Code of Honor Bookmarklet

If you're reading this then you probably already know the CoH - and you might even find yourself having to cite part of it on occassion while explaining to someone that they shouldn't be seeding their own stuff; you know, that whole self-promotion issue.

I don't find myself having to tell many people about the CoH but when I do it always seems to be in relation to a Self Promotion seed or "article" (that is actually just a seed to their external content). Inevitably I end up having to mention the CoH, providing a link to it, and then quoting item 3. However, I'm lazy and don't like having to type, essentially, the same thing more than once. With that in mind I created a bookmarklet that should, theoretically, work in both IE and FF. It will insert some stock text into the "comment" box so you can quickly give the seeder/author a heads up.

Sadly, I can't put a bookmarklet into this article so I'm going to give you step by step instructions on how to do this.

Firefox

1. Go to your bookmarks menu
2. Select "Organize Bookmarks"
3. Click on the "New Bookmark" button
4. Enter "CoH Warning" in Bookmark name

5. copy this quoted text:

   javascript:u=document.getElementById('commentsText_');void(u.value='You may want to review the ToS for Newsvine and the <a href="http://www.newsvine.com/_cms/info/codeofhonor">Code of Honor</a>, in particular item #3:\n\n<blockquote>Newsvine is for collaborative discovery and discussion of the news, not self-promotion. Posting full articles which also appear on your blog is acceptable but seeding your own stuff is not.</blockquote>\n\nHope this helps.');location.replace('#entercomment');

6. paste the previous text into the bookmarks "location" field
7. click the "OK" button

Internet Explorer

1. Go to your favorites menu
2. Select "Add To Favorites"
3. Enter "CoH Warning" in favorite name
4. Click the "Add" button
5. Go to your favorites menu again
6. Find your new favorite "CoH Warning"
7. Right click on that favorite and a new menu will appear
8. Select "properties" from the menu (it should be the last option)

9. copy this quoted text:

   javascript:u=document.getElementById('commentsText_');void(u.value='You may want to review the ToS for Newsvine and the <a href="http://www.newsvine.com/_cms/info/codeofhonor">Code of Honor</a>, in particular item #3:\n\n<blockquote>Newsvine is for collaborative discovery and discussion of the news, not self-promotion. Posting full articles which also appear on your blog is acceptable but seeding your own stuff is not.</blockquote>\n\nHope this helps.');location.replace('#entercomment');

10. paste the previous text into the favorites "url" field in the properties dialog
11. click the "OK" button
12. If prompted with a message "The protocol javascript does not have a registered program. Do you want to keep this target anyway" dialog click the "Yes" button

Perhaps, this functionality already exists elsewhere or Adam Hobson will add something like it to the newsvine firefox toolbar. Until then I hope this makes it easier for you to help people use the vine properly while helping to keep the spam at bay.

I just added a small addition to the bookmarklet script which will automatically scroll you down to the comment box your comment is pasted in. Thanks to Gleuch for this small, but very handy addition!

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