On the basis of Prof. Black's post below, I did some checking on the interweb and came across an article on the Wikipedia which provides an overview of URL shortening services (yadda-yadda). Here is the ordinary link to the entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening
I quote the following section: |Blocking | |Some websites prevent short, redirected URLs from being posted. | |In 2009, the Twitter network replaced TinyURL with Bit.ly as its |default shortener of links longer than twenty-six characters.[6] In April |2009, TinyURL was reported to be blocked in Saudi Arabia.[18] |Yahoo! Answers blocks postings that contain TinyURLs and |Wikipedia does not accept links by any URL shortening services |in its articles.[19][20][21] So, it appears that the Mailarchive has joined the group of banning TinyURLs though it would have been nice if there had been some announcement of it. TinyURLs were okay up until recently and one wonders if the additional of social media links (such as facebook and plusone) might have had something to do with it. And as for Stephen Black posts, I always worry about them ;-) -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --------------------- Original Message ----------------------------------- On Sun, 15 Jan 2012 07:53:42 -0800, Stephen Black wrote: Some time ago Mike Palij expressed concern (uncharacteristic but appreciated) that my posts were not being archived at Mail-Archive. I looked into it, and, sure enough, he was right. I was not the only one this happened to, but it seemed to happen more often to me than to anyone else. My posts were going out to subscribers, but not to the archive. It was also mysterious that a few of them did get archived, although most did not. It started to drive me nuts. Was it censorship? Were my occasionally controversial or potty-mouth posts deemed inappropriate for Mail-Archive? Why me? Or was it a time-of-posting effect, and I just happened to post more often at peak times when messages were prone to be lost? I looked into it. None of the above, it turns out. The problem is tinyurl. In an effort to save people the annoyance of having to deal with long url links in my posts, I routinely run them through the tinyurl web service to shorten them. Many of my posts contain tinyurls. Of my recent posts, those which were excluded from the archive contained a tinyurl; those which made it did not. My tests confirmed this. So I can get into the archive as long as I don't use a tinyurl. . Presumably, this rule holds for others as well. I also checked into snipurl, an alternative service for shortening urls. They're ok. It seems that snipurls are kosher but tinyurls are not. I have no idea why Mail-Archive hates tinyurls. The final test is this post. It does not contain a tinyurl. If it makes it into the archive, Q.E.D. And Mike P. need worry no more about my posts. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=15331 or send a blank email to leave-15331-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
