Some logs from 17 today:
[10:22] <%bluesoul|work> [10:20] <spitfire> http://miburl.com/xuaD85 <— for deliberation, let's consider disallowing shortened URLs without context
[10:22] <%bluesoul|work> particularly from people i don't know from adam
[10:22] <%Tuomey> bluesoul|work: I think you meant to post that in SSSC
[10:22] <%Tuomey> but yes
[10:22] <%bluesoul|work> no, i meant to do it here
[10:23] <%bluesoul|work> in case someone has an actual reason to defend it
[10:25] <%Tuomey> Fair enough
[10:25] <%Tuomey> Personally I don't see a reason and I tend to use inspect element on most of them because of screamers
[10:25] <@Silber> yeah, that's a sensible idea
[10:28] <%bluesoul|work> reddit's view on it is "Don't use link shorteners to post your content. There are few reasons to hide what you're linking to, and most of them are sneaky (if you are, use the "preview" feature that those services offer).
[10:32] <DreadLindwyrm> I have to admit there are sometimes idiotic length URLs that do need to be shortened.
[10:33] <%Tuomey> DreadLindwyrm: I think the idea here is "it's ok if you say what it is"
[10:33] <DreadLindwyrm> Fair.
[10:33] <DreadLindwyrm> I kind of lost the point of what I was going to say after posting the first line.
[10:34] <DreadLindwyrm> I should probably eat something.
[10:37] <%bluesoul|work> some of the links google generates are hella long
[10:37] <%bluesoul|work> but at least some context is nice
[10:38] <%Tuomey> If people are linking directly from google search pages they're internetting wrong anyway
Given that the maximum length of a URL is less than the maximum length of a string that can be entered into IRC, there's not many good reasons to use URL shorteners. scp.so is probably fine because access is limited to staff and users that staff trust but I've never even heard of the URL above and I spend a lot of time online. He never explained what the link was, either. That could be a virus, a jumpscare, an epileptic trigger, or a funnay maymay; I have no clue and I'm not interested enough to find out.
Just wanted to put it out there because sooner or later it's going to bite us.