Rule forbidding posting links unit after 3 posts
 

A new user reports that he was blocked from posting a link to LQ's HCL. My understanding was new users were supposed to be able to post links to locations within LQ. The URL in question starts with www.linuxquestions.org. Is this a bug in LQ's software that shold be fixed?

The reason URL's are blocked until the member has reached a minimum number of posts is to prevent spam. If anyone could immediately include URL's within their first post, the forums would be full of spam for various anatomical modifications, prescription drugs, mortgage refinancing schemes, and so forth. This is not a desirable scenario.

Overall, the "no URL rule" is a minor and temporary condition that is a quite effective guard against spam.

I understand the reason. I am questioning the implementation. I don't see how a link to something on LQ itself could be used for spam. And my understanding, at least when I joined earlier this year, was that links to LQ itself were supposed to be allowed. But in this case, a link to LQ's hardware compatibility list was not permitted.

If this is what is intended, OK. I just thought your software wasn't doing what was advertised.

I am curious.

I thought the no link ban was absolute. I also think that your relaxed ver. of it makes sense & would be hard to abuse. Can you post a link to where you read this?

The no link rule is absolute. We did recently lower the amount of posts needed from 5 to 3. It's still fairly easy to post a pointer to a link, and even a direct link to LQ could be abused (pointing to other spam threads, pointing to spam in LQ bookmarks, etc). It's unfortunate that we needed to implement this rule at all, but the reality is that it catches literally dozens of spams per day.

--jeremy

blackhole54, where did you get your idea?

Please post a link -- it will allow Jeremy to re-word or otherwise fix the misunderstanding.

I believe that posting internal links was exempt from the rule a while back. Now it no longer seems to be the case.

Notice the use of "I believe" and "seems to be" because obviously I cannot test this functionality myself, but I have a vague idea that it was the case

My first post linked to how this came up now.

My own recollection about the rule came from problems I had when I first posted on LQ. I had several email exchanges with Jeremy trying to get that first post up. The last problem I finally solved on my own when I discovered that eliminating a smiley allowed my post to be accepted (go figure how that had anything to do with external links!). But the message that was coming up when my post was blocked read something to the effect that links to external websites were forbidden until after the 3rd post. And that is what I based my post on this thread on. (So I have no link to post.)

It is also possible that there is a reference to this in the FAQ new users are supposed to read (which I did when I joined). But again, I am going on memory here.

This issue has be aired to my satisfaction.

BTW archtoad6, I was not ignoring your first request. This is the first time I've connected since my last post.:)

1. Where is the "no link rule" stated publicly? --
1st I went to LQ Rules & found no mention; then I did the following Google search:

site:www.linuxquestions.org "no link rule"

(ignore the link highlighting in the above, I don't know how to disable it) & only came back to this thread.
EDIT 3: Problem solved.


2. How difficult would it be to ban only external links?

3. What about smileys, do they really/still block the 1st 3 posts?


EDIT 1: unchecked "auto-parse" box (see below)
EDIT 2: again, unchecked "auto-parse" box -- was still checked
EDIT 3: again unchecked "auto-parse" box and removed the automatic url tags that were still there -- "Preview" suggests it will work.

Thanks, blackhole54

: colons are an integral part of smilies, : ) etc, and also for http:// addresses. Perhaps this is what causes the computer to bork?

titanium_geek

Below most instances of the editors, there is a checkbox called "Automatically parse links in text," which is checked by default. Unchecking this will cause a link to be treated as regular text. You don't have access to this option in "post a quick reply."

What if my first question must, to explain said question, contain link?

Post the link without the http:// and www part. It will post the URL as text which others can copy and paste to the browser navigation bar.

BTW, due to improvements in other parts of the equation, I've lowered this requirement to a single post.

--jeremy

Wow. If I may ask, what is the equation?