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September 5

Link to specific message on message board?

Hi everyone, Thank you for any help you can give me. I'm a librarian trying to help a student, but I'm a bit stumped on this one. The student is wondering about creating a link to a specific part of a message board so people don't have to dig through potentially thousands of other messages to get there. Since I'm not an expert on this, I was looking for some here. For more context, here is what he was asking:

"I am having trouble making clickable url links that, when my readers click on them, do not take them to a whole message board, causing my readers to hunt through a bewildering array of messages before they can get to one I am referencing. Rather, I would like to make clickable url links that take my readers to a specific post on, say, a message board, or, perhaps, a post on a chain of social media posts. This would make things a whole lot easier on my readers. I have tried to figure out ways to do this myself, but have been unsuccessful so far. What do you think? Is it possible to set up a url link in a reference list that takes one's readers to a specific post on a message board, or a social media chain, or another online dialogic format?"

I hope my question makes sense, and thank you for any help you can give me, it is most appreciated! 2601:19B:681:9910:A8B6:5E5:B728:F523 (talk) 17:31, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Whether you can create a direct link to a post in a message board is entirely dependent on the specific message board software or social media site the post is located on. Often a direct link is as simple as grabbing the address from the address bar of your browser while viewing the post, but that's isn't always possible. Occasional there will be an option on the post itself that will give you the correct address to link to it, but again this is dependent on the specific board being used. 161.11.160.60 (talk) 17:56, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the web page itself does not have link locations build into the web page, you can link to specific text on a web page in most web browsers using a content highlight function like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing#:~:text=question%20is%20unclear (I am assuming Wikipedia won't mangle that). 75.136.148.8 (talk) 21:56, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very, very much! I really appreciate this feedback -- I'll share it with my student! Again, my appreciation. 204.13.46.20 (talk) 01:05, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See URI fragment -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 18:20, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some websites like to put content in frames, so the address bar shows only the container; this may be what inconveniences your student. In such a case, right-click on the relevant part of the window and choose "copy link to this frame" or, if that is not on the menu, "show only this frame" and then copy the address bar. —Tamfang (talk) 18:12, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]