@S.Carnahan I am tempted to leave my comment there even after you have included the new link into the post.

The reason being that the comment contains a link to the Wayback Machine - so if the new links stops working at some point in the future, there is still at least this backup link.

In any case, cleaning up comments is usually left up to moderators' decision - if you prefer to remove the two comments, feel free to do so.

And, of course, if you include also the Wayback Machine list into your post, then my comment no longer adds any useful information - so in that case there is no problem in removing it.

BTW is see in the edit summar: "Repaired old link (ht Martin Sleziak)".

What does ht stand for? Is ht = hat tip?

I will add that the question was bumped relatively recently: mathoverflow.net/posts/11273/revisions That was the reason why I looked also at the answers - whether they contains some stuff which could (should) be edited.

In my opinion, it is definitely better to make such edits in the answers shortly after the question was bumped. On MO, (some) users become quite irritated when they see an old post bumped by an edit. So it's probably better not to provoke this part of userbase too much.

And I am probably not the only one who thinks that edits (even a smaller ones) are better received if the question has already been bumped for some other reason. (Of course, some balance is needed to avoid hiding what was the most recent activity.)

@Glorfindel I saw that you have made some edits just now, so perhaps you're around.

If you have a bit of time, could I have a short question about your script?

I will star with some verification whether I understand correctly what it does. In addition to repairing broken links (such as PlanetMath or arxiv frontented) it also does some minor improvements to the post. For example, if there is http link to Wikipedia, it is replaced by https.

I think I saw some such edits, when I browed this list: data.stackexchange.com/mathoverflow/query/1221876/…

http to https for Wikipedia: mathoverflow.net/posts/21220/revisions

http to https for Google Books: mathoverflow.net/posts/20260/revisions

http to https for arXiv: mathoverflow.net/posts/49971/revisions

My question. Would it maybe be useful to made those "minor" changes (such as http -> https) on the questions and all answers, if the question was bumped? Would modifying the script in such way be difficult?

Changing http to https is rather minor change - it is not worth bumping a question just for that. But if the question has already been bumped, maybe it makes sense to edit such things.

For example, when I saw that this question was bumped, I have edited http to https also in the answer.

Hi, sorry for bothering you. Since I saw some edits on MO, I saw you might be around. (And this was a question which was on my mind for some time.)

@MartinSleziak correct, and it will also try to follow (most) redirects.

@MartinSleziak I guess that was my script, and it runs automatically :)

Oh, I see.

@MartinSleziak certainly; the Broken Images Repairer already does something like that.

So the guess that you are probably online because your account made some edits was wrong. (I should have realized that.)

@Glorfindel I see. So you already have something like this in one of your scripts. And maybe at some point you might add that also to the script which repairs broken links?

The main problem is that sometimes the script makes mistakes. For instance, it used to follow redirects for doi.org, e.g. doi.org/10.1109/5.771073 became replaced by ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/771073

That has been fixed, of course, but there are probably more instances like that.

I consider such mistakes acceptable when it fixes another 'real' problem with the post.

Also, people might complain about trivial edits, though that could be solved by indicating that the post was already bumped.

Ok, thanks for your time and for your response.

Since I sometimes do such edits manually (i.e., if somebody bumped a question, I check the other answers for typos, https and various minor edits), it seemed reasonable to ask.

But it is clear from your response that you have already thought about this.

Oh, it's certainly something to reconsider :)

Ok, this was basically all I wanted to ask.

I wish you a pleasant rest of the day!

Thanks, you too!