Google Lemonade: Today's YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! (more URL corruption)

When I was checking to see if a photo had already been added to my notes, I clicked "Test this link" and I got the home page of my blogger account. Looking at the link value, I had the horror of seeing a blogger.com instead of facebook.com link in notes.

I went back to the old version so that I could quickly check all four links. Sure enough, Google has destroyed them all. This was not because of a cut&paste operation. This information was added using the Insert Image feature followed by clearing the formatting of the caption. (You can tell I cleared the formating because yet another inconsistency of the new version is that it left justifies, rather than centers, the caption.)

I told myself to calm down because I had seen that the real URL is hidden in another tag. So I switched to HTML. To more horror, the old URL was not saved in this case:

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEwD0_1DLtwZBb7yxGXtNTtcGl8hoTBIPNi3-bt7hn4tlCqftSRL-j6zaon_rtWLulp2P-bfkIRBQdxen9F402pdBGjdROyNZNwGLqYvVpFYTSp7PQokabY9ewgrOF_Q8x7ZLy_w-rISU/s960/108152637_2528286960725364_8816454851028577755_o.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="616" data-original-width="960" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEwD0_1DLtwZBb7yxGXtNTtcGl8hoTBIPNi3-bt7hn4tlCqftSRL-j6zaon_rtWLulp2P-bfkIRBQdxen9F402pdBGjdROyNZNwGLqYvVpFYTSp7PQokabY9ewgrOF_Q8x7ZLy_w-rISU/w640-h410/108152637_2528286960725364_8816454851028577755_o.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">Illinois Central Railroad Scrapbook <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">posted</a><br />
In 1912 the Illinois Central began construction of new shops at Centralia, IL, to service and repair locomotives and freight cars. The new facilities would be located approximately two miles south of downtown and would replace the old shops, some dating back to the 1850's when the IC built through Centralia.<br />
An important piece of the shop complex was a 48 stall roundhouse that formed a near-complete circle, with two tracks exiting the south end of the roundhouse. As built, 39 of the stalls were devoted to running repairs, and the other nine were equipped with drop pits for the replacement of locomotive drivers or lead trucks.<br />
Construction on both the freight car repair shops and the roundhouse began in July, 1912. In this view dated Sept. 6, about half of the exterior walls had been erected. The nine drop pits were located to the right, in the portion of the roundhouse that already has part of the roof erected. Construction moved swiftly, and the freight car repair facilities opened in January, 1913, and the locomotive facilities were completed in February, 1913.<br />
More info (probably more than you ever wanted to know) about the Centralia shops can be found at the link below.<br />
IC photo, Cliff Downey coll.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">https://www.google.com/…/ed…/American_Engineer/Ido-AQAAMAAJ…</a><br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">Greg Beal</a> I still work in that roundhouse or what is left of it. As of the end of July this year the building will closed. Such is the Canadian way, not needed!<br />
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Cliff Downey <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">shared</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I included the bogus "div" elements because I'm seeing that noise a lot lately. I suspect that it is another problem with the new version, but it is not a showstopper so I'm not going to pursue it.

Fortunately,  I have the photo that I was checking to verify it was a duplicate. Using the old version, I deleted this garbage and added the photo again. The only info I lost was the "shared" link.


BUT, I have inserted several other photos using the new version to test the it-sometimes-puts-the-photo-at-the-end bug. How many of them now have destroyed URL links? I checked the latest photo I added. It was in Hanging Bridge, and fortunately it looks OK.

I've done at least eleven other photo inserts with the new version during the last few days. I had enough details for two of the tests to check the contents. Neither of them had blogger.com. So I'm crossing my fingers that not too many of my updates got contaminated. But I'm going to, again, quit using the new version to add content. I'm still using it for the search function because that is a significant improvement. So far, that is the only improvement.

July 19 update: I used the new version to add information to a caption rather than find the same post with the old version. I updated it after making my desired edit. And then I cleared the formatting for the caption. Sure enough, all URLs got contaminated. So you now know how to recreate this bug that destroys user content, SO FIX IT. Needless to say, I did not Update after that change. (post)