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Easy way for content developers to create forward-pointing links (yes, this is the wrong community, please help redirect it.)

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First off, I know the forum is wrong, but I could find no "support option" that included your corporate forums, such as https://hacks.mozilla.org, which is the forum which brought me to ask this question. Please redirect this to the correct forum if there is one better suited for this, and send me a link to where it is moved to.

tl;dr: I believe the introduction of a semantic tag (or something similar) would help bloggers keep threads of posts together, while allowing readers easier access to all content that is created on a specific topic, without unnecessarily bloating the concepts of "categories".


This is an ages-old problem, which has persisted since the first days of blogs and forums. It has to do with "multi-part" blog or forum posts, especially when constructed over the matter of days and weeks.

Case in point, a blog series I have been reading recently: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/08/dweb-social-feeds-with-secure-scuttlebutt/ (I am eagerly awaiting further posts on this topic.)

Do you notice how the top of the second post has a helpful header pointing back to the first post? That's great, as the second post is where I entered the thread, and it allows me to go back to the starting point of the thread, *BUT* there is no indication on that introductory thread that the second post exists, or any further posts on the topic, and there likely never will be. This is because posts, generally, once made, are not changed by the author, and it's a pain (speaking as a blogger myself) when creating additional posts on a topic to have to go back to all of the previous posts and include a link to the most recent post. This is a bit of administration that helps readers, but is often forgotten by bloggers.

Fortunately for hacks.mozilla.org, posters are encouraged to cross-post links into the most likely categories, and this particular post is linked to the P2P-web category (https://hacks.mozilla.org/category/p2p-web/), and I can see from there that this is currently the most recent post on the topic. However, because "P2P-web" is not a noisy category and gets a small enough amount of posts that I can see that there are currently only 2 posts on the topic.

However, I'm certain that Mozilla engineers can come up with a better method for maintaining flow across multi-part forum posts.

Even when there isn't a lot of time between posts, it's an extra step the blogger needs to add if they want readers to see all parts of a length topic, broken into smaller pieces for easier reading (as in: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/flash-in-memoriam/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/life-after-flash-multimedia-for-the-open-web/ In this case, Dustin kindly includes a link in the first to the second, but there is no backward link in the second pointing back to the first.)


One suggestion would be to include some sort of tag when posting that indicates a unique forum topic ID (possibly the title of the first post in the thread,) and include at the bottom of all posts a "live links" section that includes links to all posts within the topic. Then, whenever a poster creates a new post within a topic, then all existing posts on the same topic, when visited by readers, would gain a new entry in the "live links" section that will direct them to where the most recent post is, in addition to all existing posts, on chronological order of when the posts were created. This would happen without any additional effort on the part of the poster - only that the tag be included in the post. If there is only one post with that tag, then no section appears.

While this may not be as big an issue with hacks.mozilla.org, due to the relatively low-volume of content, it's a much bigger issue with other "noisier" forums.

Does such a thing exist in the current HTML5 concept of the "Semantic Web"? If so, then I'd really like to see it used more within hacks.mozilla.org. If not, then wouldn't this be something worth considering in the larger scope, as more and more content gets posted up onto Internet forums daily?

First off, I know the forum is wrong, but I could find no "support option" that included your corporate forums, such as https://hacks.mozilla.org, which is the forum which brought me to ask this question. Please redirect this to the correct forum if there is one better suited for this, and send me a link to where it is moved to. tl;dr: I believe the introduction of a semantic tag (or something similar) would help bloggers keep threads of posts together, while allowing readers easier access to all content that is created on a specific topic, without unnecessarily bloating the concepts of "categories". This is an ages-old problem, which has persisted since the first days of blogs and forums. It has to do with "multi-part" blog or forum posts, especially when constructed over the matter of days and weeks. Case in point, a blog series I have been reading recently: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/08/dweb-social-feeds-with-secure-scuttlebutt/ (I am eagerly awaiting further posts on this topic.) Do you notice how the top of the second post has a helpful header pointing back to the first post? That's great, as the second post is where I entered the thread, and it allows me to go back to the starting point of the thread, *BUT* there is no indication on that introductory thread that the second post exists, or any further posts on the topic, and there likely never will be. This is because posts, generally, once made, are not changed by the author, and it's a pain (speaking as a blogger myself) when creating additional posts on a topic to have to go back to all of the previous posts and include a link to the most recent post. This is a bit of administration that helps readers, but is often forgotten by bloggers. Fortunately for hacks.mozilla.org, posters are encouraged to cross-post links into the most likely categories, and this particular post is linked to the P2P-web category (https://hacks.mozilla.org/category/p2p-web/), and I can see from there that this is currently the most recent post on the topic. However, because "P2P-web" is not a noisy category and gets a small enough amount of posts that I can see that there are currently only 2 posts on the topic. However, I'm certain that Mozilla engineers can come up with a better method for maintaining flow across multi-part forum posts. Even when there isn't a lot of time between posts, it's an extra step the blogger needs to add if they want readers to see all parts of a length topic, broken into smaller pieces for easier reading (as in: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/flash-in-memoriam/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/life-after-flash-multimedia-for-the-open-web/ In this case, Dustin kindly includes a link in the first to the second, but there is no backward link in the second pointing back to the first.) One suggestion would be to include some sort of tag when posting that indicates a unique forum topic ID (possibly the title of the first post in the thread,) and include at the bottom of all posts a "live links" section that includes links to all posts within the topic. Then, whenever a poster creates a new post within a topic, then all existing posts on the same topic, when visited by readers, would gain a new entry in the "live links" section that will direct them to where the most recent post is, in addition to all existing posts, on chronological order of when the posts were created. This would happen without any additional effort on the part of the poster - only that the tag be included in the post. If there is only one post with that tag, then no section appears. While this may not be as big an issue with hacks.mozilla.org, due to the relatively low-volume of content, it's a much bigger issue with other "noisier" forums. Does such a thing exist in the current HTML5 concept of the "Semantic Web"? If so, then I'd really like to see it used more within hacks.mozilla.org. If not, then wouldn't this be something worth considering in the larger scope, as more and more content gets posted up onto Internet forums daily?

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Hmm, I don't know the best forum for this question.

On my WordPress blog, the theme header/footer has forward/back navigation within the current category. I know people often do not see those links; they just look like noise. There might be a plugin that would look for a series tag and auto-generates a link to the next in a series once it's posted. If not, someone should create one.

I realize that's not a very modern approach, but...