Ask YC: Links in submission text? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Links in submission text?

23 pointsbprater16 comments

What do you guys think about having linkable text when folks ask questions?

When people ask about their start-up, we are stuck with doing a copy-and-paste to view the site.

I don't see a downside to this, if the submission is spam, it won't rank high for long.

http://www.make-me-linkable.com/

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Why not just make the link rel="nofollow" until it reaches a certain threshold of points and or comments?

I really like this idea for links in general.

My only hesitation is that someone might see it as a reason to create false accounts to game upvoting. Maybe a certain threshold of upvotes by users with high karma is what it takes to remove nofollow from an auto-link?

I think the idea is to discourage using self-posts to preface links with your own commentary rather than just posting a direct link.

Yes. This used to be a big problem.

Linkification for Firefox works wonders. Get the 1.3.4 Beta at the bottom of the page for FF3:

http://yellow5.us/firefox/linkification

I'd rather not have to install a plugin to compensate for the lack of a feature in a website.

Why should Firefox support plug-ins at all, if not to compensate for a lack of features? Why should Emacs support scripting, if not to compensate for a lack of features?

The point is that we enjoy FF plug-ins and Emacs scripts because they allow us to customize these "featureless" products to our individual needs. Similarly, I welcome plug-ins like Linkification and Scriptmonkey because they allow me to customize websites to my individual needs.

I would be surprised if this were the only website that you would find the Linkification plug-in useful for!

FF plugins are great. So are websites with basic features built into them, such as the "hyperlink."

I don't know if there is anything more fundamental to making the internet a "net" than the links connecting all the pages.

How about installing a plugin to compensate for the lack of a feature on several disconnected websites all around the world? You can't really convince every single page out there to auto-link, but I'm sure you will come across a plaintext URL now and again.

I like how Safari handles it. Select the text, right-click, and select "Go to Address". I believe this works on any text in any Cocoa app as well. EDIT: I now see that Safari's behavior was mentioned in another thread before I posted.

I think it is a good idea. I am always having to copy-paste and presumable the code is done since comment links are clickable. http://i-am-clickable.com/

If you're a Safari user, select the text of the link and Ctrl+Click to select "Go To Address".

Wow, that's amazing; never knew of that feature before. Thanks.

Nice to know someone was thinking about this problem at WebKit. Does Firefox do anything similar?

Wow, control click on something in firefox and it seems to highlight the containing box (div perhaps).

In fact, if you're a mac user, there's a Service that will open a highlighted URL in your default browser. Combine that with they keyboard shortcut tool in System Preferences, and you can make a hotkey to open any highlighted link.

No way, try rocking a plugin like "text/link" to open these.

Just pretend you're in emacs-- C-c C-t C-v enter.

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