Moderators (requests and notices)

https://www.lfgss.com/profiles/120330/

Likely to turn into spammy mcspamface based on first posts.

Hopefully he isn't called Danny and started out in his bedroom....

the scroll wheel on my mouse is not working for this site only...?

@Velocio

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/304683/#comment13627216

looks like just signed up to sell and then direct links to ebay auction.

Nuked

Nothing but Russian disc sales: https://www.lfgss.com/profiles/120465/

Banned as spam.

Why do outbound links show up as a microcosm.app URL in the little preview popup at the bottom left of Chrome, while the context popup shows the correct eventual destination URL?

One is overrideable in html and the other isn't ?

Why would you want to do that (genuine question)?

By making sure links go via microcosm.app, VB retains a killswitch to stop users clicking links to malicious or hacked sites.

Asked and answered many times.

But I'll summarise again:

• Privacy
  
• Security
  
• Affiliates
  
  

Privacy

If someone links to something odd|weird|illegal|trollish|etc... then the act of redirecting a link via microcosm.app means that the referrer header received by the destination doesn't include the details of which comment, conversation or even website from which it originated.

Why does this matter? Some people are arseholes, i.e. the BNP, and if linked to they like to go through their referrers and visit the sources and then troll and hunt people down (online, no idea if they ever have the balls to do so offline).

Using a short-link thing gives us privacy.

Security

If someone links to a phishing page or malware page, because it goes via microcosm.app I have the opportunity to detect and stop this. I have done this in the past on a few URLs, and have also been considering baking in Google Safebrowsing to make this less manual.

Example: fake advert appears here, looks attractive and links somewhere. Visit the somewhere and it pretends to be a Dropbox photo asking for login to view images of a bike being sold, but actually it's a phishing page. That happened, I blocked it.

Affiliates

This is no longer as important because affiliate revenue has basically dropped off a cliff, but... if someone links to a shop like Wiggle, we can add tags to the URL that says "came from LFGSS" and when an item sells they give us a kick back (typically a couple of % of their slice... pennies). This was the original monetisation strategy, and it didn't work out because cashback sites flooded affiliate schemes, and so affiliate schemes reduced rates or cancelled their schemes.

We still do that one, but only because I've not got around to ripping out the code and it's still equivalent to 10 more people making a regular donation.

So that's why we use a URL shortener, but why do we then hint at the destination in the URL hover text? Because a URL shortener does hide the destination and for you to trust clicking it you need some indication of where you'll end up. So we put a summarised version of the URL in the hover text.

Useful, thanks

@Velocio

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/305324/#comment13653246

Homophobic slurs and general twattery.

And it isn't even Friday.

He's requested his own deletion. Which has been done.

Still the most ferociously snooty forum on t'web

Some of the original responses were pretty crappy from some 'regulars', fully outed himself as a twat though.

My "following" tab no longer works, just tells me page does not exist, anyone else having this?

Since you cannot restrain yourself within the miscellaneous forum, access has been revoked. You can earn access by showing respect towards others over a long period of time within the on-topic parts of the forum... Or I can ban you again. Your choice on that.

This thread is in the wrong forum: https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/305378/

I had already moved the off-topic thread into the off-topic forum :)

Probably took me longer to find this thread...

Does that mean that Marcom can no longer post in the thread he created?

That would appear to be the side-effect :)

What's this marcom guy all about anyway? Miscellaneous paddock? It's lost on me.

He's banned from the real misc forum due to bad behaviour, so created his paddock thread in General.