Injecting HTML Into A Stackexchange Site

Question

I am writing an application that injects some HTML into the page. I was wondering what the policy is for this. Is it ok or generally frowned upon?

Answer 1

People love this. See all of the grease monkey scripts on meta:

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/greasemonkey

Answer 2

the only people that have anything to say about it are your users.

If your add-on succeeds it is ok, if it doesn't then they are probably frowning. ;-)

For a producer of web content to frown upon an extension would be silly and would not typically be amongst your risks because

1. there is nothing they can do about it, legally or otherwise. The content is in the memory of the user's computer.
2. it would/could generate negative pr/opinion
3. more viscerally, it would be the epitome of petty and would be viewed as such. No one wants to be viewed such a way.
4. and ultimately, the goal is to get the content into the user's eyes. Extensions arguably can drive traffic and promote loyalty.

Answer 3

Policy wise, we don't restrict [app] behavior.

Obviously, we frown on malicious code or usage patterns... but I doubt anyone's going to ask for permission to do bad things.

In short, you're in the clear.