[Vim-l] Fwd: Tips relying on external sites

[John Beckett]

Erik Falor wrote:
> I can understand the dilemma relying on external sites presents.
> 
> On one hand, as an author, I don't want to be responsible for 
> maintaining tips on multiple sites.  If I update a script or 
> refine a tip, I don't want to have to update it twice, or 
> thrice.  Directing to an external site means that I only have 
> to fix the tip once.  
> 
> On the other hand, broken links are no fun, and they never 
> seem to be cleaned up in a timely fashion.  I wouldn't 
> endorse pointing tips to personal web pages which may not 
> exist next month.  But vim.sourceforge.net is probably not 
> going anywhere.
> 
> In regard to the "less is more" tip I posted last month, 
> instead of linking to vim.sf.net I could just put the text of 
> the batch file in the tip.  It is short.  And it probably 
> won't change.
> 
> In the end, my feeling is that it is appropriate to link to 
> vim.sf.net, and for other sites it is not so appropriate.  I 
> think that because vim.sf.net is the official site for Vim, 
> it is appropriate to assign it this special status.  And it 
> reinforces idea that is the central repository for Vim 
> scripts.  Well, it is, isn't it?

Apparently I have caused some confusion with my opinions on tips that rely on
external links.

To clarify: There is NO PROBLEM with tips that have external links (to well-known
pages of interest to Vim users). Sure, URLs may change. No problem - we'll fix it,
or remove dead links.

However, I recommend that each tip should be reasonably self contained. It should
provide useful information. There is no problem with a tip that has (say) ten lines
of informative content, and then says that more details can be seen in a script on
vim.org or other useful site.

My problem is with tips that only serve to announce external content. That is, the
only thing you learn from the tip is that some useful feature exists on another web
site. Fifteen years ago, people were thrilled to see a link on a web page, and many
of us eagerly collected links to useful sites. IMHO the situation now is entirely
different. People are fed up with going to a promising page only to find that it has
no content, only links. Google provides an infinite supply of external links.

The discussion on this can be seen at May new tips:
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Vim_Tips_Wiki:New_tips/200805

In the "Tips linking to external sites" section I list three tips that rely on
external links, but I said: "I am not happy to recommend deletion of these proposed
tips at the moment. Instead, I am wondering if each could have additional
information added so a reader would feel that they had learned something, just from
reading the tip."

I also mentioned that an alternative would be to have a new feature on the Main Page
with some kind of Announcements section. There could be a page listing useful
external sites. Each item would have a brief overview, and an external link. The
three tips referred to are ideal candidates for such a page. However, they are also
very capable of being expanded to include some useful content.

Please post here, or on the May new tips page, with your views. If you don't request
otherwise, I might put a summary of discussion here on the May new tips page.

John