SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Goodreads has disabled the ability to use href links (named URLs) to addresses outside their own domain.

href link / named URL: Goodreads
not named: https://www.goodreads.com/

So this means that you can still link anywhere, but you can't use named URLs for non-GR links.

This sucks and I'm annoyed.

(Oh and I also have to, as a moderator of this group, go through several rounds of captcha every time I want to start a new thread >_< And it's only valid for a minute, so I usually have to do it multiple times. I hate everything.)

Here's the (not at all informative) Help page about it:

https://help.goodreads.com/s/announce...

(non-href linked out of spite)

I'm sorry everyone, I'm extremely annoyed and don't want to scream at the nice GR support person I've been emailing with.

I get it. Spammers suck, get rid of them. But, I dunno, like maybe *group moderators* aren't likely to be spamming malicious links?! YATHINK?

Oh, 'nice'.

So, that's what all that recent html-code buggery was about? If this is to prevent those odd phishing link comments: commendable. But still, perhaps find a way to do it without hindering the user experience.

(How about start by preventing zero review users from commenting?)

All other discussion boards can handle this without f*cking everything else up. But hey what else is new.

From an IT standpoint, that is, like ... the cheapest solution you could possibly find without adressing the actual problem. Because scammers will always find a way. But fixing bugs, upping security and preventing scam accounts costs money. I guess our accumulated book data does not cover those costs.

And.

Support's solution to how to deal with this? They told me to edit the message. I had to reply, asking if they could please elaborate as to how I should edit it, and guess what the reply was?

Edit the link so it points to a Goodreads address.

Yeah, if I'm trying to link to, idk, let's say a Tor.com article, the solution is to change the URL to a GR address.

What the actual f*ck Goodreads?

Again, so sorry, I'm losing my sh*t over here.

If user experience hindering changes like this are the thanks for reporting link spamming, how eager are users to report further suspicious activity in fear of GR's next dubious solution.

GR seems to be going the way of tumblr in sacrificing user experience to their lack of interest to deal with the real problem.

Anna, you should go corporate and just have them hire you to manage all this. You can show them one of your spreadsheets in lieu of a resume.

Also, BREATHE. Unless you really are an AI in which case ...
...
...um.
Go to a happy place with pet videos.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I would link you a cute YouTube video with kittens, Anna, but alas...

Goodreads support strikes again. The captcha thing is unreal; how are groups supposed to function? (The comparison to Tumblr really is apt. Cheap updates that casually destroy basic functionality.)

Thanks Mel XD

(I'll calm down. I have chocolate.)

lol Michelle, yeah exactly!

I released the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding, so I could take another deep breath, and now I can smell pine and jasmine.

Quick, somebody find some calloused hands!

LOL!!

Pssst- Youkneek! Tell Ernest to stop messing with the GR links before A-N-N-A blows her stack!

Corinne, you can paste links, but you can't name them. And not naming them is messy, and I dislike mess! <_<

named: Goodreads
not named: https://www.goodreads.com/

Corinne wrote: "Do you think old comments are fine as long as we don't edit them?"

Yes, I tested!

Anyone tried yet how hotlinking images functions with this change?

Testing, testing:

[image error]

Images are fine, as evidenced by the thread that made me notice this:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

(again, GR links shall not be named out of spite unless it's an important one)

And yes, I am aware how ridiculous it is that my inability to post a funny meme in the exact way I wanted is making me this ragey.

Let's try a random Wikipedia image:
[image error]

(Looks like a no go.)

That would be a van Gogh if it were working, but I don't get the error message, so I might have messed up the code? It looks right though.

Michelle wrote: "Pssst- Youkneek! Tell Ernest to stop messing with the GR links before A-N-N-A blows her stack!"

LOL, I suspect Ernest was actually one of the spammers that led to this action being taken. He was posting links to sites where people could buy him toys and treats.

Another (self-transferred to an image host service):



Might've been just a particular host.

Also, gotta love that we can still post gifs but not named URLs. Goodreads *does* love a mess :/

YouKneeK wrote: "I suspect Ernest was actually one of the spammers that led to this action being taken. He was posting links to sites where people could buy him toys and treats."

Frickin' Ernest!

I have found GR "help" to be an extremely unhelpful, extremely maddening process. I don't recommend it. Just learn to live with the bug/issue/problem. It's actually LESS frustrating than trying to report it.

I can live with this non-html naming links thing. It's annoying and stupid and on par for Goodreads' NUKE IT ALL method of fixing spam annoyances by making usability far worse for actual members, but I can live with it.

I have been circumventing the image error issue caused by certain disallowed offsite image links for years by just rehosting all images to a secret group on GR and then linking them from there. They can host it, pay for it, waste server space on it. I don't care.

Becky wrote: "I have found GR "help" to be an extremely unhelpful, extremely maddening process. I don't recommend it."

THIS!

I hate it so much, I never use it, I just email them. They got rid of the feedback group so they wouldn't have to listen to us whine, so they're gonna have to deal with my constant whiny emails.

(They're probably happy with less whiny people in Help tho, since the emails aren't in public. So in that sense "Help" is very helpful to Goodreads.)

Aaaaand I just got the support survey email. Idk, maybe I should unload all my rage on them :)

They will just flush your survey down the hopper.

Very likely.

edit: Yawn, the tantrum has made me very sleepy! I guess that's a positive :)

I say unload the rage on them. How else are they to know.

Hmm... The uninformative help page says "we have disabled links to external sites from appearing in user comments" with no mention of it just being href style links. Is this one of those coming soon things or just especially unhelpful help? It's hard to believe that they wouldn't allow links to, say, Amazon.

Goodreads has been smelling like neglect and bitrot to me. How is The Story Graph looking these days?

Try posting a href link and you get the error that says no href.

And yeah Amazon was my first thought, too. Doesn’t work.

TSG gets better daily, but it’s still not a complete replacement. TSG thread here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I mean, there are other community pages and options out there ... just sayin'.

Anna wrote: "And.

Support's solution to how to deal with this? They told me to edit the message. I had to reply, asking if they could please elaborate as to how I should edit it, and guess what the reply was?
..."

Feel free to blame me, because I flagged those (l)users, and it did this: https://help.goodreads.com/s/announce....

In my defense, one comment with a junk hyperlink is one too many.

Can't even do help.goodreads.com...

It should be entirely clear without saying, but of course no one blames people who flagged the idiots! The idiots are to blame, and they should be dealt with. My problem is (always and forever) the decisions Goodreads makes to deal with things.

The thing is, they can still post all the same links, and they can still do this:

Wow, did everyone see the fluffy kittens on OurMutualFriend's insta? Sooooo cuuuuuteeeeeee!!!!11 Here they are: tinyurl.com/3dxun8ac

Yes, they were. I had those several times.

That was the "fix" that broke Current Events, because the reread links have first impressions, final thoughts, and sometimes "more", if there were more than the two standard threads, which is typical for old group reads. Took me a minute to figure out <_<

And I mean OK fine, I get WHY, but when I contacted support about it, they just said they haven't heard of this problem, and that they have no idea, and they'll add it to the queue. Why the heck couldn't they say that yeah links named "more" are no longer allowed. Would've saved me a lot of energy, most of which was spent screaming.

I cleaned up my posts from yesterday, and I now have a stash of emergency f*cks to give. I'm going to need them in the future.

Corinne wrote: "I wonder if the fake "more..." will be resolved by this.

That was a particularly sleazy bit of spam."

UGH, YES! I got several of those.

Worse, it won't stop those bots with links to p0rn and other dubious places in their profile from spam-liking your updates.
I wish they dealt with that, or with fake ratings/reviews.
And now the site is imploding it seems, errors most of the time...

Corinne wrote: "I wonder if the fake "more..." will be resolved by this.

That was a particularly sleazy bit of spam."

They were my tipping point.

And, what was up with a link to a reasonable book?
I think gr did the "more" themselves, to justify taking our hrefs.

According to posts I'm seeing elsewhere, they're now blocking all outside links AND they have set everyone's profile to receive messages from friends only, so group newsletters are not going to work. I did confirm my DMs had been set to friends only. (I've always left messaging open for anyone.)

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "According to posts I'm seeing elsewhere, they're now blocking all outside links AND they have set everyone's profile to receive messages from friends only, so group newsletters are not going to wor..."

Yep. The moderator in one of my other groups posted about this earlier. I had to change my settings back to what they were.

Michelle wrote: "Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "According to posts I'm seeing elsewhere, they're now blocking all outside links AND they have set everyone's profile to receive messages from friends only, so group newsletters..."

I successfully used an image link on 22 September
, for what it's worth...

But yeah, straight-up page links fail, or rather, get blocked form publishing as a comment.


Both kinds of hyperlinks still work in the body of a review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Or like this...

Images seem to be processing separately throughout all of this; I've seen several people demonstrate that they could post images at various times since the beginning of the ban. Not sure why that is really.

They have apparently backed off on the outside links thing; you still can't do href formatting for links but you can post the unvarnished link. (This is all hearsay from rumors in other groups, because of course Goodreads isn't announcing any of this fine tuning.)

That I believe has been the narrative all along (as detailed in the first post): the href-formating of outside links has been disabled. Which means, you can't create links of images either (ie. for the purpose of offering a link to an enlarged image - as is perhaps my personal biggest objection), but indeed need to post cumbersome and inconvenient url-litanies - making all subtlety in proper forum-communication an impossibility.

All caveman like.