Why the Trash Heap is a Paragon of Bad¹ Hypertext
Writing
Before you delve into the depths of the trash heap, be
warned! That collection of pages violates just about all of Jutta's
criteria for good hypertext writing²:
- there is no subject, let alone a subject level to keep to
- the entries are mostly unpersonal, since they are just cut and pasted
from wherever I found them (I add redactional comments whenever i visit a
site for the first time, or whenever a site changes and i notice it, but i
add links at a faster pace than i can visit them)
- many links are stale; i don't have the time to verify their working
- i don't discriminate; most links are in here because I thought them to
be nifty or k00l at the time, or because of a vague impression that they
might ``come in handy'' later.
- the links are often inaccurately, if not misleadingly, labelled. Hey,
why would anyone follow a link if she already knew the contents of the
document it points to?!
- balance? ha! there ain't no balance of links in the trash heap!
- (i didn't manage to include enough misleading "coming attractions"
notes; but i herewith promise to add a few!)
- I never check my spells. Well, rarely.
- I just changed the last line
to violate the "invite your readers to critize you" commandment.
- At the last count, the trash heap contained
(30) counts of "available",
(10) counts of "current",
(75) counts of "here",
(27) counts of "list",
(7) counts of "note",
(9) counts of "there is/are",
(6) counts of "provides".
So, kids, be warned: don't try this at home!
¹ The trash heap is only bad, not evil:
it usually passes htmlchek without even a warning (links to foreign places
with illegal link syntax, e.g. non-MIME characters in script arguments,
sometimes cause complaints).
² Which i religiously observe on all my other pages -- well, mostly.
This page was last changed on Apr 03 1995, 11:42 by mfx@pobox.com. Comments and corrections welcome.