As much as I love MT, I’m annoyed by one of the new features of it. I hate that it hides the URL’s of the people that leave comments. When I surf, I use the status bar a lot – so I’m always mousing over names in other people’s comments to see if I have been to a site before or if it’s something I haven’t seen. The latest and greatest MT foils that system of mine. Instead, I get a cryptic link that includes the site I am visiting followed by other information – I actually have to follow the link to see the site’s actual address.
Yeah, it sounds trivial – but it’s really slowing my blog surfing down and annoying the heck out of me!
21 replies on “Show Me Where I’m Going…”
I’m finding it annoying as well!
Ditto. Hate it. Makes me wonder if I did something wrong, because I upgraded and my blog doesn’t do that.
Well, you can make the redirect optional with the Optional Redirect plugin; very easy to install. 🙂
Unfortunately, I can’t make it optional on other people’s sites – where it bugs me the most! 😉
Well, I can understand the annoyance, but it’s there for a very good reason. If you remove the direct link, then spammers have *less* reason to abuse weblog comments. (Direct links affect their PageRank on Google, thus giving them plenty of incentive to spam weblogs.) I suppose a simple workaround might be to add a little Javascript to make the original URL appear in the status bar, but some (such as myself) have Javascript status bar messages turned off.
Anyway, it’s an argument that could go either way, I suppose. URL *is* particularly useful when a site has commenters with similar names. 🙂
I have mixed feelings about the redirect. On one hand, it has impacted my random surfing because I also use the status bar before I click to see if I’ve already been to that site. On the other hand, the decrease in direct links means that I no longer show up at Google as the top result when you search for “Brandy”. I didn’t really care for being so easily found by just my first name though I realize that most people looking for just Brandy aren’t looking for me. I probably disappointed them. LOL
I don’t like it either but if it’s helpful, I don’t mind.
it’s a little annoying true, but i find spam more annoying so if this can help that a little then i think i’ll get used to it.
of course, because i’m a control freak i actually took the time to customize that redirect page. seriously, i need better things to do with my time. clearly.
“I can’t make it optional on other people’s sites – where it bugs me the most!” Well, yes, but you could be the trendsetter that shows people just how easy it is to install plugins – think of the glory! And I’m not really disagreeing with ste, but I tend to think that pagerank is beside the point with the most persistent spammers – they do it because they think they can. Besides, if bloggers clean up spam early and often, page rank benefits are nil. But not all bloggers do. That’s why two good friends of mine whose names have been randomly selected by spammers as excellent aliases with which to leave comments find that *real* links to their actual identities via Google come *after* pages of links to porn sites left in fake comments that have been indexed by Google. Delete your spam, bloggers! Whew – I need to go lay down now.
I find it annoying as well, I like to see where I’m going before I click the link.
Same here. I need my hover info! 😉
well, agreed, but I find MT sites that use the cgi comments page much more annoying because the comments come up slowly on many of them. Given that the content is (or can be) regenerated into the static individual archive, there’s really no need to build the comments page via cgi database calls on each request.
I also dislike javascript open for comments pages, especially when it wants to tell me I can’t resize, have a toolbar, scrollbars, statusbar, location, menubar, etc. It’s not worth controlling and it doesn’t work for people who don’t run javascript.
And it breaks links in your comments! If I follow a link on your comments page (if you haven’t got it set to rewrite links to point to a new window), then I’m stuck in your tiny comment window without scrollbars (or whatever set of totally inappropriate properties you set
Comments link should be a plain HTML link to an anchor tag in your individual archives.
I was going to say what Michael said, but he beat me to it. (As usual.)
Whew, I’m glad you cleared this up for me. I didn’t know that’s why the links weren’t showing in the status bar. On the other suggestions/preferences, I like pop-ups. I’d rather have 15 browser windows open, like I do now, than hit back or accidentally close the window because I meant to go back to some one else’s site. I do a lot of Shift+Click. It seems like when I go to a site that has the comments on the individual entry, it never remembers my information and when I use the TAB to get from field to field, the orders are set incorrectly and I end up at the top of the page. It’s the little things that frustrate, eh?
Does anyone know why IE 6 doesn’t default to showing the status bar when you open a new window? I have to manually turn it on too often.
I feel your pain 🙂
It’s been annoying me too.
I know – it annoys me as well. Plus, it doesn’t seem to stop spammers- so i’m not really sure what the point of it is other than to annoy people.
I agree Christine! I don’t know if it will really cut down on the spammer issue, doesn’t MT have a blacklist for that anyway? Maybe you can be too protected. 🙂
I’m a blog greasemonkey.
It makes me want to do a better job explaining how plugins and tweaks and good old information can make blogging better, easier and more fun.
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