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> Backlinks are links that go … back. Pages within a Ring can see which other pages linked to them. I'm reading up on web history. I believe this was one of Te

> Backlinks are links that go … back. Pages within a Ring can see which other pages linked to them. I'm reading up on web history. I believe this was one of Ted Nelson's criticisms of the web (and reasons why Xanadu was supposedly better), right?

somat 2y ago
Backlinks only work within a benevolent autonomous domain. In a federated system, it is quickly discovered how to flood them with spam. which is why, rightfully so in my opinion, the web does not even try to have automated backlinks. That is, you can only link to something, you can't link from something, you can't put a link on somebody else's site pointing to your own. The closest it has is the referer header. And if you feel lucky you can build your backlink system out of that.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  at the time, it was folklore that lack of backlinks was the key "worse is better" inferiority/superiority which meant Sir (as he is now) Tim's web became —unlike all the sundry previous attempts at hypertext— world wide. Lagniappe: https://github.com/floren/ching/blob/2d36a6ca0dd89f5a2e317d8353c1ffcdfbc94212/hexagrams#L34-L36 https://github.com/floren/ching/blob/2d36a6ca0dd89f5a2e317d8...
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  Good critical overview. My impression is that Ted Nelson came at hyperlinks from a purer information scientists POV, whereas Sir Tim and CERN team were more pragmatic network engineers. They probably didn't anticipate the spam problem but likely did see that asking another host to store state on your behalf wasn't optimal.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  You don't need a single autonomous domain, you just need a web of trust where other hosts are allowed to send trackbacks/webmentions to your site once they prove free from abuse. That's essentially how the Fediverse works - bad servers can simply be banned from the network. (And the Fediverse shares a lot more than simple backlinks, so the risk of abuse is correspondingly higher.)
- hnbad 2y ago
  Obviously that comes with a lot of caveats: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Referrer-Policy https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Re...

somat 2y ago

Backlinks only work within a benevolent autonomous domain. In a federated system, it is quickly discovered how to flood them with spam. which is why, rightfully so in my opinion, the web does not even try to have automated backlinks. That is, you can only link to something, you can't link from something, you can't put a link on somebody else's site pointing to your own. The closest it has is the referer header. And if you feel lucky you can build your backlink system out of that.

082349872349872 2y ago
at the time, it was folklore that lack of backlinks was the key "worse is better" inferiority/superiority which meant Sir (as he is now) Tim's web became —unlike all the sundry previous attempts at hypertext— world wide. Lagniappe: https://github.com/floren/ching/blob/2d36a6ca0dd89f5a2e317d8353c1ffcdfbc94212/hexagrams#L34-L36 https://github.com/floren/ching/blob/2d36a6ca0dd89f5a2e317d8...
nonrandomstring 2y ago
Good critical overview. My impression is that Ted Nelson came at hyperlinks from a purer information scientists POV, whereas Sir Tim and CERN team were more pragmatic network engineers. They probably didn't anticipate the spam problem but likely did see that asking another host to store state on your behalf wasn't optimal.
zozbot234 2y ago
You don't need a single autonomous domain, you just need a web of trust where other hosts are allowed to send trackbacks/webmentions to your site once they prove free from abuse. That's essentially how the Fediverse works - bad servers can simply be banned from the network. (And the Fediverse shares a lot more than simple backlinks, so the risk of abuse is correspondingly higher.)
hnbad 2y ago
Obviously that comes with a lot of caveats: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Referrer-Policy https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Re...