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Comment by dugmartin | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat related question that I'm interested in knowing people's thoughts on...

If you have a website that contains user generated content aimed at technical folks what looks nicer (and maybe what are some more options?):

1. GitHub's implicit username: https://github.com/foo

2. Medium's @username: https://medium.com/@foo

3. Old style homedir (eg tildeverse): http://tilde.club/~foo

4. Explicit user folder: https://example.com/users/foo

My preference is not to use implicit usernames since you then would need to filter against a blocklist (something like https://github.com/marteinn/The-Big-Username-Blocklist). Anybody have any opinions?

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I don't know why, but personally I always associate old school style ~/ as more ... trust worthy? I don't know why though!

Perhaps because I remember having those kind of addresses when I younger, and therefore associate with an older generation? (Not that that guarantees trustworthiness!) Or maybe because a lot of academic personal sites use that as well?

I guess in terms of "what looks nicer", for me:

1. I assume this is just a directory

2. '@' in URLs just feels weird now, it's not a usename:password type thing

3. Not particularly pretty

4. I think that signifies what it is, and who it is

Personally I'd prefer example.com/users/foo, or even example.com/u/foo, because (i) you don't need unusual characters like @ or ~, and (ii) you don't need server config to look for a wildcard in the root.

Alternatively, if as you say it is for hosting "user generated content aimed at technical folks", users might want to feel like they own their own (sub-)domain, so how about foo.example.com instead?

I prefer ~, but that's probably mostly because I've found the sites that use it to align better with my personal philosophies (see: Sourcehut, most of the tildeverse, a lot of academic pages).

Your #1 is full of problems about users not being capable of using their names or taking over system pages. So, whatever you do, avoid it, it's a bad one.

The `@` has a special meaning in URLs, but I think all browsers are smart enough to not break on it.

The `@` has no special meaning in the path part of a URL.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986#section-3.3

Personal preference is @username

I have all the content off the root and I don't want a collision between /articlename and a user with that same name.

~ just makes me feel too old-school. And of course @ is used everywhere to indicate a username now.

Many people don't know how to even type `~`. `@` is becoming synonymous with "person".

"entity"

Tildes are painful to type on several non-English layouts (e.g. Swedish). I like their Unixy vibe but disdain having to type them.

Hmm, I use both Swedish and English layouts and I'd say they're about as painful to type on both. It's almost the exact same movement, except with the other hand.

Really? Tilde is a dead key on a typical Swedish keyboard, meaning that you have to type AltGr+~ followed by space. Technically, the space is not needed for letters that ~ doesn't compose with, but having to think about that is part of the pain.

I also can't agree that it's almost the same hand movement, you have to use your right thumb for AltGr while also reaching for the key with your right hand. On an English layout you'd use your pinky for shift, or even your other hand.

You've already got your thumb by space after hitting ~. Pretty natural to just tap it.

Swedish QWERTY has a lot of awkward symbols, but ~ isn't anywhere near the same class as something like {

Sure, {[]} are in their own league. But ~ is still very different, in a negative way, on the Swedish layout compared to an English layout.

And tildes don't exist al all on some keyboards. I remember memorising Alt+126 to enter a tilde on Windows with an Italian keyboard.

I would prefer http://foo.binarytask.com but that works best if you have you own custom DNS software.

I mean, FWIW ~camgunz "expands" to /home/camgunzcamgunz (or /home/camgunz/camgunz), so it's a little incorrect? It's like "pixel graphic" games now that aim more for nostalgia than accuracy: Genesis games don't look like modern pixel graphic games, ~camgunz isn't actually how it works, etc. So I guess I prefer @camgunz for non-URLs, but blah://dir/camgunz for URLs?

Actually, it is how it works. Try doing "cd ~camgunz" and it should take you to the home directory for camgunz.

WOW I had no idea! Why does this work haha

EDIT: Oh I guess yeah, for other users. Innnnnnteresting, and then ~ is just shorthand for you. Huh.

> FWIW ~camgunz "expands" to /home/camgunzcamgunz (or /home/camgunz/camgunz)

It doesn't. ~user looks up the home directory of "user".

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