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Behind the Curtain

November 12th, 2006

Yet another of my Internet peeves: stuff like this.

Now, I could have gone ironic and left it at that. But my point is that the post consists solely of a link, but does not describe at all what the link is. This TPM post is more egregious than usual, as it only consists of the word “Yep,” which is a link to a Daily Kos story. Josh Marshall is a repeat offender with this.

There are three reasons I don’t like it when people have links and yet give no clue as to what they are. The first reason is that I don’t like jumping around. If I am on a page where many entries might appear and I haven’t finished all of them yet, I might not want to leave the page to look at something and then have to come back.

The second reason is that I don’t like being led blindly about. I want to know where I am going to before I go. For me, a blind link like Marshall’s is equivalent to someone holding something I can’t identify up to my nose, and without explanation, saying, “smell this!” If you write a post about something, it stands to reason that you should make clear what you are talking about. If you don’t have time for that, maybe you don’t have time for writing the post. Take a minute and at least write a short note about where you’re leading people and why. If the mystery was intentional, I like that even less; being coy may be fun for the writer, but it’s a lot less fun for the reader. Maybe the article is one I’d like to read–but maybe not. People who have slow Internet connections and have to wait a while for pages to load must be really annoyed by stuff like this.

The third reason I am uncomfortable with this is because links go bad. If the post’s archive is kept, people will find it with Google–but the link the entry points to could disappear at any time, especially news stories, which often have a very short lifetime. Without any exposition in the blog entry, the reader will be mystified at what the blogger is talking about. Broken links can also nullify the point of an entry by making key data or evidence inaccessible; ergo, bloggers should take the time to copy and paste the relevant portions of the page they are linking to, so the pertinent information is preserved.

An associated peeve often appears in comments left by readers, usually combative ones: some will make a vague argument (“I disagree with what you said”), and for a riposte they will link to an article–but they do not explain which part of my argument they disagree with, nor why, nor what it is in the article that supports their point. Unless the entire article is their point (which it almost never is), then I am left to read through an often lengthy piece (usually an annoying diatribe by a right-wing pundit), and then guess as to which part of the article the visitor was referring to; essentially, I have to do all the work of creating the visitor’s argument for them, and even then, I am not sure if I understand what they were thinking about. In such cases, I usually ask for specifics and refuse to respond until they are given.

Long story short, it’s best to be specific, and not count on links to tell a story that you should be making yourself.

Coming soon, another pet peeve: people who constantly whine and complain on their blogs. I hate that.

Categories: BlogTech, Computers and the Internet Tags: by
  1. Luis
    November 12th, 2006 at 22:32 | #1

    Paul: I hope this didn’t rub you the wrong way; it wasn’t about you and that recent post I commented on. In fact, I considered not writing about this now for fear that you’d think that, but figured that a note here would (hopefully!) be good enough. I don’t think that your lack of reference before was intentional anyway. If this did come across as critical of you, my apologies.

  2. ykw
    November 13th, 2006 at 04:32 | #2

    The fellow w/ the “yep” has lots of advs. Perhaps he’s focused on making money, so he wants to keep people coming to his site, yet was tired of writing that day. Perhaps he’s burned out. Or, perhaps he feels that the link was very worthwhile, and felt that his readers should read it. Also, perhaps he wanted it to be a surprise for his readers, so he did not add any explaination. I did click on his link and found that it lead to a well written comment, yet not as well written as bogd, of course.

  3. November 13th, 2006 at 11:56 | #3

    I think that TPM has lots of ads because Joshua Marshall is a professional writer and he doesn’t run a blog as a hobby, as mnay of us do. He’s not going to waste his time writing if he can’t profit by it just as Luis (or I) wouldn’t run around teaching for free. I’m not sure how getting people to click away from his site to another is going to make him money though.

    I think the unexplained links are a good way to play on people’s psychology to get them to read something. If you don’t tell them about it, they will be curious and go look at what you’re referring to. It’s a particularly good technique if you really want someone to read something as curiosity is far more powerful a force than any act of persuasion.

  4. Luis
    November 13th, 2006 at 12:10 | #4

    I don’t think the coy-linking technique has any connections to ads, but I do understand the curiosity factor. The problem with that is if your links don’t lead to stuff that is usually deserving of the tease, people will get turned off by it. I have a particulary low tolerance for that–I get annoyed if even once I load another page and it’s not something I want to read. More than once makes me never want to click on a blind link from that person again. Probably I’m off the norm on this, and most people will be OK with going to pages they have little or no interest in much of the time.

    I suppose one way to measure that before deciding to click on the links is to consider what percentage of that blogger’s posts you really read. For example, if you have a real interest in only half of what the author writes, it stands to reason that at least half of his blind links may not be of interest to you.

    In fact, blind links may even point to items of disinterest even more: if the topic was so important or interesting, the blogger probably would have had something to say about it. Just putting the blind link there gives me the impression that it’s a throwaway link. But again, that’s just me.

    In the end, I guess I just prefer knowing what I’m getting up front. For example, I’ve never been excited by “grab bags.” Maybe that’s a good measure of optimistic/pessimistic personalities, in which case I’m really a pessimist–I always believe my grab bag will not hold anything of great interest to me. This can be helpfully pragmatic, though, as I never believe I’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning a lottery or being the 14th caller.

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