Deleted post topic pony

December 11, 2001 4:25 AM

Instead of simply deleting posts that people suggest should be deleted, remove them from the front page and disable further new posts on them. That way people like me who don't read MeTa very often will still know what you guys were talking about and why thread x should've been deleted rather than just having to figure it out from comments.
posted by zztzed to feature requests at 4:25 AM (7 comments total)

this has come up before, more recently when the trend of filling up soon to be deleted (double posts, etc) threads with haiku and other fun stuff emerged

basically the problem with keeping deleted posts in any form is that there will be people who post awful stuff with the very aim of getting it moved into the 'hall of shame' - this is similar to what you see over at slashdot with the 'first post' trolls (because they know it will be modded down, they post phenomonal amounts of bullshit)
posted by sawks at 5:21 AM on December 11, 2001

I see what you're saying sawks, but isn't MeFi self-policing? Fear of abuse shouldn't be a reason to reject a feature. Otherwise Matt may as well install /. style mod features and all that other crap. I like the hall of shame idea for the reasons that zztzed and others have stated - it helps define the boundaries of etiquette for people like myself who are a little fuzzy on the subject. And I don't think there'd be any particular stigma with finding one of your posts in there. Everyone's messes up.
posted by dlewis at 5:48 AM on December 11, 2001

stigma is no big deal, personally i'd trash a ton of my own posts if i could...

but i'm talking about people specifically trolling for a reaction, *trying* to get something moved... it would not be pretty (take a look at any slashdot thread at -1)


the closest thing we have to etiquette (and what i see as the strength of self-policing) is a whole bunch of people leading by example, and imho it works

while the quality of a front page post is a pretty subjective thing, the high standard of disucssion that goes on here is something we should all be very grateful for


if you look at things from the reverse angle - anything that you see on mefi (which obviously hasn't been deleted) can be considered an example of acceptable posting (which is probably why some of us get a little uptight in meta re: deletia)
posted by sawks at 6:10 AM on December 11, 2001

Better to say what it is, rather than what it isn't. Ok - I like the sound of that. If that's the reasoning behind sending bad posts into the black hole then it's a good one.
posted by dlewis at 6:24 AM on December 11, 2001

The post which was just deleted was a danger just by existing. The problem with it wasn't the followup thread, but that people would even read it.

Someone found a "random Geocities site URL" generation program, ran it and got a URL of a site, and then posted it on the front page at MeFi and said "Hey; let's all pile on this site and see if we can get Geocities to delete it for too much traffic." Fun for all -- except for the poor bastard whose site it was, who would be puzzled and pissed off because his site went away for no discernible reason.

Had that FPP been moved to an archive, it would still have generated refers to the Geocities site in question and still risked getting it deleted, and still damaged the poor bastard who created that site. That's not acceptable. Only deletion would do, which is why I asked for deletion and not censure.

This was nothing less than a social-engineering denial of service attack. It was a deliberate attempt to slash-dot a site solely for purposes of bringing it down.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:28 AM on December 11, 2001

deliberate attempt to slash-dot a site

Where do you mean by the phrase "slash-dot a site"? Is this a reference to sites being linked from Slashdot.com and later getting yanked because of high traffic? Just curious.


posted by Shadowkeeper at 1:03 PM on December 11, 2001

From the New Hacker's Dictionary: "slashdot effect"
posted by Steven Den Beste at 1:57 PM on December 11, 2001