Hyperlinks to videos

[Uraniun235]

Hardass With Chris Matthews

Is it too fucking difficult to warn people your link goes to a video? With a craptacular load and ad bullshit in front of it? We warn people about PDF's and the like, why not videos and ads? Not everyone is running a brand new machine that handles that stuff well.

Question for discussion: should people include warnings when posting links to sites with flash content and streaming videos?

[General Zod]

For fuck's sake, yes. Video links aren't always going to be obvious just from the URL, and if I'm at work or on a mobile device I don't want to waste bandwidth clicking on a link that doesn't include a warning if it's a video.

[Coyote]

Probably a good idea. We still have people on coal-fired computers.

[Edi]

Probably a good idea. We still have people on coal-fired computers.

Doesn't need to be coal-fired. I have a decent computer at work, but since I'm running twenty different applications and systems on it, many of them serious memory hogs, I don't need the additional irritation. I've always liked links better, since then I can decide whether or not I want to take a look. With embedded, there is no choice. Embedded is fine in AMP, not so much in generic subforums.

And like PDF links, video links should come with a warning.

[Broomstick]

So... basically anything other than plain text or link to text should have a tag? Like...

http://www.HereIsAFakeLinkForExample.com [vid]

or Don't click on this it's not a real link [PDF]

Hadn't thought of the consequences on a mobile device (don't own one!) but yeah, bandwidth issues there, too.

I sure would appreciate that. Sometimes I'm willing to wait out a download, other times I'm not. Would be nice to know what I'm getting into BEFORE I click, especially if it wouldn't be obvious from the url.

[Stark]

We're already supposed to use meaningful, dressed links. It really isn't much to expect people to type 'video' instead of 'link'.

[Broomstick]

Would that be like this, then?

link to text

link to video

link to YouTube

link to PDF

(And no, none of those is a real link, they're just examples I made up)

[Stark]

Yeah. I mean, if someone is going to just drop 'link' down with a url behind it (as is often the case) they can say 'link to video' or just 'video' instead. It's not a big deal, but it makes the odds of auto-playing stupid anime music videos at work much lower.

[General Zod]

I don't think the specifics matter much as long as it's clearly designated as being something that can hog bandwidth. 99% of the time URLs are pretty self explanatory and don't need it, but when they're not I think a quick mention of videos or whatever should be there somewhere.

[Uraniun235]

We're already supposed to use meaningful, dressed links.

Really? Because I remember Darth Wong specifically stating that thanks to the board upgrade auto-shortening really long URLs, we were no longer required to dress links.

That said a brief "(links to video)" is pretty easy to include.

[Lord Revan]

while my PC isn't really an old one (well it's 4 or so years old but still), a simple warning for vids could be nice and I'm sure there's people with worse setups then mine.

[RedImperator]

We're already supposed to use meaningful, dressed links.

Really? Because I remember Darth Wong specifically stating that thanks to the board upgrade auto-shortening really long URLs, we were no longer required to dress links.

That said a brief "(links to video)" is pretty easy to include.

If I had my way, dressing links would still be required because long strings of random characters look like shit.