OK you’re starting to annoy me now.
I call it “A link I will not be clicking.”
Links can be informative. They can also be a huge waste of time, offensive, nsfw, filled with viruses, redundant, and lame.
Hah! Then you’re right! Then again…
Call it cosmic irony.
We understand that the links are there; we just want to have some idea of what to expect on the other end of the link so we can know if we should bother clicking on it or not. It’s like a situation where you’re doing something in your study, and someone calls to you from another room of the house saying, “Come here!” If you’re in the middle of something that you don’t want to drop, you’ll probably want to know why they want you to come there before you get up and go. If it’s the neighbours having wild monkey sex in front of the open window, yeah, you’ll go see. If it’s something uninteresting, eh, you got better things to do.
But isn’t it a given that if we are reading/posting here we don’t really have anything better to do. I mean click or don’t what does it matter? As for the virus issue, is it really such a big problem? (serious question not meant as snarky or rhetorical)
that was stupid enough to amuse me. 
er…
The worst thing is when you click on an undescribed link and you can’t even figure out why it was linked. As in, you’re having a discussion about Napoleon, and somebody links to a random French tourist web site.
And you’re like, is there some connection between this site and Napoleon that I don’t know about? Is there a joke that I’m not getting? Or did some doofus just google “France” and post the first thing that came up, without even reading the thread?
I hate people who do that. They should be beaten with clubs.
Or they link to some massive page and expect you to read the entire thing to find the one sentence that pertains to the discussion at hand.
Thank you, jsgoddess. You’re totally right. Blind links are nothing more than laziness on the part of people who can’t be bothered to formulate a coherent thought and type it on the page. And the thing featherlou is talking about is doubly aggravating, especially when it happens in GD. No, you do not win the argument because you posted a link to an entire web page.
And from experience, I know that it’s almost never worth it. The people who post the blind links are almost always the people who pick stupid things to link to. It’s like if your friend is in the habit of saying, “Come here!”, and almost every time, when you get there, it turns out to be something stupid like, “Huh, huh - I farted”. You pretty much stop responding when he says, “Come here!”
There are message boards on which long links don’t wrap to the next line. A really long url will stretch out the entire page beyond the edges of your monitor so you have to keep scrolling from left to right just to be able to read it. Tinyurl is essential for those sites. Tinyurl also gives the maker the option to send recipients to an intermediate preview page where they can decide whether or not to continue. Of course, not everyone is considerate enough to give others the option to preview.
Here is an example of a tinyurl preview to Mapquest
I do agree, though, that tinyurl isn’t desirable or necessary on the SDMB or on any other board where stretching is not a problem. It mostly seems to be a problem with PHP message boards. And I am on board with making my links descriptive. I do think it is only courteous to describe what the link is.
In that example, I would say it’s true. It’s like a punch line when you click on the link. You may find it funny (happy you clicked), or stupid (sorry you clicked), but giving away the punchline as part of the set-up would be silly.
I’ve been meaning to start this very thread myself for a while now. Wholehearted agrement from me, and I’ll add that not all browsers show the url when hovering on the link. I almost never click on an unexplained link.
Always the dread possibility of a goatse-like experience, or one of those stupid “15 seconds in there’s a loud noise” sites. The worst of the benign sort are youtube links. Right, like I’m going to bother loading up a video and turning on the sound for something I have really no hint about? And almost invariably dumb and unfunny or something, but not EXACTLY invariably, so I have to always wonder if I’m missing the one gem this season.
And, even better and more improved. If you are the OP, and you post something like “Look at this, isn’t it outragous? How does the American voter put up with this?” why not a few paragraphs cut and pasted?
Really, I do *not *want to click on a lot of links- that way lies spyware and other crap.
Thanks for this mini-rant.
Totally agreed. You can even post a little from the link. It isn’t against the rules and it helps the rest of decide if we want to read the rest of the article.
Wait, what was that part about the monkey sex again?
I find it irksome that folks know how to fully code but choose not to. C’mon. If you’re posting as your plane is boarding, don’t post ! Otherwise, take a few seconds to fight ignorance and tell us what the link is about.
Cartooniverse
I apologize for any recent transgressions.
If any.
I will try to do better in the future.
If there is one.
Future, that is.
[Link will take you to a ‘Retro Future’ Website. (It really is fun, if you’re into that trivial kind of stuff.)]
In all seriousness, my number one annoyance are links to You Tube. I’m actually allowed to surf the Dope at work, but You Tube is not allowed. I’m hate getting that “Warning” thing flashing on my computer.