Underneath the thread title, there’s the normal little forum description: “Factual
Questions”.
There’s also a link to an off-board site.
Why the link to the off-board site? Is it some sort of spam? I’ve not clicked on it:
“SoundCloud . Com”
That site is linked to in the OP of the thread.
If a Hyperlink is pasted into the thread title it creates this link looking like a tag.
True, but not the cause of the link that looks like the tag.
See my test thread:
Not just a virtual link, an actual clickable link.
Here’s the thread in question:
Where the tag usually goes, there is a link instead, above the body of the OP.
Yes and I honestly don’t care for it. Any time we have a thread like that, I find myself clicking that link accidentally instead of the thread I’m trying to read. It’s really annoying. I don’t even see the advantage in linking from the title when you’re looking in a category, because it usually means going to a link before you are able to see the context for why it’s being included.
I noticed the tag and spent time searching the thread to find some clue as to why it should be there. I finally found it as the OP’s link, but I don’t understand what you mean by it being pasted into the thread title.
I couldn’t possibly come up with a better argument against random tags than this example. Having soundcloud .com as a tag, or what looks like one whatever that means, is mysterious, time-wasting, and leads nowhere to get more information on the subject. It acts only as an advertisement for a product.
Someone had to be responsible for putting it there, because there are a thousand threads with links in the OP that don’t generate what “looks like” a tag. If it was placed there, it should be removed. If Discourse for some reason did it automatically, Discourse should be changed and the tag should be removed.
It appears to be a feature of Discourse.
If you copy a link’s address and paste it into the title of an OP it uses the links text as the title and generates the link where tags normally appear.
No one is doing anything beyond that. No one turned on a new feature, it has been there since day one of the SDMB being on Discourse.
It is rare, but it happens.
Can’t it be undone on a case-by-case basis when people complain?
Probably, but I see little reason to care.
ETA: I did a quick test, it is very easy to remove the weird little link. Same as removing a tag, so any mod can easily do so if needed.