Link descriptions. April 5, 2001 7:37 AM   Subscribe

Link descriptions.
posted by hijinx to Etiquette/Policy at 7:37 AM (15 comments total)

Amen.
posted by daveadams at 7:38 AM on April 5, 2001


My link description told you a lot, didn't it?

There is a minor to moderate brouhaha regarding the "New Remedi" thread by honkzilla, which tells you (arguably) nothing about the link. What are your thoughts?

Mine: At least tell me what the deal is with the site. What made you want to post it here? Is it cool? Did you lose sleep over it? Did you dream it? Did it make you vomit? honkzilla didn't tell me anything, so IMHO, I'd've liked to see more.
posted by hijinx at 7:40 AM on April 5, 2001


Vague (or absent) descriptions have long annoyed me, and are often to blame for double posts. But what can you do? I tried scolding people. Didn't do anybody any good.
posted by luke at 8:04 AM on April 5, 2001


If you want to show off your wit with with cryptic links, the TITLE attribute for anchors is always useful, although it may not work in all browsers.
posted by snarkout at 8:15 AM on April 5, 2001


Well, I'd almost want to suggest to Matt that if the link description box is empty, maybe MeFi should gently poke back. "Are you sure you want to do this? Make sure your link title is descriptive" or similar. But that might be too limiting.
posted by hijinx at 8:19 AM on April 5, 2001


I actually liked it.

I knew what the remedi project was, there was little-to-no chance it would be reposted by someone else, and if you didn't like the description, why not just move on to the next thread?

Lance's post seemed like an obvious link to me, and was done in a smart way. It's a new remedi, what else is there to say?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:27 AM on April 5, 2001


Well, I confess that I had (have) no clue what Remedi was. If it's done that infrequently, I can understand. But CrazyUncleJoe brings up a valid point comparing it to other recent cryptic links.
posted by hijinx at 10:02 AM on April 5, 2001


Yes, but my point wasn't to say that those posts were bad. Obviously we all enjoyed mentally (god I hope ONLY mentally) comparing our members to candy bars. I didn't get much out of the other thread, but frankly I didn't waste much time figuring out that I wasn't going to get much out of it. I know you can't enforce intelligence as a posting standard, but there's a big difference between "New Remedi" and "Read This." In an ideal world, posters would understand the difference, and in an ADULT self-policing world, I don't think it's a double standard to approve of one and not the other. Yes, if this was preschool.metafilter.com, we'd have an obligation to consistency over reasonableness - if we were in a public high school, you could make the argument that for legal reasons we had to enforce ZERO TOLERANCE POSTING RULES. We aren't, and we aren't. Part of a successful community that rules by self moderation is leading by example - and I'm not pleased with the idea that buttstickery is the predominant example being set.

People have different ideas about what Metafilter is, was, or what it should become. From my perspective, metafilter was about clever links to interesting things, it is more about politics and debate, and it's becoming more about extreme net.coppery. My personal opinion is that if it is to survive the ever increasing waves of Vandal Trolls, it should be spending less time eating itself from the inside.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 10:26 AM on April 5, 2001


Also, this would be a good place for Jason Kottke to point out that I've got a lot of damn nerve to call his comments over the top, since I managed quite a bit of vertical height in this topic.

... or at least a good place for me to once again apologize for trying to get up his nose...
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 10:31 AM on April 5, 2001


Mr Crankypants.
posted by dangerman at 12:07 PM on April 5, 2001


Title attributes? Really?
posted by Neale at 3:36 PM on April 5, 2001


Neale - you just made an example of why I hate title attributes in links. When I moused over yours, the little "tipbox" popped up, disappeared, popped up, disappeared, repeat ad nauseum. It doesn't work right on my computer. :\
posted by pnevares at 5:11 PM on April 5, 2001


On my computer, Neale's link doesn't even show up. So snarkout was right that it doesn't work in all browsers.
posted by crushed at 6:04 PM on April 5, 2001


That's because Neale didn't put an "href" (or, possibly, a "name") in his anchor tag. But IIRC, crushed, even well-formed anchors don't show the title tag in IE 4.
posted by snarkout at 5:46 AM on April 6, 2001


The title attribute works fine in IE 4 for Windows. However, I have not tested this without using HREF or NAME.

I didn't have a problem with the Remedi Project or Hell links, because the links were obvious (not some news story with the headline not in the URL) and I knew they were about art sites which hadn't been updated in a while.
posted by Electric Elf at 6:43 AM on April 6, 2001


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