#indieweb 2023-04-06
2023-04-06 UTC
geoffo, ren, caffeinewriter[m, jamietanna, jonnybarnes, gRegor, [jamietanna] and IWSlackGateway joined the channel
# 
IWDiscordRelay <capjamesg#4492> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/06/ai-chatgpt-guardian-technology-risks-fake-article
# IWDiscordRelay <capjamesg#4492> > In doing this we have found that, along with asking how we can use generative AI, we are reflecting more and more on what journalism is for, and what makes it valuable. We are excited by the potential, but our first task must be to understand it, evaluate it and decode its potential impact on the wider world.
# IWDiscordRelay <capjamesg#4492> I'm curious to read what the results are of this.
gRegor, [snarfed], [KevinMarks], [tantek] and geoffo joined the channel
# 
Loqi [indienews] New post: "Using footnotes for link reminders while writing" https://jamesg.blog/2023/04/05/footnotes-link-reminders/
geoffo, gRegor, [jacky] and [jamietanna] joined the channel
[schmarty] joined the channel
# IWDiscordRelay <capjamesg#4492> Me tpp.
# IWDiscordRelay <capjamesg#4492> *too
# 
[KevinMarks] Your footnotes don't work quite like Tantek's
# IWDiscordRelay <capjamesg#4492> What is the difference [KevinMarks]?
# [KevinMarks] Tantek post processes the ^1 to be a text superscript that links to the foot of the post where the external link is.
# [KevinMarks] In your case it might make sense to make the links inline in the text
# [KevinMarks] ^1 could use "Homebrew Website Club this evening" as the linked text; ^2 could use "page on footnotes" as the linked text. I think that would be more accessible.
# [KevinMarks] Are you POSSEing to Mastodon? That was the point of Tantek's internal links
# IWDiscordRelay <jacky#7226> kinda sucks that I can't POSSE to Twitter but tbh this feels like a (second) reminder to not look at it as much and a bit of joy that my stuff isn't canonically there
geoffo joined the channel
[campegg] joined the channel
# [campegg] I've not really thought too much about it before, but I'm curious about the rationale for footnotes over inline links; personally, I find footnotes (either superscript or ^n format) far more disruptive than a link when I'm reading, and they also forgo one of the major advantages that hypertext has over printed text, i.e. not having to jump around a single document to see citations/resources/supporting materials/etc. I can kind of see
# [campegg] how footnotes could be better back in the day when we were limited to single-window browsers, but in a world where tabs exist and are a widely-understood browser pattern, the case for footnotes over inline links seems a little thin. Am I missing something super obvious here?
# [campegg] (All of this is obviously personal preference and I'm not throwing stones at anyone else's choices; I do genuinely want to broaden my understanding/perspective.)
# IWDiscordRelay <capjamesg#4492> Yes [tantek].
# IWDiscordRelay <capjamesg#4492> It's amazing.
# IWDiscordRelay <capjamesg#4492> Really, amazing.
# IWDiscordRelay <capjamesg#4492> I should make the footnotes look better.
geoffo joined the channel
# bkil [campegg]: I find myself publishing my thoughts much more clearly since structuring content according to gemini. As a personal preference, I also find it hurtful if someone hides their URLs behind text. Always having to hover over them or copy & paste to examine where that would take me and what trackers it contains slows me down quite a bit.
# bkil capjamesg:
[chrisbergr] joined the channel
# 
[chrisbergr] I thought the "^" in "^1" is supposed to not being displayed, instead marking the following number a sup element.
# [chrisbergr] Btw I would put the number in brackets. I guess most internet users nowadays are familiar with that in superscript thanks to wikipedia. So from an ux standpoint, it makes sense to provide something known.
# [chrisbergr] My personal preference: I like default inline hyperlinks more. I don't find them distracting, in fact quite the opposite. Most of the time, when I want to learn more, I want to click on it right away, open it in a new tab. It's more efficient that way than searching for the link first. The issue with the print variant I can of course understand, but there are certainly nice solutions via CSS and or JS.
# [chrisbergr] Translated with DeepL
# [campegg] bkil Thanks! All fair points; I see where you're coming from, but personally prefer the 'hover to see' interaction than having my reading flow interrupted by additional characters.
# [chrisbergr] [capjamesg] I would do something like https://stackoverflow.com/a/66878835/1278475
# [chrisbergr] In fact, I guess I *will* do this 🙂
# [campegg] [chrisbergr] I think that's the intent, but I have seen the ^ visible in quite a number of cases ([tantek] had it that way on his site, but changed it up relatively recently). I think from a familiarity perspective, I'd probably lean towards the Wikipedia approach as well, but either way for me it's still a speed bump to reading And my browsing behavior maps pretty closely to yours… if I'm interested in seeing more, the link gets open
# [campegg] in a new tab to look at later.
# 
[tantek] [campegg] see /footnote#Why
# [campegg] [tantek] Thanks! I hadn't sen that
# [campegg] Footnotes for explanatory/exposition notes, I can understand; footnotes for all links in a document still seems like giving up one of the key affordances of hypertext
# bkil Full disclosure: on our heavily referenced chart, we at present display just a unified placeholder "icon" for the link - an underlined _w_ with a contrasting background. I find it a bit more tidy than if it used any more characters than the absolute minimum - 1. https://bkil.gitlab.io/secuchart/
# [chrisbergr] I can understand the reasons for both approaches (inline vs footnotes). For SEO (I know) it's better to use at least good descriptive link texts.
# bkil We could have hidden the links behind words or phrases, but in many cases we do share more than one reference for the same statement, and this can only be done in an untidy ways (some hyperlink each word within a phrase if the count of the two matches incidentally).
# [chrisbergr] [tantek] yes of course. I did not excluded that
[capjamesg] joined the channel
# 
[capjamesg] To dev I venture!
# bkil [chrisbergr]: Yeah, I think SEO doesn't really understand footnote links that well. At least it would cause _me_ quite some headache if I were to implement a scraper & crawler.
# capjamesg To the extent I understand Google tries to index anything that looks like a link on a page in terms of its structure (i.e. http://...)
# [campegg] bkil, the multiple references for a single statement is a good use case for a footnote, I think and I see where you're coming from there. I'm not a fan of the multiple-word-link-phrase approach
# bkil Yes, but in our chart, we have like hundreds of references. I wouldn't wish anyone to scroll through that.
# [campegg] I think I'm stuck on footnotes as a holdover from print, but can see them being useful for further exposition (I am guilty of over-using parentheses for that!) and where there are multiple citations for a statement
# [campegg] But as a matter of personal preference, and for the use cases I see for me, I'm going to stick with inlining links. Thanks for the thoughtful responses, all!
VVet joined the channel
# [chrisbergr] Randomly, I just saw the concept of a "Further Reading" list, which of course is also very appealing. https://lawsofux.com/aesthetic-usability-effect/
n8chz joined the channel; VVet left the channel