Doublepost prevention limited by search keywords October 25, 2001 8:20 AM   Subscribe

the plague of double-posts should be preventable through a reasonable search of the site, yes? i mean, if you can find the topic you are about to post, then you would realize there was no need.

but the search is limited by our own keywording. i have spent about half an hour trying to track down the URL of this link i saw a few weeks ago. anyone else remember the spooky (yet hilarious) flash-powered site with the old photograph of the little kid singing "american pie" and "black dog?"

so if i can't find a link that i remember from mefi, how is someone else going to find a link they don't know?
posted by grabbingsand to General Weblog-Related at 8:20 AM (10 comments total)

searching is also limited by the fact that i haven't been able to complete a search in a while, it always times out.
posted by o2b at 8:35 AM on October 25, 2001


if and when matt plugs in the verity search engine he's mentioned (it comes with coldfusion server 5), searches ought to be much snappier. on the order of a google search, easily. for right now, i think all that's needed is patience.
posted by moz at 8:50 AM on October 25, 2001


>anyone else remember the spooky (yet hilarious)
>flash-powered site with the old photograph of the
>little kid singing "american pie" and "black dog?"

eugenemirman.com


posted by webchick at 8:53 AM on October 25, 2001


Well, it won't help you find the singing kid, but as far as double-posts go, allowing a search for URLs/domains linked to on the front page would be helpful. For frequently linked sites, you'd search with the whole URL; for more obscure sites, you'd just search with the domain -- say, mnftiu.cc.

Search may already work this way; I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it.
posted by lbergstr at 8:53 AM on October 25, 2001


I recommend searching in the off-hours. Not only does it almost always work but you get every single result, unlike the Google cache search, which is very patchy and incomplete. Whenever I've copped out of the MetaFilter search and settled for Google I've double-posted and been deleted. My guess is there's a 2-week delay on Google but, worst of all, their search criteria are seriously skewed(not the word I was going to use, but stet.)so you get a lot of repetitions.
P.S.
The off-hours are when everybody on the West Coast and the East Coast is sound asleep, when Europe is getting up for work and only stavrosthewonderchicken, long may he live, is alive; i.e., GMT 0800 to GMT 1000.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:56 AM on October 25, 2001


Yeah, so, I bought a bunch of semi-colons off the back of a truck and I'm trying to unload them as fast as possible. If that wasn't obvious.
posted by lbergstr at 8:56 AM on October 25, 2001


that's it! thank you, webchick. you have just proven yourself more valuable than google.
posted by grabbingsand at 12:01 PM on October 25, 2001


>you have just proven yourself
>more valuable than google.

yep. and i have "I'm Feeling Lucky" tattooed across my _____.
posted by webchick at 12:55 PM on October 25, 2001


You have a _____?
posted by rodii at 5:44 PM on October 25, 2001


>You have a _____?

naturally. don't you?
posted by webchick at 6:36 PM on October 25, 2001


« Older do we all live vicariously through others?   |   Posting to sites requiring subscription? Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments