Re: Thank you for public-inbox!

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 30, 2018, 03:56 UTC
Message-ID: <20180830035609.GA140348@aiede.svl.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20180830033000.GD665@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King wrote:

> I guess I just wonder if I set up a mirror on another domain, would
> anybody actually _use_ it? I'd think most people would just go to
> public-inbox.org as the de facto URL.

If it's faster than public-inbox.org and you don't mind the traffic I would send, then I'll use it. :)

[...]

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> That would be neat, but I think it actually makes references less useful
> in a lot of cases. URLs are universally understood, which means:
>
>  - people who don't know about public-inbox can just follow the link
>    (and in fact, that's how they learn how useful it is!)

I agree: please don't stop using URLs.

Having the message-id in the URL is very useful for being able to migrate to another server.

In an ideal world, we'd be habitually using URLs that reference a redirector, in the same spirit as https://www.kernel.org/lore.html. That way, there is a very restricted syntax to use (e.g. just message-ids) that is stable and can be reconfigured to redirect to another service as appropriate. In principle it also allows tricks like redirecting based on geography or making the redirector go to the user's preferred archive interface based on a cookie.

Thanks, Jonathan