Logic for script-based linking needs improvement

[QDP2012]

Good evening admins,

It seems that in the last several weeks, some sort of script has been inconsistently inserting links into the various forum-posts where links did not initially exist, usually around what appears to be an easily identifiable keyword.

Examples:

• The word motorola automatically becomes a link to: w w w . m o t o r o l a . c o m
• The word dell automatically becomes a link to: w w w . d e l l . c o m
• ...etc.

Opinion: I dislike this "feature" on some philosophical grounds (nicely stated, any post I make should be exactly as I made it, not adjusted by a script/person for marketing purposes which I might not endorse). But, that's not the point of this post.

Logic Problem:
Aside from my dislike of the "feature", there seems to be a functional issue with its current logic. Sometimes links are incorrectly parsed from the posted message.

Example:

When I opened post #1 of this thread: http://forums.radioreference.com/digital-voice-amateur-use/279082-nxdn-ham-why.html#post2080651

• Near the end of post #1, a space was missing between sentences, which created a substring of "change.IDAS/NXDN" between the two surrounding spaces.
• The string "change.IDAS/NXDN" was displayed as a link to http://change.IDAS/NXDN which is bogus.
• I am not sure why, but now the text on the linked page displays normally, without the bogus link.

Conclusion: Please consider removing the new automatic-link feature, or at least updating its logic. Its inconsistent and inaccurate use is...annoying.

Thanks,

 

[fxdscon]

Good evening admins,

It seems that in the last several weeks, some sort of script has been inconsistently inserting links into the various forum-posts where links did not initially exist, usually around what appears to be an easily identifiable keyword.


Examples:

• The word motorola automatically becomes a link to: w w w . m o t o r o l a . c o m
• The word dell automatically becomes a link to: w w w . d e l l . c o m
• ...etc.

Opinion: I dislike this "feature" on some philosophical grounds (nicely stated, any post I make should be exactly as I made it, not adjusted by a script/person for marketing purposes which I might not endorse). But, that's not the point of this post.

Logic Problem:
Aside from my dislike of the "feature", there seems to be a functional issue with its current logic. Sometimes links are incorrectly parsed from the posted message.

Example:


When I opened post #1 of this thread: http://forums.radioreference.com/digital-voice-amateur-use/279082-nxdn-ham-why.html#post2080651

• Near the end of post #1, a space was missing between sentences, which created a substring of "change.IDAS/NXDN" between the two surrounding spaces.
• The string "change.IDAS/NXDN" was displayed as a link to http://change.IDAS/NXDN which is bogus.
• I am not sure why, but now the text on the linked page displays normally, without the bogus link.

Conclusion: Please consider removing the new automatic-link feature, or at least updating its logic. Its inconsistent and inaccurate use is...annoying.

Thanks,

Not seeing that at all here, perhaps a script running on your computer? What you describe is a known malware trait.

EDIT.. Just on a hunch, I logged out of the forums, and checked the link in your post again, and sure enough, the HTML links are there. Logged back in again, and they're gone.

.Seems like advertising for non-members, or members not logged in.

.

.

 

[QDP2012]

Thanks

Not seeing that at all here, perhaps a script running on your computer? What you describe is a known malware trait.

Investigating...

EDIT.. Just on a hunch, I logged out of the forums, and checked the link in your post again, and sure enough, the HTML links are there. Logged back in again, and they're gone.

.Seems like advertising for non-members, or members not logged in.

Thank you very much for catching that logged-in/not-logged-in difference. That relieves the virus-concern on my end (which seems clean so far...still checking just to be sure).

Thanks again!

 

[jfhtm350]

The hyperlinks you speak of are coming from scorecardresearch.com's scripts. The scorecardresearch.com scripts are being loaded by viglink.com's scripts. So it is a 3rd party of a 3rd party. Its like you invited someone to your party and they invited someone. Its not likely they will remove the 3rd party scripts because they make money from them.

 

[QDP2012]

Thanks

The hyperlinks you speak of are coming from scorecardresearch.com's scripts. The scorecardresearch.com scripts are being loaded by viglink.com's scripts. So it is a 3rd party of a 3rd party. Its like you invited someone to your party and they invited someone. Its not likely they will remove the 3rd party scripts because they make money from them.

Thanks for those details. That helps clear-up my mental picture of what's going on. Obviously, my initial thought was that these scripts were deployed first-hand on RR's systems, not that the scripts arrived from some distant third party.

At the moment, I'm not sure which thought concerns me more--that of a poorly-written script deployed locally, or a poorly-written script deployed by a distant third-party that runs as a locally-deployed script.

Your explanation also raises questions/concerns about whether such third-party scripts are robustly tested before being deployed in-the-wild, and their far-reaching influence/effect when errors exist.


Anyway, all of my concerns/ranting aside, the related script has a parsing logic problem. I thought admins would want to know.

Thanks again for helping identify what is actually going on!

 

[blantonl]

It's definitely Viglink - it is a forum add-on that automatically monetizes links to vendors pages. I'll look to see if there are some updates to the process, however I believe Viglink updates those processes remotely from their platform.

 

[QDP2012]

It's definitely Viglink - it is a forum add-on that automatically monetizes links to vendors pages. I'll look to see if there are some updates to the process, however I believe Viglink updates those processes remotely from their platform.

Thank you for checking, sir, and for the reply.

 

[QDP2012]

Good afternoon Admin's/Mod's,

In case you might be interested, it seems like VigLink might need to update its logic again.

As discovered in an earlier post...


The link below does not get parsed correctly. It directs the user to an incorrect target-page. Only when the user copies-and-pastes the "code" box's link into their browser will it go to the correct target page.

Link: This link direct to incorrect page
Correct Target:

http://www.radioshack.com/store?StoreID=018572

It seems like the second question-mark (appended after the store's number) might be the problem.

Wrong Target:

http://www.radioshack.com/store?StoreID=018572?CID=ip:Affiliate:RSO:VigLink&clickid=wwJ3J1VhjUuHQq4UFRVypUt6UkV06AzFx2tOwg0&utm_source=VigLink

---
In contrast, the link below does get parsed correctly, and directs the user to the correct target page.

Link: This link directs to the correct page

http://www.radioshack.com/hex-crimping-tool/2780238.html

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Hope this helps,