This has already caused bad links in forum posts more than once in the past.
Background:
- the forum auto-linkifies bare urls which are typed or pasted into a post, either while you are editing the post, or after the post is submitted
Issue:
- if you paste or type a bare URL, then you type a punctuation character (e.g. period or comma), the forum will incorrectly create a link that contains the punctuation, resulting in a (mostly likely) invalid link
Example:
- Type www dot google dot com slash imghp comma, and you get a bad link:
- Type www dot google dot com slash imghp space backspace comma, and you get a good link, as pressing space triggers linkification immediately:
Additional Issues:
- If you enter a bare url with no path component, followed by punctuation, the resulting link will be unlinkified after you submit your post
e.g. type www dot google dot com comma. You get a bad link at editing time, but after submission, it's just plain text
www.google.com,
Here's what that looked like at editing time:
- When you enter a bare URL over a certain length, the forum auto-linkfies it and uses and abbreviated form of the URL as the link text. This is annoying when the URL text itself is significant.
e.g. Here's a link to the CIQ API docs:
developer.garmin.com/.../Activity.html
Personally I prefer to see the full URL in this case (using square brackets as a workaround to prevent abbreviation from occurring):
I also remember that the old forum platform used to do same kind of abbreviation (bare URLs were auto-linkified and the link text was an abbreviated form of the URL). When the old forum was migrated to the new forum, all links were replaced by their link text and the original URLs were lost for any link that had been abbreviated (or which otherwise had link text that was different than link URL). It was usually impossible to tell what the original URL was, based on the abbreviated text.
Additionally, if you take a screenshot of a post with abbreviated URLs, obviously the full URLs won't be captured.
