StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Broomstick wrote:

Patrick Degan wrote:Hardass With Chris Matthews

Is it too fucking difficult to warn people your link goes to a video? With a craptacular load and ad bullshit in front of it? We warn people about PDF's and the like, why not videos and ads? Not everyone is running a brand new machine that handles that stuff well.

Question for discussion: should people include warnings when posting links to sites with flash content and streaming videos?

For fuck's sake, yes. Video links aren't always going to be obvious just from the URL, and if I'm at work or on a mobile device I don't want to waste bandwidth clicking on a link that doesn't include a warning if it's a video.

Probably a good idea. We still have people on coal-fired computers.

Coyote wrote:Probably a good idea. We still have people on coal-fired computers.

Doesn't need to be coal-fired. I have a decent computer at work, but since I'm running twenty different applications and systems on it, many of them serious memory hogs, I don't need the additional irritation. I've always liked links better, since then I can decide whether or not I want to take a look. With embedded, there is no choice. Embedded is fine in AMP, not so much in generic subforums.

And like PDF links, video links should come with a warning.

So... basically anything other than plain text or link to text should have a tag? Like...

http://www.HereIsAFakeLinkForExample.com [vid]

or Don't click on this it's not a real link [PDF]

Hadn't thought of the consequences on a mobile device (don't own one!) but yeah, bandwidth issues there, too.

I sure would appreciate that. Sometimes I'm willing to wait out a download, other times I'm not. Would be nice to know what I'm getting into BEFORE I click, especially if it wouldn't be obvious from the url.

We're already supposed to use meaningful, dressed links. It really isn't much to expect people to type 'video' instead of 'link'.

Would that be like this, then?

link to text

link to video

link to YouTube

link to PDF

(And no, none of those is a real link, they're just examples I made up)

Yeah. I mean, if someone is going to just drop 'link' down with a url behind it (as is often the case) they can say 'link to video' or just 'video' instead. It's not a big deal, but it makes the odds of auto-playing stupid anime music videos at work much lower.

I don't think the specifics matter much as long as it's clearly designated as being something that can hog bandwidth. 99% of the time URLs are pretty self explanatory and don't need it, but when they're not I think a quick mention of videos or whatever should be there somewhere.

Stark wrote:We're already supposed to use meaningful, dressed links.

Really? Because I remember Darth Wong specifically stating that thanks to the board upgrade auto-shortening really long URLs, we were no longer required to dress links.

That said a brief "(links to video)" is pretty easy to include.

while my PC isn't really an old one (well it's 4 or so years old but still), a simple warning for vids could be nice and I'm sure there's people with worse setups then mine.

Uraniun235 wrote:

Stark wrote:We're already supposed to use meaningful, dressed links.

Really? Because I remember Darth Wong specifically stating that thanks to the board upgrade auto-shortening really long URLs, we were no longer required to dress links.

That said a brief "(links to video)" is pretty easy to include.

If I had my way, dressing links would still be required because long strings of random characters look like shit.