[-empyre-] links

["Nemo Nox" <lists@nemonox.com>]

Jill Walker wrote:
>Mm, but when I link, I link quite deliberately. I choose 
>what I link to - I might think I want to link to something 
>that explains this, that gives background or further 
>information about this, that shows that I also know about 
>this other thing, that brings out an ironic or self-ironic 
>twist, that contrasts to this, etc. 

But you have no control over what's on the other
side of the link. They may change the content or
the design, they may block access with passwords,
they may disappear, you don't know.

>Mostly I link to websites that won't change, or that won't 
>change much. I like to individual articles in newspapers, 
>to whole websites rather than specific information when the 
>point of the link is to open up and touch upon something the 
>reader can explore further, to individual blog posts arguing 
>one thing, to art sites or conference sites and so on.

That's just an assumption. A newspaper may decide
to start charging for access to archives, a text
may be taken down because of legal action, an art
site may become a commercial gallery... The point
is you don't have control over what's on the other
side the same way you have control over your site.

>They might disappear but that's OK, web links aren't stable 
>- I don't expect for them to necessarily work for more than 
>a few days.

That may not be the expectation of someone visiting 
your site. In the case of a weblog, with posts clearly
marked with a date, it may not matter much. But on an
institutional page you create months ago, broken links
may reflect badly on your work. Worse, what if that
humanitarian website you mentioned on your favorites
list is now showing Nazi messages? :-)

>Sometimes I write self-contained hypertexts that pretty much 
>only link to themselves. So an essay would be a bunch of 
>webpages that are interlinked. I control the links even more 
>then, since I decide exactly what goes on the target pages.

In the case of internal links, yes, control is yours.

>I think the distinction between internal and external is quite 
>hard to maintain these days. And often it doesn't really matter. 
>And I think that we control links quite a lot. What do you think?

I still think the internal/external link distinction
is very evident (unless you use a trick like framing
external content into your site). Websites can have
(and often have) a visual personality (logo, color
scheme, etc) indicating if you are still in the same
place or have traveled elsewhere. And there is also
the address box in the browser showing the location.

Nemo Nox
http://www.ploft.com/index.shtml