Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!usenet.blueworldhosting.com!diablo1.usenet.blueworldhosting.com!nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Andrew <andrew@spam.net>
Newsgroups: news.admin.peering
Subject: Re: Request Nova BBS add easier-to-remember search URL links for Usenet article lookups
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:02:31 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: BWH Usenet Archive (https://usenet.blueworldhosting.com)
Message-ID: <utd92n$1igf$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
References: <utcd0f$7lu$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com> <614ecd45f8fdcd6abbe300006283c5f1@www.novabbs.org>
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Retro Guy wrote on Tue, 19 Mar 2024 23:24:31 +0000 :

>> Which, for years, I had accessed using this simple-to-remember URL.
>>  https://tinyurl.com/news-admin-peering
> 
> You should be able to create your own shortlink to any page on the site.

Thanks for responding as I'm well aware of two things:
1. You are the only ones with a decent Usenet search now
   (David Cavion's narkive notwithstanding)
2. No good deed goes unpunished. :)

:)

Yes. Of course anyone can create any short link. Nobody said otherwise. 

The problem is the most easily remembered short link is already taken 
(by me) for the Google search (which I did long ago for newsgroups).

Yet I can call it "retro-news.admin.peering" or something like that.

But that's not the request - it was simply the historical way of shortening
the horrid Google Usenet search link before we got Google to shorten it.

>> Until Google made the suggested change to easily rememberable URLs.
> 
> Please make an example of an easily rememberable url. 
> That's not a challenge, just a request :)

Well, the Google rememberable link was:
 https:// FQDN + g + newsgroup
For example: https://groups.google.com/g/news.admin.peering

So the equivalent RetroBBS could be similar.
 https:// FQDN + g + newsgroup
For example: https://news.novabbs.org/g/news.admin.peering

But maybe even better to use "ng" instead of "g" as it's a common abbrev.
For example: https://news.novabbs.org/ng/news.admin.peering

I fully realize that the easy part is coming up with a URL.
The hard part is implementing and supporting it (I know).

>> Now I have the same request to ask of the wonderful NovaBBS folks.
>> a. Might you consider making the search link easier to remember?
> 
> Do you mean the link to:
> https://news.novabbs.org/computers/search.php ?

No, I didn't mean that. I meant the same link above since I never search
more than one newsgroup at a time, so the link I was referring to was this:
 <https://news.novabbs.org/computers/thread.php?group=news.admin.peering>

That's just not an intuitively easily remembered URL for most people.
This would be an intuitively easily remembered URL for most people:
 <https://news.novabbs.org/ng/news.admin.peering>

Or maybe, since you're already using the question mark syntax, 
it might be easier on you to continue using that question mark syntax.
 <https://news.novabbs.org/?ng=news.admin.peering>

>> b. Might you consider adding a "link" to each article?
> 
> I have already planned to do that. 
> I just have not taken the time yet. 
> It will eventually happen.

Ah. Thanks. Thanks for understanding. I agree it will create thousands of
permalinks that you might need to maintain, so I understand that the way I
did it with the Message-ID search to get a link to the article is possible.

It works for me, and it works for all intelligent people who can figure
something that simple out - but you know as well as I do that most people
are incredibly stupid - so it won't work for them - that's all.

I was just asking for the link to make it foolproof for those other people. 

> It will be like the 'copy mid' link, just 'copy_link' instead.

Makes sense. 

> Also, as you already noticed, there is a link to search for a
> message by Message-ID at the top of the page.

Yes. At first I looked for a "permalink" at the top right of
each article, but then I realized there was a "mid" link to copy the 
message id which I combined with a message-id search on your site
to then get the link to the article from that message-id search.

As I said though, anyone on this newsgroup is intelligent enough
to figure that out, but the vast majority of the folks on that
Android newsgroup couldn't figure that out if you paid them to.

So I was only asking for the permalink feature for the dummies.
Thanks for understanding.

At this point in time, other than the narkive (which, bless David 
Caveon's heart, just isn't there yet), you're our only salvation!