Down with tinyurl! (was Re: importing excel data into a python matrix?)

[Terry Reedy]

On 9/19/2010 11:43 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Sep 2010 06:16:49 -0700, Aahz wrote:
>
>> Please don't use tinyurl -- it's opaque and provides zero help to anyone
>> who might later want to look it up (and also no accessibility if tinyurl
>> ever goes down).  At the very least, include the original URL for
>> reference.
>
> Do you have something against tinyurl in particular, or would any URL
> shortener service also get your ire?

All of them. For mail/news without a 140 char limit, read with a 
mail/news reader, there is usually no point to using them. All pain, no 
gain. I almost never click on them. (This is quite different from 
ephemeral photo storage sites, where the short url is *the* one and only 
url.)

Most long urls have a bunch of unneeded garbage at the end. When I 
create or search for a tracker issue, resulting url in the browser bar 
is about 2/3rds unnecessary stuff. When posting such links, I only cut 
and paste the needed part: http://bugs.python.org/issue#### and leave 
off the rest. I may also include the title separately. Anyone reading 
that can know just what they will find.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy