Four questions about deleted posts

December 19, 2006 5:10 AM

Having suffered the ignominy of my first ever (undoubtedly deserved) deleted post, I have four questions:
1. What's the record for deleted posts from one user?
2. How many users have themselves ever been deleted / indefinitely suspended?
3. Is it possible to delete your own account in protest, and has anyone ever done it?
4. Do mathowie and jessamyn have the power to delete each others' posts?
posted by roofus to MetaFilter-Related at 5:10 AM (59 comments total)

1. I'm curious about this myself.
2. Mat/Jes have mentioned something about this. I remember a comment from jessamyn about the levels of banning, and something about "scorched earth".
3. Actually, when Matt disabled the IMG tag, I toyed with this elaborate plan to sneak into his house and delete my account in protest, and then to paypal myself back the $5. I ended up just taking the $5 in cash from his dresser and I didn't delete my account (obviously).
4. Yes, and that's why both of their replies to this thread are now gone. That's the thing with the constant edit wars on this site; they leave little evidence except the claims of a few cranks who no one will believe. M/J put up a good public front that belies just how close this house of cards is to collapsing at any point in time.
posted by Eideteker at 5:26 AM on December 19, 2006 [2 favorites]

As regards question # 3, deleting your own account "in protest" would probably count as one of the most meaningless things you could ever do on this earth.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:27 AM on December 19, 2006

What if I ask for your account to be deleted in protest?
posted by Plutor at 5:28 AM on December 19, 2006

I paid $5?
posted by matty at 5:47 AM on December 19, 2006

You know, as passive/aggressive responses to having your post deleted go, this one is a doozy. Kudos.
posted by signal at 5:49 AM on December 19, 2006

I'd say mattamyn's exercising discretion. When other community sites in the past have permitted visitors to view member fame/notoriety online (karma, scoop, etc.), there would always be the odd duck or two that would try to incur the highest negative score possible, either as proof of the social network's flaws, or as a testament of will.

With so much effort expended toward discouraging crap posts/axegrinding online, the admins here realise any "wall of shame" scorekeeping would be an open invitation for more trolling, self-linked FPPs, and comment spam.
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:51 AM on December 19, 2006

1. You're special but nt that special...yet.
2. [admin please hope me]
3. No. You can't delete your own account. Your comments are part of our collective permanenet record. You can remove all info from your user profile and stop posting, or get banned, but your history will remain. People have tried to get deleted to no avail. Someone will come along shortly with a link to an MetaTalk thread to provide some historical perspecteive on this matter.
4. Prolly.
posted by mds35 at 5:52 AM on December 19, 2006

btw, I'm not sure this is what the admins meant by "take this to metatalk."
posted by mds35 at 6:06 AM on December 19, 2006

I didn't post this out of any passive-aggressive angst. "Constructive aggressive?", maybe. It hurts a little, to have a post deleted, but I also recognise that hard work by the admins make metafilter as supremely good as it is.
posted by roofus at 6:10 AM on December 19, 2006

I'm having problems with iTunes crashing every time I try to burn a CD. Is this likely to be a hardware issue with my CD writer or a bug in iTunes?

Apologies to those that think this would have been better asked in Ask MetaFilter.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:12 AM on December 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

iTunes bug for sure.
Point taken. It was a moment of madness, in which I briefly imagined my rather dull question might take flight in the wider arena of ask.me.
posted by roofus at 6:18 AM on December 19, 2006

It'd be fantastic if dullness was a reason for deletion in AskMe.
posted by Burger-Eating Invasion Monkey at 6:19 AM on December 19, 2006

As regards #4, jessamyn is an unstoppable force and mathowie is an immovable object.

You do the math.
posted by dreamsign at 6:33 AM on December 19, 2006

As regards #4, jessamyn is an unstoppable force and mathowie is an immovable object.

I thought they were "rock" and "hard place".

Frankly I think all of the above sounds like a delicious sandwich, but I'm kind of warped.
posted by loquacious at 6:54 AM on December 19, 2006

Is it possible to delete your own account in protest?

Can I have your stuff?
posted by jdroth at 7:09 AM on December 19, 2006

It'd be fantastic if dullness was a reason for deletion in AskMe.

What? Another round of Name My Cat or Mix-CD For My Mom isn't invigorating to your very core? Blasphemy!
posted by prostyle at 7:19 AM on December 19, 2006

I prostyled your mom while naming your cat. Or something.
posted by dreamsign at 7:32 AM on December 19, 2006

Would you really ask to have your account deleted out of protest for having a (clearly metafilter related) askme question deleted? That seems kinda silly.
posted by antifuse at 7:36 AM on December 19, 2006

Wait, Matt is The Rock?

Dude, you were great in The Rundown.
posted by Astro Zombie at 7:40 AM on December 19, 2006 [2 favorites]

antifuse, really really, I'm not asking to be deleted. It just never occurred to me before that there's no mechanism for it.
posted by roofus at 7:49 AM on December 19, 2006

All 4 of your questions are probably best answered by admins—the rest of us are happy to snark and give you bullshit answers til they come around. Oh, except for no. 3. You have your answer for that.
posted by carsonb at 8:02 AM on December 19, 2006

I only come here for the snark and the bullshit anyway. I hear user-generated S+B is the hottest thing in Web2.0 right now.
posted by roofus at 8:07 AM on December 19, 2006

1. What's the record for deleted posts from one user?

We don't keep track in any specific and meaningful way, but the people who top the list of "most deleted comments" are mostly people who have been banned from here some time ago.

2. How many users have themselves ever been deleted / indefinitely suspended?

Personally I have no idea. This would have to include jokey sock puppet accounts, pure noise accounts and the occasional horrid miscreant.

3. Is it possible to delete your own account in protest, and has anyone ever done it?

No. You can ask to be banned and we'll happily comply, but you can't remove your past comments.

4. Do mathowie and jessamyn have the power to delete each others' posts?

Yes.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:07 AM on December 19, 2006 [3 favorites]

"horrid miscreant" is so my next user name. Don't you steal it, you fuckers!
posted by dreamsign at 8:09 AM on December 19, 2006 [1 favorite]

Thanks!
posted by roofus at 8:14 AM on December 19, 2006

Yes.

So now we know: (rock)/(hard-place)={}
posted by lodurr at 8:14 AM on December 19, 2006

Actually, I'm kinda warming now to "occasional horrid miscreant".

You know, like an occasional table. It complements any room.
posted by dreamsign at 8:17 AM on December 19, 2006

Im in ur firefox question namin ur cat
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:32 AM on December 19, 2006 [2 favorites]

4. Do mathowie and jessamyn have the power to delete each others' posts?

Of all the variants of "can an omnipotent God make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it?" Jesuit mindfuck, I will always love the best the askme question about being able to rip one's own head off. Mostly because it inspires in me a delightfully sanguinary vision of the ultimate act of frustration and protest, thus:

3. Is it possible to delete your own account in protest, and has anyone ever done it?

All answers are contained within.
posted by Divine_Wino at 8:35 AM on December 19, 2006

What shall I name my cat?
posted by fixedgear at 8:46 AM on December 19, 2006

OK, who's going to write The Adventures of Horrid Miscreant in Tepid Wonderland?


If nobody does, expect a torrent of churlish puling.



posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:50 AM on December 19, 2006

Oh snap! I just scored "Orwellian Implications of Deletion" as my next band name. (First album: "No residual record") Back off, varmints!

expect a torrent of churlish puling

Your porn talk is so bad it's good.
posted by dreamsign at 9:10 AM on December 19, 2006

expect a torrent of churlish puling

Well, I ain't mopping it up.
posted by briank at 10:09 AM on December 19, 2006

You don't have to, briank - torrents are distributed over the whole network.

the CHURLISH PULING network.
posted by ikkyu2 at 10:15 AM on December 19, 2006

1. What's the record for deleted posts from one user?

The number is unknown. But the record is held by Postroad, and he has an insurmountable lead. Hell, you could probably divide his number of deleted posts by 5, and he would hold the top 5 positions on that list.
posted by dios at 10:36 AM on December 19, 2006

I thought Matt was a rock, and Jessamyn was an iiiIIIiisland.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:36 AM on December 19, 2006

I asked about double posts a while back. I'm a champion double poster. Shame they don't track any of this info.
posted by chunking express at 10:41 AM on December 19, 2006

You could probably find the number one deleted post dude by screen scraping all the metafilter posts to date, checking to see if the post was deleted, and if so who was the poster.
posted by chunking express at 10:45 AM on December 19, 2006

chunking express writes "You could probably find the number one deleted post dude by screen scraping all the metafilter posts to date, checking to see if the post was deleted, and if so who was the poster."

There is a more DB friendly way than that. Check the archive pages for missing post numbers and then check to see if the missing numbers exists as posts and who posted them. That way you don't make a bunch of hits on the server pulling up good posts.
posted by Mitheral at 11:35 AM on December 19, 2006

Guys, you don't have to figure it out. It's Postroad. And its not even close. He probably has like 10x the number of deleted posts of the next highest guy.
posted by dios at 11:47 AM on December 19, 2006

when it comes to deleted comments however, i own this place.
posted by quonsar at 12:14 PM on December 19, 2006

My only question along these lines is: If jessamyn feels like it, can she delete mathowie's account?
posted by graventy at 1:24 PM on December 19, 2006

Oh I never checked out the archive page before. Yeah, that's a much better way to scrape.

Though I think dios is right. I'd be surprised if Postroad isn't the king of deleted posts.
posted by chunking express at 1:42 PM on December 19, 2006

Who's Postroad?
posted by davy at 1:47 PM on December 19, 2006

If jessamyn feels like it, can she delete mathowie's account?

From a security standpoint: I certainly damn hope she can at least freeze it. And vice-versa.

Otherwise, Matt's only recourse to an identity-theft attack is to shut down the server and manually edit the database.
posted by lodurr at 1:53 PM on December 19, 2006

Postroad. He's got an interest in Bush and the Middle East.
posted by Mitheral at 1:53 PM on December 19, 2006

Yeah, in the same way that Bill Gates has an interest in bad software.
posted by dg at 2:31 PM on December 19, 2006

only recourse to an identity-theft attack is to shut down the server and manually edit the database

OH MY GAWD!!!1!!!!!!!1!
posted by quonsar at 5:08 PM on December 19, 2006

Well, seriously: How would you feel if all you got when you tried to load MeFi was some application error page?

Oh.... wait.... never mind.
posted by lodurr at 7:12 PM on December 19, 2006

only recourse to an identity-theft attack is to shut down the server and manually edit the database

Edit the entire site from orbit. Only way to be sure.
posted by dreamsign at 7:29 PM on December 19, 2006

you can't remove your past comments.

All posts are © their original authors.

How does that work, legally? I don't think you should be able to remove your past comments, but how can that policy be legal without you asserting some sort of ownership over them?
posted by dmd at 8:48 PM on December 19, 2006

How does that work, legally?

Copyright has to do with use, not property. Once you publish stuff to MetaFilter and "fix" it here you've given MetaFilter rights to use it on the site, as you posted it. You don't, for example, give mathowie the right to publish a book with all your posts in it. Matt has taken pains to explain this in the past but it's pretty hard to Google "All posts are © their original authors." so I'm not finding it.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:57 PM on December 19, 2006

You know, like an occasional table. It complements any room.

Sometimes.
posted by blenderfish at 12:28 AM on December 20, 2006

I always though Jess was just Matt's sock puppet/alter ego, you know like when Jaime Gumm tucks his bits and pieces and tells the "great big fat person" in the well to rub the lotion on her skin; except in this case he/she's only murdering thread noise and shit posts.
posted by Pollomacho at 1:16 AM on December 20, 2006

Ok, that seems reasonable to me. I was always confused about the whole "big web site X grabs all rights to your content" hullabaloos (e.g. myspace) - I knew there must be some way to let someone else show your content, without fear of lawsuit, without giving it to them!
posted by dmd at 11:03 AM on December 20, 2006

Once you publish stuff to MetaFilter and "fix" it here you've given MetaFilter rights to use it on the site, as you posted it.

Irrevocable rights?
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:47 AM on December 21, 2006

Would yer average mefite hate bush's policies so much if he came out as a gay agnostic librarian-type?
posted by davy at 6:35 PM on December 21, 2006

Davy, you just blew my mind.
posted by Pollomacho at 6:38 PM on December 21, 2006

... because you know, someone with Bush's policies is so likely to be a gay agnostic librarian-type.
posted by lodurr at 12:35 PM on December 22, 2006