Unless there isn't any problem I haven't thought about...

Should it be possibly to have all Internet links presented in posts to be live links? I don't know what is possible or not when it comes to formatting things within the board but I would like to have the links live but not underlined and they should open in a new window. It seems kinda oldfashioned having to copy and paste them.

imho

It's simply for our protection Unicorn. When the next bout of MS Betas are released a whole lot of links are going to be posted, each time someone clicks one of those links it will send a refer to the link target giving B1 as it's origin- we'd rather that didnt happen :)

Attention Peeps!

Please remember the board rules. One of those being...

Ummmmmm care to elaborate on the point you are making?

What would be the benifit of having live links

[ps - Take out the abilty to click on something cause 2 seconds out of a person's tim to not be lazy is all good since B-1's Security is worth it ]

I could buy your arguments if only I knew what we are supposed to be protecting ourselves against. I don't want to became a pain here, but I don't get you. We are listed at Macrosoft's as a good place to come and get support, we are a legal spot and we should be proud of any refer.

Wow that's a solid point. I almost forgot that. I guess the rest of the crew too. :)

Microsoft has listed us as in Windows XP Related Communities:http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/e...latedsites.asp

BetaONE is described as "A forum dedicated to PC support and beta software news". Therefore I strongly believe that they are aware of the fact that we are dealing with Betas. Furthermore we do not share Betas links at least.
ieXbeta.com is also listed over there with the following description even though they share Microsoft Betas links in public: "Independent community site dedicated to Microsoft betas for the PC platform."

Considering these facts I am still not clear how live links are a security threat for us. :unsure:

Let me explain. The way I see it, in the majority of cases there is no problem whatsoever with live links. It lets people we link to know their visitors are coming from betaone, and that generates an extra bit of publicity.

Of course our rules prohibit posting links to illegal material, so it can be argued that there is no need to hide our refferer. However, since we are a board dealing with beta software, our members may occassionally post links to free pre-release software. Whilst this is unlikely to get us into trouble, and if a software developer prefers us not to disclose information about their betas, we will respect it, it is often better if links like these posted by individual members do not appear in the name of betaone. If people find out that their beta software is being downloaded by too many unknown people, there is a risk that their download will be pulled, as has happened in the past.

Personally I think we should implement an extra tag, similar to [url] but which shows the links as live links. As this will be opt-in, people will not post live links mistakenly, yet it still allows people who refer us to their webpage, etc, to know where their visitors are coming from. We are still discussing our options amongst ourselves in the crew, and will certainly get back to you.

Thank you for responding and giving it a thought.

DS is right to you know, and if there are any real concerns I can live without live links, as I have done for years now.

And I'm not lazy... Lol, but everything you are forced to do and that isn't necessary is bad. (2 seconds? I'm faster than that)