No tinyurls please

December 1, 2004 8:59 AM

Can we please not use tinyURL in postings and especially in FPPs.

They are of no benefit and they put a another layer of vulnerability between readers and the content. And they are guaranteed not to work at some point in the future.

Not only do the URLS expire they are recycled. So even if they don't point to tubgirl now they might in the future.
posted by Mitheral to etiquette/policy at 8:59 AM (9 comments total)

Good point - I got stung recently by an innocent tinyURL sent in an email (where it makes sense to use them - what's the point on the web?) being recycled into a pointer to something rather unsavoury. Though in defence of folk using them on MetaFilter, it isn't made terribly clear on tinyURL that the URLs generated are temporary.

What is wrong with 'comments' and 'posts'? And why do I get so upset by the use of 'post' and 'FPP'? ;-)
posted by jack_mo at 9:07 AM on December 1, 2004

Unless you're in a bulletin board or e-mail situation where the bare link must be displayed and there is limited horizontal space in which to do it, there's no reason to use tinyurl or its ilk.
posted by mcwetboy at 10:03 AM on December 1, 2004

hugeURL.
posted by quonsar at 10:13 AM on December 1, 2004

Yeah, my browser doesn't care how long the URL is. Also, I don't want to click on something if I have no idea where it goes.
posted by driveler at 10:14 AM on December 1, 2004

Looking at tinyURL they say the redirections are now permanent but that hasn't been the case in the past. And of course no guarantee in the future.

However they point out another way tinyURLs are objectionable for MetaFilter. You can hide affiliate information in the tinyURL.

Interestingly the links are generated serially so that if tinyURL gives you http://tinyurl.com/6pdse for a replacement link then http://tinyurl.com/6pdsd exists but http://tinyurl.com/6pdsf doesn't. Which means a person could create a page similar to that livejournal most recent image thing.
posted by Mitheral at 10:22 AM on December 1, 2004

hugeURL.

heh.
posted by BradNelson at 3:26 PM on December 1, 2004

Tinyurl breaks the web.

I've lost track of the number of times I've been googling for something, finally found a link to it on a forum somewhere, and ended up clicking a broken tinyurl that goes nowhere. It's very very very annoying.

In my opinion posts containing the string "http://tinyurl.com" should be disallowed. Call me an extremist.
posted by cell at 4:50 AM on December 2, 2004

Point taken. Although I wasn't responsible for the ones Mitheral linked to, I have used tinyurl's here recently. You may consider me reformed.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:08 AM on December 2, 2004

This wasn't really a call out (which is why I dug that FPP from last year up) but I'm glad to see you've changed your ways.
posted by Mitheral at 7:02 AM on December 3, 2004