Christopher Benson-Manica said:
I dislike them for two reasons:
- They might break. Nothing is forever, not even a web server. One might
expect a free service to be even less permanent, even one as cheap to
run as a redirector. If the original server stops serving the page,
there is nothing to do about it, except perhaps find it in the Google
cache. Adding an extra layer of indirection that might break as well,
and which breaks without leaving any clue to what the original page
was, is just adding fragility.
- You can't see where they go. I prefer to have just a tiny bit of clue
about where I'm going before I press a link. Going through a redirector,
and especially one with as little clue as a tiny-url, remove any
chance of knowing it.
On top of that, I just don't see the point. I'd much rather people
started using newsreaders that didn't break lines that should be
broken (or at least use Quotefix if they insist on using Outlook), or
browsers that accept broken links (I know Opera does)
Whether they are a menace, I'm not sure, but a few tiny-urls to
goatse.cx-like pages sounds menacing to me
/L 'Brevity of expression is good. Absence of content is not.'