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It seems the Stack Exchange community as a whole "really, really hate" URL shorteners (source).

But what's our (Ask Ubuntu community) stance on pad.lv, the "site-specific redirection service for Launchpad.net"?

I found this service pretty useful while posting a link to a bug-report in Comments section, for example, https://pad.lv/1532508 works well in place of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/1532508.

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    Why do you find it useful? I usually use an alternative title, e.g. see [this launchpad bug](https://bugs.launchpad.net/…), where there's no difference in the output. Is it the comment's character limit or the actual output you're worried about?
    – dessert
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 19:14
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    Let's see how a link like yours looks like (assuming it's the output you're worried about): pad.lv/1532508 vs. bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/1532508 – that's quite long, but the long one contains useful information: It's on launchpad, it's a bug report, it's about gnome-shell. The short one does neither. Doesn't matter at all if you use a meaningful(!) alternative title (see above).
    – dessert
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 19:43
  • @dessert Not exactly the output, I meant they reduce the character-count. But that's just a loose comment showing my preference. What I meant to ask is whether pad.lv URLs are frowned upon here like other services (bit.ly, tinyurl etc.) or considered okayish.
    – pomsky
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 20:06

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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I don't see any benefit from any URL shorteners here. Post an extra comment if needed.

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  • What kind of reaction from the community does one get after posting pad.lv links? Are these frowned upon here like URLs from other services (bit.ly, tinyurl etc.) or considered okayish?
    – pomsky
    Commented Feb 22, 2018 at 11:33
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    Dunno. If I saw a URL shortener, I'd just replace it with the expanded form without looking into which URL shortener it is.
    – muru
    Commented Feb 22, 2018 at 11:37
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Being quite paranoid, I wouldn't click on a shortened link given that it would not be certain to where it would get me to. So given that this is a security and privacy risk I would not support it.

However it should be noted that, in terms of LaunchPad at least, there is an easy (and official) way of shortening the link. And that is just to have it as:

https://launchpad.net/bugs/[bugID]

And just to have the bug identifiction number instead of [bugID] at the end.

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    Of course you'll have to live up to your (nick-)name ;-) :-D
    – pomsky
    Commented Feb 26, 2018 at 20:40
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    Open duckduckgo, search !unshorten https://pad.lv/1532508 or simply paste the link directly into a service like unshorten.me - or check from your command-line using curl -sIL https://pad.lv/1532508 | grep Location
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Mar 2, 2018 at 21:28
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Other than what dessert mentions in their comment

Let's see how a link like yours looks like (assuming it's the output you're worried about): pad.lv/1532508 vs. bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/1532508 – that's quite long, but the long one contains useful information: It's on launchpad, it's a bug report, it's about gnome-shell. The short one does neither. Doesn't matter at all if you use a meaningful(!) alternative title (see above)

I am against it, simply because it is not an official URL-shortener by Canonical. For two reasons, first is privacy concerns. Second is that I cannot be certain it will be up forever, and not suddenly start redirecting to spam and/or porn (which has happened to a link I posted once in a question).

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    The argument you quoted does not make much sense, because then you would also want to ban official SE links like this one: meta.askubuntu.com/a/17707/271
    – Andrea Lazzarotto
    Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 13:20
  • @AndreaLazzarotto That's not a fair comparison. Launchpad is a big platform in a sense that there is a lot of stuff to link (and which can be shortened by pad.lv). For instance: projects, bugs, user profiles, packages, code, answers, and a lot more. In the case of SE, there are only 2 kinds of shortened links, answers or questions. An in both cases, you can know if it is linking to a question or to an answer. Example: A question has a q in the URL https://meta.askubuntu.com/q/17696/8698 while an answer has an a in the URL https://meta.askubuntu.com/a/17707/8698.
    – Dan
    Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 8:45
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    ... and neither of those links you mentioned show what they are about, because they do not contain the question title. We might agree or not agree on banning third party url shorteners or redirections, however we need to provide a reason that makes sense.
    – Andrea Lazzarotto
    Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 12:18
  • Ah, I see where you were heading with this. The quote in my answer is exclusive to the pad.lv vs original Launchpad links. Sorry for the confusion, I do not mean it in any way as a general rule for all other URL-shorteners. IMHO URL shorteners, in general, should be banned for a whole set of other reasons. But that should already be covered somewhere on Meta Stack Exchange.
    – Dan
    Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 12:39

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