This is links_readme.txt for my lists of links at http://everist.org/archives/links/


When I'm interested in a topic, I generally save related articles I happen to find, in a folder for that topic. I also (usually but not always, because I'm slack) save the article URL in a text file list of links for that topic. Because I like that links file to sort to the head of the files list in each folder, I name it like "!_topic_name.txt". The exclamation mark sorts highest, and doesn't look _too_ stupid in the filename. It has no other significance.
The result of copying such files to one folder (here) is that they all begin "!_", which makes no sense in itself and looks weird. So now you know why, if you wondered.

No, I don't use browser bookmarks files. Ever. For multiple reasons-
 - They don't allow me to make notes associated with the URLs in whatever format I like.
 - Ordering URLs in sensible ways is a pain in bookmark files.
 - Plain text allows me to search lists sensibly. (I use a nice fast, neat text editor.)
 - When the lists are in plain text, I can easily copy them (with notes) elsewhere.
 - I like to write dates in the YYYYMMDD format (and bookmark files don't.)
 - Swapping between browsers makes bookmark sychronisation a pain.
 - In general, but especially for data longevity and portability, plain ASCII beats all
   other data formats by a mile.

Anyway, I end up with many, many folders on various topics, each one with a list of related links.
Talking to people about stuff, I kept being asked for copies of my URL lists. So I started to put some of them online. The text files here are a small sampling of all the lists I keep. In some cases (eg 911) there's little or nothing here, because my archives on the topic are too huge, and copying all the links lists would be a pain. Especially since in many such topic trees (which may contain hundreds of folders) the link files in each folder are all named just "!_links.txt". The folder name gives the context - but that won't work for this all-in-one online lists folder.
Since I'm only doing this very half-heartedly, I couldn't be bothered renaming hundreds of files, or transfering them all here.

Mostly the links files get new links appended, and usually with the date (as YYYYMMDD) I added it.
But some lists have some internal sorting by topic. Whatever seemed like a good idea at the time (but sometimes wasn't.)

Of course, links often die. This is why keeping some names, or at least the full title of the article helps. If you want to find a 404'd article, try googling for the title or unique phrases from the notes in double quotes (ie match exactly.)


As you can probably guess, I couldn't be bothered running everist.org as a nice looking website at the moment. It's just an online file storage space aka junk box. Some of it can't be reached from the front page. But feel free to poke around, nothing private is kept in here.