Youtube has started using unusual characters, and sequences of, within its URLs.
For complicated reasons this breaks the EuroGA text processor, and while almost anything can be fixed in software, there is no cheap fix for this one short of a big re-write. So we have to find ways of handling it. I can fix up peoples’ posts but would appreciate if people took note of this because I don’t always have the time.
The first issue is the “share” URL (which is a shorter version of the one shown in the browser URL window) now generally needs a blank line after it. So if you have it as the last line in your post, it won’t show. The two solutions are
The second issue is the use of double hyphens in some YT URLs. This is not “illegal” per HTML specification but is really stupid (and completely pointless) and it will break a lot of older sites. This issue exists with both the full URL and the “share” URL. The solution is to enclose the URL in the “pre” tags, like this example
If the space character shown above is omitted, the fix still works but any text after the video will show up in Courier font
If anyone knows anybody who is good in Ruby on Rails, I am interested. It would not be unpaid work but we cannot afford the standard Ruby commercial rates of 1k/day or so.
For your own videos, Vimeo.com is a much better site which delivers a nice short URL as well as a much better quality of video.
I have updated post #1 with solutions for the Youtube URL issues.
There is another solution for sidestepping various text formatting issues:
Also truncate video URLs so e.g.
is just the yellow part. Otherwise, the URL appears but the forum software won’t create the on-screen player.
There is a more tricky issue with these “URL tails”. I don’t know what YT does but there is some data encoded in there, and I believe it connects to the person’s, shall we say, “other online viewing habits” With FB, you get huge URL tails like this
and I am 99% certain that if you click on that sort of FB URL you will then for ever be presented (on FB and elsewhere) with the originating person’s video viewing preferences! That is how social media advertising works… you pass something on to someone and it just carries on…
The correct URL for the above would be just
and that also renders the YT player