Hey #Fediverse can I ask you a favor?

[oldcoder@dansu.org]

@ADHDruid @raymaccarthy : Are you able to show the degree of grounding in reality that would permit you to convey to Mr. Rossolini, in the event he's blocked me, that he's continuing to talk about, as I've been telling the entire group for 2 days, **my own content** ?

Nobody is as dense as this. This whole thing is some sort of put-on or idiotic joke, right? I've been trolled and I fell for it.

All right. I never claimed that I was too sharp to fall for a troll.

I've been in what is technically social media since before any of you but Mr. MacCarthy were born. It isn't that I date back as far as Usenet. I date back to the point where the young man who sat next to me in class was going to marry the woman years later who was going to known years later as the Queen of Usenet.

Nothing existed at the time but email. The email was delivered by uucp, which was almost literally Unix to Unix Camel Protocol. But we had groups and projects and arguments.

In the time that has passed since the primordial era, through all of the changes that have taken place, I've never encountered a joke on this scale or, if it isn't a joke, idiocy that is this epic.

The idea that what is in black & white can simply be denied is incomprehensible. I mean, sure, the national "leaders" of Washington do it all the time, but we're talking about repeated denial of what's in writing right after it's posted.

[semitones@tiny.tilde.website]

@raymaccarthy @oldcoder @drahardja

I think I explained poorly. A QR code is easy to generate, yes, but replacing physical signs with new QR is not.

We are just starting our wiki, and it is likely that some of the URLs will change. Maybe wiki.ourdomain.tld/sewingmachine seemed good at first, but we decide to reorganize it to wiki.ourdomain.tld/Sewing#makerspace_equipment . I don't want to print out new signs every time this happens, until our wiki is fairly mature. (1/2)

[semitones@tiny.tilde.website]

@raymaccarthy @oldcoder @drahardja
I am less concerned with our domain changing -- I think it will stay the same unless we go out of business. So I am considering self-hosting some kind of permalink software so that qr.ourdomain.tld/sewing/ can be kept up to date with however the URL gets renamed.

Either that, or maybe the wiki can be set to have one "permalink" that's just unique letters and numbers, which never changes, and then the title and human-readable URL can change if needed. (2/2)

[raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie]

@semitones @OldCoder @drahardja
A QR code is simply a pattern that decodes to text. Any text.

You can't change the URL without changing signs, unless you keep the old URL and alias it on your system.

I understand perfectly what you want.

Install a barcode scanner which ONLY decodes and doesn't load a website and you will see what I mean.

I've added one I made
. The encoded text is:
https://www.corvidspress.com/
It can't magically be something else. It could include any page on the site.

[oldcoder@dansu.org]

@semitones : If you happen to be #selfhosting presently you don't need to install separate software to handle that case. Your webserver, typically nginx or apache, can be set up to create a permalink [and a short one] using just a few lines in the webserver configuration file.

[raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie]

@OldCoder @drahardja @semitones
You don't even need to do web server configuration. The application may do it.

Or don't change permalinks generated by your application. It breaks very many things (bookmarks, menus, links people put anywhere unless you keep the original and alias.

[raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie]

@semitones @OldCoder @drahardja
The QR code generates a human readable URL a human sees, unless they have stupid Google default scanner that directly opens the browser. A good way to be scammed!

[raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie]

@semitones @OldCoder @drahardja
Changing URLS breaks far more than signs.
It breaks every bookmark and link posted. Even if you have Aliases, keeping those updated is a chore.

I've run wikis, forums, CMS software and worked on major mature websites. Automate the URL generation and don't change a URL after making it live. An alias system to keep every URL ever used for a page is the alternative and not simple despite what some may claim.

Avoid link rot.

[oldcoder@dansu.org]

Avoid link rot is one of the goals, Ray. Human friendly is another. But let's talk about link rot.

In some cases, it isn't possible to avoid changes to the URL. The primary means to avoid breaking links in such cases is to focus on the use of short links out of the gate. It needs to be permanent short link first, disposable long link second.

Yes, there are cases where that won't work.

However, the recent discussion has persuaded me that I should make it a mission to get short links out there. I'll be doing so to the extent possible.

@semitones@tiny.tilde.website : If you decide to proceed, DM me or public is fine. I'll do what I can to get you short-linked up.

Ray, I'll add that my short links are regexes. This means that people only need to remember them approximately. They'll still work if slightly misspelled. Try that with one of the 120-character monstrosities.

When you're able to type a 120-character link into a phone from memory as one of the others insisted that people must do, we can discuss this further. You do know that that demand was as cuckoo as a cuckoo clock, don't you?

BTW I've coded and run websites too since the day that the Web existed. Not to the extent that you have, but I did handle the entire web presence for my firm for a decade and I did well enough.