Saturday, July 31, 2021

Saturday [5]

1.  One of the oldest dilemmas in blogging

a.  The blogger/reader is looking for creativity, spontaneity, ferreting and exposing, all of that.  People jump in and help with links and it's all good.  It’s for real humans in real time.

b.  The curmudgeon/bureaucrat/admin though is looking for something quite different - security, an even keel, no dramas, keeping the machinery ticking over.  He's the mechanic of the blog and can be blunt if there is a breach, he can be brutal, even rude.

When a blogger is engaging on a topic and he suddenly sees a security breach, he can swiftly revert to [b] in character and that's offputting for a reader who was only just engaging with him as a fellow [a] type. Suddenly, the blogger has turned into one of those detested governmental Hancocks at midnight, a real schizoid bureaucrat.  

That's the essential problem, readers, of being both blogger and site admin.  And yes, we have the third breach now via the same esteemed reader.

The thing I don't like here is it can damage relations which it takes time building up.  Yesterday, I was talking to my techie mate about Torquaymada and this habit of doing what I outline below, poor chap.  

James Higham hugely appreciates Torquaymada and would hate to see anything happen but as my mate pointed out, TQM is probably using a security package which makes him the only N.O. reader who cannot access Blogger's method of loading youtubes.

The puzzle is - why not?  Because his mobile firm states at the foot of the page that it is Chrome compliant as a company and I use Chrome on one of my devices, so it should synchromesh, interface, no?

All right, with my site admin hat on, here’s the issue.  Three times now, our esteemed TQM has left a link which is highly insecure.  The second time I wrote a post on it but it was clearly not understood so I'll do it again.

If one clicks on that Samsung link [no longer up], then this comes up [this is in my browser]:



Apart from the advertising on the left of the page, which you can barely see here and to which we'll come back, the rest of the page is blank.  At the foot of the page, Samsung give some details.

What then is the issue?  Was ist den los?  The issue is that this is open, blind linksharing with anyone at all - no controls over what that download bar links to.  And as anyone of any experience on the net knows, one never, ever, clicks on something concealed, something blind, something expected, even if it might be to our advantage … especially if so.

Now, were I, the blog admin, to leave that link up at t’other place [NOWP], I would be breaching readers' own security because it could be any kind of nasty at the end of that click on that blue bar.  The way we usually get around it on Gab, Twitter, on blogs, whatever, is we signpost, telegraph what it's about.  We write things such as, 'Click for the full interview.'

But you'll see that on the Samsung page, there is no such blurb, no telegraphing whatever, no indication of what the reader is going to find.  It could well be very nasty.  TQM needs to understand that this is not having a go at him personally, he might be doing this in good faith.

But no blind links can stand at this blog because readers are relying on me, with my [b] hat on, to look after them.  The game of blind linking is not worth the candle.

Thus, for the first time in maybe a couple of years, I physically went into a comment and replaced part of it with my own, telegraphing that of course:


I could have just deleted instead of making a song and dance about it but just felt it needed to be painstakingly spelt out so readers, plural, are aware.  I value TQM - DR and he are the only ones regularly using t'other place and I appreciate that.

Now to that advert on the left above.  Took me awhile but then realised what it was - it was that filth they advertise with earwax, vile stuff. That's not TQM, that's Samsung.  Nasty.

So we have a dilemma.  We need TQM's input but the Samsung he is using is something we need to be vigilant about, esp. in the middle of the night.

This, chaps and chapesses, is part of what blogging involves, even at Blogger.

5 comments:

  1. Duly noted and thanks for the info about the issue. There must be a workaround. Will investigate.

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    Replies
    1. I believe in raw text links, copied from the browser address bar. Are you posting from an Android phone? I've never used the Samsung browser on mine but there is an Android version of Firefox. However I tend to do all of my internet business from the desktop PC.

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    2. Android yes. Samsung

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  2. Could you copy and paste the URL? Sounds too simplistic to work but may be worth a try.

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  3. Think I may have been trying to lift or copy things from WhatsApp threads. But you're probably right and it could be as simple as that. I think Samsung Cloud generate a link which appears to have a shelf life of 48 hours. But as James points out links of that nature have all sorts of issues.

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