

HN Idea: Show links in questions after N upvotes - alexkay

Several 'Review my app' type of questions are posted here every day. The questions are either just a link to the app in question, or an explanatory post containing the URL which we are supposed to copy/paste to visit it.<p>Am I the only one wishing that I could just click the link in the latter type of questions? I understand why the restriction is in place, to prevent spam/abuse/etc, it's even in the FAQ. However, if the question is legitimate and gets upvoted, why not just show the link after a certain number of upvotes?<p>Do I make any sense?
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brk
_Do I make any sense?_

Yes, I like your suggestion personally. It's not terribly difficult to
copy/paste links. However, when it's clear the link is non-spammy, it would be
more convenient to make it clickable, and it would probably help the site
owner somewhat to see where the referrers are coming from.

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kylec
> It's not terribly difficult to copy/paste links.

Unless you're using an iPhone or iPod touch, in which case it's pretty much
impossible.

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swombat
As I browse HN every morning on my iPhone, I would say that's a pretty
critical use case as far as I'm concerned! :-)

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palish
I'm posting this from my doctor's office using my iPhone. I also use it to
check HN whenever my main computer is tied up with a lengthy operation. So
yeah, I visit HN on an iPhone a lot.

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pg
Links aren't turned off to protect against spam, but to discourage people from
submitting sites with editorial comment appended.

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jmackinn
Why are editorial comments something you want to discourage? I'm not for or
against the idea really but I have always wondered what the reasoning is.

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pg
What I want to avoid is editorial titles. The idea is roughly that comments
are individual property, because people can make as many of them as they want,
but link titles are common property in that everyone has to share one (except
to the extent duplicate detection fails).

If links worked in "Ask HN" text, people would use such submissions as a way
to get de facto extra long link titles. I know because they used to, and they
did.

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zepolen
I never realised this could be a chore to other people. On linux you just
select the url with the mouse and middle click.

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JoelSutherland
This is a feature available on all systems with middle-buttoned mice.
Alternatively a Ctrl (or Cmd) + Click will open a link in a new tab.

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zepolen
No I meant highlighting a non <a href> url in the text (which saves it to the
copy buffer) and middle clicking into a browser window (which pastes it).

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kirubakaran
Yes, that would be a great feature.

Related: Enable links in profile page of users above a karma threshold. Right
now, it is disabled to deter spammers.

Example: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kirubakaran>

~~~
allenbrunson
strangely enough, some hn profiles _do_ have clickable links in them. case in
point:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mattmaroon>

i've tried to figure out whatever the trick is, but i can't.

~~~
kirubakaran
I even wrote to pg couple months ago about the "discrimination" :-)

His reply:

"They just haven't edited their profiles since I turned off live links after
spammers discovered using them as landing pages for spam campaigns."

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gojomo
You can do this yourself, via a bookmarklet such as the 'linkify' bookmarklet
on this page: <http://www.7is7.com/software/bookmarklets/>

Yes, it even works on iPhone or iPod Touch MobileSafari. (You can transfer
complicated bookmarklets like that one by adding to desktop Safari, then using
the bookmarklets sync option under the 'Info' tab in the ITunes>Devices>iPhone
area. Beware, the first sync may clobber previous iPhone bookmarks with those
from the desktop.)

