Hello MNHQ - a question about automatic links please?

[rhondajean]

Seems that quite a few of us are now having names of online shops come up as automatic links.

Eg(and fingers crossed these work!

Argos
Next
Marks and spencers
Wilkes
Toys r us

Can you confirm if this is a new addition to MN or are we all infected with something nasty?

Thankoo!

Took ages 'swell.

nice try Chaos

Argos
Argos

Argos.
Argos.

Argos.

Oh, I thought it might be the full stop!

Looks like it's the multiples then.

How annoying, Chaos!!

Who is jim laurence??

I didn't think malware because I'm on linux!

Justine, I agree with others that this appears to imply endorsement of certain brands. Whether that's good or bad is up to other users.

Does it prevent itself from linking if you're being libellous, like saying that Argos is a smelly shop full of cheap tat for the hard of thinking?

Apparently not. Not so clever, then....

Can you imagine the inappropriateness of this on the old Cunting Sainsburys thread

I don't mind it, being an income generator and all, plus I can't see it on the mobile version, and that's where I do most my mnetting.

Sainsbos it is from now on then

LoveHoney

Greggs

Clearly yes to pervy stuff
No to sausage rolls

AdBlock means I don't see the links, but I don't think they are a well thought out idea, since there was recently some sort of virus or trojan that was doing the same thing. You can find threads about it in Site Stuff, I'm sure.

I don't agree that it implies endorsement, though.

Also, how bad are things that Justine is up at midnight!!!

Oh interesting. I am on my phone and some of those are links, others not.

I feel like it implies endorsement too, really not keen.

That's odd, I too see some of the links and not others (which I infer that others see as links)

MN must be pretty short of money to be doing something so intrusive. All the product-placement threads in Talk already make the site look tawdry, but at least they are in one place. Now Talk as a whole is a peg for built-in adverts. It looks a bit desperate.

I remember when HQ did something similar years ago, so that all sorts of words were auto-formatted as commercial links, with a green font and a double underline, but that was in the days when they didn't have loads of other more subtle offerings for advertisers. Seems surprising that they should have to do this now.

Making our links be affiliate links so you get some dosh - great.

Linking things that people did not intend to be links - not so great.

What if I'm talking about Argos in the context of Ancient Greek History? Or my great-grandfather who was called John Lewis and died in WWI?

My concern is that you cannot distinguish between links that are put there by MNers, and links that are put there by the affiliate programme. Could they be formatted differently?

That's true, Itsallgoingtobefine. I don't think it looks like MN is endorsing the linked-to places, but in plenty of cases it will look as if the poster whose text has been colonized is actually encouraging you to visit the shop's site, so it will seem that she is endorsing.

It tends to look terrible when they're formatted differently though.

I don't mind it for business names. Not keen on the iphone-linking-to-ebay thing. Especially since I would never recommend anybody buy an iphone on ebay, I work in a second hand phone shop and have heard loads of horror stories.

Btw when I referred to performance I didn't particularly mean speed. I meant in terms of reliability, which is extremely poor on MN.

It's interesting that MN didn't consult on the change before it happened. Have you ever thought about having a user group?

Boden
Morrisons
Fat Face
FatFace
Great Little Trading Company
GLTC

CBeebies
Nickelodeon
BBC
Waitrose
Very

I don't think it's fair to use a website like MN for free then complain when they do something pretty innocuous like this to raise revenue. They have to pay the bills somehow.