You may have noticed that starting today, I’ve been adding a dedicated link to the main story in every post on OSAlert. Our old-fashioned 2001 method of “biggest link is main story” simply doesn’t hold up today as proper attribution, so from here on out every post will have a link marked by crediting the name and/or publication of the main linked article (or multiple where it makes sense). I’ve been unhappy with our attribution for years, and finally got my act together and settled on this solution. While I’ve had, in total, maybe no more than 2-3 complaints about this since I started in 2006 – it’s taken too long, and I apologise for that.
Credit and attribution matter.
For the curious: is part of the arrows Unicode block as U+21AB, titled “Leftwards arrow with loop”. I settled on it because the path of the loop and the arrow evoked a feeling of being yoinked back somewhere else, and that’s what a link does. Sure, I could’ve opted for a chain link or whatever, but that’s boring.
As someone who mentioned blockquotes and citations all the way back in 2010 (commenting on ‘The Problem with Typography Complexity on the Web’, complete with mangled Unicode, for some reason), I’m happy indeed to see this!
I don’t think attributing something in a way no one else does is any better than just linking… If you want to formally attribute something to someone you need to cite them properly.
I am glad for this change. It is occasionally difficult to figure out which link is the important one w/r to the post. Not often, but that is something that shouldn’t ever be a challenge. This will fix that.
Yep, exactly! Attribution is important, but there was also a genuine problem with user experience. I’m very happy it’s gotten fixed.
Now you explained it, I get it.
I’ll get used to it, but for now I like the style of Michael Tsai better. It explains itself. Also, the old style of OSAlert was always a bit peculiar (which also suits the subject of course).
Check this: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/12/05/ads-when-you-start-your-fire-tv/