💾 Archived View for idiomdrottning.org › re-small-request-to-geminauts captured on 2023-07-10 at 13:59:21. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

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Re: Small request to Geminauts

JBanana wrote (three months ago, wow, time flies):

But if I enjoyed your post I may want to read more. Please could you include a link back to your gemlog? Or you capsule, or whatever you choose, but somewhere I can read more of your stuff?

Others have provided reasons why you don’t strictly need this link.

You can just go “up” in the URL, and browsers should start providing a button for that.

But, it’d bad usability to skimp out on a helpful and non-intrusive link just for the sake of minimalist cool. Sure, we don’t strictly need the link, but what harm does it do? Why not just have it?

I have three reasons. Two of them are kinda frivolous but the last one is good.

First of all, it’s not like my site is vitally useful info for all citizens. I can afford to value “minimally cool” a little higher here than I would on like, an information page about government housing benefits or something.

Second, I kinda see some value in how each page is an island. A resource valuable in its own right and not just as an upsell to “read more by me”.

Third (and this is the good reason), I don’t know what is “back” for you. Did you read it from my “texts by date” or “texts by category”? Did you read it from an aggregator or converted to an e-book? Did you read it on a train, on a plane, on a brain under strain from mildewed grain? I just can’t know and I just can’t take you back there.

Go to Idiomdrottning.org to read my stuff. That’s probably as much as I can do for you, darling.

♥

PS

As a footnote to the “each page is an island” thing, I am kinda working on a script that, if it ever gets done, will go through all my old and future post and add a ton of links everywhere. Making it more wiki-like. I’m on the fence because I kind of do love that this capsule isn’t like a TV-Tropes like rabbit hole that sucks people in. On the other hand, if I mention a concept in passing, like externalities, that I’ve explained elsewhere, it might be a good idea to have links there.

Follow-up:

Ben agrees, and adds:

I think browsers should provide these navigation features, and it shouldn’t be left up to content creators.

Right! Ideally the browser should have buttons for this stuff, and maybe also for next/previous link on the preceding page (as in, whatever page the user followed to get here). I’m not sure I want to demand that all readers grok URIs and paths, so I love seeing “up” arrows in browsers.