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January 13

cgi-bin

Does the user experience on a website using the Common Gateway Interface differ significantly, in any way, from the user experience on a website not using the interface? I just noticed that cgi-bin is linked from the citation templates of a bunch of non-computing articles, e.g. Broderick County, Kansas Territory uses

"An Act for the Admission of Kansas into the Union" (cgi-bin). Thirty-sixth United States Congress. January 29, 1861. Retrieved November 26, 2007.

As far as I can tell, CGI is just a way of setting up a website, and aside from potential tiny differences in the speed of loading, there doesn't seem to be any noticeable difference if you're just visiting the website. I'm tempted to remove these links, since there's no point to having them (and the link might make someone think it's significant), but of course I don't want to do that if there really is a good reason. Nyttend (talk) 02:41, 13 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

cgi-bin content is generated at the time of the request and is suitable for dynamic content that could change for each request. For references its use is dubious as a later request may return something different to what the original referencer saw. However some web sites may always return the same content for the same url and then cgi-bin does not hurt. I agree with Nyttend that mentioning it is irrelevant because it is not a file format. (we can mention if the result is .pdf or .ps or .mp3 or other file/document format). Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:14, 13 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]