What is the "Mask" button?

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Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:03 pm

I tried searching for it but got too much results or no results. What does the "Mask" button do? Is it hiding text from search engines?

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

^^^^^ Yes, when you use mask,

Code:

[mask] the text here is hidden[/mask]

from search engines, but you only really need to use the mask feature on parts of the forum that are not behind a login, the phonelads forum for example, all forums behind a login automatically hide your posts from search engines without masking.

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:09 pm

I do believe it is redundant. It ain't necessary anymore[edit : apart from what SS says above] as any posts here are automatically hidden by a super-secret Mod invisibility cloak thingy.

Tommo

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:29 pm

Please use sparingly - it uses up more bandwidth. Smile

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:39 pm

Don't listen to them. The mask button, when used correctly, gives you a super secret mask to hide your identity batman style Very Happy

** SUSPENDED ** Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 1267

The only forum that I would ever think about using masking is the "PUBLISH YOUR WORK HERE!" forum - since that's not behind a login.

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 1:50 am

FYI, these forums have no login requirement (i.e. can be indexed by search engines)

Phone lads
Publish your work
Surplus
Forum and tech related

(a big shout out to Eight for the research)

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

Thanks for the list DrWho and eight. Just for completeness the overhead using mask is around one hundred characters plus the masked text is 50% longer. It isn't horribly wasteful when used sparingly, but you may want to consider using one large mask instead of two small ones if they are close together. When you would want to use a lot of masks then it's usually better to use a mild form of 1337 5pe4k instead. Just replace "a" with "4" and "l" with "1" etc.

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