Embiggen the URLs please

June 9, 2005 11:17 AM

Pony: Post form searches for "tinyurl" in the link and kindly asks the poster to use the full url.
posted by gwint to Feature Requests at 11:17 AM (18 comments total)

Yeah, not a bad idea, since tinyurl links expire eventually.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:55 AM on June 9, 2005

pony?
posted by neilkod at 11:55 AM on June 9, 2005

doesn't happen too often i believe, plus morimoto did it by mistake.
posted by puke & cry at 11:59 AM on June 9, 2005

In fact, it should check for against a bunch of url shorteners.

neilkod: ponies
posted by Plutor at 12:17 PM on June 9, 2005

dont forget hugeurl
posted by puke & cry at 12:56 PM on June 9, 2005

Why enforce with technology what we can acheieve through simple social ostracism?
posted by neckro23 at 1:10 PM on June 9, 2005

I think it's a good idea, although it is infrequently an issue.
posted by knave at 2:17 PM on June 9, 2005

The ostracism, it is more entertaining.
posted by tweak at 2:22 PM on June 9, 2005

Personally, I think of this MetaTalk post as thinly-veiled ostracism.
posted by grouse at 2:50 PM on June 9, 2005

A good idea, and simple too.
posted by caddis at 3:10 PM on June 9, 2005

Previous discussion.
posted by Mitheral at 3:52 PM on June 9, 2005

posted by shepd at 5:45 PM on June 9, 2005

mathowie wrote:
"Yeah, not a bad idea, since tinyurl links expire eventually."

They changed that a while back, I thought:

"Welcome to TinyURL!™

Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? Then you've come to the right place. By entering in a URL in the text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires."

The obvious reason is still there, though (people using tinyurl to cover links to goatse and the like).
posted by Ryvar at 9:57 PM on June 9, 2005

Eh, just write the software to follow the tinyurl, and replace it with the real url. (Theoretical problem: tinyurl could link to a url that attempts to exploit mathowie's server; practical response: use curl or wget or any other utility that follows links but doesn't process them into a DOM.)
posted by orthogonality at 3:01 AM on June 10, 2005

I love the "never expires" part where never means "as long as were in business and decide to not change our service because after all you're paying nothing for this service and we'll bend you over while beating you with a brick if it'll start making us money."
posted by Mitheral at 8:07 AM on June 10, 2005

Eh, just write the software to follow the tinyurl URL that ends in a redirect, and replace it with the real URL target URL. That way there's no need to keep track of what domains offer redirection. Might as well catch 404s while you're at it.
posted by mendel at 10:53 AM on June 10, 2005

But what if you're posting a really cool 404 page?
posted by If I Had An Anus at 11:52 AM on June 10, 2005

In the same vein, it would be cool if MetaFilter automatically reg-freed links to the NYT.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 3:23 PM on June 10, 2005