Improvement to URL Unfurl feature for links to TMC posts

[MP3Mike]

Would it be possible to improve the unfurl feature for TMC URLs that are posted? The problem is currently that if a TMC post URL is included in a post that it randomly chooses a post from that thread to unfurl, not the post that was linked to. And that causes confusion in discussions.

For example here is a URL to a post:

Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

First recent call I remember where Elon was obviously in a different location. A little disconnected as it did not seem obvious who was supposed to answer. Much better when he is in the same room with his team.

teslamotorsclub.com

Here is the actual content of the post that was linked to:

Not obvious to me.
I want to know batteries.
He already talked difficulty to FSD
Nothing else to learn pertaining to earnings, sales, profits pertaining to DOJO cause it isn't able to affect the bottom line.

Elon teased this button for FSD 9 or whatever a while ago, keeps delaying
DOJO is a tease.

If the call is an hour long, we are halfway through without getting much out of it.
This is what he should do on Joe Rogan while getting drunk in an all day program

Notice that the text displayed is completely different?

I understand that using the quote feature is probably preferable to just posting a link to the post, but I have seen enough people just post a link that it would be nice if it could be improved.

 

[bmah]

Would it be possible to improve the unfurl feature for TMC URLs that are posted? The problem is currently that if a TMC post URL is included in a post that it randomly chooses a post from that thread to unfurl, not the post that was linked to. And that causes confusion in discussions.

Is it random, or just the first post on the page? Regardless, I agree it's confusing. I think the forum software is just trying to show the top of the page as the link preview, but the link to the post could actually make your browser scroll down the page to get the desired post on-screen.

I've taken to going back and editing my posts to set unfurl="false" if the preview shows the wrong think...I know that for various reasons not everybody can do this, and there might be better options (including fixing the forum software).

Bruce.

 

[MP3Mike]

Is it random, or just the first post on the page?

Yeah, it does appear to be the case. But that is sort of random, and can change over time as posts are deleted/moderated.

I've taken to going back and editing my posts to set unfurl="false" if the preview shows the wrong think...I know that for various reasons not everybody can do this, and there might be better options (including fixing the forum software).

If the unfurl feature can't be updated to quote the post linked to another option would be can it be disabled for TMC links?

 

[bmah]

If the unfurl feature can't be updated to quote the post linked to another option would be can it be disabled for TMC links?

Well, that request sounds reasonable and it doesn't seem to violate any laws of physics, so it's probably possible, but I'm just a moderator here so what do I know?

An admin (or someone familiar with XenForo) would probably need to look into this.

Bruce.

 

[doug]

The unfurl isn't very smart regarding our own forum. I'm trying to get the core software vendor to fix this since I see it as a bug and would prefer to limit the amount of custom code we have.

For now you can just remove the unfurl="true" code from the URL tag.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/tesla-tsla-the-investment-world-the-perpetual-investors-roundtable.139047/page-12990#post-5483298[/URL]

Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

First recent call I remember where Elon was obviously in a different location. A little disconnected as it did not seem obvious who was supposed to answer. Much better when he is in the same room with his team.

teslamotorsclub.com

to

[URL]https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/tesla-tsla-the-investment-world-the-perpetual-investors-roundtable.139047/page-12990#post-5483298[/URL]

Wiki - Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

 

[MP3Mike]

The unfurl isn't very smart regarding our own forum. I'm trying to get the core software vendor to fix this since I see it as a bug and would prefer to limit the amount of custom code we have.

Sounds fair. I really expected it to be smart enough to deal with URLs to itself...

Thanks!

 

[doug]

I would to, but it's not that smart. It's simply pulling the meta data from the header of the page HTML, just like facebook or twitter does. That's fine when posting the link to an article or a product, etc, since the page is pretty much about one thing.

The problem is that for a forum thread, the description meta data is automatically generated from the first post in the thread. There's no meta data in the header for each post on the page. It would really just need to do something fundamentally different when dealing with links to specific posts, and actually I think the +Quote feature already covers that.

It should probably just not unfurl URLs in the same domain.