[LINK] What's a website (was Welcome to our new website)

[Tom Worthington]

At 08:56 PM 6/06/2007, Ivan Trundle wrote:

>On 05/06/2007, at 4:47 PM, Tom Worthington wrote:
>>I use a definition from the High Court of Australia <http:// 
>>www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/ecommerce/index.shtml#law>:
>
>Tom - you never fail to amaze me in your ability to write almost 
>every e-mail with a reference to something on your website. ...

I try to confine my Link postings to topics I know something about. 
Usually I will have written something on the topic and it is better 
to point people to that, than clog up the list with a lot of waffle.

>But why not link to the High Court's definition directly, or even to 
>Austlii instead? ...

I link to a quote I have prepared, so as to:

1. INFORM: Court transcripts are long, wordy documents which are hard 
to read. If I linked straight to it, the reader would most likely not 
be able to find the relevant text, or make sense of it. As I have 
already selected the relevant bit and provided some explanation and 
context for it, I think it better to point the reader to that.

2. PERSUADE: I want to persuade readers to my point of view. If you 
read my selected quote, with my context around it, you are more 
likely to agree with me. If you read the original, you may form a 
different view from mine.

3. IMPRESS: It looks good if the reader can see I am not just making 
it up as I go along. If I pointed straight to the transcript, you 
might think I found it with a web search a few minutes ago. Instead 
you can see it is something I wrote about some time ago and had given 
considerable thought to.

4. PROMOTE: By pointing to my web site I promote myself and those 
organisations I am associated with. In this case the web page is one 
I use for lectures at the ANU and so this helps promote ANU courses. 
It may also help me get work as an expert witness if I quote the High Court.

What amazes me is that many contributors to online forums seem to put 
so little effort into what they write in postings. They put little 
thought as to why they are doing it or what they hope to accomplish. 
They put little effort into writing something which the intended 
audience will find readable, credible and useful.

My views on what and how to write postings have not changed much 
since 1998, when I wrote "How to Read and Write E-mail 
Messages":  <http://www.tomw.net.au/nt/intrnt.html>. I teach 
essentially the same techniques for web pages in my Writing for the 
Web Course <http://www.tomw.net.au/moodle/>. A lot of this seems 
obvious to me, but people seem to be willing to pay me to tell them it anyway.

ps: See I managed to slip a few more links to my web site. ;-)



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml