348
votes
Rextester has officially been hacked. Where do we go from here?
I'm the maintainer of rextester. First of all, it has indeed been hacked. I'm looking into it.
It has happened before a few times usually someone breaking the backend. I see it as a fun process as I ...
- 3,991
85
votes
Is a Microsoft MVP required to disclose affiliation?
Stack Overflow isn't built for recommendations or architecture designs. You shouldn't see too many questions that look like "What tool X by company Y can I use to build Z" (in fact, most of these ...
- 313k
80
votes
Accepted
cpearson.com is no longer available
I re-wrote all links to cpearson.com in posts on Stack Overflow to point to https://web.archive.org/web/www.cpearson.com/ - this should pull the last-archived copy of each URL.
May 8th, 2018: aaand ...
- 160k
77
votes
Accepted
Is it OK to use YouTube links in a question?
For YouTube links the rules are the same as for any other external link in any post:
The content on the other side of the link should only provide supplementary information, which is not required to ...
- 47.9k
54
votes
Your article is in another castle: should link-only articles be allowed?
No, this should not be allowed. They're bad for a lot of the same reasons that link-only answers are bad.
The specific article you mention is little more than an ad for another article. It itself ...
52
votes
Accepted
Why did this user delete a link to the reference documentation without explanation?
I made this edit for two reasons:
W3schools is not an official documentation or specification. It's good to avoid sharing links from this site pretending it's the documentation because we may find ...
- 276k
49
votes
Accepted
Question with external link to code
The key mistake you made at all was commenting instead of voting to close it as too broad.
An OP who insists on posting tons of code hasn't done the bare minimum to isolate the problem, and there's ...
- 107k
48
votes
Trigger MCVE error on paste.ofcode.org
I don't think users should be allowed to paste this link at all.
It's not even the case "Links to [site name] must be accompanied by code.", it's the fact that the link expires and becomes ...
- 19.1k
40
votes
Is it OK to use YouTube links in a question?
I would strongly advise against relying on videos to present the problem in your question, if you expect to get an answer, that is.
Video is generally a very poor resource to reproduce a problem for ...
- 33.5k
40
votes
Accepted
Link-only answer when content's license is unclear
Surely you don't need to copy/paste it literally, you can create your own interpretation of the solution and add your own explanation of it to it, then provide the link as attribution and for "...
- 5,282
34
votes
Accepted
Wikipedia links not https, is there a special reason they shouldn't?
No, the HTTPS change only applied to Stack Exchange links.
SE has no idea which sites do and don't support HTTP. It'd be a bad idea to replace every single link in every single answer like that.
If ...
- 73k
33
votes
Accepted
Trigger MCVE error on paste.ofcode.org
Yeah, there's no good reason to ever post links that'll intentionally break here. I've blacklisted the URL pattern with the following message:
Please avoid links that will intentionally break after ...
- 160k
31
votes
Where do we tell users not to use Pastebin?
All questions on SE must be self-contained. If the OP can't (or won't) reduce the code (and data) required for a question to a MRE, then their question is just not suitable for SO.
The problem is that ...
- 55.5k
29
votes
Your article is in another castle: should link-only articles be allowed?
Right now the community is not able to moderate articles, and we know this is a problem. As part of the evolution of the feature we do want to expand how you all (and mods) can interact with it, ...
- 101
26
votes
Accepted
Are links to Zoom (or similar) meeting rooms acceptable in a question?
No, they are not.
Links should only be provided as a way to add supporting material for a post.
A link to a chat or conference room of any kind, is extremely volatile and of no use for future visitors....
- 47.9k
25
votes
Where shall we let the community update Xcode download locations?
Several thoughts, in no particular order
The reason we have Offsite Resources closure in the first place is that links get stale really quickly. Download links are the bread of links: they go bad ...
MachavityMod
- 31.7k
25
votes
Is it ok to quote short solutions from GitHub issues *verbatim* as answers?
As long as you follow the attribution/referencing requirements, then it is fine.
Those requirements are:
Crediting the original author/source by name (if the name can be found),
Linking directly to ...
Cody GrayMod
- 245k
23
votes
Where shall we let the community update Xcode download locations?
Such questions should be deleted.
SO is not an authoritative source to answer questions like "Where do I download X". Google is one or perhaps someone's blog if official pages are too bad. ...
- 22.1k
23
votes
Accepted
Please blacklist expirebox.com
This is done, more or less as Joshua suggests (a link to https://expirebox.com/ works fine, a link to https://expirebox.com/anything will be blocked).
- 160k
21
votes
Where shall we let the community update Xcode download locations?
Use both a tag wiki and a question that you can close others as duplicates of. Ideally, answer the question with a link to the wiki...
Wait, what? Heh... I'll explain.
Which tag wiki do you think gets ...
- 160k
20
votes
Accepted
Is showing a link to GitHub source code acceptable?
As long as you have a short (as a rule of thumb, something that doesn't cause the code box to scroll) example that you can post in the question itself that allows anyone to reproduce the problem, you ...
decezeMod
- 523k
19
votes
Is it OK to use YouTube links in a question?
Additional note. After deciding what you want to do based on the other answers, if you absolutely must post a video, please make the link to YouTube begin at the relevant point in the video.
You can ...
- 12.3k
19
votes
Is it acceptable to provide links to a "do my homework for money" site?
Based on the comments, I think that the consensus is that such links should not be tolerated because:
They can be interpreted as rude. (Indeed, they could well be intended as a put down, though it ...
- 721k
16
votes
Is a Microsoft MVP required to disclose affiliation?
Please don't do this.
MVP status is in my profile where it belongs. I disclose affiliation when I link to my OSS project (when relevant; usually in disposable comments), because managing the open-...
- 71.3k
16
votes
Accepted
Is it spam to insert your own link into an answer to replace a defunct one?
No, that's not okay; the link target is commercial in nature (complete with 'free quote' form at the bottom), while the original was a personal blog. At most it should be replaced with an Internet ...
- 1.1m
16
votes
Rextester has officially been hacked. Where do we go from here?
What should we all do about our old questions which now likely contain dead or at least unsafe testing links? ... Where do we go from here?
Rextester is up and running again. It was defaced and the ...
- 10.9k
15
votes
Accepted
Should code from pastebin be edited into a question?
As of 2023, the Pastebin license doesn't allow reposts anymore.
Section D5 (License Grant to Other Users) of the Pastebin TOS states (emphasis mine):
Any User-Generated Content you post publicly may ...
- 22.2k
15
votes
Accepted
Removing old links pointing to malicious or suspicious websites
Moderators don't have time to deal with dead-link posts, so don't flag for mod attention. You can do everything that's useful by editing, unless it was a link-only answer and there's no copy anywhere ...
- 368k
15
votes
What should I do if an answer has a good-turned-bad link, and the replacement cannot be found?
If you're in a hurry and you can't now find a better replacement, just leave a single comment that has two messages:
The link is stale and now points to a site that is not suitable for work (NSFW)
I ...
- 42.5k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible