lectricpharaoh

I have rarely, if ever, attached files on the forums before, and as such, was unaware that there was a filter blocking the attachment of .EXE files. When I first started reading this thread, that's what I thought mbd was advocating, but it became clear it was actually about linking to .EXEs. I support the former, as it's a) already in place, and hasn't proven to be a problem, and b) it's automated, and requires zero effort from the moderators. However, I don't support the latter, for much the same reasons Narue stated (much more succinctly than I would have), in particular the bit about malicious code in source files.
I noticed that I'm the only one who voted 'no'. Come on!
Try the 'report this post' link under the poster's name. Every post has one.

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mbd

i have never noticed the red triangle that when hovered over says, "report post". it is barely visible, and not visible at all when you are browsing the forums logged out. i spend barely any time logged in here, that might be why i have never noticed it. anyways, thanks!

Infinite Recursion

For reference to such a thread:

http://www.programmingforums.org/thread15619.html

cscgal

Hi,

Sorry for coming into this thread a day late. I spent last week with a cold and have spend the better parts of yesterday and today playing catch-up with all of my work.

In any case, I'm with Narue. I strongly advocate not linking directly to exe's (even on trusted sites) but instead to the actual webpage on the site that links to the exe for downloading. (Aside from the trustworthiness factor, usually such pages include supported platforms and any other information that the author wants me to know before I start installing random software on my computer). However, actually policing this is near impossible, so I'd settle for just personally advocating it and requesting users to please link to such pages instead of directly to the exe when you happen to come across it in a thread.

And yes ... click the exclamation button to get a mod's attention

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BstrucT

I agree.

>BstrucT

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cscgal

> And indirect links should not be allowed under any circumstance. Let's wait to see what cscgal thinks.

What's wrong with indirect links? Instead of a direct link to www.microsoft.com/ie8.exe I would rather a link to www.microsoft.com/ie8.html where I can see that it is beta software, whether it is supported by my OS (64-bit), and then can choose to click on the download link myself, well informed.

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Sane

I did not mean it as you could have direct links from trusted sources, but no indirect links from trusted sources. I meant:

In my opinion, direct links should be allowed if the source is trusted. And any links (direct or indirect) from untrusted sources should not be allowed under any circumstance.

Trusted could even qualify as a veteran on this forum. I simply think there should be something in the rules that tells new posters not to link to their own executables in their posts. There does not necessarily need to be an automated system in place.

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grumpy

Sure. To the left of every post is a small group of icons. One of them is . Click on that, and you can report inappropriate content to moderators.

I agree with Narue; a zero-tolerance policy for executables would be unenforceable. If you have concerns about content of a particular post, common sense would suggest reporting to moderators and relying on their judgment will usually be sufficient.

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cscgal

Sane: Sorry, still confuzzled.

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Ancient Dragon

>> is there some method of alerting the moderators about useless threads
Of course -- just click the Repprt Post icon below your user name thats in the shape of a diamond. All mods check that mod-only thread frequently. That will fix the thread and/or post that is reported. We also check the other threads of the reported poster to see if he/she spewed spam into other threads and delete those too.

[edit]Sorry if this duplicates some of the information Grumpy posted. [/edit]

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