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Currently, when you hover over the link link for a question you see a shortlink.

For example for this question, hovering over the link for the question shows you:

AJAX inconsistency in IE 8?

and the title displays short permalink to this question

Whereas hovering over the link for an answer for the same question shows you

AJAX inconsistency in IE 8?

and the title displays permalink to this answer

I think it'd be very convenient to provide a short permalink to the answers too. For example the above answer can also be linked to by simply using

https://stackoverflow.com/q/3664482

As Jon Seigel pointed out in the answers, the above takes you directly to the Answer, and it's just as short as the question link. Also, the User ID could be tacked on.

Providing this as the answer link seems more consistent to me.

Visual aids:

Question:

alt text

Answer:

alt text

0

2 Answers 2

6

You can already mostly do this by abusing the URL processing algorithm, but it's an extra step to get the URL (you'll have to manually edit).

How? When you put in an answer post ID into the URL where it expects a question ID, you get taken to the answer automatically!

Example linking to Jeff's answer:

Long link (from the "Link" button): Show a short link for Answers too... not just Questions

Short link: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63846

Using the shorter link, you automatically get redirected to the long link.

The only way I could see this getting shorter is something like https://meta.stackoverflow.com/p/ ('p' is for posts) followed by either a question ID or answer ID. Edit: this is already implemented as /q/.

5
-1

think we wish to have more people share links to questions rather the answers, we wish people to promote the site, not just their answer.

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  • 5
    that's an ominous "we"... ;) Sep 9, 2010 at 18:37
  • 3
    This is interesting. Someone from my office asked me a question almost the exact same as a question I'd answered on Stack Overflow. So rather than writing a detailed explanation for them via email, I sent them the link to my answer.
    – Andy E
    Sep 14, 2010 at 11:27

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