Reading the Washington Post, I bopped a San Francisco link amid a description of John Gilmore, and was dumped onto a Bay Area mishmash.

Because links take their meaning from context, offering an opportunity to learn more about the subject at hand, I felt misled.

Washington Post Staff Writer Ellen Nakashima was focused on "civil liberties activist" John Gilmore at that point in the story -- not on Bay Area news in general, current SF blogs or tourism-related WaPo.com SF articles. Yet that was the topic mismash amid which I landed.

Gilmore just happens to hail from San Francisco, and I wanted to know more about his current activities.

So, having been burned, I read straight through to the end of the story, and went to Google. Did my own search (pout).

Repeat encounters with similar pages at WashingtonPost.com have left me wary of following any of their in-story links.

The reporter didn't do it. That San Francisco/psudo-gilmore link page was generated by the cunning technologies of Inform Technologies LLC, as were the others I subsequently encountered.

Inform services are fascinating, as are those of apparent competitors (at least in some regards), like Moreover and Topix. Even so, it is Inform that has moved Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive CEO Caroline Little to wax rhapsodic that the service "keeps readers engaged longer, drives more traffic, and ultimately helps us make more money."

Thus she offers Inform as almost the Holy Grail of add-on information services.

Good for them.

Even so, links like San Francisco amid the John Gilmore text are not what I mean when I write about the importance of off-site links to the success of online publications.

Meaningful outward-facing links, which help enlighten the reader about the subject of concern, are important.

Unintentional misdirection of the sort I encountered while reading about John Gilmore is self-destructive for online publications.

I say "unintentional" because I am after some research persuaded that no one intended to send me off on a wild San Francisco goose chase.

Even unintentional misdirection undermines user confidence in the misdirecting publication, leading longtime readers like myself to think twice before clicking any in-story link posted by the offending publication.

Clearing up my misgivings may require more than a tune-up of the configuration, if anyone seeks to clear them up.

I'll be watching, almost every day. Having read the Washington Post for decades and having followed its online efforts since the days of Digital Ink, I'm not giving up on them. Or on their partners.