3 ms·
> linking only to have a link to something I used to link to reduce redundancy in what I had to write. Now, I tend to duplicate large parts of documentation to
by nomel 4y ago
> linking only to have a link to something
I used to link to reduce redundancy in what I had to write. Now, I tend to duplicate large parts of documentation to remove links, because I found that people actively avoid links. I'm guessing this aversion is related to a unconscious awareness of the "doorway effect", which exist even in virtual environments, and I assume, to some degree, on web pages:
> The doorway effect is a known psychological event where a person's short-term memory declines when passing through a doorway moving from one location to another when it would not if they had remained in the same place.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doorway_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doorway_effect
- actionfromafar 4y agoYou know how Visual Studio can bring up in a mini window a "peek" into another function? I think that's excellent and I think we need something similar for regular documents. Something which could expand incrementally. It would be harder to write, but it would be excellent for documentation. Maybe an LLM would be good for such a thing. Say, instead of just linking to the documentation of another function, you could "zoom" into a description of it, tailored to screen estate or number of words: zoom a box of 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 words
- nine_k 4y agoLinks have two problems: (1) they carry you away into a different context and (2) they rot. So, to bring something to attention, you need to both quote enough and provide a link. For one's own archival purposes, it makes sense to locally store a copy if any important enough web page. No, that text or image is not guaranteed to be there tomorrow.