Quick Procedural Note re: Comments and Embeds
Posted on October 15, 2014 Posted by John Scalzi 20 Comments
Recently WordPress changed something on the backend relating to how comments are handled (not just here, but globally) and as a result urls for images now embed in comments. Well, I’m not a fan of that; images have the potential to send things off the rails pretty quickly. I’m talking to WordPress about pulling it from the site (they’ve been very helpful), but in the meantime I’m taking the precaution of sending comments with image urls into moderation. If you post one, it’ll get held up until I approve it. I don’t imagine this will be a problem for the vast majority of you.
Mind you, if you try to post an image that annoys me, it won’t make it out of moderation, and if you keep it up, you’ll find yourself in moderation. But, again, I don’t really expect this will be an issue with most of you. Most of you are lovely people.
http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/AG00526_1.gif – “The Images are coming! The Images are coming!” – sorry, had to try.
I’m okay that you did, because I needed to test it anyway.
That said, folks, please don’t start posting random images. I have a busy day.
John, are you now moderating though dozens of image embeds from failure-mode-of-clever folks (including myself)? Apologies.
I hope WordPress makes sure the image stays the same after moderation. 15 years ago we had a similar problem and some smart *censored* tried to pull a stunt on us by replacing the image behind the URL after it was approved.
John, how does one change it so comments with images get moderated? I have a free WP site. Thanks!
I just love the phrase “find yourself in moderation”. I am picturing gurus and hippies with little parking meters embedded within them…
*CLICK* Awww guess I need to return to pragmatism dudes, I’m done finding myself for now.
Conspiracy alert. A few days after your post complementing WordPress this happens? I sense a sinister plot unfolding.
@Martin : “I hope WordPress makes sure the image stays the same after moderation.”
I don’t think they can, unless the image is downloaded to and then hosted by WordPress/the blog’s owner’s server. If it’s a link that goes to another site, then… that’s the other site’s control.
@A.Beth: I know, but there a several tricks to check that. You cannot prevent from changing the image but you can kill the comment then or put it up for re-moderation.
Because pictures.
http://38.media.tumblr.com/10eacbfb07167edcb12ef43508b94fa4/tumblr_n9g5bsk8DT1s818xzo1_1280.jpg
Well that explains why when I put in a link to a cartoon image, the image appeared in the thread. Sorry about that.
If you don’t want the image to appear, you could insert spaces into the URL so that people who really want to see it can find it, but it won’t rudely intrude.
WordPress auto embeds too many things in the comments. I wish they would give blog owners the ability to turn it off.
I wondered how that YouTube video got embedded the other day. Almost asked the commenter how they did it.
This raised a few eyebrows at We Hunted the Mammoth, too: David always had it set so images could only post as links there, because of trolls’ nasty habits. Now that WP’s changed things, the images embed (or sometimes don’t, randomly). But with mods on there now, we should be able to cover it if any trolls try that.
It’s still possible to post pics as links with the a/href code thingy.
Somewhat related: just curious if you (Mr Scalzi) will be releasing comments from the Mike Allen Big Idea from last week.
More PizzaGate! Churros’ PizzaCat is CLEARLY intended to distract us from the fact that the rabbit is SMOKING! Moderator! Moderator! QUICK!
Why in hell did they think THAT was a good idea???
My apologies. I fully expected my copy/paste to show up as an ugly url in the comment.
wow, even an
a href=”url” (link)
goes into moderation?
It shouldn’t embed the image, it should just provide a link to click on that takes the user to the image. Weird.