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This seems like it's vulnerable to some form of abuse. library.com/books/1as03jf08e/Moby-Dick/ library.com/books/1as03jf08e/Hitchhikers-Guide-to-the-Galaxy N

This seems like it's vulnerable to some form of abuse. library.com/books/1as03jf08e/Moby-Dick/ library.com/books/1as03jf08e/Hitchhikers-Guide-to-the-Galaxy Now lead to the same place...

always_good 9y ago
You would redirect to the canonical one.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  You don't necessarily have to redirect, but you should at least include `<link rel="canonical" href="..." />` (as given example StackOverflow does) so that search robots and other website (scrape and/or API) clients know which one is the canonical path, to avoid duplicate efforts.
  - always_good 9y ago
    That only works for some crawlers. Certainly not for users. Meanwhile, everything obeys redirects. Since you bring up Stack Overflow, notice that they do the canonical redirect. Change the title in the URL and you'll get redirected.
    - WorldMaker 9y ago
      Yes, the best approach is probably both, but it is crawlers that it matters more that they know the canonical paths more than users, and a crawler ignoring rel="canonical" is likely not much better than/as buggy as a crawler ignoring robots.txt; it's a specification they can ignore at their own peril.
- awj 9y ago
  I think the concern is in the way it obscures the target. Replace "Moby Dick" with a Chuck Tingle (warning, probably nsfw) book. Now that second link is a serious problem.
  - always_good 9y ago
    I see what you're saying, but it doesn't seem like much more than a funny gag you might pull on a friend. If a website is concerned about that case, then instead of letting it inform their URL design, they should have a "Warning: Adult content. [Continue] [Back]" interstitial like Reddit or Steam.
  - digikata 9y ago
    I'm not even sure it's a serious problem - a possible annoyance, and perhaps, for a spammy site owner, maybe even a feature. But as a web user, I'm not really fond of that added uncertainty.
madeofpalk 9y ago
eh. You can do that with query strings and hashes in URLS anyway. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=digikata&profile=bad-person https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=digikata&profile=bad-pe...
- digikata 9y ago
  standards wise, you know the part after ? is variable though...
  - madeofpalk 9y ago
    variable? Not sure if I 100% get what you're saying, but what I know is that https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=digikataWaitNoThisOtherBadThing https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=digikataWaitNoThisOther... won't go to the same place as your user profile. There's standards, and then there's "Standards".

This seems like it's vulnerable to some form of abuse. library.com/books/1as03jf08e/Moby-Dick/ library.com/books/1as03jf08e/Hitchhikers-Guide-to-the-Galaxy Now lead to the same place...

always_good 9y ago

You would redirect to the canonical one.

WorldMaker 9y ago
You don't necessarily have to redirect, but you should at least include `<link rel="canonical" href="..." />` (as given example StackOverflow does) so that search robots and other website (scrape and/or API) clients know which one is the canonical path, to avoid duplicate efforts.
- always_good 9y ago
  That only works for some crawlers. Certainly not for users. Meanwhile, everything obeys redirects. Since you bring up Stack Overflow, notice that they do the canonical redirect. Change the title in the URL and you'll get redirected.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    Yes, the best approach is probably both, but it is crawlers that it matters more that they know the canonical paths more than users, and a crawler ignoring rel="canonical" is likely not much better than/as buggy as a crawler ignoring robots.txt; it's a specification they can ignore at their own peril.
awj 9y ago
I think the concern is in the way it obscures the target. Replace "Moby Dick" with a Chuck Tingle (warning, probably nsfw) book. Now that second link is a serious problem.
- always_good 9y ago
  I see what you're saying, but it doesn't seem like much more than a funny gag you might pull on a friend. If a website is concerned about that case, then instead of letting it inform their URL design, they should have a "Warning: Adult content. [Continue] [Back]" interstitial like Reddit or Steam.
- digikata 9y ago
  I'm not even sure it's a serious problem - a possible annoyance, and perhaps, for a spammy site owner, maybe even a feature. But as a web user, I'm not really fond of that added uncertainty.

madeofpalk 9y ago

eh. You can do that with query strings and hashes in URLS anyway. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=digikata&profile=bad-person https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=digikata&profile=bad-pe...

digikata 9y ago
standards wise, you know the part after ? is variable though...
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  variable? Not sure if I 100% get what you're saying, but what I know is that https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=digikataWaitNoThisOtherBadThing https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=digikataWaitNoThisOther... won't go to the same place as your user profile. There's standards, and then there's "Standards".