I have some thoughts on Manuel Moreal’s post on how linking out could result in server load:
If my site was big enough to cause problems, would then be my responsibility to be careful what I link to? […] My gut reaction tells me that it’s not really my responsibility to worry about the way other people run their sites but maybe I’m wrong and I should worry about that.
My view that if something online resonates with you, then it’s worth linking to. Not only are you spreading awareness of material you think is worth sharing, you’re giving signal to the creator that their material is resonating with others. To not do so, because you fear that a large amount of traffic might knock their server over feels like a decision made on too many assumptions about their hosting setup, or how they would react to such an event happing to them.
The stuff I post here barely goes anywhere, and I’m perfectly happy with that being the case. But there’s been a handful of times where things went wider and it’s always quite a thrill. I try to pay it forward by sharing links to things that I believe are worth sharing. To not, because I think it might cause an outage, feels like depriving others of that same thrill. Maybe “depriving” is too strong a word here, but it does feel like keeping something from them.
Chris Verbree I'm not sure if a regular blogger needs to really think about this type of stuff. I mean if you write daringfireball it's something different - but most are not writing a blog on this level. Or is this to egoistic a view?
Leon Mika @V_ Yeah, I agree. Maybe for Manuel it’s a little different, as I do see many people read and link to his stuff. But the majority, I think, shouldn’t worry too much about the effects of linking to other sites.