not to be rhetorical

August 22, 2007 7:30 PM

it would appear this is a double yet this isn't. in all seriousness: may i ask after the rationale?
posted by de to etiquette/policy at 7:30 PM (59 comments total)

The John Cage post was reposted three months after the original and it was the same video.

The rhetoric site was posted four years ago and though yeah they're both pointing to the same site, it's not the same as just a few months ago to the exact single clip. The criteria for what a "double post" really means tends to slide when years and years have passed since the original post (and the linked site has changed).
posted by mathowie at 7:34 PM on August 22, 2007

Sure. The first two were only a few months apart. The second two were four years apart. This means that not a lot of people were around when it first showed up, relatively speaking, so no one probably recognized it as a double. No recognition, no flags. No flags, no double post deletion. Usually if something's reposted in good faith over two years later it's likely to stay.
posted by jessamyn at 7:34 PM on August 22, 2007

The rhetoric double is four years old, and a pretty great resource, basically; letting it stand seemed okay, where the John Cage posts were separated by a couple months.
posted by cortex at 7:34 PM on August 22, 2007

I like how mathowie and I both italicized years.
posted by jessamyn at 7:34 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

And now, pb with sports.
posted by cortex at 7:34 PM on August 22, 2007 [12 favorites]

user 225 wants rationale, dammit.
posted by quonsar at 7:35 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

Five posts by three admins in one minute. Must be some sort of record, methinks.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:36 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

METATALK = INSIDE JOB
posted by cortex at 7:39 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

six...
posted by growabrain at 7:41 PM on August 22, 2007

thank you. good years they've been too. cheers
posted by de at 7:43 PM on August 22, 2007

I should admit we all get emails now when new metatalk posts go up. So we'll likely answer questions within the first five comments instead of being #83 like we often used to be.
posted by mathowie at 7:45 PM on August 22, 2007 [2 favorites]

Cool; so MetaTalk's like a matt-phone now (and a jess-phone, and a cortex-phone, to boot!)
posted by yhbc at 7:48 PM on August 22, 2007

Not that there'd be any chance of abusing such a thing, or anything.
posted by yhbc at 7:49 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

Aha, I see now that mathowie just cloned himself to get more admins. (Cortex is the terse clone.)
posted by smackfu at 7:53 PM on August 22, 2007

(Cortex is...terse...)

I'm keeping that one handy for the next time someone jabs me about going on at length.
posted by cortex at 7:55 PM on August 22, 2007

cortex, have you heard about Michael Vick?
posted by pb at 8:14 PM on August 22, 2007

Hoyoooo!
posted by cortex at 8:17 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

Looks like you're done here. I'll go elsewhere and get my smell on.
posted by mds35 at 8:26 PM on August 22, 2007

So what's the rule? One year? Two? And can we now dispense with the myth that nuking double-posts is the only hard-and-fast rule around here? Cuz it ain't.

(Which is fine with me. But it's kind of weird that is you post something 364 days old you're a moran, but if it's 366 it's "Best of the Web.")
posted by bardic at 9:17 PM on August 22, 2007

*that is = that if
moran = moran
posted by bardic at 9:17 PM on August 22, 2007

You're drawing fine distinctions where there are none. It's the difference between "really old" and "not so old", which is not 364 vs. 366.
posted by smackfu at 9:26 PM on August 22, 2007

What a maroon.

I'm not speaking for the management here (or else i would've posted @7:34PDT), but you'd be safe if you put 3 years or at least a thousand days AND a site redesign/reorg/repurposing between front page links to the same place...
posted by wendell at 9:29 PM on August 22, 2007

It's a fuzzy rule. A meh site/video/whatever that was posted four years ago will probably get nuked as a double without a second thought, if it doesn't get nuked just for being kind of crappy—that the thing here was a pretty cool resource definitely worked in its favor.

Recency is a big factor, quality is another; both get sort of interpreted on the fly depending on the post. It's a straightforward enough rule, but it's not really hard and fast like the self-link thing; even the FAQ doesn't claim as much.

If people went on a bizarre repost spree of stuff from five years back, we'd probably clamp down on it. As it is, it doesn't seem to happen much.
posted by cortex at 9:34 PM on August 22, 2007

I dunno. I think it's worth sweating a little bit. Nuking doubles is pretty much the only objective standard in place beyond nuking self-links and porn. At the very least, it's worth mentioning in the guidelines that some doubles are more equal than others.
posted by bardic at 9:35 PM on August 22, 2007

The explanations from the mods are a triple, and they're still there. May I ask after the rationale?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:37 PM on August 22, 2007

(Which I guess it does, but I wouldn't know it from the times I've defended double-FPP's and been told to eat a bucket of cocks since "it's a double zomfg" and the times I've defended doubles as being worthy and been told "it's an old double zomfg.")
posted by bardic at 9:39 PM on August 22, 2007

(Aright, I'm too tired to be posting, obviously. Point is, there's a surprising amount of drama around doubles, whether you defend it or point out it's a double. And both sides are essentially right. That's all I'm trying to say.

But we'll always have porn and self-links. Yay!)
posted by bardic at 9:44 PM on August 22, 2007

I hear you. My own stance on it has gotten a little more moderate in the last few months, through feedback from users and conversations with Jess and Matt; when I came on board, I considered a double a double and to hell with the circumstances.

My understanding is that the discretionary time+goodness exception has been around in Matt's playbook (and the FAQ—which someone pointed me to after I nuked a years-out double they'd posted) for a long while. I think it's one of those topics that's always going to lead to a not-quite-satisfying compromise wherever the line gets drawn.
posted by cortex at 9:45 PM on August 22, 2007

*hands out chalk to everybody*
posted by carsonb at 9:50 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

It was a very good year.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:59 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

Best to err on the side of leaving the older ones, for the reasons stated. It's not as if you're being forced to read them again. There's also a butterfly effect with FPPs--they can take off in different directions depending on the initial comments.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:11 PM on August 22, 2007

And can we now dispense with the myth that nuking double-posts is the only hard-and-fast rule around here? Cuz it ain't.

The only hard and fast rule that there's been since I've been around has been that there are very few -- as few as possible -- hard and fast rules.

That rules.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:32 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

I've been thinking about making an FPP about this site I read about somewhere where people scan their cats on actual scanners! It's kind of a pun on MRIs and stuff. Plus it's kind of LOL, only about cats!
posted by Ceiling Cat at 11:01 PM on August 22, 2007

Apparently, Ceiling Cat has stopped watching the rest of us and is now masturbating himself.
posted by wendell at 1:07 AM on August 23, 2007 [2 favorites]

Who else would Ceiling Cat masturbate, wendell?
posted by cgc373 at 2:25 AM on August 23, 2007

Not even self-linking is quite an absolute rule, so expecting mere doubles to have a bright, clear line seems a bit unrealistic.

There are three admins and a lot of different days, so I just don't think you're going to get any kind of consistency. The fact that we get even this MUCH consistency is pretty darn good, honestly.

I think 'ancient doubles that are worthwhile are okay' is a pretty good rule. 'Ancient' is subjective, but, eh, it's not like this is the legal system. It can be a little sloppy.
posted by Malor at 2:33 AM on August 23, 2007

... we all get emails now when new metatalk posts go up ...
Finally, a sure-fire way to send mathowie an e-mail without it being ignored.
posted by dg at 2:58 AM on August 23, 2007

I have your American rhetoric right here: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." It's from the Where's Waldo? books, I think.
posted by Abiezer at 4:20 AM on August 23, 2007

The John Cage post was reposted three months after the original and it was the same video.

Yeah, but it was a different delivery system, which made all the difference to me. I couldn't get the link from the original post to work, whereas jennydiski's YouTube link worked fine. I'm not necessarily saying the deletion was wrong, but I don't think it's fair to say "oh, it was just the same."
posted by languagehat at 6:12 AM on August 23, 2007

> There's also a butterfly effect with FPPs--they can take off in different directions depending on the initial comments.

agreed. i'd have been happier had admin turned a blind eye to the diski double (too). it was potentially an exceptional FPP.
posted by de at 7:10 AM on August 23, 2007

In my mind the primary distinction to draw is what's changed in the subject of the double post. American Rhetoric is a living site - even if you'd seen it before, there may have been something new and valuable added. The John Cage video is exactly the same thing it was decades ago, it's just easier to find now.
posted by ardgedee at 7:46 AM on August 23, 2007

Metafilter: hard and fast.
posted by flabdablet at 8:25 AM on August 23, 2007

On a similar note I noticed posts to good entries to the HowTo wiki were taken down as doubles, even though they were links to different howtos. How is that different to multiple posts to videos at YouTube?
posted by nthdegx at 8:33 AM on August 23, 2007

nthdegx: examples?
posted by jessamyn at 8:40 AM on August 23, 2007

D'oh, I meant wikihow. Anyway, see reason for deletion of the getting out of a car howto. Actually I somewhat take it back since a) that howto isn't a good one and b) a wikihow post has survived since, but I'm still curious about the logic behind the reason for deletion and why this wouldn't apply to youtube (sometimes I'd like it to).
posted by nthdegx at 10:42 AM on August 23, 2007

The truth is doubles stay when bribes are given out. Matthowie is partial to cuban cigars, jessamyn to first edition literary works and cortex to vintage erotica. If you keep this in mind you'll never get a double post, in fact, they'll judiciously prune the database to retroactive double go away.
posted by substrate at 10:51 AM on August 23, 2007

nthdegx - well on a guess it's because it looked like wikihow had been linked to basically every 2-3 months previously, but really asking for explanation of a deletion reason from six months ago is sort of stretching it. My guess is everything on wikihow is a "how to do X" sort of thing, it's a type of web page, with a specific purpose. YouTube links are just mediums for content that covers a lot of areas. So, if I had to guess, that's the difference. There's not an overall pattern imo.
posted by jessamyn at 11:00 AM on August 23, 2007

No wonder I couldn't find "HowTo". Heh.

That britney howto is a case where there had been a pretty exhaustive link to wikihow about a week and a half prior, and the post in question was a blip of Ha Ha Britney jokery besides. The deletion reason could have been explicit about the latter bit, certainly.

That may also be the first post I ever deleted. Heh.

Wikihow is a pretty specific resource compared with youtube—with a few of "look at all these howto!" posts on the blocks already, it's likely to see the bar raised some on reposts, though, as you note, it's not a locked door. Recency and quality and flags and a bit of random luck all come into it, but the difference between the two is pretty big:

Toutube is a huge general resource—really basically just a video delivery platform (and with respects to Google Video, pretty much the platform). It's not a content-specific site, it's a place where all kinds of content get stored.

That said, we do delete some youtube posts, generally the stupid/lazy ones.
posted by cortex at 11:03 AM on August 23, 2007

Or, you know, what she said.
posted by cortex at 11:04 AM on August 23, 2007

Also, man, I'm going crazy with the "Heh." terminators lately.
posted by cortex at 11:08 AM on August 23, 2007

Are 'Heh Terminators' cybernetic killing machines sent back from the future to kill our lolcats?

Because if so, they need to come with me if they want to live.
posted by quin at 11:14 AM on August 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

Anyone else wondering about cortex's new favorite word?
WordNet - Cite This Source
recency

noun
1. a time immediately before the present
2. the property of having happened or appeared not long ago
posted by Cranberry at 12:08 PM on August 23, 2007

My working vocab tends to be very faddish. A word will just get stuck in my craw for a few days or a couple weeks. I don't know why, exactly; but it's a big improvement over the two straight years or so in middle school that I went around reflexively declaring everything to be "sweet". Or if it was really great, "sweeeet." Or if it was actually bad, an ironic "sweeeeeet..."
posted by cortex at 12:22 PM on August 23, 2007

One of these days, I am totally going to do a FPP about zombo.com.

...years...
posted by Kickstart70 at 12:30 PM on August 23, 2007

Am I the only one who now has an image of Batman Superman and The Flash all showing up at a crime scene at the same time and being like "Oh, you got this one? Word. No, no... it's fine. I just... I just got this email that there was some crime-busting needed doing so I came by, but if you've got it then no worries... No, really. It's cool. I'll just... you know I was in the mood to watch a movie tonight anyway, I mean I've had um... I've had Casino Royale at my house for months and haven't even opened it, so uh... yeah, this really works out better for me, too, you know? Ok. I'll see you later. And if you need any help with this one, just let me-... no? ok, then. no problem. good luck."
posted by shmegegge at 3:29 PM on August 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

"but really asking for explanation of a deletion reason from six months ago is sort of stretching it"

Well I only recently came across it when considering a wikihow post myself, and, since it's so old I didn't make a MeTa thread. I don't see the age of the post affects the validity of the question, though.

Thanks for the explanation.
posted by nthdegx at 3:10 AM on August 24, 2007

Yeah sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. I just meant that sometimes deletions are more contextual and it can be hard to remember exactly what was going on six months ago that made something that might not be deleted today be totally deleteworthy.
posted by jessamyn at 6:37 AM on August 24, 2007

I found another Tub Girl!
posted by davy at 9:21 AM on August 24, 2007

Nono! Wicked, innit.
posted by nthdegx at 6:43 PM on August 24, 2007