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How should short links in Answers be handled?

What is the general consensus on short links being used in Answers? How I handle these is I try and decode them and see what the full link is, if this is possible. If I find that the link is spam, then I'll flag it. If it isn't and someone used it in Answers to save characters I won't flag it. I don't think short links are "bad", but I don't trust them when I can't decode it. There's more in Answers, but I've flagged enough to the point I'm done looking since the bad links and weird profiles keep showing up.

While I have removed the links because the report was wrong, my initial point on short links in answers stand. How I determine if a short link is spam or not is I decode it on a site that will unshorten it and verify if it's spam or not. Most of the time this works, but when it doesn't I'm hesitant to trust the link. Because I'm hesitant to trust it, I may flag it as spam and leave it to the mods and admin to look into it further and make sure. In this situation I tried to unshorten the link without success.

Because I could not unshorten it for verification, the posts were flagged for spam. Part of this has to do with not being able to unshorten the link usually being related to a spoofed URL. I don't think short links are "bad", but if you don't have character limits like in Answers, it's kind of redundant to risk being labeled for spam because of it. In most cases, they are used to hide spam.

Here's how I see it when it comes to short links: I don't mind short links in Answers, but I don't think it's a good idea since the odds of being falsely flagged for spam are are not in your favor. Why anyone would take the risk in Answers is beyond me, but I also don't think it should be off-limits if you understand what you're doing and can accept the risk of being flagged for spam.

While I don't think they should be used in Answers, they are useful in guides as a way to "extend" the available characters after adding a link to a guide, since many of them can consume a good chunk of your 350 available characters in guides. In this case, short links are useful and are worth considering if you have to. The use of short links in guides has personally bailed me out of situations where I wanted to put a link in but it would also consume a lot of available characters. On the same token if someone mentioned it I'm more then willing to provide the full link if they ask.

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I commonly see links shortened by using google link shortener ( https://goo.gl ) which allows you to track how many clicks that link received, and other information like countries user(s) were in when the link was clicked, which websites generated the most clicks on that link, the browser used, the OS used and the Time clicked.

For example, if you clicked this link that leads back to this question, ( https://goo.gl/jUBSoS ) I could track some non Identifying info. here are the link's analytics. https://goo.gl/#analytics/goo.gl/jUBSoS/...

(I clicked once for example)

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I still think that short links should only be used in guides to preserve available characters after formating.

Tracking is a good way to see who is using the content but the scope is limited because someone may not want to use the link and may want the full link (which I will provide) and some don't use them at all. It isn't reliable enough to trust as a data source entirely. That full link basically strips me of data but I'd rather lose the data if it makes them more comfortable.

It helps me figure out where the guide is commonly used and if it's worth my time to source human translations. For the sake of privacy I am not going to reveal what I know from the data I have from the links in my guides (even though it's anonymous because many sites are moving to dark traffic, including iFixit).

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My tip for checking links like that, use Incognito mode in chrome

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@nick how about not worrying about short links or long links or any kind of link but concerning oneself with where the link takes you. Stop marking answers as spam because of short links and mark spam where spam really exist. "I don't mind short links in Answers, but I don't think it's a good idea since the odds of being falsely flagged for spam are are not in your favor." Does it really matter if you mind or don't mind? Are you saying you mark these as spam because you may mind a short link? Marking any answer just because we have a gut feeling etc. is not right. It does not matter what one likes or does not like. For as long as it is a valid answer it does not matter what we think or what we like. I've seen so many answers marked as spam lately that are anything but spam. I urge everyone that moderates, to be careful about what gets marked. Read the answer and understand the answer, if there is a link follow it and see where it takes you, but do not mark it as spam because you do not like it for whatever reason.

Why is everybody so focused on the negative things and looking for the negative? Maybe some of you that look for all those "bad answers" could focus on answering some questions? How about providing some help instead of passing all these judgements and worrying about what we like. How about stepping it up a bit and participating in answers instead of playing moderators?

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I don't mind short links but the reason I flagged them wasn't purely on that basis alone - short links are not bad on their own but can be used to conceal spam. If they post spam links then they have to hide it or it'll die quickly.

I'll take responsibility for it to the extent that the flagging was wrong but that's it. I did it because the profiles looked similar and I seen the same problem with all of those links - I couldn't decode them so I flagged them because it's hard to tell when you can't clearly decode them. It turns out what happened was they were rebrand.ly links, which my standard decoder doesn't support and hangs on. If I come across a tool that works, I'm reluctant to switch until I see there's an obvious need. That's essentially what happened since I have had good luck with unshorten.it in the past. It's worked before but in this case, it failed.

I have posted more to Answers but people keep abandoning their posts (which frustrates me). It's happened more then what I'd consider reasonable. There's always going to be people who abandon their question but it's happened enough that I'm not as active. I have 9+ answers on abandoned questions and 1 I had to gamble on a fix and answer myself because I wasn't given a lot of help before it went away when I asked about my M401n and some issues I had. What I think happened is because I didn't own the model that I was presumed to own when I really have a M401n and not the dn/dw with color LCD. I was able to fix it with firmware, but that was after I got no help and gave up on getting any. If I was told that the reason for moving on is "they didn't know how to troubleshoot the issue I had" I wouldn't be annoyed - I didn't get any closure like that.

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I'm with Nick on this one. We have a tool that allows Admins to wholly block certain domains from being submitted to the site.

For instance, that spammer you cited today is hiding links to pagedemo [dot] com behind bitly links.

I can easily ban links to pagedemo, but if they're all hidden behind bitly our detection will not work. It also makes it difficult for iRobot to check for spam.

I can also ban all the common link shorteners, and deal with new ones as they come up, but I'm concerned with how that will affect our current good users.

@oldturkey03 @danj @nick @avanteguarde, Based on what you've seen in Answers, would banning link shorteners cut down on spam, or make it easier to identify?

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I personally use them in my guides to free up characters, @evan. While I think it's okay there, I think you should be prepared to provide someone the full link if they ever ask (some people outright dislike short links). I have no problems with this because the data from doing it is secondary to the primary reason - that is to free up characters.

In a lot of situations I see shortened links, it's spam. I usually decode them with tools like unshorten.it because I'm NOT going to risk a virus to give someone a chance. Since a lot of spammers hide their spam behind shortened links to get past the spam filter I think it would put a pretty good dent into the shortened spam link problem. As far as detection I think it makes it harder for bots to see it, but makes it easy for humans to identify it as probable spam.

Back to how I think blocking them will work; While this is a cat and mouse game, blocking shortened links should help us win by a large margin. We're going to have to keep up with new link shorteners, but they can't hide behind those kinds of links if they're blocked. In practice, it will make their lives much harder. The iCloud spammers seem to like them the most.

How I'd handle it is if someone is established and uses a good bit.ly link I'd send them the raw text and tell them it needs to be posted with the full link. I'd probably also credit them the lost points the first couple of times to help them out. Most established users have no use for shortened links, so I don't think it'll matter *much*. With that being said, user whitelisting for these short links is another option.

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Are link shorteners essential on guides or just helpful? For instance, can you make a sub-bullet and include the full link?

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It depends, but most of the time it's just helpful. However, there are guides I consider it a essential tool I need while writing it. In some cases, adding the full link means I have to compromise the content to have the link and content I want in that line at the same time and short links do help avoid splitting lines because of a long link when that happens.

Now, onto how I can hadle adding the full link as a subline; This depends on the guide and lines I need at a minimum. If I only need a handful, then it isn't a problem to do that. On the other hand guides like Linux Config 2008-12 need as many available lines as I can get. For guides like that it's very unlikely I will have room to cram full links in as a subline.

For example I may want to include a link to help someone enable TRIM on SSD's or provide a link to a forum post to show readers what the issue with a particular SSD is (Ex: The SSD in Linux Config 2008-12). Short links enable me to have both a strong step and the link I want in situations like this, so the reader can have the best of both worlds - my advice and a forum post to help them piece it together. Not being able to use short links may create problems in some situations.

In a guide that isn't that complicated, I probably have room to provide both in the same place and make everyone happy. For guides like Linux Config 2008-12, I often have enough characters to include a section in the primary intro that includes full links BUT I don't have enough room to put them in as sublines. This is primarily because in guides like that I have to cover everything from the C2D T/P Series to Ivy Bridge Core i Series processors in some cases. If you have a chance to look at it and you want to see what I mean, you can find Linux Config 2008-12 here.

Since that guide is being written so I can reuse as much content as I can in other guides and restart with a better generation of hardware (and the difficulty of finding good hardware from that period is very difficult), I tested the option of having full links listed in the intro so you can see what the best option for those kinds of guides are. If it isn't in that list, I found room for a full link.

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I've noticed links to fixingblog are ALWAYS behind a goo.gl short link. I've never seen one not goo.gl-ified. Is this done automatically or do we block fixingblog links? @evan (text added so can be posted)

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We don't block or change fixingblog posts, and there are plenty of non-shortened links. It may just be the habit of certain users to default to goo.gl links by default.

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I think short links are valuable for guide use in situations where it's the best option (Ex: Amazon), but they shouldn't be used in Answers. That being said, it should also be the last option you try and should look at other options first. The reason I don't use them in Answers (and think it's not ideal) is because people are likely to accuse you of spamming.

That being said I now know how to shorten a link that's a pain to work with to try and reduce the need for short links. It'll help a lot on things like Amazon pages, but not search links.

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@nick amazon allows you to shorten these. http://a.co/7evK0PS

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@sam pointed me towards that option. It doesn't help on things like ODD HDD bays where I have no idea which size you need (in which case, I'll use the search link since 2 links are inefficient).

I know what my laptops need, but unless I know what you own and have concrete information I'm not in a position to guess 99% of the time.

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we could probably make an ifixit link shortener maybe something like ifix.it (I know .it is a valid closer ex: https://www.kahoot.it )

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Nick will be eternally grateful.