Autolinking

[winjim]

Is there some sort of autolinking software at work? I've noticed some suspicious looking links to Halfords and mudguards.

 

[winjim]

Aha! There is! Halfords!

 

[winjim]

Maybe it's the punctuation that's making it go funny. I wonder if mudguards works.

 

[winjim]

Halfords Halfords Halfords.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

its malfunctioning at the moment - it should only be non-members that see it. We are aware of it and it has been reported, we await a fix.
Sorry, it is annoying us as much as it is annoying you, I promise!

 

[Markymark]

I think it's becuase @Shaun likes iPhones, Halfords and mankinis

 

[Shaun]

... and mankinis

Cracking offer if you get the face mask too :

The random linking has now been fixed.

 

[jefmcg]

it should only be non-members that see it.

I'm seeing autolinks. Is this a bug resurfacing, or has the policy changed?

Either way, can I request that we make autolinks a different colour from "curated" links? Several times today I have clicked a link that I thought would have taken me to the item being mentioned, but instead took me to the home page of a commercial site. I think this is devaluing the contributions of posters - who from the point of view of autolinks are your content providers - to make it look like they have provided links but in fact it is the site that has done it. People might become wary of clicking any links if they start to find they are not adding information. I assume if I insert a link to a particular sale item on Halfords site, cyclechat adds an affiliate tag to that link

 

[Pat "5mph"]

Yes, better have different colour for the autolinks, me is getting confused

 

[Shaun]

I recently added some additional automated links to popular merchants that everyone uses. The links lead directly to the homepage of that retailer and earn CycleChat a small commission if they result in a sale.

There was only supposed to be 1 added in total per page but due to my misunderstanding how the settings worked there were many more being added, and if a lot of different merchants were mentioned on a page it resulted in a flood of links, making the page much more link-heavy than intended and quite likely off-putting as a result.

I've fixed this and also modified the formatting so that the auto-generated links are underlined the same as the commission links so that members and moderators alike can differentiate between them.

Cheers,
Shaun