Todd Walton wrote:
On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 12:14:17 -0500, RBW1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
http://tinyurl.com/3kkma
It's probably just me, but the use of tinyurl and ilk kinda bugs me. The point is to make a
http://long.complicated.url?slkj23434lsl.asp?unnecessary=yes&morecrapjusttoconfuseyou=yes
shorter, right? Excellent motive, I say. The TinyURL service is
handy and, just as importantly, apparently reliable. But aren't there
any informal netiquette rules governing its use?
I've seen people use it when the URL they were referring to was completely within reason. It was as if they were just trying to hide the real thing. TinyURL themselves actually condone this. From their front page:
"Hide your affiliate URLs
"Are you posting something that you don't want people to know what the URL is because it might give away that it's an affiliate link. Then you can enter a URL into TinyURL, and your affiliate link will be hidden from the visitor, only the tinyurl.com address and the ending address will be visible to your visitors."
?dirty=yes
The other beef I have with TinyURL use is the reliability of the
TinyURL service. They've been around since at least February of 2002.
That's three whole years. But what happens when, say, 20 years from
now they're gone? What if somebody else buys the domain name and
starts cashing in on all those dormant tinyurl hyperlinks out there? What about the freaking page I wanted to link to?!??
Proposal:
I think that when a TinyURL is employed, the real link should also be included. Plain and simple. If the real, long URL gets mucked up, so be it. But at least it's there, and a person can see where they're being taken before they follow the link, as well as the actual Internet address being referred to being available for posterity's sake.
This isn't a tirade against you, specifically, RBW. You just happened to trigger a pre-existing peeve-mode.
I always put both the tinyurl and the full url in for just such reasons.
Rich -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
