What happened to our questions to Osama?

October 17, 2001 2:30 PM

Okay... what happened to the painfully funny and popular thread from earlier today that had us offering our own questions to Osama?

I don't normally ask... I attribute any missing thread to a well-deserved deletion by Matt. But I can't imagine what about the thread would have warranted a deletion.
posted by silusGROK to Etiquette/Policy at 2:30 PM (18 comments total)

It *was* funny, but unfortunately it was also a doublepost.
posted by xiffix at 2:34 PM on October 17, 2001

I think it was treated as a double post.
posted by samsara at 2:35 PM on October 17, 2001

Drat..I double linked
posted by samsara at 2:36 PM on October 17, 2001

The first thread only garnered seven comments, the second had over fourty before the hook came out. I wonder if that had more to do with when (mid-evening EDT) the original link was posted or perhaps the way the link was formatted (all serious-like)?
posted by xiffix at 2:46 PM on October 17, 2001

An aside on an otherwise unremarkable thread counts as a primary post when the second instance was actaully read, and appreciated?

Sigh.
posted by silusGROK at 2:48 PM on October 17, 2001

If this is evidence of a new zero-tolerance policy on double posts, I am in favor. I was looking forward to reading that thread when it suddenly disappeared, but it's certainly a fair way to approach the signal/noise problem.
posted by sudama at 2:55 PM on October 17, 2001

Yes. But the noise was the first post... this was pure signal!

I'm not angry... I'm just really bummed: I nearly bust a gut reading that thread, and it was only at 48 comments! I was really looking forward to a follow-up visit.
posted by silusGROK at 3:00 PM on October 17, 2001

Sorry, collatoral damage. I could move all the comments from the deleted thread to the still alive thread.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:07 PM on October 17, 2001

I'm not sure why, and I may WELL be mistaken, but I was under the impression that that was the usual mechanism, to consolidate comments into the first thread upon deletion? Did I dream that? I could have sworn I saw that happen before, anyway....
posted by rushmc at 5:25 PM on October 17, 2001

It was simply painful, but not very funny.
posted by ParisParamus at 6:23 PM on October 17, 2001

I'd like to see the comments moved over if possible -- maybe deleted double-post threads could automatically be linked from the primary post (without the comments box on the bottom, so two streams wouldn't develop). Maybe I should post this in feature requests ...
posted by sylloge at 6:34 PM on October 17, 2001

I have to admit that the questions for Osama thread had me and the coworkers dying laughing. Then, when the thread disappeared, I had to explain to them that sometimes threads just go away. They didn't understand and asked why God makes bad things happen. And I told them that God DOESN'T make bad things happen...Matt does.
posted by ColdChef at 6:58 PM on October 17, 2001

hmm. weird.

So I just tried to move all the comments. It looked like the old thread was 11551. If I recall correctly, there were about 40 comments in it.

I did this query in sql:

UPDATE comment
SET
link_id = 11542
WHERE link_ID = 11551

but the result in now a thread with 32 comments, none of which appear to be any I found earlier. Hmm...
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:16 PM on October 17, 2001

adventures in db adminstration. add that to your resume: they're always looking for db admins.
posted by moz at 7:38 PM on October 17, 2001

Oliver's un-punchy link headline = piddly amount of comments? Sigh.

:)
posted by owillis at 11:40 PM on October 17, 2001

ROTFL ColdChef!
posted by rushmc at 6:21 AM on October 18, 2001

Hey, Matt? Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the comments that you moved were from the wrong thread. They weren't from the question thread, they were from a thread that got deleted at the same time (but for the life of me, I can't remember what that double post was about).

The question thread was either right before or right after the thread that these comments came from.
posted by ColdChef at 7:03 AM on October 18, 2001

The thread was 11559.

You're a star, Matt! Even if you've been demoted from Demigod to mere Patron Saint over this.

: )

PS... LOL ColdChef. Very nice.
posted by silusGROK at 9:00 AM on October 18, 2001