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Originally Posted by Pudding4brains  Hi eeyore,
Thanks for getting back to the point. I was a bit disappointed with you last night as I feel that all I have been trying to do is precisely "being constructive" in the ways you suggested and while doing so ran into problem after problem. Taking the time to indicate these problems (as opposed to shrugging the shoulders and leaving) is also constructive I think. |
I'd go with that, it's just that the way we say something is often as important as to what we say, as in...
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Originally Posted by Pudding4brains You may also keep in the back of your head that there is a certain threshold for a newbie to start "moaning" and maybe if a newbie does come to doing so, it might be with good reason. So instead of all wabbers mobbing the newbie like happened in the "Stupid forum" thread it might be an idea to step back a little and wounder why a newbie would become so frustrated so soon that he/she couldn't resist posting something that you may perceive as unjust criticism. I think that would be a way more constructive line of thought than mobbing the newbie with "WAB is great - you must be stupid yourself" posts. As for your advice to me personally, well, let's pretend you didn't okay? |
that member must have known the sort of reaction they'd get, and sadly there are some people who troll websites looking to wind people up and start a fight
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Originally Posted by Pudding4brains The point is that I usually do write them manually and that the software mangles that work. I know it's not WAB, but the same software, so have a look at this post on WATW and imagine what it would look like if all the links were automagically "mangled" to either full URLs or whatever page name the remote site may come up with.
Next, try to imagine how truly annoyed you would be if you had to to rework all those links two or three times because the software did mangle them.
If I write something like this: Bla bla bla, so look at [url=http://some.link.edu]this page[/url] bla bla. then I have fully specified how I want the link to be displayed in the text and the software has no reason to think it's cleverer than me, let's say "Microsoft Style".
If fully specified the parser shouldn't touch the link and if it does the software should be considered to be "broken".
No, that simply isn't right. The software on the WAB server has to make a real effort to first address the site linked, then retrieve the name of the page as specified by the remote site and finally blend this name into the link displayed on the WAB page. |
That happens in a fraction of heartbeat and it's no problem for WAB. What it does do however, is ensure that all links are uniform and you can't the link to a porn site under your own link title of 'Blue Tits'
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Originally Posted by Pudding4brains I'm trying precisely not to show any ugly link or very unpredictable remote page names and make an effort to nicely blend the links into the text. The big deal is that it's annoying without end to find that effort destroyed time and again by some silly piece of software that is just plainly broken. |
see above
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Originally Posted by Pudding4brains Not only is it annoying that I have to remember to switch off the options manually almost every time I save a post (as I have links in most), but it also happened at some point (I think it was through "quick reply") that I had to press the "advanced" button first to be able to get to the options in the first place and after pressing that the software already managed to mangle the links before I even had a chance to disable it.
Not very "smart" either: The software doesn't remember the settings, not even for a post where it was already manually disabled. So if I go back and press "Edit" to repair a typo or so (I do that a lot, my English isn't too perfect, sorry) I have to remember to scroll down and do all the extra clicks or be punished immediately with even more work. |
I think we also have to consider how many people want to do what you're doing and how much time and money we should spend on it. If it's jsut you and half a dozen others then I'm afraid you might be in for a long wait
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Originally Posted by Pudding4brains All this is just thick and very, very annoying - the software should be doing me a favour by leaving my work well enough alone - it shouldn't be me doing the software a favour by having to scroll down and doing all sorts of extra clicks every time I want to save my edits (or be punished by getting my work ruined!).
So, at the very least I should have the option to set the defaults for this "feature", but the smarter way would be to repair the software.
* Automatically parse links in text
- should only "do it's thing" if a "url type text" is not already located within URL-tags |
unless the title is trying to hide a porn site
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Originally Posted by Pudding4brains * Automatically retrieve titles from external links
- should only be allowed to come into action on "url type plain text" substituted by the previous function and never touch the text to be displayed in already fully specified URLs. |
The very basics of it all is that the system shows the title that the website owner chose to have shown when they build the webpage. So if you link to a site and the title says "Butterfly Photography in Devon", our link does the site owner a big favour by titling the link exactly as they wanted it. It produces a far better search engine listing for them than having their link overidden by a title by a member choosing an alternative title of something like "see here".
So the website owner is happy. WAB's is happy because the title doesn't hide something. And so it's only the poster who's not so happy...can't please all the people all the time
Stu