Could do something in the sidebar based on _main's left's type, etc.
SHORT
less typing
Once you've seen a few snailmail addresses you can start figuring out how to create them. Web addresses within and across websites should strive for that simplicity. (Okay to require some learning - eg zip codes, two-letter abbrevs.)
If people can construct working URLs *guessing* at some of the URL (command) they want, computers will also be able to.
del.icio.us good example of a site that takes this deeply to heart.
2. Past all netty/webby stuff, what do we like?
Messy chunking (English) - symbols, words, terms, sentence fragments / phrases / sentences
Meaning-full - a name that lets us know what we're getting into. Plenty of room for opinion. Name of site? Name of page?
every word is metadata
http:// could have been fewer characters; syntactic space was left to specify things about the kind of connection when we didn't know that the web was going to take over so much.
Twitter's @; shell prompt
HUMAN READABLE
tr.im/7Ytb9a - where'm i going?
Even with a 'real' URL:
hackable
Meaning-full -
del.icio.us decided to let individuals work their tag namespace as the like; but those individual pools can also be looked at together by removing the username from the URL, and see together what terminology emerges. They never did much with creating more than a direct democracy with it though. (You could have many processes to help the community converge on terminology, split, etc.)
Namespaces? original wiki, one per wiki.
Other wikis experimented with multiple namespaces, often hanging off the first:
RegularWikiPage/SubPageOfIT
But generally no connection between those namespaces
what metadata in names? Twitter's @
browser addresses as command line commands
REST
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WikiWed examples:
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wiki
Flat namespace; names are atomic
of some programming patterns
DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork
Wagn
Structured wiki without losing wiki-ness.
Okay, the shortest Wagn contest will never be four lines of code. (SigWik, 4 lines, 222 chars, Perl and Shell.)
Names are non-hierarchically holonic.
"...postscript seems like the perfect language for a wiki."
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Short URLs rock. If you don't have a brief domain and specify an idea simple enough for a good URL API to make pithy: shorten (despite evil)
Often no URL is better. Don't worry. There's still plenty of metadata weaving your tweet into the net - author, time, language, rhythm
( @claudinec tweets about standing desks )
@claudinec Been thinking standing desk on and off for quite a while. Fun! (Explicit metadata! Sorry, Claudia, continuing meta-tweet-thread.)
@: Twitter's mark for explicit metadata - people, or at least accounts. In the Twitterverse, as important as links, the web's currency.
The @ itself is metadata. It commits meaning in relation to the text up to the next space. One character instead of
http://'s seven; brevity
@johnabbe and johnabbe are two different kinds of names in the same namespace.
If the metadata is visible
Shells show metadata as a (or often many) characters at the left before you start typing.
unposted