RE: Steem improvement proposal : Canonical links.

[jesta]

In my view, this is one of the fundamental issues that really needs resolving for 3rd party app success.

A standard that everyone (including and most importantly, steemit.com) needs to follow.

Comments

[howo]

I think too, and with steem success growing we'll see more and more dapps hence why I think it' so important to remove this problem that slows down adoption.

[dj123]

great catch @howo, was going to say this needs to be in Steemit GitHub submission & an Utopia post but with all the comments below, looks like this will be worked out the with all the dev here

just letting you know I'm following you now

[valuproposition]

I like the utility of the canonical property.

The app tag is not particularly scaleable, and adds several brittle complexity obligations to all clients.

1. The blockchain doesn't know jack about apps.
2. The universal url schema is either fixed for all time, or everyone in the steemverse needs to change their schemas

I'd suggest we start with both a canonical and an app_account (that is an account associated with only the app that assisted in creating the post).

At some point in the future we can either:

1. agree on a kind of "meta schema" that will allow the account app_account to publish a configuration set for in a special tx; so that all clients can generate the correct urls by pulling the most recent tx for that app_account.
2. the app_account could publish special tx with a javscript function in the body that would take a post and transform it into the correct canonical url. (this is a terrible idea for all the obvious reasons)
3. have a standard js lib in an npm style repo somewhere that everyone has access to, with the functions describe in #2, but vetted by the publisher (this is terrible for a mostly different set of reasons)

If we get sufficient community support, and add in the concept of trusted app_accounts (with some additional complexity) any of the above would get the job done 'well enough'.

Oh, I agree this really does need to happen. For all our sakes.

[ajibsingh]

Nice to meet you @jesta
You are the best steemians

[totravel]

I think so

[sf2]

I agree with your approach 110%.

It will only help improve efficiency on the chain as well as avoid potential duplicate content issues. There are many On-Page SEO issues Steem has, many of the most critical I have outlined here...

https://steemit.com/steemit/@sf2/9-things-steemit-can-do-to-improve-on-page-seo-for-all-users

The more we can improve these technical SEO and accessibility issues, the more adoption and awareness we will create for Steem and the community.

Everybody wins.

[jonas13m]

What is the fundamental issue?