Rich linky goodness at boston.com

By adamg - 1/24/06 - 3:14 pm

Andy, who works at boston.com, described how links do or do not appear in online versions of Globe articles - specifically, that link to the Web site of the adult-video store, which caused all sorts of problems down at Morrissey Boulevard yesterday. As Dan Kennedy surmised, the link was the result of an automated process that looks for linkish-looking things, then links them:

... I don't think our own content producers pay much attention to the content that is put on the site, but when the Boston news community starts making fun of us, then that catches the managements attention, (maybe third hand, I doubt our senior editors read Gaffin regularly) ...

Update: Original post marked private.

Note: I can sympathize. At the day job, our content-management software also automatically links things from our print edition that look like links or which have @ signs in them - which can cause trouble when a columnist is using a hypothetical address to show some interesting programming issue or whatnot. One difference: We try to look at everything that goes online (and yes, we put up less content than the Globe).

So, no, I don't write for the Globe fulltime.