Autolinks : distracting, really not doing anything useful.

[revvy]

I agree with revvy.
Let's get rid of the thumbs down icons forever, thanks

@vurt - now we know who's been down-voting everyone!

yeah, warp/censor the reality like in the real world....

Count your blessings for living in Germany. Plenty of folks in the world would be envious of you.

The negativity on a music forums of anonymous downvotes was pretty obvious to many, including the boss of KVR.

[vurt]

I agree with revvy.
Let's get rid of the thumbs down icons forever, thanks

@vurt - now we know who's been down-voting everyone!

yeah, warp/censor the reality like in the real world....

ill admit to warping, not sure ive ever censored though.

[justin3am]

Boy, I really dislike this autolink feature. If I want to add a link to my post, I can do it myself.

[Hink]

ty Ben

[vurt]

my only issue with it really, was scrolling on the phone, accidentally catching a link.

so all good now
cheers boss.

[Lint_Huffer7]

I can understand the idea behind getting rid of the downvotes, though I think that in practice "upvotes without downvotes" creates the opposite effect from what's intended. It makes fringe views seem more agreed-upon (compare "DUMBEST WRONGEST THING EVER! 5up 104down" with "DUMBEST WRONGEST THING EVER! 5up"), which in turn makes places seem less welcoming, because who wants to be in a place where the DUMBEST WRONGEST THING EVER gets five bonus points attached to it?

But the autolinks, oh man, oh man. They look really distracting and break up the visual flow of posts. Makes me feel like I'm reading a spam comment on a blog from the early 2010s. You know the ones, the ones linking random words to their ad-farm in order to boost SEO, or spamming Amazon referral links.

I've been on other forums with a similar "feature", and it seems the standard rule of thumb is to let logged-in users disable the auto-links for themselves. That way those who do appreciate them can keep them, and if the autolinks are being used to drive revenue, they still get eyeballs from the not-logged-in masses.

All that having been said, though, I'm aware that I'm a relative newcomer here. It's possibly rude of me just to offer my two cents like this (though I hope it isn't taken that way), and it would definitely be rude of me to demand a change. So I hope this doesn't come across as hysterical whining or the band's brand-new bassist telling them all their old songs suck and they need to start doing power ballads or anything like that.

[BertKoor]

Some product names are generic words, such as "Add", "Acoustic" or "Listen" so we override any obvious ones we've noticed and set them to be ignored.

Please add "EQ" to the ignore list. It's very often discussed, but we never meant this plugin.
https://www.kvraudio.com/auto/d1023 --> https://www.kvraudio.com/developer/eq

[Michael L]

It's very often discussed, but we never meant this plugin.

But we often mean This Plugin, which needs an Autolink

[jackoo]

I'm posting in some thread something regarding the Axiom midi controller (M-Audio).
Getting a link to Blue Cat's product... terribly annoying (not that I don't like Blue Cat - which I support, but it's not what I'm communicating in the thread).

[ThomasHelzle]

It's an experiment for now. It's not paid. It's to encourage more traffic to the KVR product database pages, developer pages, and product database search.

While I can see what the original idea may have been, I don't think this is doing it.
If I land on pages not really related to the topic at hand or even if I just land on a page that yes, talks about the same plugin that is talked about but doesn't really add anything to the discussion, I don't think this will endear the product database or any other linked feature to the user but rather make them feel dubious and in their obviousness, confusing.

I once saw a theatrical play where every piece on the stage was labelled. So the fridge had a big tag "Fridge" and the (painted) cow a big "Cow" etc. This was really funny, since it showed something about our thinking and communication in that setting, but I do not think it's a good way to design a website.

We live in a time when not scarcity of information is the issue, but the opposite. KVR is noisy as hell at the best of times, but this feature adds a kind of information that is just filler, not content, since there is no real meaning or intent in it.
Imagine if every word in every text would be a link to an encyclopaedia explaining that word. That would be just silly.
Or imagine you talk to somebody and a second person explains every word the first person says.

Our senses these days are totally overloaded and a feature like this only adds to the overload.
The 1% of good it may do in some rare cases is massively negated by the 99% of the time where it's just useless noise and/or confusing, diminishing the value KVR is delivering.

Once again I would highly encourage to disable it.
It's the wrong means and superflous.

Cheers,

Tom

P.S. I personally on the other hand regret the removal of the downvote feature, since it brought some balance to the voting feature and discussions and was IMO worth the irritation it sometimes created.

[jackoo]

It's an experiment for now. It's not paid. It's to encourage more traffic to the KVR product database pages, developer pages, and product database search.

While I can see what the original idea may have been, I don't think this is doing it.
If I land on pages not really related to the topic at hand or even if I just land on a page that yes, talks about the same plugin that is talked about but doesn't really add anything to the discussion, I don't think this will endear the product database or any other linked feature to the user but rather make them feel dubious and in their obviousness, confusing.

I once saw a theatrical play where every piece on the stage was labelled. So the fridge had a big tag "Fridge" and the (painted) cow a big "Cow" etc. This was really funny, since it showed something about our thinking and communication in that setting, but I do not think it's a good way to design a website.

We live in a time when not scarcity of information is the issue, but the opposite. KVR is noisy as hell at the best of times, but this feature adds a kind of information that is just filler, not content, since there is no real meaning or intent in it.
Imagine if every word in every text would be a link to an encyclopaedia explaining that word. That would be just silly.
Or imagine you talk to somebody and a second person explains every word the first person says.

Our senses these days are totally overloaded and a feature like this only adds to the overload.
The 1% of good it may do in some rare cases is massively negated by the 99% of the time where it's just useless noise and/or confusing, diminishing the value KVR is delivering.

Once again I would highly encourage to disable it.
It's the wrong means and superflous.

Cheers,

Tom

Perfectly stated!

[Lint_Huffer7]

Hmm, definitely one of those mixed-emotion moments right now...

[thecontrolcentre]

Yeah ... better to get rid of the tu button too.

[cryophonik]

I don't think it works out that way in reality, as least from what I've seen. Thumbs up is simple to interpret - it's essentially the same as a "+1" reply that says you like or agree with a post, and no further context or explanation is necessary. Thumbs down is open to too many interpretations and, as we've seen too many times, can't be used responsibly on a forum like this, where too many trolls want to downvote an innocuous comment just to be immature, or because they don't like the poster, or who knows what reason because it has no context or explanation. If someone disagrees with a post or comment on a forum, the obvious solution is for that person to use his/her big boy words and reply, explaining why he/she disagrees. Doesn't seem too much to ask on a discussion forum, does it?

[Erisian]

Why have we gone from Autolinks to thumbs up/down when there are two perfectly good threads on those subjects?