WP-A: A New URL Shortener

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Vinicius Mesel wrote:

> I'm a 16 year old Python Programmer that wanted to do something different.
> But, like we know, ideas are quite difficult to find.
> So I decided to develop a URL Shortener to help the Python community out
> and share my coding knowledge, and today the project was launched with its
> first stable version. So if you want to see the software working, go check
> it out at: http://wp-a.co/ Or if you want to see the source code to
> contribute and help the project: https://github.com/vmesel/WP-A.CO

While I commend your efforts, I think that you should have chosen another 
topic for your project.  It is also hard for me to see in which way this is 
“something different” – are there not enough “URL Shorteners” already? –, 
and how a “URL Shortener” could “help the Python community out”.

Because I think that “URL Shorteners” are a bad idea in the first place: One 
never knows for how long a time a “short URL” works, who is listening in the 
middle, and what they are referring to, until one uses them at which point 
it is too late.  If a “short URL” expires, there is *no way* to retrieve the 
referred content; when a *real* URI breaks, there are services like the 
Internet Archive and the Google cache to help one out.  So when I see a 
“short URL”, I tend not to use it.

I find it particularly disturbing that in wpa.py:processaURL() your software 
apparently stores the original URIs in an SQL database; in the case of your 
proof-of-concept, in *your* database.  So *you* are listening in the middle 
then.  I cannot be sure because I have not thought this through, but with 
aliases for common second-level domains, and with text compression, it 
should be possible to do this without a database.

So sorry, because of that already, I will certainly not use or recommend 
your service.  “Leave others the privacies of their minds and lives. 
Intimacy remains precious only insofar as it is inviolate.” ─Surak

And with the exception of Twitter-ish sites that place a limit on message 
length, there really is *no need* for shorter URIs nowadays.  (HTTP) clients 
and servers are capable of processing really long ones [1]; electronic 
communications media and related software, too [2].  And data storage space 
as well as data transmission has become exceptionally inexpensive.  A few 
less bytes there do not count.

Instead, there *is* a need for *concise*, *semantic* URIs that Web (service) 
users can *easily* *remember*.  It is the duty of the original Web 
authors∕developers to make sure that there are, and I think that no kind of 
automation is going to ease or replace thoughtful path design anytime soon 
(but please, prove me wrong):

<https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/uri-choose>

__________
[1] <http://stackoverflow.com/a/417184/855543>
[2] <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#appendix-C>
-- 
PointedEars

Twitter: @PointedEars2
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