Problem publishing: URL caused failure

Help
1

I was attempting a test publication of an old Markdown document and it failed with dire warnings that I was attempting to cause harm. The only Markdown directives were # and ## section headings. Nothing else.

On a guess, I removed removed a line containing a web address, and the remainder of the document passed, and looked OK. I was publishing without logging in to write.as as I did not want to keep the result.

So, what is it about an internet address that sets off alarms? I dread to include it here, but it was a github address. Ideas? Thanks.

2

As a further test I removed “https://” from the github.com URL, and it was accepted. I can live with that, but what other weird triggers are waiting to trap me?

3

Of the 5 Markdown manuals I found, only the last mention that URLs must be enclosed in back-ticks in order to stop any meaning being applied to them.

4

Hey @picamanic, I disabled the spam filter for your account, so you should be able to publish whatever you want now.

One signal we look for to recognize spammers is plain URLs – so that’s most likely why your posts were flagged before.

5

Thanks, I know there must of something going on with with the Markdown processor. I would have hoped that it would have not tried to treat my document as a program. Still, the fact that I am forced to use raw HTML just to get coloured text says something.

6

Actually nothing to do with the Markdown processor :slightly_smiling_face: We just have to deal with a wonderful world of SEO people abusing our free platform and spamming backlinks. So we have automated systems that look for certain patterns in posts, and take action based on that.