This is simply an FYI for regular commentors, but it could be worthwhile for everyone to be aware of.
Sanitizing Links
First up, comment link sanitizing.
I searched for Xuron cutters on Amazon just now, and here is what the product link looks like:
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https://www.amazon.com/Xuron-Purpose-Flush-Cutter-Blue/dp/B002N1OXKC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=RM3ZC3IPY0BT&keywords=xuron+cutter&qid=1666311400&qu=eyJxc2MiOiI0LjY1IiwicXNhIjoiNC4zNCIsInFzcCI6IjQuMDMifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=xuron+cutter%2Caps%2C72&sr=8-1If you put a link like this in the comments, no worries – I will edit it as soon as I see it, usually to something that looks like:
https://www.amazon.com/Xuron-Purpose-Flush-Cutter-Blue/dp/B002N1OXKC/If the product name is too long, I’ll truncate it to:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002N1OXKC/That’s all you need for an Amazon link – try it https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002N1OXKC/?tag=toolguyd-20. That last part is an affiliate tracking tag, which credits ToolGuyd for Amazon referral sales.
Many retailer links are similarly bloated with a lot of unnecessary code.
I trim them down for two reasons. First, extra-long links can be unsightly. Years ago, they used to break past the comment section boundary box and add scroll bars, but I have since fixed that. This is where the truncation habit came from, I wanted to avoid the hassle of a horizontal scroll bars
URLs can also include identifying information, especially if you pull them from email newsletters, but this is less of an issue these days than it used to be.
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It’s great if you truncate links in your comments, but it usually takes me a few seconds, and I don’t mind it.
Please don’t use link shorteners – that makes more work for me, as I have to examine the link and then copy/paste and test a sanitized version.
If you want an Amazon link that doesn’t take a lot of space, go with the format above, and replace the product code with the desired ASIN.
Tool Brand Commentors
A tool brand affiliate recently left a comment, and it including a link. They used their corporate email in the email field – which is never publicly-visible, and so I knew their exact affiliations.
The link inadvertently included the commentor’s full corporate email address, and this was in a comment about a competing brand’s products. That’s definitely not good for them.
I took the liberty of replacing their link with an anonymized version, rather than the link they submitted, which looked to have been pulled from Outlook.
Basically, I stripped identifying information from their link for their protection.
If the comment crossed the line, which I tend to determine on a case-by-case basis, I would have simply removed it.
If you work for a tool brand and have something to say, either identify yourself, if even only via the email address field, or let me know via private email.
A LOT of engineers and sales reps have commented over the years, and I’m sure there have been a fair share of anonymous comments. Generally, it works best if I’m in-the-know, either because you tell me, or make it clear via name or email field.
Some have used fake names or emails, which make trust a little harder, but a “hey Stuart, I’m an engineer for so-and-so” provides valuable context.
Here are two good rules for brand or retail reps:
1) Don’t bash competitors or competing products.
2) Deception is bad.
Factual information is always welcome, such as answers to my own or readers’ questions.
When brand reps try to deceive readers, such as with pretend endorsements or fake reviews under fake names, that’s what causes problems.
It comes down to this – is a brand rep’s intention to help ToolGuyd readers, or to influence and manipulate them? One is welcome, the other is not.
If a helpful brand rep says the wrong thing, I can edit their name, remove comments, or do whatever reasonable measure to protect them.
Efforts to help ToolGuyd readers and end-users are always appreciated.
Brand reps or engineers can also email me with information they would like added to a post or in a comment to answer a reader question.
I caught another tool brand shill recently, and am dealing with it privately.
Moving/Editing/Fixing Comments
Unfortunately, nobody can edit comments but me.
If you reply to the wrong comment, simply leave a second comment where you intended it to go.
I might miss the cue on occasion, but most of the time I catch on and can simply copy/paste your comment into the right spot, and delete the original.
It’s a huge hassle for me to create new comments in anyone’s name. But if you create a placeholder comment, you don’t even have to send me a note, I’ll move things automatically.
If there’s a simply typo or autocorrect error, ignore it. If your comment has an egregious error that will hang over your conscience forever, reply to your comment with the correction. If you’re worried I will overlook it, drop me a note.
If I’m at a computer, these things take me a few seconds; with admin privileges, every comment has an “edit” button.
A few seconds here and there add up, so please don’t ask me to capitalize i’s or to change their’s to there’s.
For urgent changes, such as when your browser accidentally auto-corrected your full legal name into a comment’s name field, email me.
There’s a link to the contact form at the bottom of every page, I have a publicly-accessible email on social media channels, and many regulars have my personal direct email from when I answered a question or thanked them for a news tip.
If the anti-spam filter sends you to a 404 page, hit the back button, copy/cut your comment, leave a comment simply saying “placeholder” or a summary of what you wanted to say, and email me your comment.
3 or more links will send your comment to moderation. After you post such a comment, it will tell you as much. I check the moderation box at least 50 times a week.
Bonus Info About Amazon URLs
As an aside, you might see some other code in Amazon links. For instance, I will sometimes use:
?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DERWhat this does is force Amazon to be the selected seller if available.
If Amazon’s direct product listing is lower priced but backordered, they might show a 3rd party listing ahead of it, even if at a higher price.
Or, if Amazon’s direct listing is $110 before a $20 clickable coupon, and a 3rd party listing is $95, they might show the $95 price first, even though $90 after coupon is lower.
When I append the URL in such a manner, it shows the Amazon/Prime listing on top if/when available. I do not do this by default, but it comes in handy when the dominant product listing behavior becomes unpredictable.
So, a link might look like: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000X1R26Q/?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&tag=toolguyd-20 . Amazon’s algorithm usually does a good job, and so I don’t usually need to do this.
Each seller has their own ID. For instance: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000X1R26Q/?smid=ATVSB44Y1LUE3&tag=toolguyd-20 – this is the same product but with KC Tool as the seller. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000X1R26Q/?tag=toolguyd-20 gives you the page with the top listing selected by Amazon’s algorithm, usually with the priority on lowest price or earliest availability.
My Amazon deal search tool works in a similar manner – kind of. Back in the day, Amazon had filters in the sidebar that narrowed things down by discount. What this did was modify the search terms. So, I took note of how it worked, and created what is essentially a dynamic search term link generator. It doesn’t produce as many results as it used to, but can still reveal some good deals on occasion.
ToolGuyDan
I don’t know if it works with affiliate tags, but for an even shorter URL, try Amazon’s own short-link format: amzn.com/B002N1OXKC . No need for /dp/, plus it saves a few bytes of domain name.
Stuart
I sometimes use Amazon’s shortener for my links, or simply and quickly append them as shown.
What I’m talking about here is how and why I truncate others’ links in the comment section. Most will look like:
https://www.amazon.com/Xuron-Purpose-Flush-Cutter-Blue/dp/B002N1OXKC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=RM3ZC3IPY0BT&keywords=xuron+cutter&qid=1666311400&qu=eyJxc2MiOiI0LjY1IiwicXNhIjoiNC4zNCIsInFzcCI6IjQuMDMifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=xuron+cutter%2Caps%2C72&sr=8-1&tag=toolguyd-20
It takes me a few seconds to improve readability.
It looks like the amzn shortener works sometimes, but not others, depending on how it is entered in the address bar. Truncating to amazon.com/dp/ASIN works 100% of the time.
In any case, the main point isn’t about Amazon. A commentor will include an ebay link, and it will look like:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/181131119665?epid=10023288702&hash=item2a2c418c31:g:~McAAOSw9TRh1bOz&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoC8EopC9fJcANAbuJeY9YtWEEKXI1WKeZWE4dvAyq2c7wizjrU3iBlgoRoh%2BQwRO8juPG4txp%2B35SIuo%2F9CmcgR%2BtJ3kPjY%2FbwRqoNhju8SCk9bNlTYC3Cn0SExS%2Bvr%2BmGkDLtriHDIHRoCto0ajfJnA4AsaGdurDH44gpq9sb%2FStMcjWicHEONwMJ%2FMi%2FuPco60W%2B1XrhxaOT4M894PP14%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR5a4-or_YA
As soon as I see this, I’ll quickly go in and within seconds it looks like:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/233681046838
I can do this on my phone, desktop, or laptop.
Can I shorten links further? Probably. Will I? No.
Most links can be trimmed in a similar manner, and so I don’t have to think about shorteners or anything else on a case by case basis.
If and when I shorten a link for someone, I also want them to be able to recognize it afterwards. There’s a lot more I could and maybe should do, such as coding comment links to open in a new window, but that yields less benefit for more work.
I also do these things as I come across them. The longer and more complex the task, the greater the chance it will derail me from whatever I was doing or working on.
Jim Felt
I’m just truly amazed how many “corporate” drones have no idea how to edit their e-mail address. That’s like 2010(!) real world skill set issues.
Oh. And their boss may not realize anything more either.
Stuart
It wasn’t their fault. The term “corporate drone” seems excessively harsh. I also didn’t comment on their role.
Google, Outlook, and other email services rewrite links, and it’s not always obvious.
What’s obvious to one person might not be obvious to others.
This is a link you included in a comment back in August:
https://www.zoro.com/milwaukee-jobsite-organizer-48228030/i/G4859788/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=surfaces&utm_campaign=shopping%20feed&utm_content=free%20google%20shopping%20clicks&gclid=CjwKCAjwo_KXBhAaEiwA2RZ8hHpnT_VOvM0XSjisH_f3AcOWHTvHXUWtFFqruBq1i43FuPmGTwcq9hoCKgYQAvD_BwE
There is a ton of gobbledygook here. If your name or email address was hidden in this URL, would you be able to spot it easily?
This can be truncated to:
https://www.zoro.com/milwaukee-jobsite-organizer-48228030/i/G4859788/
Here’s a link from a comment you submitted last October:
https://www.american-giant.com/collections/mens/?g_acctid=206-822-0570&g_adgroupid=105039075342&g_adid=494762905157&g_adtype=search&g_campaign=Search%20-%20Brand%20-%20American%20Giant&g_campaignid=10979555720&g_device=m&g_keyword=american%20giant&g_keywordid=kwd-775853841&g_network=g&data=%7C01%7Cjim.felt%40fakeemail.com%7C&gclid=CjwKCAjw2bmLBhBREiwAZ6ugo00Wl8vVzWXj0txdfM6kirX6VxLWPfXzJiWF1pdMdUWlzLAC_5-QtBoCvPsQAvD_BwE&utm_campaign=&utm_content=494762905157&utm_id=t_kwd-775853841%3Aag_105039075342%3Acp_10979555720%3An_g%3Ad_m%3Afi_69432121210&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=adwords&utm_term=american%20giant
Here it is truncated to the bare minimal: https://www.american-giant.com/collections/mens/ .
Email newsletter standards have changed, but links sometimes still include identifying information, even email addresses in plain text.
For the link I sanitized for the brand affiliate, there were 396 characters, most of it nonsensical character strings. I could only guess they grabbed it from an email which added a whole lot of code to pass the link through an antivirus.
I sometimes have to strip out full contact info – addresses and phone numbers – from comments. Thankfully first-time-commentors’ entries go to moderation, and so I can remove these things before their details are publicly posted.
I receive name modification requests at times.
There was one time where your comment didn’t immediately appear, and it turned out it was because you typed your name in as jom, and the spam filter considered you a new commentor. =)
MANY regular commentors have misttyped their name and/or email address. Sometimes I’ll get an “oops” email, other times a duplicate comment, and sometimes a “where’s my comment?” message if I haven’t had a chance to check the comment moderation queue in a couple of hours.
Readers have submitted nearly 176,000 (approved) comments over the years. Even with a very high level of care and attention, mistakes can and will happen.
An email address in a long gobbledygook URL is something that most people might miss.
Take another look at the last URL above – I put a fake email address in there for you. Did you spot it at first glance? If yes, that’s great! If not, and you scrolled up to look for it, what happened? You weren’t expecting to see your email address there, were you?
That’s part of the reason I started truncating comment URLs long ago, aside from easier readability. Some links came from newsletters, and I spotted email addresses in the tracking code.
It’s natural for any person to not notice something that they weren’t expecting.
Ben V
Outlook/Gmail/etc rewrite emails to replace insecure links to external content to secure ones so the content renders correctly. In the old days we used to get that “show insecure content” warning but now days there’s no pop up and the link simply doesn’t work. It does make those links incredibly long!
Stuart
Ah, that makes sense – thanks! Those links usually redirect without issue – unless copied directly from an email. I have been wondering why some links are inexplicably redirected through Google servers.
A W
I read through your whole reply and missed the fake email. Great example of how easy it is to miss something like that.
It reminds me of the attentive selection videos that came out in 2010. (Search “the monkey business illusion,” on YouTube. It’s the one with 13m views)
I tried including the link but got sent to a 404 page.
Marko
“If you put a comment like this in the comments, no worries”
I suppose you meant “If you put a link like this in the comments, no worries”.
Stuart
Sorry – thank you – *fixed*!
fred
Having been born the decade before the ENIAC was introduced – my computer savvy is pretty primitive. So, I appreciate your tutorial:
“if you want an Amazon link that doesn’t take a lot of space, go with the format above, and replace the product code with the desired ASIN.”
Mea culpa!
I’ll have to try to remember this format:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/
Jim Felt
Stewart. Et al. Very thorough response. Sorry about my time zone displacement responses sometimes too. I’m mostly late to the party.
Also pretty sure my time spent on perhaps too many business and personal social media accounts is responsible for the “occasional” snark. Lousy moderation skills.
But regards my use of the word of “drone” I’m pretty sure that’s a fair description of many a corporate marketing client I’ve personally witnessed over the years. That’s exactly why clients that remained so for decades were such standouts. They weren’t just passing time until another opportunity presented itself. They actively care/d.
And yes I know how to spell your name! ;-)~ Regardless of the typing handicap this iPhone sometimes presents.
Thank you for all your effort. And where’s the darn Milwaukee track saw?!
Big Richard
I believe the affiliated commenter you speak of was in reference to a video link of the DeWalt mower catching fire. So you are saying someone from a rival tool brand posted that link and attempted to persuade users from avoiding this technology? That is pretty low. I know you will never disclose what brand it was (unless it was Makita, then you might), but I think in this case full transparency would be best for your readers. In the past I have seen you flag similar comments with a note stating that the commenter is employed by a competitor, or something along those lines.
Stuart
That’s where things get tricky.
When I know where an insider comment is coming from, I determine on a case by case basis whether it helps readers or primarily serves to promote a product or bash a competitor.
More helpful comments remain, less helpful ones are removed without noise.
I also look at comment history to help create an intent profile. Are their motives community-focused, or brand-serving?
Sales reps and engineers chime in from time to time, and so I’ll never call one out if/after they made their affiliation known. The last thing I want to do is encourage fake names, or reduce the helpful contributions made towards factually answering reader questions.
JoeM
Thank You for this Stuart! I’m hoping the affiliate link part of the code can be pasted to any Amazon product I buy. I want you to get credit for reminding me to shop there!
And for everyone else… To be clear… Joe is my Real Name, M is my real Surname’s initial. and if my E-Mail were visible you’d wonder just how insane I am. It’s the name of my long-serviced computer, plus the answer to life, the Universe, and Everything Important. Because Ich Bein Ein NERD… I am open to friendly discussion, even slightly aggressive discussion if something I’ve said is offensive. In those cases, please forgive me as I try to navigate the social landmines I’m not good at. I’m likely to challenge what you say, please have mercy and show me how I’m wrong, so that I may correct my behaviour.
I have a high IQ, so I have social interaction issues. It’s also where the long rants come from. Stuart is trying to reign me in, and I’m trying my best, but I won’t get it perfect every time. Im sorry. I’m learning just as much as anyone else, and I don’t know how to express my appreciation in words for those who have taught me great things I enjoy. It may appear like hero worship, or creepy. It’s just my way of saying thank you for all your help.
There. That’s me being as open about my weirdness as possible, to my knowledge.
TomD
I *think* if you click a ToolGuyd affiliate link, and then buy something else on amazon, he *may* get some credit for it. But I’m not exactly sure how the affiliate program works, and trying to “game” it can get everyone involved in trouble.
Stuart
Affiliate rules are complicated – there are cookie durations and what-not, and yes there are rules regarding what I can say or encourage.
Joe is also based in Canada, and that requires different links.
I generally have a “I don’t worry about, and so you shouldn’t worry about it” attitude. Nobody should go out of their way to click links – advertising, affiliate, or otherwise.
Lawrence K
I have always used other search engines and browsers to search for tool deals and lowest prices instead of searching directly on Amazon. Amazon has become so dishonest and deceptive that it will post several different prices for the exact same product. Only the luckiest search terms will get you to the lowest price listing. They also allow vendors and sellers to play the same game.
Anymore, it gets very time consuming just to save a few bucks and hope for an honest deal. And then all those nice major tool makers who sell off their brushed inventory while disguising it to look like the Fuel line or Gen 2 or Gen 3, etc. To me, it’s all a gimmick to manipulate as many tradesmen and skilled workers as possible into buying what they really don’t need or even want — if they knew the date of the old inventory being sold off by a 3rd party purveyor. There’s tons of them that all the big Yellow, Red, and Blue tool makers sell the old stuff off to. Hence, Amazon lightning Deals!! Buy now or never…….
For those who have never read it, these illegal and even criminal business practices and tactics are addressed by the “Unfair & Deceptive Trade Practices Act”, Title 5 U.S. Code sections 45 to 57a. Most states have the same or similar laws. But hey, who cares about what the law says anymore? Not even the US Dept of Justice.
Mike McFalls
I read this comment and while I agree; I recommend everyone follow a simple rule of checking the OEMs MRSP on every tool I plan to purchase and then only buy at or below that price. The OEM’s don’t always post their prices – but usually do – so when they don’t check the price at HD, Loews, ToolNut or whatever reputable site you want.
But always be sure to check the model numbers before making a purchase, anywhere, so as to eliminate the honest mistakes in postings and the intentionally dishonest sellers.