Skimlinks trial on MSE forums

oakhouse13

What does 'on the fly' mean? Skimlinks uses it all the time to explain what they do is fine but I would like to know what is so great about on the fly.

robt_2

oakhouse13 wrote: »

What does 'on the fly' mean? Skimlinks uses it all the time to explain what they do is fine but I would like to know what is so great about on the fly.

I think you can take it to assume it means 'disguised' so that most people don't notice they are being redirected trough affiliate pages.

furndire

If you can see something is happening, at least you can ignore it, or avoid it. With skimlinks, hidden as MSE seems to be trying to do, you can do neither.

I wonder how many of the visitors to this site - who expect it to be open and above board - know it is happening - not many - judging by the amount of responses they are getting on here - or don't they care ???????

Wasn't this how Communism started - Animal Farm? I digress.

JimmyTheWig

jamesd wrote: »

Dan, I'm not sure why it's so hard for you to get the idea that changing a link to one that goes to a different site is editing the content of the post.

While I think the rest of your post (a little too long to quote all of it) was well reasoned (and worthy of an official response), I must again question the logic used in the piece I have quoted.

If I (whether before the Skimlinks change or afterwards) type www.bbc.co.uk, MSE turns it into a link. I have not told it to be a link. I have not typed "http://". All I have done is typed a website address. So MSE is _already_ changing my content. I don't see that changing what I typed into a Skimlinks link is any more of a change to what I typed than they've always done.

MrsBartolozzi

MrsBartolozzi wrote: »

Ok mine is nothing like that, even in "normal" viewing mode. I have a pic but am not sure about how to upload.
I'll have a scooch about and see if I can find out how.





There ye go - no pink box at all!

So can someone tell me why only the chosen few get to see the pink box?? It doesn't appear for me whatever verson of MSE I view it in. Must be others who don't see it too and assume if it's not made noticable (eg big banner across the top of the screen or big flashy colours) it's not important.

poppy10_2

MrsBartolozzi wrote: »

So can someone tell me why only the chosen few get to see the pink box??

I don't think the color of the box is the main issue here. You're the only person that has posted about it not being pink, and it's most likely a browser issue on your end. Let me guess, you're using Internet Explorer?

jamesd

furndire, Martin and I think the rest of the team clearly do care. Martin in particular is obviously passionate about this place because he just wouldn't be putting in the time he does if he wasn't passionate about it. He's also modified decisions in the past when presented with arguments that he found persuasive. No telling whether or to what extent that might happen in this case, but if you're like to persuade Dan and Martin, best to to find good arguments that they can try to address or consider whether they should accept the potential issue if they go ahead, or not.

jamesd

furndire, for example, you might have thought of something I didn't write about initially: is it appropriate to change links that were written in the past, when the poster wouldn't have known that their links would be changed, and therefore can't have given any knowing consent for that to happen when they wrote their post?

Poppycat

works fine for me in firefox and IE 8

poppy10 wrote: »

I don't think the color of the box is the main issue here. You're the only person that has posted about it not being pink, and it's most likely a browser issue on your end. Let me guess, you're using Internet Explorer?

MrsBartolozzi

poppy10 wrote: »

I don't think the color of the box is the main issue here. You're the only person that has posted about it not being pink, and it's most likely a browser issue on your end. Let me guess, you're using Internet Explorer?

Nope, Firefox. And it's the same in IE.