Linking to Deleted Posts?

July 27, 2007 4:43 PM

Something about the most recent Alberto Gonzales post really irks me: people linking to their deleted posts in comments. It seems to me that this (a) just fundamentally defeats the point of the deletion, (b) lowers the incentive to make a good post in the first place -- since you can always link to it if it gets canned, and (c) is contrary to at least the tacit reasons underlying the no-double-post policy. (Obviously, there's a separate PoliticsFilter issue here, and the problems are related, but I would like to focus on the linking-to-deleted-posts issue and get a clarification on it.)
posted by spiderwire to Etiquette/Policy at 4:43 PM (165 comments total)

Perhaps even funnier/sadder is that dersins beat delmoi to his own deleted-post link.
posted by spiderwire at 4:43 PM on July 27, 2007

spiderwire, spiderwire...does whatever a spiderwire does. look out! he is a spiderwire.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 4:47 PM on July 27, 2007

I don't think it's a common enough problem to worry much about. People have historically made links to or quoted their own comments from threads deleted or otherwise, for one thing; for another, deleted threads are not secret or embargoed, so references to them are fine.

With all sympathy, I think it's likely that the "separate PoliticsFilter issue" is what's primarily driving your response to this. I can dig it, but I don't think this is the problem you present it to be.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:50 PM on July 27, 2007 [3 favorites]

Somebody saw the Simpsons movie.
posted by klangklangston at 4:53 PM on July 27, 2007

Let's use this as an open thread about the Simpsons movie.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 4:59 PM on July 27, 2007

It was OK, but not so great. I had kinda wished they'd use the movie as an excuse to do that thing from the show where they start one plot and then switch to another, but they seem to have forgotten how that works.
posted by klangklangston at 5:01 PM on July 27, 2007

That's what I've heard. I think I probably won't see it. I like some of the trailers, though.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 5:04 PM on July 27, 2007

The general stakes set for making a comment good are so low, I don't think this is something to spend energy discouraging in the face of so many other fappages. At least it's content.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 5:04 PM on July 27, 2007

Just refrain from flagging, and move on.
posted by grobstein at 5:11 PM on July 27, 2007

You are easily irked.
posted by found missing at 5:12 PM on July 27, 2007

I got free passes, but it was still a pain in the ass to get up to Burbank, and then deal with all the shitheads saving seats and generally being fucking morons as far as proper movie theater behavior.

On the hour-long drive home, I kept thinking "This was right on the line of being worth it."
posted by klangklangston at 5:13 PM on July 27, 2007

I'm still gonna see it - I don't care what anyone says. Did you hear that interview with Nancy Cartwright on Fresh Air? 100% awesome.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 5:20 PM on July 27, 2007

It's playing at the Drive-In here, which makes the proposition tempting. Lots of kids and a casual summertime atmosphere seem an ideal set-up. Maybe some red vines. Appropriate summer venues are such a treat. I've watched The Lost Boys at the Beach Boardwalk and The Matrix under an overpass this year. They were certainly improved.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 5:21 PM on July 27, 2007

If you had told me 13 years ago that I'd be as antipathetic about a Simpsons movie as I am now, I would have kicked you in the nuts and stepped on your neck for being a damn liar.
Oh, to be young again.
[Single tear rolls down craggy, age-ravaged face]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 5:36 PM on July 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

AV, do they show the Lost Boys regularly at the Beach Boardwalk? Because that would totally be worth a trip down the coast!

(I haven't seen the Simpsons movie... I'll probably wait for the DVD.)
posted by trip and a half at 5:38 PM on July 27, 2007

trip and a half: No, but they fucking should. The crowd was enormous. This is the BBW's (lol) 100th anniversary, so they're putting on some special events. Jason Patric even spoke afterward. Whooa!

Up on campus they show it outdoors annually, but it's not as good because it wasn't shot there, now was it?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 5:48 PM on July 27, 2007

If it's okay to SELF-LINK in comments, what could be wrong to linking to deleted posts pointing somewhere else in comments?

Bad callout. No cookie.
posted by davy at 5:51 PM on July 27, 2007

Senator Schumer: Just one question sir. I enjoyed the Simpsons Movie. You know I just love that Mayor Quimby. Wonderful... As I said, sir.... Mister Gonzales ... a simple yes or no question...

DID YOU SIR ENJOY THE SIMPSON MOVIE?!?

Gonzales: Well, I... I'm sorry but ... my memory just.... GOSH. I just really don't recall. Movie?
posted by R. Mutt at 5:51 PM on July 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

Well, that's just dumb of them, then. I know a bunch of folks who would make a special trip to see it at the BBW!
posted by trip and a half at 5:54 PM on July 27, 2007

I want to see it, mostly because I love the bit in the trailer where Ralph is standing in the O of FOX and singing the music. That makes me smile every single time it comes on TV.

I doubt I'll catch it in the theaters though.
posted by quin at 5:59 PM on July 27, 2007

Think of the ad revenue that will be lost, if we ban this kind of linking. Won't someone think of the ad revenue???
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:02 PM on July 27, 2007 [2 favorites]

The thing that kills me is there's a Quik-E-Mart in Burbank not far from my place, but that motherfucker is always full with a line going out the door. I want some Duff.
posted by mullingitover at 6:04 PM on July 27, 2007

I want some Duff.

I want me some Duff.
posted by R. Mutt at 6:19 PM on July 27, 2007

JUST now got home from Simpsons Movie. Hey!!!! Funny!!!! I LOLed!!!! Not the funniest ever. But fun.

How bout that linking to deleted posts thing though, huh? Amirite?
posted by The Deej at 6:19 PM on July 27, 2007

Oh Blazecock Pileon, the "Only in it for the money" critique is so two/three years ago. It faded into the aether for a while only to be resurrected in the most recent PoliFilter fooferah. If only you could formulate your own potshots, rather than parrot the most recent line of MetaSlag bullshit to be smeared across the Grey, who knows, maybe with a little help from the Blue Fairy, you could be a real troll someday!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:25 PM on July 27, 2007

The simpsons movie will be on every airplane flying in a scant few weeks. I won't see it there, either.

Yeah, I'ma download it. Wanna fight?
posted by chuckdarwin at 6:36 PM on July 27, 2007

Did you hear that interview with Nancy Cartwright on Fresh Air?

Did Terry Gross give her actual cunnilingus, or just fawn to the point of making the audience uncomfortable? Did Nancy Cartwright warn the listeners about Xenu?
posted by Mayor Curley at 6:57 PM on July 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm waiting for the DVD... I think a Simpsons experience would be ruined if I had to watch it on anything other than my living room TV.
posted by amyms at 6:59 PM on July 27, 2007 [2 favorites]

Gonzales Denies Seeing Simpsons Movie

AG Aide Said She Was "Ordered" To See Simpsons Movie; "It Was A Required Office Outing... He Bought Us Ice Cream Afterwards"

Gonzales Says If Aides Saw Simpsons Movie, They Sure Didn't Go With Him

Muller: Al Called From Cinema, Said He Was Taking Office To See Simpsons Movie

In Testimony, Gonzales Says Decision To See Simpsons Movie Was Left To Junior Aide, He Recalls Seeing Yellow People, So Must Have Been Letters From Iwo Jima

WaPo: Letters From Iwo Jima Not Playing At That Cinema, See, It's Right In The Entertainment Section

Gonzales Says He Took Aides To See Letters From Iwo Jima At Wichita Dollar Cinema That Day

Wichita Dollar Cinema Closed, Converted To Big Lots In 2003

Gonzales Says He Ordered Aides Not To See Simpsons Movie, They Saw It Against His Will

Subpeonaed Receipts Show Gonzales' Buttery Fingerprints, Also That He Purchased Simpsons Movie Soundtrack From Amazon, Commented In Review "Hans Zimmer is a genius"

Hans Zimmer: Gonzales Called Me, Told Me He Loved My Adaptation of Danny Elfman's Original Theme

Tony Snow Says Democrats On A "McCarthyite Witchhunt," Can't Explain Pig Footprints On Oval Office Walls And Ceiling

Scooter Libby Talks: Karl Rove Paid For DOJ Simpsons Movie Outing With School Lunch Program Money, Outsourced To Halliburton To Buy The Tickets For $17.8B
posted by dw at 7:19 PM on July 27, 2007 [12 favorites]

Did you hear that interview with Nancy Cartwright on Fresh Air? 100% awesome.

Yeah. Folks were also talking about it over at MetaChat today.
posted by ericb at 7:30 PM on July 27, 2007

Oh Blazecock Pileon, the "Only in it for the money" critique is so two/three years ago.

Someone pissed in your corn flakes, apparently.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:32 PM on July 27, 2007

Someone pissed in your corn flakes, apparently.

No. Andy Warhol pissed in his/her mouth. And hard!
posted by ericb at 7:35 PM on July 27, 2007

Yeah, the fact that the Kwik-E-Marts don't have Duff is so lame it might keep me from the movie. Totally lame.
posted by exogenous at 7:39 PM on July 27, 2007

Poppycock, BP. You wanted a response and you got one, albeit half-hearted and lazy. If there's anything pissy here, it's you.

ericb, you win the prize for inducing the most apropos spit take I've ever done. *Wrings out beard*
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:44 PM on July 27, 2007

Chocolate rain
Making silly metatalk callouts
Chocolate rain
Link to non-existent threads and pout
Chocolate rain
Moderator's killing all the posts
Chocolate rain
LOL republicans are most
posted by ludwig_van at 7:55 PM on July 27, 2007

Deleted posts should be, well, deleted.

Don't really see why they're kept around.

Always assumed that it was a bug in the software or something.

Matt should really fix this.
posted by Afroblanco at 8:09 PM on July 27, 2007

Everybody, please find a way to complain about everything, ok thanks.


I'm going to have to see the Simpsons movie like it or not due to my twelve year old step-daughter. Should I gird my loins for disappointment, or assuming the theater isn't wall to wall douches (a 50/50 proposition at most) might I actually enjoy it slightly?
posted by Divine_Wino at 8:11 PM on July 27, 2007

If there's anything pissy here, it's you.

Sheesh, if you keep following me around the site like this, especially after a half-hearted joke, I'll have to call you my shadow. But hey, keep trolling, creep, it's fun watching you guys get frustrated when I don't rise to your bait.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:28 PM on July 27, 2007

take a chillpill spiderwire
posted by caddis at 8:31 PM on July 27, 2007

BOX TURTLES: WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?

FIND OUT NEXT ON THE TIN SHEAR NETWORK
posted by quonsar at 8:35 PM on July 27, 2007

Box turtles and tinsnips are ok, but can "you're a cunt in a hat" be the next big MetaFilter meme? Please? Pretty please?

Simpsons movie: funny, but not spectacular.

Linking to deleted posts: yeah, uh, what's up wit dat?
posted by BitterOldPunk at 8:59 PM on July 27, 2007

Meta-ma-filter.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 9:06 PM on July 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

It got four stars in the local paper so odds are I'll see it, probably this weekend.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 9:08 PM on July 27, 2007

Yeah, the fact that the Kwik-E-Marts don't have Duff is so lame it might keep me from the movie. Totally lame.

I bet it tastes exactly like a cross between Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Coors Light. Personally, I'd rather try Skittlebrau.
posted by bluishorange at 9:35 PM on July 27, 2007

I saw it tonight, and it's at about the same level as some of the good modern episodes. Occasionally fun, often vulgar (in the common sense)... meh.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:58 PM on July 27, 2007

Derail notwithstanding, I'm not convinced. I have the same problem with homunculus' post that I did with delmoi's post -- both were a day late and a dollar short. A policy allowing reposting the same story until it sticks and then backlinking to the previous deleted posts is just crass.

If the Gonzales post was topical (and I thought it was, when it happened -- but I didn't post it at the time because of the big snafu on Friday), it could have been posted the day of the hearings followed up. As it stands, the thread is old news, it's not going anywhere, and it's just ammunition for the "PoliticsFilter sucks" crowd. And in this case, I agree with them. Everyone that cares knows what's gone down already -- there's no interesting discussion to be had.

It's unfortunate, sure -- and I'm saying this as one of the general PoliticsFilter/NewsFilter advocates -- but if it wasn't a good topic Tuesday, it's not a better topic on Friday.

If there's to be a thread on a topic, let's just have the thread. If not, it's just undue stress on the admins and the site to keep posting the topic over and over again until it passes that vague standard of "newsworthiness" (or mods-can't-take-it-anymore) that lets it through the filter. Just let it go. Not everything gets onto NewsFilter. Such is life.

But. Regardless: even if the thread's ultimately approved, it strikes me as kind of disrespectful to link to previous threads that were nixed for legitimate reasons. Just post the links and integrate them into the discussions. It's not that difficult, right?
posted by spiderwire at 10:12 PM on July 27, 2007

C'mon, BitterOldPunk, if a meme is to be had from that thread, it's gotta be
Metafilter: Better than coked-out ditch-pigs.

I have a lot of nostalgia for the Simpsons, but Ratatouille was so sublime that any new animated movie is ruined for me now. It will probably take at least year before I can let my standards down again.
posted by maryh at 10:12 PM on July 27, 2007

"Cunts in hats" is totally funnier than "coked-out ditch-pigs". But I'll make a deal with you, maryh: the next time you feel the need to call someone out, if you'll call them a cunt in a hat I promise to follow it up with, "and a coked-out ditch-pig, to boot".
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:40 PM on July 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

It's a deal!
posted by maryh at 10:45 PM on July 27, 2007

Sheesh, if you keep following me around the site like this, especially after a half-hearted joke, I'll have to call you my shadow. But hey, keep trolling, creep, it's fun watching you guys get frustrated when I don't rise to your bait.

To listen to you, *everyone* is following you around the site. When you hear people complaining about yet another steaming pile of crap you left around, it may be because they are following you, or it may be because there's just so much of said crap.
posted by Krrrlson at 11:05 PM on July 27, 2007

Bunch of coked-out ditch cunts with pig hats.
posted by Balisong at 11:47 PM on July 27, 2007 [2 favorites]

A policy allowing reposting the same story until it sticks and then backlinking to the previous deleted posts is just crass.

Agreed, I removed it. Until there's a better post than just linking to TPM again and again, this isn't a good post for MetaFilter. Linking to your own deleted threads is weak.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 12:20 AM on July 28, 2007

To listen to you, *everyone* is following you around the site.

Nah, it's only the same handful of sad weasels, again, of which you're one. If anyone else at all had made a small quip about a Simpsons reference, you and your friend wouldn't have overreacted about it, in order to try to get a rise out of me. Give up, because it's not happening.

As an aside, Krrrlson, why is it that you behave as badly as you do, while hiding behind your anonymous account? Post your real name. Why hide yourself? Aren't you proud of yourself? Why are you so ashamed of your behavior here?

For all the tired lectures from you and your friends about "community", running your mouths about "maintaining community" and railing against the evils of "sockpuppets", you really go out of your way to snark at anyone you possibly can, including people like myself who make an effort to contribute interesting links and posts to the site, while you hide behind your veil of anonymity and contribute nothing. At the end of the day, your behavior makes this site worse and sucks the fun out of Metafilter.

I'd wait for your inevitable, wicked, awesome comeback, but the rest of the site and the people here are too interesting to waste more time on you. Good luck with your vendetta.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:30 AM on July 28, 2007

"Wicked, awesome" should be "wicked-awesome" for max dramatic effect. You cunt in a hat.

No, no, I don't mean that, BP. But as someone who's a constant snarker and has contributed, on the average, less than one FPP per year, I'm... *checks Krrrlson's posting history*...um, yeah, you're kinda right.

Wait, what am I doing? I don't have a dog in this fight. I just like typing "cunts in hats".
posted by BitterOldPunk at 1:15 AM on July 28, 2007

Nah, it's only the same handful of sad weasels, again, of which you're one.

No, he's right. If I had a nickel for every time I've read a tedious, dickhead comment, gotten to the end, and thought, "jesus, Blazecock Pileon again?"

I suppose you'll just say I have a vendetta against you too.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 1:42 AM on July 28, 2007

Awww... FWIW, I like Blazecock Pileon.
posted by amyms at 2:02 AM on July 28, 2007

I have a can of Duff beer. Like everyone else of my age in Australia, I'm waiting for it to be worth cunt-in-a-hat loads of money and then I'll flog it.

I did try a can when it was first released though and it tasted like cat's piss.
posted by h00py at 4:49 AM on July 28, 2007

Sit on my face and we'll both be happy.
posted by Anne Coulter's Butt Plug at 4:58 AM on July 28, 2007

while you hide behind your veil of anonymity

Didn't you used to be called something else...?
posted by Jimbob at 5:12 AM on July 28, 2007

I like Blazecock Pileon

I got this cheery flickr message in my inbox the other day:

Hi If I Had An Anus,

Yay! . Anal Whore . has marked you as a contact too.

Indeed. I lurve teh internets.
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 5:21 AM on July 28, 2007

I like BP too.
posted by imperium at 5:39 AM on July 28, 2007

DP?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:53 AM on July 28, 2007

Blazecock Pileon, Krrrlson: ferchrissakes, get a room you two. This is even more tiring than me blathering on about my large penis.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:57 AM on July 28, 2007

Man, I miss Alex Reynolds. That guy wasn't afraid to have his real name out there next to all his comments.
Something to think about there, so-called "Blazecock Pileon"..... (wink,wink)
posted by Balisong at 6:52 AM on July 28, 2007

Why are deleted posts accessible? Why not just delete them from the database? Deleted comments aren't generally available unless you can access the deleted post, deleted tags just go 'pouf'. What is this crazy 'one rule for posts and comments' and another for 'tags'? It's so unjust. Surely tags have as much right to existence as posts and comments. I make an off-the-cuff in an AskMe about Israel/Palestine - BAM! you won't see what I said (fair enough). Post a thread in the blue about the same subject - thread gets deleted, all tags are gone. Comments remain accesible via. Yes, I know my example is not about the situation in the Middle East (the bay of Bengal actually) [germaine though] but my point stands.
posted by tellurian at 7:36 AM on July 28, 2007

This was a heavy-handed deletion, one I can't imagine Matt making. Especially in combination with the previous one.

Interest is going to build and build in this topic long before it goes away, and playing whack-a-mole on threads because you disapprove of the topic is a bad idea.
posted by NortonDC at 7:37 AM on July 28, 2007 [2 favorites]

Post your real name. Why hide yourself?

You've been awfully insistent on that lately. Have something in mind?
posted by Krrrlson at 7:44 AM on July 28, 2007

I did try a can when it was first released though and it tasted like cat's piss.

How do you know what cat's piss tastes like?
posted by birdherder at 8:09 AM on July 28, 2007

I extrapolated it from the smell that wafted up to my delicate nostrils after one of my feline friends kindly pissed all over the freshly washed clothes that I hadn't put away but instead piled onto the spare bed. I may be sick but I ain't that sick, thanks all the same!

PS. I like the fact that deleted things aren't really and truly deleted, they've just been shunted off into a purgatory kinda place, so they can still be referred to but they aren't stinking up the lovely blue. That way, those brave people who haven't quite got it right haven't spent all their time typing and linking whatever it is that they've typed and linked for naught. Comments are different (as mentioned above, you can even self-link in a comment and not be flayed alive on here) and nothing is ruined if something within a comment is daggy and lame. Or not, as the case may be.
posted by h00py at 8:28 AM on July 28, 2007

This was a heavy-handed deletion, one I can't imagine Matt making.

Like it or not, there are two new sheriffs in town, and they're willing to take things in a different direction than Matt did. And since they have his blessings, we just have to learn to accept it.
posted by Dave Faris at 8:53 AM on July 28, 2007

Got anything else you want to tell me I should shut up about gratefully accept?
posted by NortonDC at 9:17 AM on July 28, 2007

Henry wasn't really a serial killer, just an ugly retard who was good at confessing.

Again, if you can self-link in comments you should be allowed to link to your own deleted threads in them too. But when I asked jessamytn and cortex for consistent policies I was publicly bitchslapped so like whatever: Metafilter is a despotism whose ideology is whimsy.

And what we gots, Dave Faris, are uppity deputies; there can be only one Sheriff. Ain't you never seen Gunsmoke?
posted by davy at 9:21 AM on July 28, 2007

Why are deleted posts accessible? Why not just delete them from the database?

Delted posts are accessible so that 1. the reasons for deletion can be made available and people can sort of get an idea of what works here and what doesn't and 2. so that people who took the time to comment can still get at those comments [particularly important for deleted doubles in case they want to repost them someplace else or save them for posterity.

This was a heavy-handed deletion, one I can't imagine Matt making. Especially in combination with the previous one.

Matt can speak for himself on this one, but my feeling was that it was a not-great rehash of the post we were still talking about (with a sarcastic title, even) in MeTa. I've seen people come out of MeTa discussions and make really good posts on the same topic under discussion. This was just a link to TPM Muckraker -- itself rarely a good place to link to as a main MeFi post (fine site, different purposetone) -- and Salon. In short, if the only thing you can link to for news on a political topic is the same old political blogs, maybe it's not a good MeFi post. This is true with other sites too -- a one-link post to a slashdot thread or a lifehacker thread is rarely, though sometime, a good post here.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:22 AM on July 28, 2007

Just lie back and think of England, nortondc.
posted by Dave Faris at 9:24 AM on July 28, 2007

Huntin' a cat.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 9:30 AM on July 28, 2007

Ain't you never seen Gunsmoke?

I stand corrected. Is it true that Cortex carries a single bullet in his breast pocket, in case of an emergency?
posted by Dave Faris at 9:32 AM on July 28, 2007

Ha! "Before this happened, the rule was: No one messes with the haunted house guy."
posted by juliplease at 9:44 AM on July 28, 2007

Man, I miss Alex Reynolds. That guy wasn't afraid to have his real name out there next to all his comments.
Something to think about there, so-called "Blazecock Pileon"..... (wink,wink)

Balisong, Alex Reynolds is just another fictional layer in Blazecock Pileon's stack of deceit and deception. He can't be trusted under either name.
posted by doctor_negative at 10:05 AM on July 28, 2007

Nah, it's only the same handful of sad weasels, again, of which you're one. If anyone else at all had made a small quip about a Simpsons reference, you and your friend wouldn't have overreacted about it.

For the record Blazecock Pileon, I am not following you - you, me and anyone else with an iota of sense knows that. I know, whole point of accusing someone is to get them to deny it, a la LBJ, but what the hell. You've just had a habit of popping into MeTas and making petty lil potshots lately. I shouldn't encourage you by responding to them, even when you gussy them up in disingenuous Simpsons references, but it's good for shits and giggles once in a while, and gets even funnier when you try to pull a 180 and pretend to the bigger man, beset by a gang of internet hoodlums. Do you think the four people who might give a shit can't just browse your recent comments and see what you were saying before you took the high road?

Honestly, all of the little flaming tricks you've been pulling lately, the potshots, the baiting, the accusations of stalking, the glass house criticisms (And really, you in particular shouldn't be chastising anyone for having multiple accounts, Alex- er, I mean, rot-, oh, sorry, Blazecock Pileon), the 180s, and using positive site contributions to excuse poor behavior are nothing new. You aren't fooling anyone. It's all been done before, on this site and elsewhere, and often more effectively. But like I've said before, you obviously want a response, and I just can't say no to kids.


you really go out of your way to snark at anyone you possibly can, including people like myself who make an effort to contribute interesting links and posts to the site,

We're talking about behavior on MeTa, not the Blue. I enjoyed that Maps FPP you made the other day, but was scared you'd blow your rape whistle and accuse me of stalking if I commented in it. And speaking only for myself, the people I act like an asshole to are usually assholes themselves - I've found that often bullies and wannabes like yourself (Your Troll-By-Numbers shtick makes it quite obvious that your heart isn't really in this) are fun to make fun of. I won't pretend to be standing up for the little guy, to be bullying the bullies, or any other noble bullshit like that, it's just a guilt-free way to kill some time, get some chuckles, and blow off some steam while my podcasts upload to the player.

I don't like you, BP, but I definitely don't dislike you either; I won't pretend to know anything about you at all. As tempting as it can be, judging people by their conduct on MeTa is a horrible idea, and fwiw, I wouldn't refuse to talk to you or any other MeFite at a meet-up or share a smoke on the sidewalk based what I've seen on the Grey.

Now, let's forget our troubles with a big bowl of strawberry ice cream!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:06 AM on July 28, 2007

*dumps ice cream on Alvy's head, gives him a mirror to see his own potshots*
posted by amberglow at 10:33 AM on July 28, 2007

*Gazes into Amberglow's Magic Mirror of Unbiased Judgment through drips of melting pink deliciousness*

Why-why I was being a jerk! And without any sort of slimy political excuses or dissembling personal justifications beyond my own amusement!
Take it away, please, take it away!!!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:53 AM on July 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

And what we gots, Dave Faris, are uppity deputies...

Barney and Barnessamyn Fife ?
posted by y2karl at 10:59 AM on July 28, 2007

jessamyn, while I will not dispute your reasons for deleting the post because you consider the sources too obvious, I disagree with your reading of this as being a re-hash with a sarcastic title to boot. If you look closer, I think you will see that isn't the case.

Delmois's post was about Gonzales - his appearance before the committee, his performance, the White House reaction to his performance, etc.

The topic of the homunculus' post was intelligence surveillance programs - called "Program X" by TPM for shorthand. This was not sarcasm but the post topic.

Now you may have other valid reasons for deleting the post - fine. But this was a different topic and homunculus was not being sarcastic with the title.
posted by madamjujujive at 11:01 AM on July 28, 2007 [2 favorites]

Now you may have other valid reasons for deleting the post - fine. But this was a different topic and homunculus was not being sarcastic with the title.

Agreed, my apologies conflating it with adamvasco's post (with sarcastic title). I was reading two very similar Meta threads at once.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:08 AM on July 28, 2007

*licks ice cream off of Alvy, smiles*
posted by amberglow at 11:09 AM on July 28, 2007

"Dear Ben & Jerry, I never thought I'd be writing you this e-mail..."
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:16 AM on July 28, 2007

deleting posts was a terrible idea the first time it was done, and it's only gotten worse as time goes by. it was left up for many many hours, until someone finally made a remark that evidently embarrassed her into deleting it. so, now its a contest to see if the mods can be badgered into acting. cool.
posted by quonsar at 11:42 AM on July 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Actually, it was up for hours while she was on airplane. You're being a presumptuous ass, quonsar.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:50 AM on July 28, 2007

Let's try criticizing people's actions instead of the people, cortex.
posted by NortonDC at 11:56 AM on July 28, 2007

That'd be the difference between "being" and "are", NortonDC.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:02 PM on July 28, 2007

"Agreed, I removed it" seems to support quonsar's take on it.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:10 PM on July 28, 2007

... you gussy them up in disingenuous Simpsons references.

Nah, you just got caught overreacting to a lame joke, so now you're going to backpedal by invoking really old history, so that you and the usual creeps feel good about putting the boot in. Whatever.

Do you think the four people who might give a shit can't just browse your recent comments and see what you were saying before you took the high road?

Some advice: If you're going on the same tirade as the creeps who follow me around here, back up your complaint with something specific. Putting aside my mistake of responding to your goading, I haven't said or done anything wrong.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:12 PM on July 28, 2007

Why was I not notified of this bitch-fest? Here's my metaphor of the day: MetaFilter is a novel, and Jessamyn and Cortex and #1 are editors. There are some decent passages that have to be cut from time to time, because they just don't make sense in this novel. In other words, GYOFB whiners.
posted by Mister_A at 12:13 PM on July 28, 2007

"Why was I not notified of this bitch-fest?"

The bitch-transmitter was down for repairs, sorry.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:21 PM on July 28, 2007

"Agreed, I removed it" seems to support quonsar's take on it.

It's the correlation/causality problem. I removed the post before I saw the comment. If I were that easily embarassed into acting this place would look a lot different.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 12:23 PM on July 28, 2007

Funny, I thought of "are" and "being" as forms of the same verb, indicating extant state. But what do I know?
posted by NortonDC at 12:28 PM on July 28, 2007

I don't know how jessamyn and cortex get through these things with so little cursing.
posted by Mister_A at 12:29 PM on July 28, 2007

You are a dope, NortonDC.
posted by Mister_A at 12:30 PM on July 28, 2007 [2 favorites]

deleting posts was a terrible idea the first time it was done, and it's only gotten worse as time goes by.

this isn't a parse-able sentence, but if it's saying what i think it's saying, this is wrong. there was no gonzales thread the day of the hearing. there was a post the next day that got deleted because it was old news. there was another post two days later that which also got deleted because it was then even older news.

if it was really that important, why not post it the first day? if it got deleted once, what justifies reposting it?

also -- more germane to the question i asked in this thread -- even if the post is allowed through, why would it be so hard to copy over the links from the earlier, deleted thread rather than linking to the deleted thread itself? at least the former option preserves some modicum of respect for the admins.

so, now its a contest to see if the mods can be badgered into acting. cool.

uh huh. as opposed to a contest to see if the mods can be badgered into letting a post through because people refuse to abide by their earlier decisions.

also, just as a point of reference, in the ~4 hours or so between my pseudo-complaint on the thread and jessmyn nixing it, there were 6 total comments, none of them very productive. it's not like an invigorating discussion was prematurely stifled by the heavy hand of censorship.
posted by spiderwire at 12:32 PM on July 28, 2007

But what do I know?

Not grammar, evidently.
posted by spiderwire at 12:33 PM on July 28, 2007

"will be" and "was" are also forms of the verb "to be", crap bag.
posted by Mister_A at 12:49 PM on July 28, 2007

A policy allowing reposting the same story until it sticks and then backlinking to the previous deleted posts is just crass.

Agreed, I removed it. Until there's a better post than just linking to TPM again and again, this isn't a good post for MetaFilter.

I hate to say it, jessamyn, but between this and your deletion reason, I have to wonder if you read the article before you deleted the post. It wasn't an update or repost of the same story, it wasn't even really about Gonzales. It's the best analysis I've read so far comparing what we already know about the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" with what Gonzales let slip, and what that implies. Yes, it's on TPM, but it's an excellent piece on a subject many of us are interested in. You guys have said that TPM links are okay when they're particularly good, which is obviously subjective but I certainly thought this qualified. This deletion seems like more of a reaction to TPM than to the article itself.
posted by homunculus at 12:50 PM on July 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

um, the correct form is 'crapbag'
posted by found missing at 12:52 PM on July 28, 2007

Watching the Bush administration collapse is a little like seeing the fall of the Trade Center towers in million to one slow motion, in my opinion, except that this time there can be no doubt it's an inside job, and this time almost all of us are either in the towers or in buildings nearby.

And deleting political posts of this sort does sometimes have the flavor to me of having the office manager insist that we will all be OK if we just stay at our desks and remain calm.
posted by jamjam at 1:32 PM on July 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

jamjam wins the Worst Analogy Ever contest.


_{Cunts in hats. Cunts in hats.}
posted by BitterOldPunk at 1:44 PM on July 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

jamjam wins the Worst Analogy Ever contest.

Well finally!
posted by jamjam at 2:00 PM on July 28, 2007

Watching the Bush administration debacle is a little like being trapped in a collapsing coal mine, with slowing decreasing oxygen and rapidly increasing panic among your fellow miners. Posts are like people on the surface pumping fresh air to you and jessamyn is like the evil mine owner who is unplugging the pumps as fast as they can be plugged in. jamjam is like a canary singing out his little birdbrain trying to warn us.
posted by found missing at 2:04 PM on July 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

It wasn't an update or repost of the same story, it wasn't even really about Gonzales.

You mean besides that his name appears in the title of both articles?

It's strikingly disingenuous to claim that this entire controversy doesn't center almost completely on Gonzales and his testimony, or that it would have been inappropriate or even slightly controversial to put your TPM/Greenwald links in a thread posted following the hearings on Tuesday, if anyone had bothered to make one.


Also, you posted a one-link comment in that thread to "Cyber Jihadists Embrace Tor." Your thoughts on the appropriate relationships between topics carry little weight.
posted by spiderwire at 2:08 PM on July 28, 2007

*Sorry, it's only in the lede of the Greenwald article.
posted by spiderwire at 2:09 PM on July 28, 2007

It's strikingly disingenuous to claim that this entire controversy doesn't center almost completely on Gonzales and his testimony,

Not really. The controvery over the TSP started when the NYTimes broke the story in 2005. Gonzales revived it by talking about "other intelligence activities." The controversy over "Program X" goes beyond Gonzales.

or that it would have been inappropriate or even slightly controversial to put your TPM/Greenwald links in a thread posted following the hearings on Tuesday, if anyone had bothered to make one.

Of course it would have been appropriate. The topics overlap. If delmoi's post had stayed, I would have settled for posting the links in there.

Also, you posted a one-link comment in that thread to "Cyber Jihadists Embrace Tor."

Sure. The post was about a surveillance program which is supposed to be looking for terrorists. I frequently post links I find interesting in threads they are loosely related to.

Your thoughts on the appropriate relationships between topics carry little weight.

Oh well. I'm rubber, you're glue.
posted by homunculus at 2:51 PM on July 28, 2007

it's an excellent piece on a subject many of us are interested in.

yeah, but it wasn't up to hey-look-silly-string or i-took-my-new-vanity-phone-apart level.
posted by quonsar at 2:52 PM on July 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'd always wondered what a baseball fight would look like typed out on the page, and now I know.

So, who's Pedro and who's Don Zimmer?

And quoted but not cited in the deletion reason? How could you betray me, Jessamyn? We've never met and never broken bread together!
posted by dw at 3:05 PM on July 28, 2007

And with that, I think I'm going to take a short break from MeFi. Or rather, this impending axegrindy train wreck.

Honestly, do any of you know when to stop? Yes, we all agree this is the worst presidency, ever. Yes, we all agree they use the Constitution as toilet paper. Yes, we all agree that Cheney is TEH EEVL and they should all be impeached and thrown in Gitmo or whatever. Yes, Alberto Gonzales is a lying liar lyingpants and the worst there ever was at it. We all agree now, OK?

But at some point, you drive the point home so damn much that it's nothing but outrage fatigue. And there's no energy left for outrage, just resignation and burnout. Still, it keeps on, as if we are all little children who must be told 100 times that Bush is a bad, bad man.

Enough. Just, enough. We know already. There are too many Carrie Nations here yelling at all of us drinking water that vodka will be the death of us and why have we not done more to help along the temperance movements. We know. We really do. Stop preaching to the choir, because the choir wants to eat.

I'm just going to take a break from all of this now and let things settle. Last thing anyone needs around here right now is a smartass.
posted by dw at 3:24 PM on July 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Not really. The controvery over the TSP started when the NYTimes broke the story in 2005. Gonzales revived it by talking about "other intelligence activities." The controversy over "Program X" goes beyond Gonzales.

I didn't say that. I said that the two topics are so tightly interwoven -- right now, not in 2005 -- that it's absurd for you to post that thread and then argue that it's distinct or novel on that basis. Gonzales' name is mentioned at least 33 times in the articles you posted. "TSP" and "intelligence activities" are mentioned 18 times, total.

Of course it would have been appropriate. The topics overlap. If delmoi's post had stayed, I would have settled for posting the links in there.

No, you're missing the point. Just because your comments would be appropriate in a thread doesn't make them appropriate for the front page simply because that thread got deleted or never made, which is what you were arguing to jessamyn.

In fact, your admission that "the topics overlap" precisely countermands the argument you just made that the topics were sufficiently distinct that they merited separate posts.
posted by spiderwire at 3:32 PM on July 28, 2007

"Agreed, I removed it" seems to support quonsar's take on it.

No, "Agreed, I guess? I mean, I don't know, I just can't—I mean, I've spent the last few hours gnashing my teeth and staring at the screen and polling public opinion because I'm unwilling to make a decision unless browbeat by folks who disagree idealogically with quonsar" or something of the sort would support quonsar's take on it. I'm not sure why he's acting like such an A1 jerk the last couple days, but that was hardly a good-faith interpretation of the situation, no matter how much he seems to personally dislike anyone or anything involved in running this site lately.

It wasn't an update or repost of the same story, it wasn't even really about Gonzales.

Which is pretty much why I, looking at that on a Friday afternoon when my cohort were both tied up with other things, said "fuck it", despite the hyperfocus the meta-subject has gotten, the reliance once again on just linking TPM content, and inevitable stink of Fuck You, Mods (whether even intended or considered in the case of the actual poster) in light of the last few days' on-sight controversy. It was a judgment call, I had things to do with my evening, and the way things are going it seemed like it'd be that thread or another. As a thread ostensibly about other than Gonzales, it sure could have been constructed in a way that didn't seem to be intentionally pressing our buttons.

Considering all that, I can't really blame Jessamyn for disagreeing with the call I made when she finally got a chance to look at it independently.

Funny, I thought of "are" and "being" as forms of the same verb, indicating extant state. But what do I know?

Protip: "you are being foo" and "you are foo" are fundamentally different statements, even though both contain the words "you", "are", and "foo". Heady stuff, I know.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:57 PM on July 28, 2007

Just because your comments would be appropriate in a thread doesn't make them appropriate for the front page simply because that thread got deleted or never made, which is what you were arguing to jessamyn.

That's not what I'm arguing. That doesn't even make sense.

Over time I've posted a lot of front page worthy links as comments in other threads instead of on the front page. The people who are interested in them will still see them in the thread, and that's fine. I don't have an overwhelming need to post yet another front page post. But if there is no active and relevant thread, and the link is really good, I'll post it to the front page. That's what I did here.

In fact, your admission that "the topics overlap" precisely countermands the argument you just made that the topics were sufficiently distinct that they merited separate posts.

No, because it's where they don't overlap, but rather where the "Program X" piece goes beyond what had previously been written, that I thought made it worth posting. And I didn't think the other post did merit being posted in the first place; there just wasn't enough there. But the "Program X" piece attempted to go beyond just reporting on Gonzales's testimony, and tried to analyze it in a larger context and shed some new light on a secretive surveillance program. I thought this one made the cut on its own. Evidently, I was wrong.
posted by homunculus at 5:03 PM on July 28, 2007

and inevitable stink of Fuck You, Mods (whether even intended or considered in the case of the actual poster) in light of the last few days' on-sight controversy.

That was not my intention, I assure you. Actually I just copied the title of the piece verbatim. I wasn't trying to punch any of your buttons.
posted by homunculus at 5:11 PM on July 28, 2007

Yeah, I dig it, hence the qualifier. Context is a bitch, of course.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:55 PM on July 28, 2007

No, because it's where they don't overlap, but rather where the "Program X" piece goes beyond what had previously been written, that I thought made it worth posting. And I didn't think the other post did merit being posted in the first place; there just wasn't enough there. But the "Program X" piece attempted to go beyond just reporting on Gonzales's testimony, and tried to analyze it in a larger context and shed some new light on a secretive surveillance program. I thought this one made the cut on its own. Evidently, I was wrong.

You're not "wrong" at all, because it's not a cut-and-dry question. It's obvious that you didn't post it in bad faith, though you seem to agree that it was pretty borderline. That's fine; I did the same thing last Friday and I got savaged for it, too. Que sera sera -- I just don't think we should pretend that the topics aren't pretty inextricably linked. We can discuss that reasonably and yet still abide by what the admin decide to do, I think. Those things aren't exclusive.

That said, I certainly didn't start this thread to tear into you; politics and news posts are borderline by nature, and we've had that debate too many times. I started it because I felt like backlinking to nearly-identical deleted posts rather than just reposting the links is sort of a backhanded slight at the mods, which they've been getting too much of recently.

Even if it is usually tolerated practice, we're mostly bright people here and it's not crazy to point out that the way this week has gone, some circumspection wasn't out of the question here.

If the mods decide to let the post stick -- and I agree that if forced to choose between the two, I'd take yours -- it seems only fair to do the 5 seconds of extra work to transplant from the previous discussion. But that criticism doesn't apply to you, so I don't think you should take it personally that people did it on your thread.
posted by spiderwire at 6:28 PM on July 28, 2007

One more thing: the "this is a good discussion" point is a canard. The whole reason Glenn Greenwald and Josh Marshall have popular blogs (which all the politics wonks do read) is that they're very, very good at condensing issues -- but that's very different from an "original" piece.

Good breakdowns of the issues might make PoliticsFilter posts more palatable for some people, but after 12 hours out of the news cycle, it's usually time to cash it in. A good "analysis" doesn't make a NewsFilter thread magically topical again two or three days after the actual event. It sucks that we missed the boat on the Gonzales issue, but we did. Okay.

Ironically, if there wasn't always such sturm und drang over "NewsFilter" and "PoliticsFilter" posts, this could have been a one-line link to firedoglake.com on Tuesday and saved everyone a hell of a lot of grief.
posted by spiderwire at 6:41 PM on July 28, 2007

Are you lonely?
posted by found missing at 6:54 PM on July 28, 2007

i have my box turtle. and my fish.
posted by quonsar at 7:09 PM on July 28, 2007

i hope you don't keep the box turtle where you keep your fish. i hear they bite.
posted by spiderwire at 7:35 PM on July 28, 2007

Considering all that, I can't really blame Jessamyn for disagreeing with the call I made when she finally got a chance to look at it independently.

I read this to mean that you had decided to let the post stand, and that Jessamyn deleted it without consulting you, even though it had been up almost 7.5 hours by then, so that she must have assumed you had seen it and decided to let it pass, cortex.
posted by jamjam at 7:39 PM on July 28, 2007

She likely did just that. It happens. Just because one of us decides not to kill something doesn't mean it has some sort of wacky diplomatic immunity. It goes both ways, and we disagree about stuff sometimes. If I'd felt that it absolutely must not deleted, I would have emailed Jess and Matt to hash it out.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:47 PM on July 28, 2007

Super Bad!
posted by Burhanistan at 7:48 PM on July 28, 2007

Just because one of us decides not to kill something doesn't mean it has some sort of wacky diplomatic immunity.

Excuse me. For please can you point me to the Kottke Embassy?
posted by spiderwire at 7:59 PM on July 28, 2007

You are a forbearing and good-natured man, cortex. And very likable.
posted by jamjam at 8:07 PM on July 28, 2007

Quit making with the nice or you're gonna get me lynched.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:10 PM on July 28, 2007

Also, we totally saw a Rembrandt of the parable of Lazarus where Jesus looks just like you tonight. Also, he seems just as surprised as anyone at the resurrection of Lazarus.
posted by klangklangston at 8:46 PM on July 28, 2007

Just got back from the Simpsons Movie. I cried. I need a doctor.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 9:47 PM on July 28, 2007

No, cortex, you called him a presumptuous ass. You didn't say his comment was presumptuous or that his approach was asinine. You referred to quonsar himself as a presumptuous ass. That's poor form.
posted by NortonDC at 9:49 PM on July 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

I read this to mean that you had decided to let the post stand, and that Jessamyn deleted it without consulting you

Yeah I think that's what happened. We generally don't consult each other unless we feel that something is really borderline or likely to turn into a shitstorm. If we're not on chat, it's also pretty impossible to tell if someone else has taken a look at something else and said "I'll allow it" or just not seen it.

The flag queue has a mechanism where you can remove flags from the queue after you've acted on them, so if there's a double post and you remove it, then you can remove all the double post flags so that he next person won't see them and think there's something that needs to be done. We have an informal way of leaving flags up there if we either don't know what needs to be done, don't have time to do something or want a second set of eyes on it.

We also all keep fairly weird hours so I never assume cortex or mathowie have seen anything and I suspect the same goes for both of them. We're all sort of deputized to act independently, for better or worse. I don't know if any of this explanation helps at all, but there it is.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:01 PM on July 28, 2007

No, cortex, you called him a presumptuous ass. You didn't say his comment was presumptuous or that his approach was asinine. You referred to quonsar himself as a presumptuous ass. That's poor form.

I said "You are being a presumptuous ass", in direct reference to a comment he made. You have every right to refuse to accept that "You are being" in the context of a reply to a specific statement is a statement about an event-in-time (or, to cast it more closely to your reading, a statement about a temporary state of being in implicit contrast to some other default state), but then we're at an impasse: I chose my words very carefully because I do not believe that quonsar is by default a presumptuous ass.

Had I believed, against direct experience, that this was not an exceptional thing for him to have concluded and said and that he was in fact just a presumptuous ass in general, I'd have said this: "You are a presumptuous ass."

As far as telling people they're acting like asses, etc, it's something I try to avoid, but it's been a hell of a week and the dude for whatever reason decided to launch a multi-thread snark attack. If it was poor form, it was so on both ends; regardless, it's not how I like to spend my time, so you don't need to convince me with stubbornly ungenerous parsings.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:32 PM on July 28, 2007

We have an informal way of leaving flags up there if we either don't know what needs to be done, don't have time to do something or want a second set of eyes on it.

And in the case of something that is getting a lot of flag activity, there may even be a new small pile of flags on a post for which one of us has given the shrug and deleted the initial pile. That may well have been the case here, complicating things further—it's one of the costs of what is in a lot of ways a very simple and elegant ad-hoc message-passing arrangement.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:35 PM on July 28, 2007

You referred to quonsar himself as a presumptuous ass. That's poor form.

You're talking about a guy who's famous for declaring that he stores fish in his pants.
posted by spiderwire at 10:46 PM on July 28, 2007

You referred to quonsar himself as a presumptuous ass. That's poor form.

Sometimes the truth hurts.

Live with it.

I'll bet you can.

Give it a shot.
posted by dersins at 10:47 PM on July 28, 2007

cortex writes "inevitable stink of Fuck You, Mods (whether even intended or considered in the case of the actual poster) in light of the last few days' on-sight controversy. It was a judgment call, I had things to do with my evening, and the way things are going it seemed like it'd be that thread or another. As a thread ostensibly about other than Gonzales, it sure could have been constructed in a way that didn't seem to be intentionally pressing our buttons."

Wait, wait.

So part of the reason you deleted the post is because you felt personally slighted by it, because you thougt it was pushing your personal buttons?

And you were too busy to really read it, you had betetr things to do, and just shot from the hip?

Cortex, you're in the position of, basically an ALG. Indeed, you wrote "it was a judgement call".

If a an administrative law judge or an insurance examiner or a mortgage broker or the like said, "well, I thought cortex was trying to push my buttons, and I was in a rush to get home, so I just went ahead and denied his case/claim/mortgage without really examining the merits", would you be pissed?

If you feel something is personal, or if you don't have the time to do your job, that's a damn good reason to recuse yourself, or wait to cool off, or to give the benefit of the doubt to the post.

There's a great joke (by Lincoln?) about an attorney, during a case, viciously insulting the judge's wife. Afterward, the attorney's client asks "Why'd you attack the judge, he's about to decide my case!"

The attorney explains the judge has a reputation for impartiality and for putting the law ahead of his personal prejudices. He goes on the explain that that reputation is extremely well-deserved, and that the client has no real case. By insulting the judge, the judge's sense of fairness will force him to bend over backwards to make sure his decision won't be influenced by the personal animosity he now has for the attorney, and that's the attorney's client's best hope of a favorable decision.

Be that judge, cortex.
posted by orthogonality at 10:55 PM on July 28, 2007

This should be good.
posted by spiderwire at 10:58 PM on July 28, 2007

So part of the reason you deleted the post is because you felt personally slighted by it, because you thougt it was pushing your personal buttons?

Actually, I didn't delete it.

And that's independent of the fact that this is not law or insurance, it's a goddam website, and that the absolute worst case scenario of having a legitimately great post unjustly deleted is having to have a discussion about it and wait 24 hours to post it again. I love this place a lot, but this is one of those "it's only a website" moments.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:02 PM on July 28, 2007

So part of the reason you deleted the post is because you felt personally slighted by it, because you thougt it was pushing your personal buttons?

Actually, using your MetaFilter post to make a point about MetaFilter, whether it's "fuck you mods" or just some sort of meta-editorializing about the site is generally discouraged. That's not a personal button, that's a general guideline.

Please don't make specious analogies to courts of law or real estate. It's been clear from the outset that MeFi is not operated with a codified set of rules and regulations and the consequences of pulling a post are not at all the same as sending an innocent man to jail or doing a slipshod housing inspection for him.

Keeping flamewars and shitstorms to a minimum is part of what we do here and sometimes that means pre-emptively removing posts that are going badly and look doomed to go worse (based on the flag queue certainly, but there's judgement in almost every moderator decision).

You made your tongue in cheek LOLGonzales fuck-you-MeFi-bread-and-circuses-plausible-denial post, and we let it stay, despite the flags, because waiting for someone to make a better post on the topic that is being simultaneously bitched about in THREE METATALK THREADS is taking up too much of our damned time. No one's going to jail. No one's house is underwater. It's just a website.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:12 PM on July 28, 2007

dw writes "But at some point, you drive the point home so damn much that it's nothing but outrage fatigue. "

1. No one forces you to read any post. (I skip plenty of them, having no interest in bands or celebs.)

2. These posts aren't about "driving home the point"; they're about trying to understand what's gong on, to solicit discussion that is explanatory, to discuss developments or prognosticate.

Not all the comments are "BUSH == HITLER"; if I wanted that I'd read Fark or Kos. By discussing, e.g, Gonzales, we're looking to discuss specific things, e.g., what did Gonzales say, why is that important, which Senators challenged him, what were their most effective points, why is Gonzales stonewalling, what's the "other" TSP? These are new questions with new answers, and questions that mefites are good at delving into.

If all you see is "outrage filter", frankly you're missing the point. (No insult there, I don't "get" why Lindsey Lohan posts are interesting.)
posted by orthogonality at 11:15 PM on July 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

jessamyn writes "Please don't make specious analogies to courts of law or real estate."

Sure, you're an admin, not an administrative law judge.

But you are in a position of judgment, and you're paid for it. Frankly, the excuse, "I didn't have time to do my job correctly because I had a social engagement I was in a hurry to get to" doesn't cut it whether you're a bag-boy at the grocery, the Attorney General of the United States, or an admin on a website.


jessamyn writes "Keeping flamewars and shitstorms to a minimum is part of what we do here and sometimes that means pre-emptively removing posts that are going badly and look doomed to go worse (based on the flag queue certainly, but there's judgement in almost every moderator decision).

"You made your tongue in cheek LOLGonzales fuck-you-MeFi-bread-and-circuses-plausible-denial post, and we let it stay, despite the flags, because waiting for someone to make a better post on the topic that is being simultaneously bitched about in THREE METATALK THREADS is taking up too much of our damned time. No one's going to jail. No one's house is underwater. It's just a website."

Yeah, frankly I hadn't been reading Metatalk since my Romney-campaign-using-fake-police-badges post got deleted for being a trainwreck after it became a trian wreck because no mod bothered to remove rockhopper's multiple derails about something completely unrelated.

So I had no idea of the depth of discontent about the Gonzales deletions.

But it almost sounds like you're saying you delete posts because they might become train wrecks, and it would be too much work to just delete derails, and that you didn't delete my Gonzales-related post because it would have led to more bitching in metatalk and that was "taking up too much of [your] damned time".

I appreciate you work hard at your admin jobs and add real value to the site, but that taking shortcuts aimed at reducing your work is ultimately creating more work for you, and rancor for the site. Hey, I know the temptation in my work -- the shortcut seems tempting until you realize (or bear) the long-term cost. Certainly, taking the shortcut of not explaining deletion reasons (which you've to your credit stopped doing) ultimately caused more rancor and work than it saved.

Maybe greater judiciousness and restraint will mean less work and less rancor in the long term.
posted by orthogonality at 11:34 PM on July 28, 2007

But it almost sounds like you're saying you delete posts because they might become train wrecks, and it would be too much work to just delete derails

Fortunately, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying there is always a balancing act trying to figure out whether to act on something when we see it flare up, or whether to wait and see if it calms down over time, keeping derails and whatnot in check in the meantime.

This gets double complicated when something makes it into MeTa because then we're responsible to the MeTa thread that has opened up, plus we have to work in whatever the main MeFi thread is under much greater scrutiny and with an accompanying uptick in flags just based on the MeTa thread, so there's some complicated math to do to determine an appropriate response. Sometimes the fact that no one is going to be minding the store for 18 hours affects that calculation and response. That's always been true but it comes into play much less now that we have better mod coverage.

We've stated before, we don't have time to just play derail avoidance police in all the threads that need them, even if we decided such an approach was tactically wise which, so far, we haven't.

Certainly, taking the shortcut of not explaining deletion reasons (which you've to your credit stopped doing) ultimately caused more rancor and work than it saved.

I'd debate that point. I think people generally argue the deletions themselves and not the reasoning no matter what we say, but I agree that not sounding like smarmy pains in the ass is a good move generally. I think the rancor is free-floating and attaches itself to any likely focal point.

Maybe greater judiciousness and restraint will mean less work and less rancor in the long term.

Maybe. My guess is that we'd just inspire rancor from whatever the opposing faction was in whatever side we decided to be more judicious and restrained towards.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:55 PM on July 28, 2007

Is it at all common for moderators to be so continually transparent and accessible on other websites?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:10 AM on July 29, 2007

Rancor?
posted by homunculus at 12:12 AM on July 29, 2007

But you are in a position of judgment, and you're paid for it. Frankly, the excuse, "I didn't have time to do my job correctly because I had a social engagement I was in a hurry to get to" doesn't cut it whether you're a bag-boy at the grocery, the Attorney General of the United States, or an admin on a website.

You do understand that you just accused cortex of deleting a post that he didn't delete -- in fact, he did exactly what you asked -- and were completely wrong about it, right? No apology? Nothing?

Man, you're pretty lucky they're not judges, because a real judge would be a lot less forgiving with you right now. Those judges also tend to have their "judgments" respected, not have their integrity questioned by people who admit that they weren't even paying attention to the issue until they decided to chime in with their oh-so-wonderful pronouncements of proper decisionmaking.

But it almost sounds like you're saying you delete posts because they might become train wrecks, and it would be too much work to just delete derails, and that you didn't delete my Gonzales-related post because it would have led to more bitching in metatalk and that was "taking up too much of [your] damned time".

They're saying that no one posted a Gonzales-related post until a good day after the hearings, it got deleted because it sucked and was late, and then people kept posting them. They weren't derails. It was tripe, and the people that posted obviously knew better, since they kept linking back to the previous deleted threads.

you didn't delete my Gonzales-related post

...Because you did exactly what everyone was complaining about w/r/t AskMe responses last week and couched your Gonzales post in a very, very thin veneer of legitimacy, which this comment makes quite clear was just an excuse to be passive-aggressive. Personally, I flagged it for that reason. It was a dick move, and the fact that you got away with it certainly doesn't put you in a position to push your luck by being condescending about it.
posted by spiderwire at 12:54 AM on July 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

spiderwire writes "You do understand that you just accused cortex of deleting a post that he didn't delete -- in fact, he did exactly what you asked -- and were completely wrong about it, right? No apology? Nothing?"

I read his coment as meaning he had deleted it. He didn't,and I do apologize.
posted by orthogonality at 1:34 AM on July 29, 2007

spiderwire writes "They're saying that no one posted a Gonzales-related post until a good day after the hearings, it got deleted because it sucked and was late, and then people kept posting them."

It was late? All the Gonzales posts were about different aspects (the hearing, the newly disclosed program, the media coverage), and "late" is better, as it allows for more considered links and discussion.
posted by orthogonality at 1:38 AM on July 29, 2007

Balisong, Alex Reynolds is just another fictional layer in Blazecock Pileon's stack of deceit and deception

Nevertheless, those Alex Reynolds mysteries look pretty damn good to me. Never seen them in any English bookshops.

Can anyone vouch for them?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:47 AM on July 29, 2007

Wow. The whininess is reaching epidemic proportions. If I were a moderator, I'd just ban everyone and head for the beach.

It's only a website.
posted by languagehat at 7:39 AM on July 29, 2007

So now the old policy of "more leeway in comments" is on its way out too, huh? Let me know when we're supposed to wear matching shirts.
posted by davy at 8:20 AM on July 29, 2007

At some point, the "why" questions will all have be answered with "Because I said so. Now go to bed!"

Damn kids.
posted by The Deej at 9:44 AM on July 29, 2007

Everyone in this thread is actually a cunt.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:27 AM on July 29, 2007

In a hat.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:27 AM on July 29, 2007

Including languagehat?
posted by wendell at 12:37 PM on July 29, 2007

langvadgehat amirite
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:53 PM on July 29, 2007

Jesus Christ, I wish people would stop harping on the Alex/Blazecock thing. He's a good member now, and has been for a while, and all the needling just seems so fucking petty and mean-spirited.
posted by klangklangston at 4:00 PM on July 29, 2007 [2 favorites]

If I'm not a cunt in a hat, who the hell is?

Also, what klang said. In spades.
posted by languagehat at 5:42 PM on July 29, 2007

Amen, Klangklangston. People change and that is to be respected.
posted by LarryC at 5:50 PM on July 29, 2007

It's just that his NEW name fits his OLD persona and vice-versa! Too easy to get confused!
posted by wendell at 6:04 PM on July 29, 2007

Is Cunt-in-a-Hat the sequel to Cock-in-a-Box?
posted by The Deej at 6:13 PM on July 29, 2007

I've given this a lot of thought, BitterOldPunk, and I believe you are right. "Cunt in a hat" trumps "coked out ditch-pigs" by a mile. Also, I'll bet that if you shouted "Cunt in a Hat!" in a crowded bar, waited until all eyes were upon you, then shrugged and coolly said "Pete Doherty", everyone present would silently nod in agreement and go back to their drinks.

Just needed to clear that up. Thanks.
posted by maryh at 9:34 PM on July 29, 2007

I'm actually meeting friends for drinks before a concert tonight, so I'll try that and report back.

The meme, she spreads.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 1:58 AM on July 30, 2007

Thanks, klang.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:51 PM on July 30, 2007