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[wontfix?] links in collection descriptions

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2018 7:24 pm
by livelove
The href attribute in anchor tags in collection descriptions accepts http only, not https.
Https prevents the parsing of the markup code and the code is displayed as is.

Re: links in collection descriptions

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2018 7:53 pm
by livelove
ok, in addition to that something else is going on.

In the image below the link in the first collection is displayed correctly,
contrary to the link in the second collection, although I don't see any error in the html markup:

Image

Re: links in collection descriptions

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2018 8:47 am
by mpowell
Sorry we're just getting to this now!

Due to abuse in the system and security concerns, we made the decision some time ago to disallow markup in the Collection Description. Existing collections were cleaned up, but it looks like we missed a few -- 4 to be exact, one of which is your Doomsday collection. I just looked at each of the ones that were missed, and they're innocuous enough so we don't mind allowing them to remain, but we're don't allow this in general.

The preferred way to share a link in Collection Descriptions is just simply typing out the link like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_doomsday_prophecy

We do have a bug filed to allow for simple tags in Collection Descriptions (which you filed, actually), but this probably will not include external links. It's just too susceptible to abuse, until we get more resources to be able to properly moderate updates.

Re: links in collection descriptions

Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2019 3:54 am
by livelove
Thanks for being so transparent about your considerations.

It's a pity though, because it unnecessarily makes the text less readable.

I also don't understand what you gain in terms of security, because if you hyperlinks then whoever posts spam links etc. will still be able to do that. So I don't really understand the rationale behind that. The advantage of allowing anchor text would be to make the text more readable.

From a security standpoint, I also don't see the logic in allowing links everywhere in the forum, but not in the collection description.

mpowell wrote:It's just too susceptible to abuse, until we get more resources to be able to properly moderate updates.
I think there are a number of ways to allow this and still be safe from abuse.
One such way would be to allow hyperlinks in collections and/or forums only after reaching certain criteria (x films rated and/or y postings and/or z months of membership, etc.). I very much doubt that spammers would rate 200 films just to be able to post a spam link which will be deleted anyway along with the spammer's user account.