Sidebar borked

January 25, 2008 6:05 AM

Plutor, your contact mangled the sidebar...

Weirdness when Plutor (a contact of mine) linked to user 13300 (whose handle is img src="http://www.gifs.cc/stline1.gif" - but with angle brackets). The sidebar is now... wide. So, what's the best way to hide him from the sidebar? Without removing him as a contact. Or do I just suck it up? (Sorry, I failed Internet twice yesterday. Going for the hat trick today.)

posted by ObscureReferenceMan to bugs at 6:05 AM (34 comments total)

Huh.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 6:11 AM on January 25

Horse walks into a sidebar, sidebartender says "Why the sidelong face?"
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:15 AM on January 25 [10 favorites]

You got your gif in my sidebar. You got your sidebar in my gif!
posted by cashman at 6:20 AM on January 25 [1 favorite]

It looks like user 13300's userpage just needs to be fixed...he borked it while trying to add his profile pic or something. I would just decontact Plutor until a mod comes along and straightens it out.

Yes, decontact is a word. Silly.
posted by iconomy at 6:28 AM on January 25

Dunno how long it'll stay like this, but that's pretty cool.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:31 AM on January 25

Oy. iconomy, you're very kind; I think user 13300 was actually just aggressively fucking around when they started their account, is what actually happened.

There's a string of weird username experiments from back in the day, testing/exploiting the relative generous constraints (or lack thereof) on username selection at the time. It would probably be good of people to not set accounts with those weird-ass strings as contacts, especially since the accounts are universally abandoned and there's no actual user to contact.

We should probably clean up some of those weird things to avoid this going forward.
posted by cortex at 6:33 AM on January 25

...he borked it while trying to add his profile pic or something.

His username is his profile pic. I wonder how that would work out now if s/he tried to comment.
posted by carsonb at 6:34 AM on January 25

His username is his profile pic.

That was my first thought, and then I thought...nah, no way you could that. I was wrong, apparently.
posted by iconomy at 6:39 AM on January 25

I wonder how that would work out now if s/he tried to comment.

"Now, here's user 13300 posting a comment. Now, the user who posted that comment says "Something is missing. What is it?" "It is I myself who was part of the comment I posted." So he mentally takes a step backward, or regresses, and posts a gif of the user posting a gif as a comment. But still something is missing. That is still his real self posting the second gif. So he regresses further, and posts a third. A gif of the user posting a gif of the user posting a gif of a comment. And because something is still missing, he paints a fourth and a fifth until he posts a gif of the user posting a gif of the user posting a gif of the user posting a gif of the user posting a comment. So infinite regression, then, is the moment when our poster has regressed to the point of infinity and is part of the comment he posted, and is both the observer and the observed. In that peculiar condition, what would he be observing if he were observing, let's say, the blue? He would perceive that the blue is like a freeway with an infinite number of lanes, all leading from the past into the future."

-Escape from the Planet of the Gray
posted by cashman at 6:48 AM on January 25 [2 favorites]

ah crap, I left a 'paint' in there.
posted by cashman at 6:51 AM on January 25

More like "manglor", amirite?
posted by Mister_A at 6:57 AM on January 25

There's quite a lot of these:

13286 <font color="red">jhfjdhd</font>
13287 <font color="#006699">jjj</font>
13288 <img src="http://www.fg-a.com/SbBall.gif">
13289 <img src="http://www.fg-a.com/lbullet2.gif">
13299 <a href="http://www.drudgereport.com">hfjsjs</a>
13300 <img src="http://www.gifs.cc/stline1.gif">
13306 </font color="green">HoldenParis</font>
13307 <font color="red">HoldenParis</font>
13308 </font color=red>HoldenParis</font>
13309 <font color=red>HoldenParis</font>
13310 <font color=green>HoldenParis</font>
13315 <a href=http://www.drudgereport.com>alisttton</a>
13318 <a href=13>jeffp</a>

posted by Burger-Eating Invasion Monkey at 7:00 AM on January 25

I thought it might. That was half of the reason I contacted him.. er.. her? I guess I didn't realize it'd bork the front page so dramatically. Or maybe I'm just a dick and I didn't consider the feelings of my contacts.
posted by Plutor at 7:09 AM on January 25

I don't think your perl quine works, either.
posted by Wolfdog at 7:13 AM on January 25

That's the last time I befriend "';DROP table metafilter"
posted by null terminated at 7:30 AM on January 25 [6 favorites]

Alright that didn't make much sense
posted by null terminated at 7:30 AM on January 25

Yeah, it's someone fucking around with the site back in 2001. They've never even logged in since creating the account. I cleared out the username to something less hacky.
posted by mathowie at 7:31 AM on January 25

I should be heading to work, so naturally wasted time checking the archive around December 28, 2001, when those names were created. I wonder if this thread was the precipitator.
posted by mediareport at 7:40 AM on January 25

Wolfdog: "I don't think your perl quine works, either."

Them's fighting words.

No wait, you're right. 1) Why did I pick $$ in the first place? 2) Why has it taken almost 2 years for someone to point that out?
posted by Plutor at 7:54 AM on January 25

Oh, no. It was just the plugin I'm using for syntax highlighting was borking some of the regexp format.
posted by Plutor at 7:57 AM on January 25

I wonder if this thread was the precipitator.

Man, I knew about the accounts from database spelunking, but I just now read up on the backstory proper. For once, I'm not talking about Superman when I say this: Kent was a dink.
posted by cortex at 8:05 AM on January 25

I love Plutor when he breaks things.
posted by Eideteker at 8:44 AM on January 25

That's the last time I befriend "';DROP table metafilter"
Oh, you mean little Bobby Tables? I love that guy!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 8:47 AM on January 25 [1 favorite]

You could have picked like a million things that wouldn't need escaping, but you picked $$. "There's more than one way to break it", I guess.
posted by Wolfdog at 8:50 AM on January 25

You're just lucky I didn't pick qx(rm -rf ~).
posted by Plutor at 11:28 AM on January 25

Maybe there should be a preemptive ban on Holdens.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:47 AM on January 25 [1 favorite]

More like sidebork amirite?
posted by Mister_A at 2:09 PM on January 25

I cleared out the username to something less hacky.

Comedy gold!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:27 PM on January 25

Old Lame Gif Hack would be a great country-blues name.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 3:22 PM on January 25

This is a good omen - a ghost from the past arises to foretell the inevitable return of the IMG tag.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 4:57 PM on January 25

Like Hallmark cards, there's an xkcd for every occasion.
posted by eyeballkid at 8:33 PM on January 25

Crap. Damn you ObscureReferenceMan! Or damn me for not reading your comment.
posted by eyeballkid at 8:34 PM on January 25

Oh man, changing usernames -- think of the possibilities!

Maybe instead of that aborted gold star idea you could just append ", purveyor of all things awesome" to someone's username for a week?
posted by danb at 7:17 AM on January 27

Hey!? What happened to that gold star idea?
posted by timeistight at 3:21 PM on January 27