This would make zero functional change to URLs. It's purely cosmetic.

A link to a post on Codidact often contains no user-readable information about what awaits at the destination. When I find links online, I very often look at the URL in order to get a rough idea of what it links to. Sometimes I open a preview (three-finger-tap in Safari), but just as often, if not more often, I look at the URL that pops up when I hover over the link. On some occasions, I actually open the link in a new tab, but I prefer not to, because of all the overhead. Unfortunately, that is the only viable option if I'm not in Safari (which is at least 50% of the time), for Codidact links. Because of this, can we please add some metadata to the URLs, that is there only for the user to read, but has no effect in any other way? On the client-side, Codidact adds it to the address bar URL, the "copy link" button, the question title link, browser-popup share-button, and strips it server-side.

For instance, https://meta.codidact.com/posts/291173 becomes: https://meta.codidact.com/posts/291173/Q/should-multiple-whitespace characters-in-a-row-be-permitted-in-usernames

And https://meta.codidact.com/posts/291173/292337#answer-292337 becomes:

https://meta.codidact.com/posts/291173/292337/A/should-multiple-whitespace characters-in-a-row-be-permitted-in-usernames#answer-292337

Should the URL always use the current post title, or will that make tools believe it's a different URL?

Additionally, since this adds what can be called "clutter" in certain cases, add an option for "stripped" URLs to the "copy link" button, which will just be the same as the non-Markdown version today.

posted 3 months ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

3mo ago

Andreas witnessed the end of the world today‭

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