Group URL
At the moment the group url system goes like this:
https://www.loomio.org/groups/1234
I would like to have a system of shortened urls used i.e https://www.loomio.org/abcd where the abcd is the short name for the group. By short name I mean the group name, less any spaces in the name.
This https://www.loomio.org/abcd could be an alias to https://www.loomio.org/groups/1234
What do you think? What would the advantages and disadvantages be?
[deactivated account] Thu 11 Jul 2013 5:16AM
@richarddbartlett Can it be done using redirects? I'd prefer that than needing an extra step to get there through a search page.
Richard D. Bartlett Thu 11 Jul 2013 5:18AM
@neilmorris I missed a step in my reasoning.
I meant: assuming there is more than one group called "Cool Kids", loomio.org/group/cool-kids should go to a search page. If there's just one, it should go to the first group with that name.
[deactivated account] Thu 11 Jul 2013 5:24AM
Does this mean that you're anticipating several groups with the same name?
Could you get around this by requiring each group to have a unique short name? i.e. Coolkids and cool-kids
Chris Taklis Thu 11 Jul 2013 8:49AM
i think it would be useful.

Josef Davies-Coates Thu 11 Jul 2013 10:13AM
Yes, this has been discussed before, although just went through all the discussion in features and couldn't find the previous discussion...

Robert Guthrie Fri 12 Jul 2013 6:10AM
Yea I'm totally in support of doing this. Will do soon.

Robert Guthrie Fri 12 Jul 2013 6:11AM
Although we'd probably namespace group names to loomio.org/group/name or loomio.org/g/name

PauKokura Thu 21 Nov 2013 11:29AM
To have unique-short-names could allow a new feature: To link a group. (something like @person, #group) It's not really like a twitter hashtag but I think it can be quickly understood). This could be limited to subgroups in the same parent group or not.)
Some ideas/examples.
Link a group's #subgroup
(In the context) Thanks for joining the "moon trip airways" group. You can also participate in one of our subgroups: #mta-cheesetasting and #mta-carbonstudies
Link independent public #groups
(in a comment) @johnexample great idea. We had this discussion before in #moontripairways
Link #decissions (by id) rather than groups, or both.
On #moonbridge we all want flying bikes: #5432.
Further..... mention @group to call all members from a group with some kind of notification.
(Imagine you are member of the main group but not in the subgroup. Comment in the main group discussion) Hey, people in the @mta-cheesetasting consider a lactose-free option!
Richard D. Bartlett · Thu 11 Jul 2013 4:53AM
Yes! We've talked about emulating Trello's approach to this. I.e. see this url: "trello.com/board/trello-development/4d5ea62fd76aa1136000000c"
The human-readable name is ignored by the server, so this goes to the same place: "trello.com/board/garbage-garbage/4d5ea62fd76aa1136000000c".
In our case that would be loomio.org/group/group-name/213890
Perhaps an improvement would be for "loomio.org/group/group-name" to go to a search page for "group name".