Links make the web great

Links really are kind of awesome, they allow communication in a very different way than paper or speech can afford, kind of obvious but, still wrote about it.

This is probably the most obvious thing, but have you ever thought about how great it is that links just let you write whatever you want without actually having to provide that much context about something, just add a link and you’re good, no need to infodump extra paragraphs just in case!

That’s the tl;dr. But keep going if you like my rambles.

I was reading a really good post—but pretty off-topic to this one—by Nat, who mentioned an idea that never ended up becoming a blog post:

…part of what’s so nice about sharing my thoughts on my blog is that I can do thought-composition by linking to older articles. I can’t just like, interject in the middle of a conversation with a contextual link. If I tried actually breaking down why I believe some of the things I believe verbally I’d probably just overwhelm whoever I’m talking to…

Isn’t this like, such a great thing? In this case Nat talks about explaining personal thoughts and beliefs, but of course this applies to pretty much any type of blog post.

If there is a type of post I don’t really care about when visiting a blog, it would be technical tutorials about niche tools.

Of course, I just did one of those yesterday, talking about FreshRSS User Queries. I linked to it on a chat, and well, I immediately thought of adding a warning: “you might not get any of this, so probably check other posts of mine instead”.

And well, it’s true! Most of the time tutorials or technical topics are only useful for the people looking for them, so I rarely follow bloggers who only post that kind of stuff, since it can feel like they are only trying to get clicks, play the SEO game, and such.

Of course, you should write about things you are passionate about, don’t stop doing that just because I dislike it, it’s just that I may not be interested on reading it—same goes for articles with Titles That Capitalize Every Word For No Reason.

Back on topic, a neat thing about writing on a website instead of talking or writing on paper, is that you don’t really need to give all the context upfront—I feel like I already said this multiple times with different words and I keep writing anyway.

I am conflicted on this, on one hand, why do I need to dig into a rabbit hole to understand what you are talking about? but on the other, why would I read through ten paragraphs of something I am familiar with just to get to the point?

But, honestly, I kinda feel that digging around in rabbit holes is probably better, or at least, it’s something the web is quite good at.

It’s easy to forget that this is what the web provides, hyperlinking. I can mention someone’s blogpost and you can go and read it, I can link back to older posts referencing what I am talking about, and you can go ahead and get some context!

Reading a book doesn’t let you do this, sure, you can reference authors and all but you can’t immediately access a reference as easily as you click a link.

Having a conversation requires a common understanding between speaker and listener, any foreign concepts will require explanations that may end up being overwhelming, as Nat said. Besides, it’s not uncommon for some people to just nod and agree and figure it out later, or to end up with a misunderstanding.

I am actually kinda terrible at talking about things, I’m decent in some scenarios or with previous preparation, like presentations where I can write down my thoughts beforehand, but I still struggle otherwise.

In the web, I don’t worry much about it, just express what I want, and link to other pages explaining missing context, if I deem it necessary.

And to me, that’s great, because it lets me discover the web the way it was intended to be.

Back when search engines and AI slop answers weren’t a thing. That’s how most people navigated and discovered where to go. Blogrolls, webrings, link blogs, all of them work, because of hyperlinks.

Years ago, and to this day, I would get lost in Wikipedia, check out a random article, click on a random word, see it originates from a certain book, that was adapted into a movie in the 90s, and came out at the same time as this other movie, and keep going and going just by clicking around. Nowadays there are Wikipedia speedruns where people try to get to one article to another just by clicking links on them!

Take my post yesterday, which is about a neat feature in FreshRSS. There I have a direct link to their website, and two links to different posts explaining other features of FreshRSS. Now, even though I answer what FreshRSS is with the website link, I didn’t include an answer for what RSS is. However, the post has the RSS tag, and by clicking it, you’ll see multiple a post about what RSS and how I use it.

As an aside, it’s an explanation that still assumes the reader knows a bunch of things, but, alas, I was young! I will probably write an update at some point.

You will notice how I didn’t link to any of the stuff mentioned in the last couple paragraphs. Well, do I need to? When I already linked to the post I wrote about User Queries at the start of this post?

It is perfectly understandable to want everything perfectly in one page, but well, used properly, hyperlinks can let you choose when you actually want to do that, both as a writer, and a reader.

Sadly, there are those other horrible websites that will be like “Top 10 XYZ” and will separate the list in multiple pages just to feed you as many ads as possible, or keeping you in a page wasting time. I literally didn’t remember those existed until I thought “what’s the worst case scenario of just adding links for everything instead of writing fully formed articles?”—Thankfully adblockers exist.

I guess everything should be balanced, so, okay, here’s a direct link to what RSS even is, it’s a 4-year old post written by a much more Linuxy wannabe puritan me but, well, it’s alright.

Maybe this was just an excuse to make you check multiple posts on my website all along! Well, if you made it this far, thanks for reading me still!

https://fosstodon.org/@joel/114948740159395628