I have noticed the use of shortened links like bit.ly, and goo.gl have increased, for a variety of reasons it is not acceptable to use these links in Ask Ubuntu, here is the question on discussing shortened link services:

How to deal with masked shortened-urls?

Reasons for cleaning these links:

• True location of links are hidden
• Stats and location data is collected (way for spam to track users)
• There are easy ways to "shorten" links with markdown maintaining the orginal link in mouse-over, so the primary purpose of these services is defeated.
• Links are not picked up as "broken" when they lead first to the link shortening service.

##What I'm suggesting

To help facilitate the cleanup of these links to make the site better here's what I think we should do:

1. Find all the links
2. Check to make sure a link is alive still (use one of the preview services for safety)
3. Replace the link with a direct link.

Previewable

• bit.ly: http://askubuntu.com/search?q=bit.ly Add + at end to preview bit.ly/####+ - DONE (only for bit.ly need to expand for other url forms bitly uses, there are many)

• tinyurl.com http://askubuntu.com/search?q=tinyurl.com add preview. at beginning http://preview.tinyurl.com/cz23u4 DONE (You aren't allowed to use tinyurl anymore as well)

• goo.gl http://askubuntu.com/search?q=goo.gl add + at end goo.gl/####+ DONE (note that there are many question that are following instructions where they were told to wget a goo.gl link, I don't think we should encourage answers with these links, but questions about them should keep the original steps followed)

• is.gd http://askubuntu.com/search?q=is.gd add - hyphen at end

• tiny.cc http://askubuntu.com/search?q=tiny.cc add ~ at end DONE

• bitly.com http://askubuntu.com/search?q=bitly.com add + DONE

• j.mp http://askubuntu.com/search?q=j.mp add +

Un-previewable

• t.co http://askubuntu.com/search?q=t.co