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August 12, 2013
In a hypertext context, there's
an old rule-of-thumb that the This is a rule-of-thumb that can be
link title and the linked page violated on the web at the author's
should be the same, so the whim, and often is violated by some
reader gets immediate feedback very popular writers, such as Atrios,
that they've gone to the place aka Duncan Black of the eschaton blog.
they expected to go, and so on.
Atrios uses the style where you
just start commenting on something
without explaining what you're
talking about, where you're
supposed to click on the link just
to see what he's talking about.
This can be amusing, but gets old
pretty fast: as a courtesy to your
readers, you really want to label
links so they can make an informed
judgement about whether they want
to go there.
It also wouldn't hurt to use
informative, readable titles,
and save the punchline, if any,
for last. (And if you can't
write a punchline, maybe you
shouldn't... eh, Delong?).
For doomfiles purposes: there's a
tension between the way the link
reads before following, and the STYLISH_HAND
way the title reads when the piece
is in front of you.
MORASS might seem like an okay name for a
particular page while you're writing or reading
it, but isn't really specific enough when you're
not on the inside.
So I search for a better name:
WITH_CAUSE
LONG_TRAP
STUCK
INELASTIC_COLLISON
TIGHT_ORBIT
DEEP_WELL
SHOW_DONT_TELL
NO_SHOW
LONG_REHERSAL
SLOW_START
CAREFUL_PREP
LONG_WARMUP
Ok, that's the winner for
now. Halfway positive, though
only half:
LONG_WARMUP
In the early days of the doomfiles,
I hadn't quite grasped the idea of
"informative titles", so I've always
tended to use very short words or
phrases mostly so they would "look
cool" floating around the edges of
the page.
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