Filtering Posts

February 11, 2007 5:46 AM

Is there a way to not receive posts matching a given tag? [details inside]
posted by avriette to feature requests at 5:46 AM (37 comments total)

Apologies if I've done this wrong; I've never done more than comment on posts. When I went to AskMefi, it suggested that metafilter-related questions should be directed to metatalk, which says to "post a link," when this is a question. I've gone through the FAQ and searched through askmefi, metatalk, and mefi itself without much luck.

I specifically would like to ignore posts tagged with youtube, video, etc. I wouldn't have said anything except that a) there seem to be so many of them lately and b) when I realized that I was apprehensive about asking if there was a way to do it, I decided that being concerned somebody would call me curmudgeonly or jerkish (both have been used!) that perhaps a solution would be nice to have. (and that perhaps such people are without a sense of irony)

I use nightly builds of Firefox and Google Reader to pull down mefi with RSS (or atom, or something). I'm really just trying to keep my news-reading experience text-and-static-images-only. I don't have an especial bias against youtube or other such sites.
posted by avriette at 5:50 AM on February 11, 2007

Upon reading the above, it occurs to me that I'm trying to keep my reading experience at a level of complexity not much greater than that of Mefi itself. Fancy that.
posted by avriette at 5:52 AM on February 11, 2007

You can use online services (free) like FeedRinse to cleanse RSS feeds of certain items by tag or keyword.
posted by matthewr at 6:01 AM on February 11, 2007

matthewr, that's delightful. thank you.
posted by avriette at 6:19 AM on February 11, 2007

Is it unreasonable to ask that posts be tagged? Should I just be filtering on a word rather than a tag? Honest question, not trying to be snarky.
posted by avriette at 6:25 AM on February 11, 2007

avriette: Is it unreasonable to ask that posts be tagged?

Of course not. However, it's unrealistic to hope that tags will be consistent across any and all posts covering a given topic. If I were inclined to filter posts, I'd definitely go the word-filtering route rather than the tag-filtering route.
posted by Doofus Magoo at 6:37 AM on February 11, 2007

Hm, that's fair enough. What, then is the purpose of a tag? Consider the 'flash' post.
posted by avriette at 6:40 AM on February 11, 2007

Generally, the tag's useful as a reference. If one wanted to refer to a prior discussion in an AskMe thread, or wished to ensure a double post wasn't submitted by mistake, tagging would be useful to MeFites. The tag could also offer a means of discovering a name, event, issue, or hyperlink referred in MetaTalk or Projects, that wasn't directly in the blue, but could be of side interest. Should the exact name of a meme be forgotten, the tag may assist in search engine inquires, and so on.
posted by Smart Dalek at 6:54 AM on February 11, 2007

People mostly use tagging here as a way of indicating the content of their posts, whether it's words like iraq, practicaljokes or batshitinsane. People often do not use tags to indicate the delivery mechanism of the link, though some do. I find the tagging system useful here to find relevant Ask MetaFilter questions to a question I might be asking, or figuring out if a familiar post in the blue is a double. If you particularly like art or music posts, you can subscribe to an art or music tag and that works pretty well.

It's nearly impossible to mandate appropriate tags though we do (I think? If not we will) mandate that *some* tags be added to your posts in MeFi. However it's a community of almost 50,000 with 10% of that posting/commenting pretty frequently, so it's nearly impossible to implement some sort of "here is the way we'd like you to use the site" system. Usually we're just happy if we can get across a few "here is now not to use the site" ideas.
posted by jessamyn at 7:11 AM on February 11, 2007

In the long run, tags are more about navigation and grouping similar posts together. They're imperfect for things like filtering, but they work pretty good for the other things.
posted by mathowie at 7:44 AM on February 11, 2007

And no apologies necessary, avriette—you did this pretty much exactly right. In the rougher parlance of metatalk post-game chatter, this is one of the most non-shitty threads we've had in a while. (Innocents like meetup requests and bug reports not considered, natch.)
posted by cortex at 7:46 AM on February 11, 2007

I wasn't going to make a post about this, but as tags are already the topic of conversation...

When making my last post I ran into the character limit of tags. Is there a reason why there's a 200 character limit on tags? It doesn't bother me, I'm just curious as to why.
posted by Kattullus at 8:13 AM on February 11, 2007

There has to be some limit — database fields can't just be of unlimited length.
posted by matthewr at 8:16 AM on February 11, 2007

I know matthewr, that's why I asked about the 200 character limit in particular. But reading it over I can see that I wasn't too clear on that front.
posted by Kattullus at 9:14 AM on February 11, 2007

tags, especially when shown as severalcombinedwords, get less common the longer they get, so I put a limit of 200 characters on it to ensure people don't get carried away with silly paragraph-long tags all smushed together.
posted by mathowie at 9:39 AM on February 11, 2007

I generally try to tag my video/youtube posts - and all my posts - with appropriate tags.

People should probably include the tag "video" for non-youtube video links, and "video" and "YouTube" when posting youtube links, just to help differentiate between the two.
posted by loquacious at 10:10 AM on February 11, 2007

Since we're chatting about tags, is there a reason that registered users can't add or even edit tags on a post? Might improve the experience. As for abuse, well, "wisdom of the crowds" and all that bullshit....
posted by keswick at 10:25 AM on February 11, 2007

Thanks, mathowie, for satisfying my idle curiosity. That is an excellent reason for the 200-character limit.

Oh, and keswick, that way leads to tears...
posted by Kattullus at 10:57 AM on February 11, 2007

clue: every way leads to tears.
posted by quonsar at 11:02 AM on February 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Not ones measured in the meters, quonsar, the metric system will wipe away your tears.
posted by Kattullus at 11:16 AM on February 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Maybe allow registered users to add tags, and show the top 2-5 (by count) user-submitted tags for each post alongside the poster's tags? I think Slashdot's been doing something similar lately, and I dig the idea; that way it reflects more of a consensus than simply the opinion of the latest person to do the updating (cf. Wikipedia).
posted by Doofus Magoo at 12:04 PM on February 11, 2007

Maybe allow registered users to add tags, and show the top 2-5 (by count) user-submitted tags for each post alongside the poster's tags?

If we did this, I would personally game every post so that the top tag was LOL GAYFURRIES. :-)
posted by anotherpanacea at 1:08 PM on February 11, 2007

I would personally game every post so that the top tag was LOL GAYFURRIES. :-)

And that is why we can't have nice things.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:13 PM on February 11, 2007

avriette: "I specifically would like to ignore posts tagged with youtube, video, etc."

How to ignore something, in nine easy steps:

1) Determine the thing you would like to ignore.
2) Think about your reasons for ignoring it. "There's too much of it" and "Kind of shitty" are excellent examples.
3) Tell other people you want to ignore these things. With luck, others will agree.
4) Discuss, at length, the reasons why the thing should be ignored.
5) Do you own a belt?
6) No, sorry, I mean a brown one.
7) Great. Now put the belt on. You shouldn't wear a shirt tucked-in without a belt.
8) How are your folks? Did they enjoy the timeshare?
9) Just fucking ignore it.
posted by Plutor at 1:31 PM on February 11, 2007

How to move something very heavy, in nine easy steps:

1) Determine the thing you would like to move.
2) Think about your reasons for wanting to move it. "It's in the wrong spot" and "We won't all die if we can find a way to move it" are excellent examples.
3) Tell other people you want to move the heavy thing. With luck, others will agree.
4) Discuss, at length, the ways you might move the heavy thing.
5) Do you own a long, rigid pole or such?
6) No, a sturdier one, with good tensile strength.
7) Great. Now try to find a fulcrum. You shouldn't try to improvise a lever without a solid fulcrum.
8) Look! We've nearly found a technical solution to a value-neutral problem statement!
9) Oh, fuck it. Let's all just live in caves until the sabertooths eat us.
posted by cortex at 1:43 PM on February 11, 2007

(Seriously, Plutor, wtf lad.)
posted by cortex at 1:44 PM on February 11, 2007

I'm afraid of sabertooths.
posted by cgc373 at 1:49 PM on February 11, 2007

I specifically would like to ignore posts tagged with youtube, video, etc

Can you program? If you can, it wouldn't be extremely difficult to repurpose any of several Firefox scripts or extensions to filter out what you don't want to see. It's been done on MetaFilter itself and it's been done on other popular (and probably unpopular) sites. Cooking up a solution is not a horribly arduous task especially if, as you say in your profile, you hack for food.

Because I'm entering a cranky phase of my old manself, I will say that the "just ignore what you don't want to read" argument which is often trotted out when the topic is raised is simply bogus, no matter how smart, well-intentioned, good-looking, or physically well-endowed those who make it may be. It has been demonstrated, many times, that a lot of people want an alternate solution to filtering out items other than ignoring what is put in front of their face.
posted by mdevore at 2:01 PM on February 11, 2007

It's nearly impossible to mandate appropriate tags though we do (I think? If not we will) mandate that *some* tags be added to your posts in MeFi.

mathowie - can we please please pretty please have this? I don't think it's asking too much for users to not leave the tags field completely blank when making a post. Every time I see a post without tags I want to berate the poster for being lazy and just making it harder to find their post, but I can't really just say that as it's thread-crapping. The excuse of "I can't think of any tags for this post" is complete nonsense, I cannot conceive of a post that one could not think of at least a single summary keyword that applies, and if such a beast were to exist it would not deserve to be a post.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:01 PM on February 11, 2007

mdevore: "It has been demonstrated, many times, that a lot of people want an alternate solution to filtering out items other than ignoring what is put in front of their face."

Just because a lot of people want it doesn't mean it's a good idea. George Bush, for instance. Or emacs.
posted by Plutor at 3:45 PM on February 11, 2007

metafilter-related questions should be directed to metatalk, which says to "post a link," when this is a question.

Yes, it has always been this way. No, it doesn't make any sense. Think of it as a hallowed tradition, whose dim copy-n-paste origins are lost to the mists of prehistory.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:01 PM on February 11, 2007

metafilter: its dim copy-n-paste origins are lost to the mists of prehistory.
posted by quonsar at 4:05 PM on February 11, 2007

Just because a lot of people want it doesn't mean it's a good idea. George Bush, for instance.

We aren't talking about the effects of a President. What people want as far as filtering capability for their personal use doesn't hurt you, doesn't cost you, and doesn't affect you in any meaningful way. It does not harm your friends, family, or acquaintances. Nor your enemies. Or anyone else's. Filtering capability makes a lot of people happier or more productive with no real net down.

I think Plutor is smart. I think Plutor is well-intentioned. Plutor surely must be good-looking. And Plutor may be physically well-endowed, though I personally don't wish to know. Ever. But frankly, I think what Plutor has said and says on filtering topics is very silly. Bad analogies don't help his case, either.
posted by mdevore at 4:22 PM on February 11, 2007

Here's a yahoo pipe that filters out posts with you tube or google video mentioned in it, mostly cause it was an excuse to go all ajax on that isht.
posted by 31d1 at 5:43 PM on February 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

"metafilter: its dim copy-n-paste origins are lost to the mists of prehistory."

Better yet:

Metafilter: No, it doesn't make any sense.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:46 PM on February 11, 2007

I think it would be cool if we could block out posts with certain tags. For example, I wish I could block out all AskMe questions tagged with "computer," "audio," and "ipod." This would be a nice feature, and seems like it would be easy to add.
posted by Afroblanco at 6:57 PM on February 11, 2007

31d1: "Here's a yahoo pipe that filters out posts with you tube or google video mentioned in it, mostly cause it was an excuse to go all ajax on that isht."

Now there's the solution we can all get behind. Even those of us who think that the filtering in question is best done by some sort of intelligent neural network honed over millions of years can nod in approval at that pipe.

I'm not being sarcastic. Yahoo Pipes are awesome.
posted by Plutor at 3:44 AM on February 12, 2007