RWO site issues, disruptions, suggestions, announcements

[liz]

That one has been reinstated. It was never a suspect. I was just trying to play around with the page breaks by (temporarily) deleting a few posts. It did change the page breaks (and hence the page that wasn't working) but didn't help me identify the culprit post. I've replaced everything now that I either removed completely out of the thread, or soft deleted within the thread.

I guess it will forever remain a mystery the nature of the post that had the effect it did.

[bloodspirit]

I've posted a link in the 2019 drafting thread that seems to have stuffed it up. Sorry. Didn't anticipate that.

[Blood Fever]

I've posted a link in the 2019 drafting thread that seems to have stuffed it up. Sorry. Didn't anticipate that.

You probably know this, but I can't seem to able to post on the covid19 thread on the footy chat. a post, or link, from boddo seems to have caused a blockage Thx.

[neilfws]

I've noticed recently when pasting URLs from the ABC website that the link text displays as "iview", and the rest of the page after that link doesn't display properly.

One solution is to edit your post like this:

- copy and paste the story title from the ABC page
- select the title words in your post and click the "Link" button (the globe + chain link icon)
- copy the ABC page URL and paste it in, click "OK"

Or if you know how to edit the code for a link plus its text manually, do it that way. So long as link text is added, rather than just pasting the URL.

[Aaron]

I've noticed recently when pasting URLs from the ABC website that the link text displays as "iview", and the rest of the page after that link doesn't display properly.

From my Desktop, I cannot read any new posts of the "2020 trading, drafting and list management: players and personnel " thread after post #787 from BloodSpirit (9:34am 5 Aug ) that has a iview link. I can though see these missing NEW posts on my phone via Tapatalk.

[Thunder Shaker]

From my Desktop, I cannot read any new posts of the "2020 trading, drafting and list management: players and personnel " thread after post #787 from BloodSpirit (9:34am 5 Aug ) that has a iview link. I can though see these missing NEW posts on my phone via Tapatalk.

There's malformed HTML immediately after that link that's stopping the rest of the page from displaying. There is a spurious "[/title]" tag that's likely to be causing the issue. Apparently, it's meant to be paired with another "[title]" tag further down but they've been switched and it's confusing the browsers. (Replace the [] with greater/less than).

Also, the forum doesn't sanitise raw HTML tags. This is a problem.

[Ludwig]

Why do some links always screw up the thread?. iview links seem to one culprit, but there are others. Do we know why this happens? If we can't fix this, can we have an alert to RWO members listing the kind of links that shouldn't be made?

[Ludwig]

As a follow up to my previous post:

Post numbers 177 to 180 are missing from the thread Round 13: Dockers v Swans.

[Thunder Shaker]

If you find you have posted a link that has mucked up the display of the thread (such as the notorious iview links), there are two solutions:

Prevention: The problem can be avoided by creating the links manually using url tags. Copy the link from the top of the browser window and paste it into a url tag.

Editing the post: The edit button isn't visible, but the post can still be edited. Accessing the editpost script directly and pasting the global post number into the script will run the script normally and the post can be edited to remove the problematic html. The global post number can be found in the URL in the top right corner (it is different to the displayed number which is the post's index in the thread). For example, Ludwig's post above mine has thread index "#54" but the global post number is "800865".

This is a trick that moderators can use to repair the forum. Individual posters can edit their own posts for a limited time.

[neilfws]

I've noticed recently when pasting URLs from the ABC website that the link text displays as "iview", and the rest of the page after that link doesn't display properly.

Just here to point out that the "Round 16: other games" thread has been broken by a rogue iview URL, and that the solution is in my quoted post

[Markwebbos]

Hi Mods, I think there is a bug in the URL creation thingy for ABC urls it always seems to create something that displays as "iview" and always messes up the thread. It's happened to me on 4 or 5 occasions.

I'll try and use a URL tag instead and hopefully that works.

[Ludwig]

I had part of a quote from an AFL website article deleted with the following reason:

Last edited by liz; Yesterday at 09:09 AM. Reason: Please don't past extensive quotes from other sites, and please provide a link to original article (link added)

I agree that I should have provided a link instead of an attribution without a direct link, although reference to the AFL website would seem sufficient.

I cut and pasted a section pertaining to the Swans from an article that discussed all 18 teams. I didn't think that 1/18 th of an article would constitute 'extensive'. so maybe you can clarify this point.

I am not sure why this rule should apply to articles appearing on the AFL website, since the AFL is not primarily in the News or Publishing businesses and it's not clear if copyright rules apply to articles published on their website, especially if there is attribution. I think information published on the AFL website might be in the public domain. Could you kindly check on this?

[bloodspirit]

Hi Ludwig

I agree with you that copying 1/18th of an article seems reasonable and unlikely to run into trouble but I also think it's fair enough that we defer to the mods guidelines around this because they are responsible for running the site, and they are taking that responsibility on themselves.

From a copyright point of view, I think what you may mean by 'public domain' is where copyright works fall into the public commons either because copyright has lapsed, or because the copyright owner has expressly relinquished their rights and given permission for all to use their work. That most certainly does not apply to anything on afl.com.au. I don't think it even applies to our posts on RWO (in which we, as the authors, retain copyright). We are legally able to copy each other's posts only because of an implied licence to do so.

An important exception to copyright, are the fair dealing exceptions, most pertinently the right to copy a reasonable portion of a copyright work for the purposes of criticism and review. So, there would be less tolerance for simply copying and reposting content if there is no commentary or analysis of the copied work.

Cheer, cheer!

bloodspirit

[liz]

The purpose of providing a link to where an article is published is so that people can click on that link and go to the originating site to read the article. If you reproduce the entire section that is of interest to (most) Swans fans, there is no reason for them to click through to the original publication. I view an article like that as 18 separate sub-articles (of which you reproduced 100% of one) rather than a single, long article. Certainly I had little interest in reading the equivalent information for 17 other clubs.

I don't follow your suggestion that the AFL is somehow different from any other organisation that employs journalists to write and publish stories for the purpose of generating traffic through their site.

Many years ago - sometime in the mid 2000s I believe - I was one of a delegation of three or four people from the admin/moderator team who visited the Swans' offices in response to a "summons". We were told that certain media outlets (of which the only one I can remember as being named was the AFL site) was unhappy that people were cut and pasting material from their sites on RWO and that they might think about taking legal action against the site if it continued. From that point, we clarified the protocols regarding cutting and pasting - the rules we now have and enforce. This site - with just the bare financial resources to support the hosting and software - has neither the resources or the interest in responding to even a threat of legal action.

Putting aside legal or commercial considerations, I also think it is basic courtesy that people are encouraged to go to a site where material is originally published so they can read it in the correct context. That's not a major issue with an article like this one from the AFL site, but would apply to, say, material copied from another discussion forum or BTL comments from a mainstream media site. I became aware not so long ago (maybe last off-season) that someone had reproduced some training reports over on BigFooty that had been posted here. In that case, neither RWO or (more importantly) the original author had been credited. I considered that the height of bad manners but had little control over what was done on another site. [I don't view RWO as "owning" material posted here, given we are not a commercial site. That ownership remains with whoever generated the material, and they are free to go an post their own material on as many other sites as they wish.] However, if anyone did the same in reverse (ie pasted on RWO BF material written by other people), that wouldn't be considered appropriate (even with appropriate credit given to the author). Taking posts out of context of the discussion that they were contributed to is unfair to the author.

[Nico]

I have a friend trying to register. He puts in all the details required but when he hits Register it comes up invalid user name or password.