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chrismorgantoday at 11:44 AM0 repliesview on HN

Yeah, I’m happy to just call permashortlinks a bad idea, seldom warranted historically and roughly never now. The article offers no explanation about why to use permashortlinks—what looks to be “a few reasons why” is actually a few reasons why to link to the original (rather than copying and pasting the contents), nothing to do with the permashortlink practice.

https://indieweb.org/permashortlink does give a few reasons, but they’re bunk. “More reliable in email”? Not meaningfully so. “Quicker to recall / copy due to size”? Not typically a concern. Maybe a nice-to-have, but you can consider adjusting your URL style, then it can be even better. “Less effort to manually enter”? Repeat of the previous point.

And it doesn’t address the problems of the permashortlink. Cost. Diluting across different domains. Having something different to maintain and remember.

Don’t do separate permashortlinks. Just fix your regular links to not be bad.