So. I’m reading the GQ thread about the speed of light. In this post there is a link. Ok, I click the link, interesting post. But look at the web address for that page:
http:// cuntlapper. straightdope.com/sdmb/ showpost.php?p=16344434&postcount=4
Does the dope start its webpage addresses with ‘cuntlapper’ on purpose? The NSA is going to wonder what I’m up to when they go through my browser history, and being targeted for a drone strike is the last thing I need right now. What’s going on here?
No. As I understand it, it’s an accidental result of a redirection from some site that links to SDMB, and can happen to anyone.
I don’t know of a solution, but there probably will be one soon. Let’s hope the Feds understand when you get hauled off to the pokey. Be sure to write.
It’s a redirect and the OP who placed that link there being a jerk.
You know what we do about jerks.
Elect them Governor?
But seriously, I thought it would be something like cu is code for _____, same with ntl, and ‘apper’ because there’s an app running or something. Something technical that I don’t get. No, it’s jerks!
But you don’t necessarily know who started it, do you? That Doper who posted that link might have just jerkishly created it “for the halibut”, or might have (possibly unwittingly) copied an existing link that someone else jerkishly created earlier. Are you able to determine who’s the Inceptional Jerk in this case?
Note the link Marley23 posted, above, to an earlier thread. That, in turn, contains several links to still earlier threads. The situation isn’t new. Among all those threads, you’ll find a variety of theories by various people (of various levels of technical understanding). Various posts by spinky and CrazyHorse seem to be the most knowledgeable, including suggestions for eliminating or reducing the problem, by defining a canonical URL for these boards.
I myself never claimed any deep technical understanding, but I did post the results of several experiments I did, that I felt shed light on the matter (for me anyway). BigT seems to think he knows a lot too.
ETA: And BTW, let me re-iterate for at least the third time (I think): I DIDN’T ever create any [noparse]senegoid dot straightdope dot com[/noparse] links. Somebody else did that.
In all the prior threads on this subject that I’ve seen, I haven’t noticed any responses from any Mods that clearly indicate one way or another (as far as I can tell) if they have a good understanding of the problem, or whether they consider it a serious problem that needs to be dealt with somehow. I am not aware that they’ve ever said if they care (much) if Dopers create links like this, other than vulgar ones as TubaDiva noted above.
Nor have there been any comments from them indicating whether or not they’ve brought this to the attention of jdavis, or whether they intend to. However, remarks by several other posters have suggested that the problem is well-known and well-understood (by at least somebody). A solution has been suggested several times, but only vBulletin gurus would know if it’s actually a configurable something you can do in vB. (Involves adding HTML code to every page to define a canonical URL.) I haven’t seen any feedback from any Mods in these threads discussing the possibility or perceived need for doing that.
Are there some posts that I’ve missed that someone could point me to? (With a boards dot straightdope dot com link, of course 
)
I’ve alerted the media.
BTW, if you’re going to spell out a url like senegoid dot straightdope dot com, with the word “dot” instead of a “.” there is no need to use the noparse tags.
Even attempting to obscure the links like that, just talking about the issue repeatedly in ATMB was sure to inspire someone to get silly about it. For example the fartypants prefix got picked up when it was mentioned in one thread about the senegoid prefix. Then someone else posted about that by creating yet another thread, where even more people mused about other prefixes. It was almost inevitable that someone would eventually cross that line from fartypants to the “c word”.
It looks like the post was edited in the mean time and as long as google doesn’t find it again in additional crawls they may not go on to index everything at the c-word prefix. (but they might now that they’ve caught the, um, scent of it)
This can be remedied in like 30 seconds by going to the google webmaster tools and defining the canonical preference is boards.straightdope.com.
I just checked, and no such luck. The cword prefix has been completely indexed by Google so this has been coming up in search results for at least several days, and the OP mentioned here really might have just copy/pasted a link from their search results without noticing. Although that is kind of hard not to notice.
I think this is in reference to me? I received a moderator warning that I don’t understand, but the PM mentions something that sounds like what’s mentioned in this thread. I realize that there isn’t time in the day for mods to deeply review all potential rules violations, but I’ll say that in my 15 years of posting here, no post of mine comes anywhere close to violating “don’t be a jerk” (or anything else), and certainly not at the level accused. Whatever might have appeared in my link was entirely unwitting, and from reading a few of the sub-threads of this ATMB thread, it looks like a technology issue with board crawling and search engines?
Also, the moderator PM includes a quote of the original content, but there is nothing untoward in that PM quote, neither in the exposed text or in the hyperlink. Also, I cannot reproduce the alleged link through any of the thread-searching methods I typically employ.
Try2B Comprehensive: were you reading that post via SDMB directly, or through a search or app of some sort? I can’t imagine I would have missed that URL even in a copy/paste, and again the quoted link in the moderator PM looks 100% normal.
All this. Some people seem to be having fun with this. As I remarked a few posts above, the Mods have never said (that I’ve noticed) if they care, except for TubaDiva’s remark, above, about that vulgar link. Other than that, I’ve never seen a warning or caution telling anybody to not do this any more.
As I discovered in one of the earlier threads on this, this is true. Once a search engine finds one of these, it may proceed to re-index the whole board by that URL, even if, in the meantime, a Mod edits out the link in the offending post as TubaDiva did.
And, as both you and I have now questioned, does TubaDiva know for sure if the offending post mentioned in the OP was the one that originated this cu… URL? Her strongly-worded warning in that thread seems appropriate enough, but how would one know if that’s the poster who started it? For all we know, it could have originated in some post completely outside of this message board, and Google could pick it up from there just as well, n’est-ce pas?
I see in the time I was writing the above post, Pasta came in to ask what’s going on. This seems to confirm my and CrazyHorse’s suspicion: That Pasta did this unwittingly.
Note to Pasta: Yes, I originally saw the evil link too, and I’m using a plain old browser on a plain old desktop computer. TubaDiva did indeed edit it, so you won’t see now what the problem was. The link was originally [noparse]cu…straightdope.com/whatever…[/noparse], where “cu…” was, uh, . . . something indiscreet. Your link, as originally posted, was:
cuntlapper dot straightdope dot com
If you go to Google and search for anything at that URL, you’ll see it’s all there. Regular google searches for things on this board sometimes turn up those various oddball URL’s that have been brewing in the bilge that is the Internet, and I’m guessing you may have inadvertently found and copied one of those.
ETA: And I’ve described, in an earlier thread, how such a URL, once created anywhere, can be propagated to the point where the whole SDMB site gets indexed under that link. CrazyHorse has discussed this too, I think.
Based on the date of the post and the fact that google has already indexed the entire SDMB at that prefix, it is pretty much guaranteed that it was showing up in search results long before the offending post was made.
My guess is that’s probably what happened despite it seeming hard to miss. Did you find the link you wanted to reference by doing a google search and copy/pasting the link?
Yes, I usually start with Google for searches unless I know I can get it in one shot with the board search (lest I hit the 120 second timeout).
I just tried Google searching for a vulgar address, and then pulled up a page to test whether I would have noticed it in a copy/paste by going through the usual posting motions. Having done this experiment, I think I would miss the bogus URL almost always. My eyes focus on the downstream part of the URL to make sure things like search keywords aren’t included, and my browser dims anything upstream of the primary domain name (i.e., “http://vulgarphrase.” is dimmed).
I assume TubaDiva was unaware of this bogus URL phenomenon at the time of the warning. If not, then I cannot comprehend why I wouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt rather than sternly and publicly berated as a jerk.
Hopefully this domain redirect issue can be resolved soon.
I suggested above that it could even have originated from some place off this board.
People (read: Mods), do I have to point out the obvious? Just search for that URL on a certain other board. (No, I’m not going to name it publicly here. Last time I did that here I got my ass nibbled by a mod here. I’m report this post, though, in order to mention it to the Mods privately.)
It’s all over some certain thread(s) there. Nuf said here (publicly at least).
Probably, TubaDiva owes Pasta an upper-case bold-face retraction and apology, to match the warning given earlier.
ETA: This post reported, to give additional information privately to the Mods.
NOT plausible. It’s been a known issue for some time, and has been discussed several times before, as noted in earlier posts in this thread.
ETA: However, the notion that it might have (and, as I’ve now shown, apparently did) originate off-board might be new to everyone involved. Perhaps TubaDiva searched for an earlier appearance on this board and, not finding one, assumed that Pasta originated it?
Through the SDMB. I was reading the thread, clicked your link and noticed the odd domain name or whatever it is. FWIW I never thought you were responsible for it, I should have been more clear about that. Sorry you got warned- the kinds of things you share on here don’t seem congruent with the kind of prank going on here.
Okay, I found an off-this-board post containing the cu… URL dated June 19, 2013. So it’s been kicking around for at least that long.
(Link to be reported privately to Mods.)
I have been informed of this issue but do not have the time to implement a technical fix for what is in essence bad behavior. The Mods and Admins are capable of handling any occurrences of bad behavior if things get out of line.
Jerry