[kwlug-disc] Link shortener advice

[Paul Nijjar]

On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 06:53:09PM -0400, Chris Frey wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 05:58:04PM -0400, Jason Eckert wrote:

> > I avoid link shorteners altogether. Instead, I ensure that the description
> > text is hyperlinked to the full URL so that the reader doesn't see the full
> > URL unless they hover over the hyperlink. Of course for email, this
> > requires it be in HTML format instead of plaintext.  In the few cases where
> > plaintext is a must, I use footnotes (e.g. see Link#1 below and put
> > Link#1:hyperlink) at the bottom of the message.
> 
> I agree.  The only advantage to link shorteners that I can think of
> is when you have to manually type it in.  And that's pretty rare these days.
> 
> Is there another case I'm missing Paul?

Reading clarity in the context of the newsletters I generate. 

Below is a snippet from a recent newsletter. I want this newsletter to be readable as plain text, so Jason's suggestion of hiding the URLs does not work. The standard approach of just displaying the link makes the newsletter cluttered and unreadable: 

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/event?eid=cmpycm1tcHF1MnVwMzYyc3R0ZjJiZzRmNmMgbmxrYzM5anQ0cDBuYmM0cGs5cGo3cDVmaDBAZw&ctz=America/Toronto

Link rot is an issue but it is not much of an issue, since I am just linking to individual calendar entries. (Yes, you may now criticize me for using Google Calendar. Feel free to spin up an alternative that permits the kind of workflow such that I will actually transcribe events.)

This leaves Jason's other suggestion of using footnotes, which is visually confusing. You want to keep the link and the event information together. 

Personally, I think using a link shortener is the best of a set of bad options. Thus my question stands. What should I do to get the least worst link shortening option?

- Paul


Tuesday, Aug 18 2020
--------------------

 6:00pm: Online: Apache Kafka - Kafka Streams: Revisiting the Decisions of the
Past
         Location: Online: Register for meeting link
         Learn More: https://da.gd/XMPxW


Wednesday, Aug 19 2020
----------------------

12:00pm: Online: Waterloo AI and Deep Learning - The Journey to Becoming the
#1 Kaggle Grandmaster
         Location: Online:...
         Learn More: https://da.gd/vZF9a

 6:30pm: WatPy - PyDrinks
         Location: Death Valley's Little Brother, 84 King Street North,...
         Learn More: https://da.gd/p5Xtj

 6:30pm: Online: KWJavaScript - Coordinating State with Vuex
         Location: Online: Register for meeting link
         Learn More: https://da.gd/VuFk

 7:00pm: KW Unix Users Group
         Location: McMullan's, 188 Highland Rd W, Kitchener, ON
         Learn More: https://da.gd/oZsV

 7:00pm: Online: Hackers & Hustlers: Meet your Startup Co-Founder
         Location: Online: Register for meeting link
         Learn More: https://da.gd/0IJfG




-- 
Events: https://feeds.off-topic.kwlug.org 
Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org