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Meta: I submitted this yesterday, even with the exact same alteration of the original title. The url that I submitted, however, ended with a different number
by dhimes 10y ago
Meta: I submitted this yesterday, even with the exact same alteration of the original title.
The url that I submitted, however, ended with a different number (238544).
So my question is: Why are web sites doing this? Is this so that they can be resubmitted to sites like HN (do other sites have these similar rules)? I might have a clue if my link no longer worked, but it does.
- codezero 10y agoThe URL path is the same, but they've added a query parameter with /238544?key=... to the submitted URL. The query parameter may or may not do anything, it depends on the site, so presumably it's just ignored and was attached to allow it to be resubmitted. With that said, HN does allow resubmitting the same URL multiple times with some wiggle room around the last time it was submitted.
- dhimes 10y agoThe ?key is part of the email tracker- I get mine emailed to my inbox and presumably OP does too. But the /238544 looks like a landing page. It's some sort of route- presumably for tracking- but when you leave the number off you get a 404 (I try to strip anything superfluous before posting).
- tedunangst 10y agoWithout the key in the URL, I only get "This content is available exclusively to Chronicle subscribers", no article. Your submission probably didn't get much traction because nobody could read it.
- dhimes 10y agoThank you! So some sites use a key even from third-party sites to keep content from being shared. I knew sometimes we can get in through Google if it's paywalled, but I didn't know that other sites used a key.
- corecoder 10y agoDon't know about this specific site, but many sites do that for traceability, so they can disseminate slightly different URLs in different campaigns and see which got more traction.