On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 6:37 PM, Felipe Almeida Lessa <felipe.lessa@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 6:53 PM, Rogan Creswick <creswick@gmail.com> wrote:
> Short, obfsucated, urls may direct you places you don't want to go,
> but I fail to see how that concern applies to HWN: since each url is
> accompanied by a description of its content, that seems to obviate the
> need to see the actual url. In most cases, the text also indicates
> the domain that you will visit, so you can avoid supporting
> stackoverflow with page impressions if you wish (for example).

It is also possible to borrow half of Slashdot's system and write something like

http://goo.gl/G081Q [article.gmane.org]

Is that a good compromise?

That is a nice in-situ style. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the footnote proponents' main argument is that its lightweight nature causes less of an interruption when reading the text.

I think its fair to say that those who RTFA more often would benefit most from in-situ and those who rarely RTFA benefit most from the footnote style. I'm in the former group, but who knows what most people do?

David