Why Are Links Adding Metafilter URL to Them?

June 7, 2001 4:00 PM

Has anyone noticed that a lot of the links people are building have http://www.metafilter.com crammed in front? I don't have specfic examples, but I've seen it at least four times.
posted by machaus to Bugs at 4:00 PM (13 comments total)

yeah, that's because they're not building links correctly, and forgetting to put "http://" in the HREF's they are doing.

User error, plain and simple, and there's no perfect way to technologically stamp it out. I added a preview on everything for a reason, I don't know why people don't bother to use it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:07 PM on June 7, 2001

thought that might be the case, but its been so rampant lately that I wanted to make sure that it wasn't anything else. So you can't just have "the system" append http:// rather then http://www.mefi.com when a link doesn't have a complete FQDN? Or could you build an intelligent 404 page?
Just thinking out loud like someone that doesn't run a blog with 10,000 users.
posted by machaus at 4:21 PM on June 7, 2001

machaus: "the system" isn't appending anything. the browser sees that "www.usatoday.com" doesn't have a protocol specified, so it assumes it's a relative link, ergo you get "http://www.metafilter.com/www.usatoday.com".
posted by pnevares at 4:23 PM on June 7, 2001

ahhh, ok...
maybe I should go worry about my own webpage...
posted by machaus at 4:29 PM on June 7, 2001

I could search for instances of this:

<a href="www.blah blah blah...">

and replace that with:

<a href="http://www.blah blah blah...">

but then people would just keep doing it without knowing what they've done and no one would learn any harsh, cruel lessons. I want them to be shunned, shunned I tell you!

Ok, maybe I'll code it.

posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:22 PM on June 7, 2001

personally, i'd rather not have this "fixed". if someone doesn't know how to make a proper link they need to learn how. and it's not that hard ;)
posted by pnevares at 5:51 PM on June 7, 2001

I must agree with pnevares. I learned, and I am an old lady in Texas. If I can anyone can.
posted by bjgeiger at 7:22 PM on June 7, 2001

Blame IE. You're lucky they'e not just typing in 'nytimes'.
posted by fooljay at 7:48 PM on June 7, 2001

I kinda like the shunning thing, matt. But I'm a shunning kind of guy.
posted by jpoulos at 8:18 PM on June 7, 2001

What it *should* do is detect the omission, and instead of automatically fixing it, it should refuse to post the article until the user adds the http:// his own damn self.
Bonus points if it automatically creates a MetaTalk thread to publicly humiliate the poor sap. ;)
posted by darukaru at 9:57 PM on June 7, 2001

How about a gentle approach: a sideblog blurb that says "if you're creating a link, remember to start it with http://"?
posted by rodii at 7:16 AM on June 8, 2001

Well, yeah, that would work too.
posted by darukaru at 7:29 AM on June 8, 2001

i don't think the sideblog blurb would help much - people aren't going to be writing links when they're looking at the font page ;)
posted by pnevares at 11:41 AM on June 8, 2001