[wp-hackers] Some Thoughts/Enhancement Ideas In And Around TheCategory Side Of Things

[Otto]

On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 12:40 PM, Mike Schinkel
<mikeschinkel at newclarity.net> wrote:
> URLs should be "hackable" according to usability expert Jakob Nielsen, new media professor Dennis G. Jerz and many others:

Yes. Every single one of those people is mistaken. :-D

> Once again, you are prove yourself out of touch with users and arrogant to imply your opinion is the only right one.

Yes, my opinion is the right one. Seriously, do you go around assuming
that you are wrong all the time? Must be a hell of a way to live. I
don't consider that arrogant, I consider that just a fact of life.
Everybody thinks they're right all the time. That's the way people
work. Unless you consider recognizing that fact and admitting it
outright to be "arrogant", I suppose. Odd use of word though.

Still, all this is off-topic for the list, so if you're going to just
keep posting personal attacks against me for no reason other than me
stating my opinion, I'm pretty sure nobody on the list wants to read
it. Why not message me directly instead?

> That's the spec, but not the reality of the use of URLs.  Throwing paint again the wall and having it land where it may obeys the laws of physics but doesn't necessarily create art.

Continually claiming that people treat URLs as mix-and-match reality
doesn't make it so. Those "usability experts" are idiots if they think
the average person edits the URL in order to go where they way. Hell,
man, people don't even edit the URL to go to Facebook, and get
confused when Google starts returning different results!

Check this out:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php

That site showed up as the top Google result for "facebook login" for
a while the other day. Read the comments on it about people who can't
figure out how to log into Facebook anymore, and then they get all
ticked off because they think that readwriteweb.com was "Facebook's
new look".

Real people don't use URLs. They rarely even notice them.

>> In other words, the fact that /category throws a 404 is because there
>> is no /category. It also doesn't matter one little bit because nowhere
>> on my site or anywhere else on the web will you find a link to
>> /category by itself. Google will never go to /category because *nobody
>> links to it*.
>
> Duh! Nobody links to it because it's broken!

That's one way to look at it. Another, more valid, way to look at it
is that *it's not a valid URL*. It doesn't have any content to
display. I can't even think of what content I would want to display
there. It doesn't map to anything legitimate, therefore it is a 404.

A 404 is not "broken". It's simply a way to state "there's no content here".

> You'd find people would link to it if it provided meaningful content. Such a page could logically default to being an entry point for the list of categories on a site. The fact that isn't obvious to you is what I find sadly amusing and misguided.

Well, probably because I don't want to give people a list of
categories on my site.

Don't presume your idea of navigation is universally acceptable.

> Sigh.  Your technical knowledge and subsequent technical help of others on this list a hugely great service to the WordPress community.  OTOH your constant advocacy against common sense greatly diminishes your contributions on balance.

Really? More personal epithets? This is not the place for such things, sir.

If you cannot be right, then you could at least try to be professional.

-Otto