Link in archived thread links directly to goatse

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21

I’ll mention to management. Apparently Vigilink was added to the board a few years ago in another attempt to monetize the board. It’s not been an issue until recently and no one seems to know why. But I’ll inquire.

22

I would have thought simply deleting the link would be something to try before deleting the entire thread.

23

Well, originally it didn’t create links like this. It was more of a tracker for existing links. They would collect information about what links were most popular, and pay you a couple cents for the privilege. I assume they sell the information.

My best guess is that people started busting up links to try and get around Viglink tracking them, and so they added a feature to force those to still be links, so they could be tracked.

This makes sense if the site itself wants to keep making money from even broken links posted by users. But that should be mean the site should have the ability to opt out, IMO.

24

[noparse]Perhaps another way is to break the link into pieces, each enclosed in its own pair of [nopars]…[/nopars] tags (with “noparse” spelled correctly, of course). Thus, for example:

[nopars]http://dog[/nopars][nopars]gie.freeshell.org/pict[/nopars][nopars]ures/home03.jpg[/nopars][/noparse]

Test to see if that even works at all:

[noparse]http://dog[/noparse][noparse]gie.freeshell.org/pict[/noparse][noparse]ures/home03.jpg[/noparse]

Even if this works, its a PITA to do.

Results, upon preview: Yes, the link is successfully broken, but can be cut-and-pasted if you really really want to go there. WWVD? (What would Viglink do?)

25

Maybe it worked on preview, but that’s a live link now.

26

Have the mods considered, oh, I don’t know, deleting the damned thing? Do we really need a theoretically non-working link to a goatse site? Or replace it with [Link to goatse site removed because, hey, google it yourself. At home. With the blinds closed]

27

Possibly, but it may just be a case that someone thought it would be a useful feature. You have a link tracker, make links active. Motivation is still “non-clickable links don’t direct through us for us to track”.

Given that viglink was ignoring noparse tags already, I can’t see how it would work. But I’m not reactivating it to check.

Probably.

Thanks.

28

Totally apropos of nothing but noparse tags work stacked so if you want to show how you did a bit of coding with noparse, simply wrap the code in noparse itself

[noparse][noparse]link goes here[/noparse][/noparse]
Aaand I no longer see noparse as a word. It’s nop arse now.

29

Adblock, people, adblock.

30

I have adblock and it wasn’t doing anything about viglink. I had to use ghostery for that.

31

I posted this in the other thread:
TEST WITH THREE DOTS:
http://boards.straightdope…com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=320298

EDIT: Seems to work broke link when it got to the extra dots. Sane with commas.

TEST WITH EXTRA SLASHES AFTER http lead-in:
http:///boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=320298
EDIT: LInk still “fixed”

TEST WITH EXTRA SLASHES LATER IN URL:

EDIT: Link still “fixed”

TEST WITH DROPPING LEADIN:

EDIT: Link still “fixed”

My best guess for now: use “spoiler” tags for NSFW links, and we’ll just ride with the rest…

32

I had to go add it to adblock’s filters.

33

I wondered if that would work, but got too lazy to give it a try. Definitely a bit less of a PITA than my suggestion.

34

When have any of these events ever warranted an entire thread being removed as opposed to just being corrected by a mod or, at the most, locked?

I suppose that made your job as a mod a lot easier, as opposed to just fixing the links that your own adware made clickable after the fact, but didn’t the Dope once have this thing about not erasing history? There are thousands of threads that will have the same problem so are you planning to delete them all?

Among other things that particular thread answered a question about board policy that was being asked by a poster and could serve as a cite in the future if the same question comes up again.

All the posts in it were rule-abiding at the time they were made and your own software screwed something up. Is that really a justifiable reason to break with SDMB tradition and vanish an entire thread?

35

This is not the first time we’ve removed a thread from view because it was a nuisance.

Management reserves the right, you know.

From the registration agreement:

This is not a common thing but sometimes it does happen.

36

Hilarious.

37

Speak for yourself. I’ll bet that poor bastard has some serious incontinence issues nowadays.

38

Unless you count the 27 other threads that have the same thing in them.

Of course http://www.goatse.cx/ now only has a video of a lawyer explaining no more image, due to the Christmas Island courts, and then he advertises some bitcoin type scam.

So it’s all good for the moment.

39

Oh wait.

Evidence
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8695368&postcount=23

How about Tubgirl? Should those all be sent to the cornfield too?

40

I never suggested that the board doesn’t have the right to remove threads, just that in this case you seem to be completely missing the point about what you believe makes it a ‘nuisance’ - it is your own ad software that created a problem years after the thread was posted.

Deleting it removes all those totally legal, non ‘nuisance’ posts from the SDMB record, while demonstrating an inexplicable refusal to acknowledge or address the real problem, which will come up again and again however many legitimate threads you choose to disappear in the future.