De-flag?

February 24, 2007 9:26 PM

I wasn't able to find any previous mention of this, but what if someone decides they didn't want to flag a post? Can we have a feature that lets people change their mind if they flag something? I say this after reconsidering flagging my own supposed double post.
posted by Burhanistan to Feature Requests at 9:26 PM (29 comments total)

do your grandkids flag your posts, Burhanistan?
posted by quonsar at 9:33 PM on February 24, 2007

It's still a double, three years old or not, still the very same link. Maybe people could put their images in this thread as a compromise?
posted by grapefruitmoon at 9:38 PM on February 24, 2007

Flag it and move on.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:49 PM on February 24, 2007

we don't pour over every single little flag, so it's not worth doing. A stray flag here and there is no big deal, we usually look for clusters of a dozen or more.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:51 PM on February 24, 2007

pour what over?
posted by Cranberry at 10:11 PM on February 24, 2007

pore? I forget. You know what I mean.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:15 PM on February 24, 2007

Pore indeed.
posted by cortex at 10:22 PM on February 24, 2007

Is there really no statute of limitations on double posts?
posted by inconsequentialist at 10:26 PM on February 24, 2007

Mefi's been around long enough now and there's so much good stuff that I'd love to have a separate section of the site: Mefi Revisited?

Each post would link back to the original. Optionally, people could supplement the post with new links.
posted by vacapinta at 10:44 PM on February 24, 2007

I think doubles should get slack if, they are a double of an old post, and they come out and say "I know this has been on Metafilter before, but This is the reason why it should be here again" If a site goes through a major over haul or has something revelant in light of local events... But really, thats about the only time.
posted by magikker at 10:47 PM on February 24, 2007

I think that even a double of an old post (say, older than a year or maybe two) that links to a site that hasn't had a major overhaul should still be a candidate for an FPP.

I know that I have enjoyed posts that are soon after discovered to be doubles and are deleted. And I also know that I wouldn't have gotten to visit that site unless it had been posted again since I don't go searching through the Metafilter archives looking for interesting old posts, especially ones that are more than a year old.

Good posts that link to interesting, fun, and creative sites like this one for example should be available to new audiences as they arrive on the MeFi scene.
posted by inconsequentialist at 11:01 PM on February 24, 2007

Good posts that link to interesting, fun, and creative sites like this one for example should be available to new audiences as they arrive on the MeFi scene.

Why can't they just go through the archives?
posted by russilwvong at 11:17 PM on February 24, 2007

Just going through the archives is an inefficient means for discovering items of interest unless you have a very pointed end in mind.

Maybe it's worth asking how often visitors to this site search through the archives in order to find interesting sites as opposed to something like checking to make sure that something hasn't been posted before. And the answer to how often this happens may differ between veterans and newcomers.

I, for one, would probably not have ever searched through the archives for something like the content found in Burhanistan's post, especially two years back. If that were my only means of getting at this site (other than happening upon it somehow) I would have missed out.

Maybe most people aren't like me however and, if so, that's fine of course. But my guess is that visitors spend very little time, if any, searching through archives to find interesting posts and links as opposed to searching the more current FPP's.
posted by inconsequentialist at 11:30 PM on February 24, 2007

We've had this discussion before, and sometimes we let really old (4 years or older) doubleposts stand, especially if the site has changed in the time that passed or if it's part of a larger post about related stuff.

This seemed like an exact double to the same site three years after it came out.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:33 PM on February 24, 2007

I still say being an exact double post shouldn't necessarily count against one. I suppose that opinion is motivated in large part by (part of) the public service I take MeFi to be providing, i.e. an efficient means for publicly encountering and being given the opportunity to engage with the best of the web.
posted by inconsequentialist at 11:45 PM on February 24, 2007

an efficient means for publicly encountering and being given the opportunity to engage with the best of the web.

If that really is the goal, the change needed isn't in policy. mathowie's worked hard over the years to keep the site and its archives efficiently accessible. Allowing doubles is antithetical to efficient means to the best of the web.

HEY EVERYONE! The archives are chock full of the best of the web. Check 'em out. You can browse by date, tag, user (don't suppose that URL could be made to work with usernames, could it?), or user's contacts.
posted by carsonb at 12:01 AM on February 25, 2007

This reminded me of the best double evar.
posted by knave at 12:48 AM on February 25, 2007

Jesus, I miss the image tag.
posted by gleuschk at 4:04 AM on February 25, 2007

knave, my husband just yelled from the other room: "What in the hell is so funny?"

Le sigh. IMG, RIP.
posted by Brittanie at 4:11 AM on February 25, 2007

I'm lazy, and I don't even want to surf this site, let alone the rest of the web. Please feed me with a spoon and empty my piss bucket every few hours. Oh and, someone else go through the archives and find things to temporarily amuse me. All that clicking? Way too strenuous.
posted by Dave Faris at 5:38 AM on February 25, 2007

What Dave Faris said.

I still say being an exact double post shouldn't necessarily count against one.

Fortunately, the guy who runs the site doesn't agree with you.
posted by languagehat at 6:23 AM on February 25, 2007

Needs more pope.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:16 AM on February 25, 2007

You flagged your own post, then made a MeTa post calling attention to your "supposed" double by asking for an unflag option, "independent of the merits of keeping or deleting [your] double post?"

Now that you mention it, I see a little lint, navelgazer extraordinaire.
posted by breezeway at 10:08 AM on February 25, 2007

carsonb: username.mefi
posted by niles at 11:55 AM on February 25, 2007

Thanks, niles, I did know that construct for profile URLs. My request is for usernames to be used in the search_posts.cfm parameters. Right now it seems to only be user numbers, which is less convenient to building URLs from memory.
posted by carsonb at 12:11 PM on February 25, 2007

I'm really interested now in how often people actually do use or search through the archives and for what purposes.
posted by inconsequentialist at 1:06 PM on February 25, 2007

I use the archives whenever the front page is slow (or I'm awake at 2AM). It's amazing how much either gains relevance, I miss or I forget.
posted by Mitheral at 2:35 PM on February 25, 2007

carsonb: Sorry, missed that. But I wonder if the two couldn't be linked, as in " http://www.metafilter.com/search_posts.cfm?user_ID=username.mefi/niles ". That obviosly doesn't work, but if username.mefi could be set to return a user number instead of a profile page, it might be nice tool for generating links to various pages. No idea what sort of database hit this could create, though.
posted by niles at 2:51 PM on February 25, 2007

when I first found mefi, the first thing I did was scour the archives for material similar to what drew me here. in my case, it was a link to some web comic or other, so i did searches for comics all over the site, using the (at-the-time) miserable on site search, as well as google and yahoo, and found a ton of interesting things. it's why i put up the five dollars a long time later when the option was open again.

anecdotal, i know, but still. i have precious little sympathy for people who don't want to go through the archives to find mefi's golden treasures. it's like saying that you don't want to have dessert because your favorite ice cream is at the back of the freezer.
posted by shmegegge at 5:07 PM on February 25, 2007