Replacing shortened URLs by original

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The discussion revolves around replacing shortened URLs with their original counterparts on a forum. CamilleRoux proposes this automatic replacement due to concerns about readability, click tracking, and potential spam or self-promotion. However, Mittineague raises valid points about legitimate uses of shortened URLs, such as protecting client confidentiality or avoiding broken links. CamilleRoux acknowledges these concerns and suggests making the replacement feature optional.

1

Hi,

On my forum, members are frequently using short URLs in their posts (t.co, bit.ly…). I think it’s a problem for some reasons:

  • Readers can’t see the real URL
  • The clicks counter is reseted when an admin replace the short URL by the real one
  • It’s frequently associated to spam (some URL shortener allow to change URL)
  • It’s also frequently associated to self-promotion (they are using shorteners to track clicks)

What do you think about replacing automatically short URL by the original?

7 Likes
2

I don’t know if it’d be any easier, but it’d at least be less circuitous if the option to manually ban certain URLs was available.

3

In our forum, besides the SPAM and self-promotion reasons for using shortened URLs, there are two legitimate reasons eg.

“I am working on a client’s site ______ and I can’t get the CSS right, please help”
Where the dev wants the client to not find out they were asking for help.

“I posted an example page on my website here ______”
Where the poster doesn’t want Not Founds to appear in their logs after the temporary page has been removed and would prefer to not need to constantly update their htaccess file.

So replacing them automatically all the time in our use case would not be a good thing.

4

Interesting point of view… So if we do this, we should make it optionnal