4
\$\begingroup\$

Without getting into the content if at all possible, I was browsing "Is something wrong?" Yes: Pervasive ad hominem and judgmental behaviors and noticed that links in that post cause HTTPS warnings because they still link to meta.rpg.SE rather than rpg.meta.SE.

IIRC, a while back the magical Community fairy came and edited every post on RPG.SE to fix those links if necessary. Did this happen on Meta as well, and if so, how was that post missed?

\$\endgroup\$

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
4
\$\begingroup\$

Pace doppelgreener, I don't think it's exactly a problem with Community ♦ forgetting to rewrite domains. Rather, it was my custom at the time to use protocol-relative URLs just in case someone was able to hack HTTPS out of the broken setup of the day. Those now still work in the same way, but because the link format is different, they weren't caught and domain-rewritten like the others. After all, they're already HTTPS-ready, with no rewriting necessary, so Community ♦ never touched those posts at all.

I've edited the post in question. There are doubtless some others scattered around, and a suitable SEDE query can probably find them if the devs don't want to run a pass themselves.

\$\endgroup\$
4
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ Query here. I've fixed the ones where it was an actual link, dunno if it's worth fixing ones where it's just referenced. \$\endgroup\$
    – Miniman
    Aug 30, 2017 at 6:38
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ Also, 22 tag wikis with links to meta posts that could use updating. \$\endgroup\$
    – Miniman
    Aug 30, 2017 at 6:40
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ @Miniman: The tag wikis are especially important; AFAIK there is no script to auto-update any of those links. \$\endgroup\$
    – user17995
    Aug 30, 2017 at 6:41
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ It's not just something you did -- the bot does actually need to be run again to change these URLs, since it never tried to change them originally. It just recently became a major issue because of browser manufacturers incrementally adding stricter handling of HTTPS (which is good), and previoiusly those pages worked fine. I've reported it here on meta.se and poked a staff member about it: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/300322/… \$\endgroup\$
    – doppelgreener
    Aug 30, 2017 at 15:02
2
\$\begingroup\$

The magical Community fairy edited HTTP links to HTTPS.

The issue here is it didn't also edit meta.something.stackexchange.com links to something.meta.stackexchange.com. The former domain pattern is not HTTPS-protected, so you are leaving a HTTPS domain, entering a domain that is supposed to be HTTPS but isn't (you're requesting a https:// version after all), and that domain is then forwarding you onto an entirely different (actually HTTPS) domain.

Browsers just don't like that for all sorts of reasons.

The Community fairy should probably do another pass to update our Meta links to the new format.

\$\endgroup\$
1
  • \$\begingroup\$ As you can see here, the domain-rewriting pass needed was already run months ago. \$\endgroup\$
    – user17995
    Sep 7, 2017 at 3:01

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .