Man, the lack of knowledge on how to properly post links on DU really gets under my skin, sorry ...

[mr_lebowski]

Respected Friends ... if you're posting a link, and there's a ? mark character it it ... then the ? mark, and everything to the right of it ... is totally extraneous, and should be removed before posting the link.

Unless, you REALLY want the outlet from which you copied the link to get $$$ for everyone following the link from DU.

Apologies to the member who just posted this, no offense, cause almost everyone does this.

Compare these two links:
https://www.nj.com/politics/2019/01/a-republican-nj-lawmaker-just-switched-parties-heres-why-shes-now-a-democrat.html?utm_campaign=njdotcom_sf&utm_content=nj_twitter_njdotcom&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

https://www.nj.com/politics/2019/01/a-republican-nj-lawmaker-just-switched-parties-heres-why-shes-now-a-democrat.html

Note that both of these links 'work' exactly the same (although your address bar shows different info when you reach the site). However, the FORMER ... makes money for Twitter when we use it here on DU. The latter ... does not.

I'm not saying Twitter gets paid instead of DU, cause in fact it doesn't look like DU makes any attempt to get paid for click-thru's from what I can tell, but there's really no need for Twitter to get paid, is there?

This also applies in cases where you post JPG/PNG/GIF files, or Youtube videos, or whatever. In those cases you get a bunch of crap characters showing up after the picture or video on DU, and it just looks ugly, and adds nothing.

Everything that's in a link, from the question mark to the right of it ... if there is a ?, is EXTRANEOUS, and should be removed IMHO, when posting links. That is information coming from (wherever you copied it from) ... trying to get paid when their links are shared.

Also, for the Love of Dog, if your link says 'Google' in it ... you're almost surely doing it way wrong.

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	Am I just totally annoyingly anal, or
	6 (60%)
	Does this bug at least some other people?
	4 (40%)
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[msongs]

1. ppl who own twitter stock might frizz out but the rest of us thank you lol nt

[Hoyt]

2. What looks ugly to me is a link from Twitter that has 2, 3, or even more of the same tweet.

What’s up with that?

[mr_lebowski]

8. My guess on that one is a bug in the DU software, not something that the poster of the link has

any control over.

It is pretty annoying, agreed.

[Hoyt]

9. Thanks. I wondered what caused it.

[Princess Turandot]

12. That happens when someone posts the links to *replies* to an original tweet..

Below is an original tweet, followed by the links to two individual replies. Twitter doesn't have a feature that copies an entire thread sequentially. I assume that's because some tweets generate thousands of replies.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[Hoyt]

15. Yes that's it. Thanks. Seeing losers like that once, is more than enough.

[Midnightwalk]

3. Learned something new

I've noticed short vs long versions of equivalent links. Didn't know everything after the ? could be stripped.

[mr_lebowski]

6. Yay :)

There actually are SOME cases where what's after the question mark COULD be useful, if DU's software worked differently. It's not ALWAYS a 'bad thing', but our software here doesn't leverage it ... in those useful cases.

For example, if I try to share a Youtube vid, forwarded to the 193 second mark ... a "?t=193" is appended to the URL created by Youtube, which denotes to the Youtube server to 'start at 193 seconds', but the DU software will not support it, and will instead show the "?t=193" mark (which denotes a list of 'parameters' being passed the web server, in case you're interested ) as text, but does not 'pass it' to YouTube when you (as a DU user) click the video.

Which is why, if you click the below video, it will start at the beginning, instead of at 193 seconds ... like I was hoping when I created the link. And IS what would happen if you copy/pasted the actual link I pasted below ... into your address bar. That "?t=193" there ... is extraneous, rather than 'useful', due to how DU works.

?t=193

[Midnightwalk]

10. Dumb question

First thanks for the lesson. Everything after the ? are parms and for YouTube t=n means start at n seconds.

If DU doesn't pass the parms for the t=193 case, does it also not pass them for the case in your post with the twitter reference? Still good to learn how to trim a link.

[mr_lebowski]

11. Logical question ... Youtube is apparently a 'special case' to the DU software ...

You can see however by clicking the first link (sj.com) above that the 'parameters' are passed to the server in that case (hence the content of the address bar when you arrive at the newspaper site), and that is most definitely *normally* 'the case' with DU ... except in what I believe are 'custom-handled' URL's ... like those that point at Youtube in it's various formations.

Very logical question though

[lunatica]

4. I know that only because I know simple html markup.

But not everyone does, so good luck with this. I would do something I could control, such as deal with my own frustration.

I know what you mean though.

[LakeSuperiorView]

5. That's just, like, your opinion, man.

[mr_lebowski]

7. Jesus ... (nt)

[obamanut2012]

13. lolololol

[fleur-de-lisa]

22. LOL!

[Recursion]

14. Also the "utm" stuff is Facebook

And, yeah, I always try to strip the tracking links.

[WeekiWater]

16. Thank you for this.

I appreciate it.

[912gdm]

17. thanks for the lesson

I had no idea I could leave the extra crap out...

[Autumn]

18. Thanks for this tip. I've noticed lately that when I post a video it does that.

I didn't remember it happening previously and just thought it was a new software thing or something my chrome book that replaced my Toshiba was doing .

[DontBooVote]

19. Look at all those votes for annoying. SMH.

[seaglass]

20. Catch more flies with honey? The message was actually helpful, the headline was not - so maybe

that's why people chose annoying.

[mr_lebowski]

21. I am perfectly willing to accept the assessment that I'm being annoying anal :)

My being bugged was what spurred me to post, just being honest ...

[jpljr77]

23. Those URL strings don't "pay" Twitter. It's tracking code the publication uses.

In this particular case, the folks at NJ.com are using Google's UTM tracking code to determine where their traffic is coming from. It's a 100% certainty that they posted this story themselves on Twitter, in their free account, and they are trying to see how effective that was (vs. Facebook vs. Instagram vs. clicking from their home page vs. emails, etc.).

And it should be noted: The publication creates this code, not Twitter.

Twitter does have paid placements, of course, but that would almost always be noted in the Campaign field of the tracking code. This campaign, "njdotcom," is probably just their marker for everyday news posts (after all, ALL media outlets post articles to Twitter on a daily basis).

Now, copying that URL as is and posting it somewhere else, like Democratic Underground, WILL skew the numbers for the NJ.com marketing team. It will appear as if more traffic is coming from Twitter because each time someone from DU clicks it, it will count the same way.

But in this case, and in most cases involving media sites, there is no money being exchanged. They're just trying to track where their readers are.

[mr_lebowski]

24. This is true, and yes, I posted a simplified explanation of the situation

In order to determine whether or not someone like twitter is ACTUALLY going to get paid requires a level of sophistication that I didn't feel like getting into for the purpose of this post.

At a minimum, by posting the link with everything after the question mark, you are often going to be skewing the numbers that the publication receives and tracks, and with many outfits, this a very important statistic to them. It can lead to business decisions being made, such as to LATER pay for placement on Twitter ... because they believe it's more effective than it really is. You're giving the news outfit inaccurate data, essentially.

And you MAY, unless you really understand how to read what comes after the ? mark, be contributing to them getting paid, when they don't actually deserve it.

Fair enough?