Relative urls get borked in recent activity October 30, 2008 12:08 PM Subscribe
I think I found a link url bug on recent activity.
The links in this comment are as follows:
http://www.metafilter.com/76091/And-the-Philadelphia-Phillies-are-the-2008-World-Series-Champions#2318327
http://www.metafilter.com/76091/And-the-Philadelphia-Phillies-are-the-2008-World-Series-Champions#2318399
However, those same links on the recent activity page are like this:
http://www.metafilter.com/contribute/activity/#2318327
http://www.metafilter.com/contribute/activity/#2318399
I realize this is just a simple relative url issue, but for a second there it confused the hell out of me. Bothersome enough to fix?
The links in this comment are as follows:
http://www.metafilter.com/76091/And-the-Philadelphia-Phillies-are-the-2008-World-Series-Champions#2318327
http://www.metafilter.com/76091/And-the-Philadelphia-Phillies-are-the-2008-World-Series-Champions#2318399
However, those same links on the recent activity page are like this:
http://www.metafilter.com/contribute/activity/#2318327
http://www.metafilter.com/contribute/activity/#2318399
I realize this is just a simple relative url issue, but for a second there it confused the hell out of me. Bothersome enough to fix?
Very well. I therefore recommend we all point and laugh at me.
posted by middleclasstool at 12:12 PM on October 30, 2008
posted by middleclasstool at 12:12 PM on October 30, 2008
Obama will fix it.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:16 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]
posted by blue_beetle at 12:16 PM on October 30, 2008 [1 favorite]
I think the most common cause of this is one (or more?) greasemonkey quoter scripts that chuck out relative links in some contexts. I think this was an outstanding error in an older version of one of them that was later fixed by the author, but memory is fuzzy here.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:22 PM on October 30, 2008
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:22 PM on October 30, 2008
Mefiquote performed badly until.. well.. I'm not sure when, but I know it was wrong for longer than it should have been.
mathowie: "We could ask people to please use a full URL, but that's about all we can do."
Well, you could catch all a tags with href attributes that match /^#\d+$/ and munge them appropriately. You could even match /^\/\d+\// and I think that would catch all of the old instances of Mefiquote still out there fucking things up for the rest of us.
Actually, what might be better is matching !/^(https?|ftp|gopher):\/\// and yelling at/banning offenders. That'd catch URLs like this, too.
posted by Plutor at 2:56 PM on October 30, 2008
mathowie: "We could ask people to please use a full URL, but that's about all we can do."
Well, you could catch all a tags with href attributes that match /^#\d+$/ and munge them appropriately. You could even match /^\/\d+\// and I think that would catch all of the old instances of Mefiquote still out there fucking things up for the rest of us.
Actually, what might be better is matching !/^(https?|ftp|gopher):\/\// and yelling at/banning offenders. That'd catch URLs like this, too.
posted by Plutor at 2:56 PM on October 30, 2008
I very highly doubt more than one or two hypothetical weirdos are going around constructing relative URLs by hand, so I'm skeptical of the need for even any sort of matching/detection function here.
Mefiquote performed badly until.. well.. I'm not sure when, but I know it was wrong for longer than it should have been.
Yeah, and my bet is that most of the relative urls we see are from folks using an out of date version of it, basically. Every time I've checked with someone about (or someone has mentioned to me) borked relative link, it's turned out to be just that indeed.
In other words, I blame you and your dastardly success.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:24 PM on October 30, 2008
Mefiquote performed badly until.. well.. I'm not sure when, but I know it was wrong for longer than it should have been.
Yeah, and my bet is that most of the relative urls we see are from folks using an out of date version of it, basically. Every time I've checked with someone about (or someone has mentioned to me) borked relative link, it's turned out to be just that indeed.
In other words, I blame you and your dastardly success.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:24 PM on October 30, 2008
Not really related, but doesn't deserve its own post -- the recent comments tab on the blue has an incorrect comment count if comments have been deleted (e.g. there are 13 extra comments listed for the Powell thread) . I think this same issue used to exist on MeTa, but was fixed.
posted by team lowkey at 4:02 PM on October 30, 2008
posted by team lowkey at 4:02 PM on October 30, 2008
Obama will fix it.
"All across America, people are hurting because of malformed URL's that we were left with because of 8 years of ineffective Matt-PB administration on Metafilter. They'll try to blame you for using relative URL's in comment threads, but we know better. I've proposed a three point plan to get metafilter back on its feet so nobody ever has to click additional links to read a comment again.
"First: I'll create an automatic check when a comment is submitted to determine if it contains a relative URL in a hyperlink. Metafilter will automatically generate an absolute URL in it's place."
"Second: we'll create a commission to study the need for a 'quote' feature which will automatically quote selected test and create a link back to the original comment. We'll also look at implementing threaded comments.
"Third: Patton's Army, single mom, cancer, black kid, funny name, promise of america, brothers keeper, change america, change the world."
posted by empath at 5:17 PM on October 30, 2008
"All across America, people are hurting because of malformed URL's that we were left with because of 8 years of ineffective Matt-PB administration on Metafilter. They'll try to blame you for using relative URL's in comment threads, but we know better. I've proposed a three point plan to get metafilter back on its feet so nobody ever has to click additional links to read a comment again.
"First: I'll create an automatic check when a comment is submitted to determine if it contains a relative URL in a hyperlink. Metafilter will automatically generate an absolute URL in it's place."
"Second: we'll create a commission to study the need for a 'quote' feature which will automatically quote selected test and create a link back to the original comment. We'll also look at implementing threaded comments.
"Third: Patton's Army, single mom, cancer, black kid, funny name, promise of america, brothers keeper, change america, change the world."
posted by empath at 5:17 PM on October 30, 2008
You could even match /^\/\d+\// and I think that would catch all of the old instances of Mefiquote still out there fucking things up for the rest of us.
Also try to catch quotes that say MATHOWIEADMIN and have random, meaningless numbers, and I will buy you a puppy.
posted by middleclasstool at 5:39 PM on October 30, 2008
Also try to catch quotes that say MATHOWIEADMIN and have random, meaningless numbers, and I will buy you a puppy.
posted by middleclasstool at 5:39 PM on October 30, 2008
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
We could ask people to please use a full URL, but that's about all we can do.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:10 PM on October 30, 2008