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Comment by Sukotto | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps it's because I'm not a twitter hipster, but what's with all the bitly links? They really detract from an otherwise great post.

I personally really prefer to know where I'm going before I click a link. Save bitly for posts that restrict your character count please

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Sorry about that. :-/ The long links were making it really difficult to compose my post. I too get annoyed at URL shorteners, but I thought the annoyance would be offset by the convenience of having the short links inline (as opposed to placing the long links at the bottom via footnotes). In retrospect I wish I could edit my original post and just put the long links inline.

Use this Greasemonkey.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/46822

Anyone who downvoted me care to explain why? I don't twitter (which appears to be the primary audience of bit.ly users) and my experience with url shorteners starts and ends with tinyurl (and all the abuses I encountered with that service).

What, specifically, was unworthy about my question and rational?

Compare what you wrote with something like this response: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1136775

I downvoted you because... ugh, whining about something I don't care about. I don't care so why do you? It's not even important, it's not even the sort of thing there can be a definitive answer to, it's just preference on both sides so there wont be a resolution.

Besides, you're wrong ;), the shortened links are no real hindrance because you can tell by the context that they'll only go to a shop or a picture, there's no chance here that they'll be surprise shock sites, PDFs, etc, and unlikely they'll even be videos.

So stop cluttering up with your bikeshed colour whinging and post something about clothing fashion. Even if it's a short personal anecdote with which I can't identify and don't care about, that's still a better quality comment.

Just add a plus to the end of the URL.

Oddly, copy/pasting the link into the address bar and manually adding a plus to the end of the URL seems to take far more effort then just clicking on the link. If only there were a usability trick to actually see the link directly in the post somehow...

Personally, I prefer the shorter links. Since HN makes you put the full link text, it ends up really cluttering up comments.

Also, I'm surprised by your passive-aggressiveness. I almost made a comment about how you must be new here, but you've been here longer than me!

I use Long URL Please (http://www.longurlplease.com/), and most of the time don't even realize something was posted as a bit.ly or some other shortened URL until I look carefully. It replaces shortened URLs from most services with the actual URLs that they lead to.

Thanks for the heads up about this, just 'installed' the bookmarklet. Seems to work well.

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