It seems to be a WordPress habit. Friday afternoon rolls around, time to spring another feature on a million unsuspecting bloggers just in time for support to high-tail it to the dude ranch for the weekend.
Latest addition hard on the heels of the wildly successful upgrade of early April is the addition of Possibly Related Posts. It’s being billed as a way of leading readers elsewhere to posts that might be about the same thing you have written.
The operative word you have to keep in mind is Possibly.
A quick survey of the links now inserted at the bottom of a couple of my posts include:
- A link to a crime story set in Indonesia on a post about the strange language I speak with my brother Gordon.
- A link to a story about some guy whose dad was a tv repairman in the same post
- And three well-meaning but somehow not-at-all-related posts about shift work tacked on to my most recent post about being refused a ride in a taxi in the middle of the night.
Other bloggers have had the ultimate creep-out: one complained in the forum of links to porn inappropriate content, for example.
If you’re not happy with links appearing on your blog you never chose and have no control over, there is fortunately a way to disable it. Go into your dashboard and click on Design, then Extras. A page will pop up. Check the box marked: Hide related links on this blog.
But to give WordPress credit, they are saying that over the coming days we’ll be allowed to tweak the results to our liking. Hopefully that will include the ability to filter out the crap. Not a bad idea, but one that should have been there from the beginning.
© 2008 lettershometoyou
I have to say that this came as a somewhat unpleasant surprise this morning. Just because it felt a bit invasive, you know? To have links posted on my blog that had nothing to do with me and that I hadn’t approved to be there, and not knowing why there were there.
So yeah, now I know you can disactivate this function. Might give it a few days to see if it works out a bit better.
I still think WordPress is the best thing going, but I do wish they would give a little warning about changes, rather than telling us after the fact.
There’s more than just unwelcome links and lack of control, the WP folks aren’t mentioning how this is driving the hit count up for WordPress.com–something the company is using to tout the popularity of the site (as well as increase its value).
Shelley,
Thanks for coming by and commenting. I hadn’t thought of the self-serving aspect of it, but you’re right.
Az: things just seem to get dropped in our laps, don’t they? It’s like HERE - deal with it. And as pointed out on wordpress wank (link in sidebar) the default setting should have been the other way around: you should have been forced to go in to the dashboard and change the settings to allow the links, not to disable them.
I keep stumbling upon comments from you on the blogosphere, haha. I wouldn’t like this feature (if I want to link to someone else’s blog I’l do it myself, thank you), but then I don’t use WP.com so I don’t have to deal with it.
Giggling at the Indonesian story linked to your language with your brother.
Hi Viviane - I hope you didn’t stumble upon a comment from one of my cranky days.
SBW: the thing about the links you click on is they are automatically generated, ie no human being has taken a look at them to see if they actually have anything to do with your post. It’s like running text through an on-line translator and posting without proof-reading beforehand. You sort of get results, but most often it’s either tragedy or farce.
Thanks for the tip. I’m off to disable immediately. Boo to WordPress.
Another week another “feature” and this one is reminiscent of the global categories and local tags surprise feature that caught us all by surprise. Suffice to say that I turned the dear thing off.
Good grief. I see not one but two spelling mistakes up there. I’d better put on my @~@ — sorry.
tt - don’t worry, cleaned it up for you.
charlotte and az: it’s a work in progress. In a few weeks, it might have evolved into something you can work with.
thanks Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)thanks that thing drove me wild
you learn somthing new
am might be back for more tips