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Why could someone approve this suggestion: http://stackoverflow.com/suggested-edits/317071 ???

I always expand shortened links in questions/answers. Did I get something wrong and posting shortened links is no more frowned upon but something you should do???

Btw lapidate me if I'm wrong, but I rollbacked the edit.

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4  
I was in the process of improving it when it was approved. I put the "no url shorteners" link in there: meta.stackexchange.com/q/99136/172756 –  ThinkingStiff Jul 14 '12 at 23:08
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It's obviously people just not paying attention. The modified version isn't even linkified... Oh the times you wish you could retract the reputation gained from terrible, terrible edits. –  animuson Jul 14 '12 at 23:38
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I was improving that suggested edit at the time that someone rolled back, so you're the one who forced me to refresh the page! +1 well done :) Actually had to make two refreshes, since another edit only concerning the URL was made before I could provide a more elaborated improvement. In my humble opinion, edits should consider everything related to the question and not only the "wrong" that stands out. –  Zuul Jul 15 '12 at 2:42
    
In this case, I'd even remove the link altogether. Such links either indicate a question that is "too localized", or at best go dead in a short time and then just add noise to the question. The description should suffice, I feel. –  Arjan Jul 15 '12 at 7:05
    
As an aside, if the URL would be hard to parse (like if the server would refuse a proper encoded URL, while Markdown would fail to handle the original URL), then shorteners are sort of okay as a last resort. –  Arjan Jul 15 '12 at 7:08
    
@Arjan all URLs that don't contain a linebreak (what is not allowed by the RFC) can be put by the [1]: http://example.com notation, which is rendered by the add-link button. –  Kay Jul 16 '12 at 19:41

2 Answers 2

up vote 17 down vote accepted

URL shorteners are still frowned upon. That's just a bad edit (the shortened URL isn't even a link) and shouldn't have been approved. The new edits that replace the bare URL with linked text are what the suggested edit should have been. You were right to either roll it back or improve upon it.

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I know this may be a shock, but... not everyone follows MSO policies. We can say all we want that we frown on link shortening, but some people don't read MSO at all. Others don't agree with this particular policy decided here and will continue doing whatever they want.

All it takes is three people such people for this kind of thing to get through. So it's not exactly a surprise.

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They may not read Meta, but they sure as hell could have at least glimpsed at what they were approving –  random Jul 15 '12 at 1:58
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Simulating mind of a person who don't read Meta: Read. See a big ugly link turned into a short link. Looks good. Approve. –  nhahtdh Jul 15 '12 at 2:52

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