specialist_guides/name_of_applicant_fop083_v1.pdf", "http://www.ico.org.uk/for_organisations/freedom_of_information/guide/receiving_a_request", "https://cy.ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/your-right-to-get-your-data-deleted/", "https://ico.org.uk/ESDWebPages/Entry/Z9602302", "https://cy.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/", "https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-freedom-of-information/receiving-a-request/#1", "https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1164/recognising-a-request-made-under-the-foia.pdf#page=22", "https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/key-data-protection-themes/children/", "https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1135/publication-of-exam-results-by-schools-dpa-guidance.pdf", "https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guidance-index/freedom-of-information-and-environmental-information-regulations/consideration-of-the-applicant-s-identity-or-motives/", "https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/right-to-erasure/", "https://ico.org.uk/ESDWebPages/Entry/Z9602302", "https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/", "https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-freedom-of-information/receiving-a-request/#15", "https://cy.ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/official-information/", "https://cy.ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/your-right-to-get-copies-of-your-data/", "https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-freedom-of-information/receiving-a-request/#15", "https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/official-information/", "https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/your-right-to-get-copies-of-your-data/", "https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-freedom-of-information/refusing-a-request/#20", "https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/foi-and-eir-complaints/foi-and-eir-complaints/", "https://icosearch.ico.org.uk/s/search.html?collection=ico-meta&profile=decisions&query", "https://ico.org.uk/concerns/complaints-and-compliments-about-us/complain-about-us/"] ...

Checking 29 external links
For the Links > External check, the following failures were found:

* External link https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1164/recognising-a-request-made-under-the-foia.pdf#page=22 failed: https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1164/recognising-a-request-made-under-the-foia.pdf exists, but the hash 'page=22' does not (status code 200)

* External link http://www.ico.org.uk/upload/documents/library/freedom_of_information/detailed_specialist_guides/name_of_applicant_fop083_v1.pdf failed (status code 404)

* External link http://www.ico.org.uk/for_organisations/freedom_of_information/guide/receiving_a_request failed (status code 404)

HTML-Proofer found 3 failures!

gareth: ~/data/src/mysociety/alaveteli-themes/whatdotheyknow-theme (master $=)
$ echo $?
1

href is just a simple script that finds any links in a href attribute. Would need to mod it to also find links in a Rails link_to call.

Still; seems like a promising tool that we could run once a week via github actions to give us a report.