Mailto:s in posts, acceptable or not?

January 17, 2006 10:07 AM

Mailto:s in posts, acceptable or not?
posted by Mitheral to Etiquette/Policy at 10:07 AM (23 comments total)

I'm against because it a) spawns your mail program when your not expecting it and b) results in punitive action against the target. At least if you have to dig the email address out of the comments or a with a search you've expended some effort.
posted by Mitheral at 10:07 AM on January 17, 2006

Agreed. Unnecessary.
posted by peacay at 10:09 AM on January 17, 2006

Thirded, for the same reasons as Mitheral. All in favor?
posted by Plutor at 10:11 AM on January 17, 2006

Feh. It's fine. Look at where the link points before you go there and you're OK. And there are plenty of people who have emailed him and thanked the poster for putting the address in there.
Relax, sissies.
posted by klangklangston at 10:12 AM on January 17, 2006

"Dumping garbage in the street is okay, because people can just walk around it."
posted by Plutor at 10:17 AM on January 17, 2006

Putting the mailto: in HTML links is a pretty standard protocol all over the web, where forms aren't used. Spammers will scan the source and mine the addresses they want, regardless of how hard or easy it is for a legitimate end-user to click a link or copy and paste. Just sayin'
posted by Rothko at 10:17 AM on January 17, 2006

It's courteous to include a note anytime you're posting something that's going to launch an application or a plugin, I think. This is also mentioned on the Wiki.
posted by Gator at 10:22 AM on January 17, 2006

I didn't notice it before, but that is lame and I removed it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:28 AM on January 17, 2006

Yeah, but garbage smells bad.
posted by rxrfrx at 10:41 AM on January 17, 2006

Rothko writes "mailto: in HTML links is a pretty standard protocol all over the web, where forms aren't used. "

And I've got no problem seeing them in comments, just not on the front page.
posted by Mitheral at 10:49 AM on January 17, 2006

. . . that is lame and I removed it.

I think that says it all.
posted by JeffK at 11:16 AM on January 17, 2006

Posting someone's e-mail address in a mailto link ensures they will be slammed by spam. I get one or two spams a day, partly due to rather restrictive server-side filtering and partly due to the fact that my current primary e-mail address has never appeared in a mailto link on a Web page.
posted by kindall at 11:27 AM on January 17, 2006

And I use mutt in a remote shell connection, so the mailto links just taunt me.
posted by cortex at 11:39 AM on January 17, 2006

And I've got no problem seeing them in comments, just not on the front page.
posted by Mitheral at 10:49 AM PST on January 17

done
posted by Optimus Chyme at 11:47 AM on January 17, 2006

as long as they're in the format of: "hey guys, you can email me at [e-mail]".
posted by blue_beetle at 12:05 PM on January 17, 2006

Look before you click? I thought this was SOP.
posted by puke & cry at 12:20 PM on January 17, 2006

A minor pet peeve of mine is that on the company websites I visit, "Contact Us" leads half the time to a full-blown page with Addresses and an inserted Google Map and the other half the time its just a Mailto:

Having to "hover over" to see what will happen seems out-of-band from a usability standpoint.
posted by vacapinta at 12:32 PM on January 17, 2006

There is the target alert extension to FF which gives a visual clue to the destination. But MetaFilter shouldn't require that kind of attention to details. The cleanliness of the front page is one of the things that makes this place a daily read.
posted by Mitheral at 12:42 PM on January 17, 2006

I can't believe anyone here would just click blindly on a link, given some of the nasties that have been linked on this site in the past.

vacapinta, the same thing annoys me too.
posted by dg at 12:56 PM on January 17, 2006

Thats how you get viruses.
posted by puke & cry at 1:12 PM on January 17, 2006

Come on, this makes sense as basic netiquette:

It's courteous to include a note anytime you're posting something that's going to launch an application or a plugin...
posted by mediareport at 9:46 PM on January 17, 2006

There is no "hover" when I'm on my PDA, so if it's going to be a mailto link, make sure the link is clearly marked as an e-mail address. Some of us do not have the luxury of "look before you click." We rely on diligent linkers to provide adequate link text for what we're about to click on.
posted by Eideteker at 5:42 AM on January 18, 2006

Apparently knowing the link type is a big deal, now. I suggested one solution over here and that suggestion stands.
posted by Rothko at 6:51 AM on January 18, 2006