If you liked it then you should have put a URL on it
Check out my less-creatively-titled, but more to the point post Why everything should have a URL. đ
If thereâs one thing that made the internet what it is, itâs the URL. Itâs what makes sharing funny cat videos possible. Itâs the bookmark to access your bank account balance. Itâs the Wikipedia link you send your buddy to end a heated argument. Why then, are our most online important interactionsâââcollaborating with coworkers, accessing government services, or consuming open dataâââall too often, tragically URL-less?
The humble URL
Thereâs a lot packed into that seemingly innocuous string at the top of your browser. At its most basic level, a URL is a promise that so long as they have that magical sequence of characters, anyone in the world can see exactly what you see. In technical terms, a URL or Uniform Resource Locator is the means by which to access a resource. That resource can be anything from a product on Amazon.com to an individual Tweet on Twitter to a page in the Congressional Record. A URL is also, by definition, also a URI (uniform resource identifier), meaning no two things ever have the same URL. Put another way, if you have somethingâs URL, you also have a unique way to identify it, today and in perpetuity. It gives your content a permanent home on the internet, our primary means of communication.
Exposing process
But URLs are more than just the phone numbers or license plates for the internet. When used correctly, they expose process. Whereas in many organizations, asking why something is the way it is involves several trips up and down the hall to âask Bob, I think he might have been around thenâ (with Bob somehow always being out of the office), at GitHub, as in most of open source, every decision has its own URL.
That URL exposes not just what decision was made, but why it was made, who made it, what information was available at the time, and what arguments were made both for and against it. And as new members onboard, they have immediate (and non-blocking) access to that URL, and all the context it contains. Better still, as the same or related issues arise, that institutional knowledge can be passed around with a single hyperlink.
We rarely use email for exactly that reason. Itâs not available to those not originally CCâd, itâs not easily referenced, and most importantly, itâs easily lost. What was the subject again? Was it sent to this distribution list or the other? Did I go over my quota? The medium doesnât matter (issues, forums, chat with transcripts) so long as itâs possible to move backward from a given deliverable and understand how things came to be.
Where things go wrong
If the fabric of the internet is so necessarily sewn with URLs, why then, do sites, especially government sites, so often violate this sacred cyber-norm?
URLs donât require additional instructions
If you asked me to send you GitHubâs SAM.gov registration, the portal that centralizes common information about all businesses that sell to the federal government, Iâd be forced to send you the following:
- Go to
sam.gov
- Click
Search Records
- Type in the word âGitHubâ
- Click
Search
- Click
View Details
Sadly, thatâs the most direct way anyone can get to that public information. Take a look at your URL and youâll see things like navigationalstate
, interactionstate
, each followed by an obscure string of letters and numbers. This tells you that the URL is only part of the puzzle, and that the server decides what to display based primarily on your previous interactions. The server, not the URL, is the master of what you see.
Regardless of the medium, one thing remains true: URLs donât require additional instructions. If the steps to retrieve a particular piece of content on the internet involves verbs â sub-instructions like âclickâ, âscrollâ, or âsearchââââthat content has not been afforded the respect a proper URL provides. âTake this URLâ should be the only instruction you need. In technical terms, the internet is stateless.
The internet is not an afterthought
The second way URL-less information is created is when the internet is relegated to an afterthought. Spoiler alert: the internet is here to stay. Whatever youâre doing, whether itâs running a city council meeting or starting a small business, if you donât take the internet into account when creating your workflows, itâs going to be an uphill battle to get things online.
Despite a fundamental shift in the way people interact with technology (hint: the iPad is just five years old), many workflows havenât embraced this reality. If the first step in content creation is to fire up a desktop word processor that has margins and page breaks, youâre already heading down an analog trajectory. And to then go back and adapt the content for the web is going to be a subpar experience for information publishers and consumers alike.
Just as internal communication should prefer high-fidelity, electronic mediums in order capture and expose process, so too should external communication be treated with the same respect. A painter imagines the final masterpiece before ever touching brush to canvas. Whether exposed internally or with the public, great workflows start with the URL, in its ideal, non-PDF form, and work backwards to content creation.
Great URLs
Having a digital-first workflow and a standards compliant site is a great first step, but to truly put content on a pedestal, great URLs take digital publication three steps further:
-
Theyâre semantic - URLs may be consumed by machines, but they are primarily built for humans. As such, they should describe the thing they represent in human-readable, not just machine-readable terms. Weâve all looked to the top of our screen when browsing, only to discover
domain.com/index.php?page_id=23784
or a similar obscure database ID. Great URLs make it immediately clear what they represent. Just by seeingben.balter.com/2014/10/02/expose-process-through-urls
you immediately know (A) that this is an article, (B) who the author of that article is, © when it was published, and (D) what itâs about. -
Theyâre format agnostic - When you visit a web page in your browser, even if the URL doesnât explicitly end in
.html
, the server assumes thatâs what youâre asking for and serves the requested content accordingly. But what if you want a different format, such as JSON or XML? Great URLs honor the idea that a URL should uniquely identify (and locate) a resource (not a specific presentation) and let you simply swap out the extension to get another format. If Iâm looking at a hoodie in GitHubâs shop, and want that data in JSON, I simply add.json
to the URL, to get that same content in JSON. This is part of the secret sauce that makes RESTful interfaces possible. -
They link deep - In any given page, thereâs a lot going on. Maybe itâs a long blog post or simply a heated discussion thread. âScroll two third down and youâll see itâ is never an acceptable way to share content. Great URLs identify not only which page, but where on that page. Hover over the heading above and youâll have the opportunity to link directly to it (the URL updating with an in-page anchor hash).
Knowledge work as craft
Whether youâre an attorney, a civil servant, or a web developer, in todayâs digital world, if you donât make sprockets for a living, thereâs a good chance that youâre a knowledge worker. Your deliverable at the end of each day, doesnât actually exist beyond magnetic patterns on a hard disk. Through meetings, discussions, and drafting, you create organizational knowledge in one form or another.
Just as blacksmiths know the value of an anvil, and bakers the value of yeast, so too must knowledge workers embrace the tools of their craft. A composer would never stand for his or her concerto being played on a kazoo. Why then, is content all-too-often created haphazardly, with its presentation and preservation being subject to the whims of organizational habit?
The next time you begin a new project, adopt a high-fidelity, electronic medium that allows you to capture and expose process as a URL, today, and forever. Your content, your fellow knowledge workers, and the informationâs consumers deserve it.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy:
- Why everything should have a URL
- Four characteristics of modern collaboration tools
- 15 rules for communicating at GitHub
- Why open source
- Five best practices in open source: external engagement
- 19 reasons why technologists don't want to work at your government agency
- Twelve tips for growing communities around your open source project
- The difference between 18F and USDS
- How to make a product great
- Leaders show their work
- Eight tips for working remotely
Ben Balter is the Director of Hubber Engagement within the Office of the COO at GitHub, the worldâs largest software development platform, ensuring all Hubbers can do their best (remote) work. Previously, he served as the Director of Technical Business Operations, and as Chief of Staff for Security, he managed the office of the Chief Security Officer, improving overall business effectiveness of the Security organization through portfolio management, strategy, planning, culture, and values. As a Staff Technical Program manager for Enterprise and Compliance, Ben managed GitHubâs on-premises and SaaS enterprise offerings, and as the Senior Product Manager overseeing the platformâs Trust and Safety efforts, Ben shipped more than 500 features in support of community management, privacy, compliance, content moderation, product security, platform health, and open source workflows to ensure the GitHub community and platform remained safe, secure, and welcoming for all software developers. Before joining GitHubâs Product team, Ben served as GitHubâs Government Evangelist, leading the efforts to encourage more than 2,000 government organizations across 75 countries to adopt open source philosophies for code, data, and policy development. More about the author â
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