The LJ FAIL roundup.

[maetang]

So at the moment it looks like this latest round of LJ FAIL includes...

THE BUGS

These are bugs, rather than purposeful FAIL.

A bug whereby "/" in tags isn't working. This is an actual bug, and should be fixed. For now, you can manually correct the URL when you select any tags with a "/" in them, and it will still work. It's laborious, but can

Comments

[cleolinda]

Others are saying they got pingbacks from F-locked posts.

I would just like to confirm that this has happened with my pingbacks at least four times since they turned it back on, because I got curious and started clicking to see what people were saying in entries where they linked to me. Four different times, at least, it took me to locked entries.

Also, I've been getting variable amounts of text quoted back at me--but far more than I would have expected almost every time. Like, the pingback I got on this one--you would expect that it would quote the sentence in which you linked to me. The first few pingbacks, that's all it sent me. Then they started to get longer. Here's how much of this entry it actually sent me:

A bug whereby "/" in tags isn't working. This is an actual bug, and should be fixed. For now, you can manually correct the URL when you select any tags with a "/" in them, and it will still work. It's labourious, but can be done

[maetang]

I would just like to confirm that this has happened with my pingbacks at least four times since they turned it back on, because I got curious and started clicking to see what people were saying in entries where they linked to me. Four different times, at least, it took me to locked entries.

How odd and creepy!

What if this had been a locked entry about something personal or upsetting, and then at the end, you'd changed topics and said, "But cleolinda's [whatever: link] cheered me up"? It would have sent me entire paragraphs of things that had nothing to do with that link, that you very likely would not have wanted me to see.

And yeah, that makes no sense! If they were going to quote text, why not do what other pingback services I've seen elsewhere do, and just quote one or two lines around the actual link. That would surely give the most relevant context.

[cleolinda]

Hey, would you mind if I linked/quoted all this business? I'd like to show people exactly how much of your entry it sent to me.

[maetang]

Sure. Go ahead, and thanks for asking!

Non-Friends won't be able to comment here at the moment, because I've reluctantly F-locked comments on my journal for now, hopefully until LJ sorts everything out. But I'm happy for you to link and quote from here, especially if it helps other people get a sense of what's happening, and what the pingbacks look like in action.

[cleolinda]

Yeah, that's fine--thanks. I was just appalled by how much it quoted back at me, and I think it would help people to see just how much.

[maetang]

Yeah. The pingbacks FAQ says "a brief quote from the text where your entry is linked", but that, that was NOT a brief quote!

People should know what's really going to happen, so they can decide if they want to use pingbacks or not. I can see that it may be a really handy feature for a lot of users - but not if the way it's implemented contradicts the way it's actually supposed to work.

[maetang]

BTW, what may also be confusing and even more shady about this is that I have pingbacks disabled. I disabled them yesterday. You've had them enabled, so you could see that pingback from my post here. However, the FAQ says:

"The pingback system is mutual; when you choose to receive pingbacks, you are also choosing to send pingbacks to others when you link to their content."

But if I have pingbacks disabled, how come I'm apparently also sending them out to you?!

It's just not right.