clarifying mystery links September 26, 2007 12:27 PM   Subscribe

Occasionally links without any real description are posted to the front page. It would be nice if any user could add a short description that would appear when you moused over the link, so users don't have to click on eight different links to find out what a post is about.

I think this would be easier than trying to get people to post descriptions. Ok, start flinging it.
posted by craniac to Feature Requests at 12:27 PM (54 comments total)

Someday we could build a wicked cool thing that could automatically fetch the HTML title tags from any links in your post and set those as the title on your HREFs if you didn't already write something. I know TextMate does this on the mac when you're using the simple HTML shortcuts but I always thought it was nice (my last couple podcast roundups were edited in TextMate first). So a link to metatalk would automatically get a title of "MetaTalk | Community Weblog" when you mouseover.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:32 PM on September 26, 2007 [2 favorites]


Diagnosis: correct.
Prescription: likely to do more harm than good.
Prognosis: uncertain.
posted by googly at 12:33 PM on September 26, 2007 [1 favorite]


Yes, this isn't the best idea, but I'm hoping the ensuing discussion comes up with something better. The automatic title tag fetching sounds good. Oh, that was The Boss who wrote that--cool.

One problem with third-party post descriptions is that there would be no way to choose one of them, and you could include any clever description you wanted. And it would over-complicate things, I suppose.
posted by craniac at 12:40 PM on September 26, 2007


Or... the poster could use the 'More Inside' function. Or the HTML title attribute in their links. Or they could be bothered to write something useful rather than pretending their glibness is clever.
posted by ardgedee at 12:43 PM on September 26, 2007


"Or... the poster could use the 'More Inside' function. Or the HTML title attribute in their links. Or they could be bothered to write something useful rather than pretending their glibness is clever."

I guess I'm taking the position that technology can compensate for weaknesses in human behavior. Like spell check. Or nuclear weapons.
posted by craniac at 12:47 PM on September 26, 2007 [1 favorite]


If I'm reading your original suggestion correctly—that any user, not just the poster, would be able to attach text to the link mouseover—then that'd probably be pretty problematic indeed. Authorship w/r/t posts is kind of a big thing (consider the friction that comes even with the idea of semi-public backtagging of posts) so I don't even want to imagine the fistfights over who described what how etc.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:04 PM on September 26, 2007


Sometimes a little mystery can be a good thing.
posted by gwint at 1:10 PM on September 26, 2007


It would be nice if any user

ANY user? How would that work? Would it just be the first user or several users?

I see it spawning more Meta threads as the original poster or others dislike the secondary explanation. and lord knows what sort of description will come from the person who sees the Nth political thread of the week and has a small meltdown.

For what it's worth, I tend to dislike the no description posts, but sometimes they're quite good and in retrospect the lack of description highlights a good stylist choice, like opening a surprise package that has something great inside. If it really annoys me, I just skip the links, or ask for description inside the thread. It's not a perfect solution, but overrall I think it works.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:10 PM on September 26, 2007


Occasionally clouds without any real precipitation appear in the sky.
posted by quonsar at 1:21 PM on September 26, 2007


Oooh, ooh, make that "any user" me! I'll write titles for everything, like "SUX" and "Ghey!" and "PWNED!"

Then you'll know if the link sux, is ghey, or does some form of pwning!
posted by klangklangston at 1:28 PM on September 26, 2007


I don't like clicking things.
posted by mattbucher at 1:33 PM on September 26, 2007


This would suck all the joy out of hama7's posts, and for that reason alone it should never be done.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 1:36 PM on September 26, 2007


How about a slashdot style URL preview for every link, for the status-bar impaired. (I'm looking at YOU iPhone users).
posted by blue_beetle at 1:40 PM on September 26, 2007


BitterOldPunk writes "This would suck all the joy out of hama7's posts,"

Alternatively it would expand the audience for those posts. As it stands I know I'm not the only one who can't be bothered to click mystery meat if the poster can't be bothered to give even a smidgen of a hint about the destination.
posted by Mitheral at 1:45 PM on September 26, 2007


Or the HTML title attribute in their links.

I haven't taken apart the link widget -- how hard would it be to add a title attribute to the dialog?

See any given y2karl post for extensive and interesting use of title...
posted by lodurr at 1:50 PM on September 26, 2007


Occasionally links without any real description are posted to the front page.

So?
posted by Dave Faris at 2:29 PM on September 26, 2007


Dammit, I'm turning into a one-trick pony.

Your post advocates a:
[ ] community moderated
[X] technical
[X] social
[ ] legislative
[ ] economic
[ ] authoritarian
[ ] free-for-all
solution to crappy MetaFilter posts.

I'm afraid it won't work due to:
[ ] the King of the Shitpile problem
[X] the "It's only a web site" problem
[ ] it's been tried and it doesn't work
[ ] people who practice willful ignorance
[ ] MetaFilter should be less like Slashdot, not more
[X] Digg actually sucks a lot
[ ] The Kuro5hin model didn't work at Kuro5hin either
[ ] Matt doesn't have time
[X] there aren't enough hours in the day to police that
[ ] the code doesn't work that way
[ ] technology doesn't work that way
[ ] MetaFilter runs on very limited hardware
[ ] wishing doesn't make things better
[ ] asshats don't respond well to finger-wagging
[ ] scoreboards don't fix anything, they just get gamed
[X] overestimating the intelligence of people
[ ] five bucks isn't real money to some people
[X] it doesn't prevent shitty posts from appearing
[X] it will let too much crap get through anyway
[ ] nobody ever agrees what a shitty post is
[X] requiring cooperation from asshats
[X] most people don't take tags seriously
[ ] when you outlaw shit posts, only outlaws will post shit
[ ] the word "deletion" doesn't mean what you think it means
[X] it makes life harder, not easier

Furthermore it seems you might not realize:
[ ] Removal of stupid posts is a good thing
[ ] User numbers don't consume bandwidth or CPU time
[ ] Matt, jessamyn, and cortex actually know what they're doing
[ ] If an algorithm existed to do that, everyone would already be using it
[X] There is a small but loud contingent that thinks such crap is "good"
[ ] Some people think "important" means "postworthy"

In summary:
[X] Yours isn't the worst idea I've ever heard, but it's not good.
[ ] That's a pretty dumb thing to do.
[ ] Do you even understand the words you're using?
[ ] Die.

posted by majick at 2:56 PM on September 26, 2007 [6 favorites]


hama7's posts: too short; didn't read
posted by grouse at 3:24 PM on September 26, 2007


I thought this was the kind of shit that Greasemonkey was supposed to be good for. Wasn't that pretty much always the default answer back in the good old days?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:40 PM on September 26, 2007


God forbid you should click on something that has any possible surprise factor in store. Allowing users to edit everyone else's post sounds like a recipe for total mayhem, up to and including cats living with dogs.
posted by dg at 5:16 PM on September 26, 2007


I try to use the title attribute whenever I want to make some kind of parenthetical comment about the link I'm posting.

Perhaps that's the answer, when you click on link instead of just giving you the box with http:// in it, it could have another box underneath that would apply a title to the link, and have it character limited to keep people from running out of space on certain browsers.

Make it simple enough and people might use it.
posted by quin at 5:56 PM on September 26, 2007 [1 favorite]


Sometimes a little mystery
posted by 31d1 at 6:11 PM on September 26, 2007




mathowie's idea is great, but anything that requires user input probably wouldn't be..
posted by Chuckles at 7:32 PM on September 26, 2007 [1 favorite]


Sometimes a little mystery

Sometimes hover-over descriptions add to the mystery.
posted by Poolio at 7:33 PM on September 26, 2007


Poolio has recently started doing this with his posts.

My feeling is that if the context doesn't make it clear what the links are to, then adding hover-over descriptions is a common courtesy type of thing.

And it really doesn't take much effort to add them.
posted by Poolio at 7:43 PM on September 26, 2007


hama7 jumps to mind.
posted by Xere at 8:11 PM on September 26, 2007


Don't you suppose that if people are inclined to make obscure and mysterious posts, they're probably unlikely to go to the trouble of filling in alt text information?

There's nothing wrong with a little obscurity. They don't ruin the site or make it less useful. There's more than one way to skin a cat, after all.
posted by Dave Faris at 8:24 PM on September 26, 2007 [1 favorite]


Maybe those who yearn for conformity should develop a set of templates that can be used when composing posts, to ensure that sufficient information is conveyed in an appropriate format such that the intended audience is left in no possible doubt with regard to exactly what it is they will find at the other end of that mouse click. After all, there is so much invested in that click that it would be a crying shame for every wish not to be fulfilled as a result of the massive input of energy and time taken to open a single link on the Internet.

Or, you could say "Vive' le Difference" and get over it.
posted by dg at 8:45 PM on September 26, 2007


`Mystery posts are lame. The post should give you enough information to know what you are clicking on.
posted by LarryC at 9:28 PM on September 26, 2007


Why?
posted by dg at 9:40 PM on September 26, 2007


Because it's helpful to know if you'd be interested in clicking on it. I know, I know, it's just a link, right? But people have a lot of links and information to deal with and the standard convention IS to add some descriptive text to explain where the link goes or what it's about. When a user decides not to put the description in, he's essentially saying fuck you to a lot people. Mind you, this could be fine, but it's always get piss some people off.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:31 AM on September 27, 2007


Why? Out of respect for your reader. When you put up an FPP, you're asking people to take time out from their day to look at what you're showing them.

And out of respect for your own post: If you don't give people a reason to look at it, well, then, why should they look at it? But if you give them more information, maybe, just maybe they'll want to come in and participate.
posted by lodurr at 2:31 AM on September 27, 2007


Poolio's got a point, too: The TITLE text is part of your content, and it's a hidden part. It gives you an opportunity to be playful with your readers.

All of this is really about mastery of the medium. Some people are just going to be better at this than others, and a lot of the time that's going to be because most people don't want to deal with these details. That's fine.
posted by lodurr at 2:36 AM on September 27, 2007


This would be really easy to fix -- the triad just has to delete posts that might have been good but weren't because the mystery meat content was too high. To help locate such posts, they could add a "Mystery link content too high" flag. Then people would stop posting mystery links and the workload for this issue would drop.

And if you look at the triad's posts, you'll see that they don't use mystery links. Or not much, anyway. Following their example, the best posts use descriptive links.

But because they don't delete posts for having mystery links, maybe we have to assume that they don't think they're worth the effort of clicking a Delete button.
posted by pracowity at 2:51 AM on September 27, 2007


While I find your idea really appealing, I'm not sure the problem merits a fix, myself, even as I agree that mystery meat posts are really annoying. For my own lazy/selfish reasons, I'd love to have a richer link dialog (with a TITLE attribute), but as I think through the javascript required, it's a non-trivial implementation -- even if you snag a library from somewhere to do it with. (To stretch a metaphor, it's a hamster, not a pony, but Matt would need to get geared up to feed a hamster in addition to the ponies.)
posted by lodurr at 3:06 AM on September 27, 2007 [1 favorite]


Out of courtesy, the only times it's necessary to spell out exactly what the user will get when they click on a link is if the content is not safe for work, contains loud audio, requires a plug-in, or is a huge download. After that, if you require more information then you're not asking for courtesy, you're asking for conformity.
posted by Dave Faris at 4:15 AM on September 27, 2007


you're asking for conformity

How do you figure that? Conformity with what -- with the basic expectation people have, that when you ask them to look at something, you tell them what they can expect to see? That kind of conformity?
posted by lodurr at 4:40 AM on September 27, 2007


Out of courtesy, the only times it's necessary to spell out exactly what the user will get when they click on a link is if the content is not safe for work, contains loud audio, requires a plug-in, or is a huge download. After that, if you require more information then you're not asking for courtesy, you're asking for conformity.

It'd be super sweet if we could always remember to put NSFW in the fucking description, and not as a tag that 99.9% of us will only see after the fact. Not to derail here, I'm just sayin'.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:44 AM on September 27, 2007


When a user decides not to put the description in, he's essentially saying fuck you to a lot people. Mind you, this could be fine, but it's always get piss some people off.

Except that a lot of people don't read it as a "fuck you", and those that do are taking non-descriptive links way too personally.

Mystery meat links aren't a great idea in volume, but in smaller numbers they've pretty much always been around, are easy to skip, and actually do please some people. A mystery meat post that is also shitty is a shitty post and may well get deleted; a post that is aggressively/obnoxiously mysterious and also not obviously great may also be in trouble. These are fundamentally post-quality issues meeting up with the conspicuousness of an unusual post, not issues with less-descriptive posting style itself.

So an unexplained link to something good now and then isn't a big deal. It's not a fuck you, any more than a blockquote or a run-on sentence or a sidenote in small text or a use of capital letters or footnotes or iambic pentameter are fuck yous: not, in any but specific, rare reactionary cases. If you don't like those posts—don't like hopping into the comments, maybe, to see what other people are getting from the links—that's fine: pass 'em on by.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:30 AM on September 27, 2007


When I see one of these I just think "monkey beans" and move on. I'll maybe come back later if it starts showing up a lot in recent comments.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:44 AM on September 27, 2007


"Mystery Meat" should be the official name of mystery posts, if it isn't alreay.

"Maybe those who yearn for conformity should develop a set of templates that can be used when composing posts, to ensure that sufficient information is conveyed in an appropriate format such that the intended audience is left in no possible doubt with regard to exactly what it is they will find at the other end of that mouse click. After all, there is so much invested in that click that it would be a crying shame for every wish not to be fulfilled as a result of the massive input of energy and time taken to open a single link on the Internet.

Or, you could say "Vive' le Difference" and get over it.
"

I noticed you used conventional grammar and punctuation in your response. Mindless conforming robot. Throw off your chains.

I guess I agree that there are instances when a mystery meat post works, but those moments are inversely proportional to the increasing number of posts. And if we're all about expression and letting our inner child out to play, then why don't we allow more html and (gasp) images to be used?

In short, conformity is already enforced in dozens of ways in this community.
posted by craniac at 6:59 AM on September 27, 2007


That said, my idea is probably not a good one, but Mathowie's definitely is.
posted by craniac at 7:00 AM on September 27, 2007


"When a user decides not to put the description in, he's essentially saying fuck you to a lot people. Mind you, this could be fine, but it's always get piss some people off."

Wait, what? Are you fucking high?

I've never seen a link with absolutely no description. [I don't think that an attempt at an empty link: even works.]

So you've got an argument about insufficient description, which is easily countered by the tautology of "It was sufficient to make someone click."

But the idea that it's a fuck you? That's a hysterical gripe to have.
posted by klangklangston at 7:47 AM on September 27, 2007


In short, conformity is already enforced in dozens of ways in this community.

eye aint byin yr rbutl crank
posted by Dave Faris at 8:16 AM on September 27, 2007


klangklangston writes "I've never seen a link with absolutely no description."

True there is usually a word or two; however, I don't think ?????? or LOLMICROSOFT!!!1! or Adipositivity actually let anyone without mind reading ability determine the contents of the links. Mukasey Mukasey Mukasey Mukasey does tell anyone who isn't already familiar with the issue what the heck the post is about.

The worst example I know of (a FPP consisting of a single period).
posted by Mitheral at 9:57 AM on September 27, 2007


doesn't tell anyone
posted by Mitheral at 9:59 AM on September 27, 2007


And as a classic example of one of the reasons why mystery meat is bad. Fezboy! just double posted quonsar's LOLMicrosoft FPP.
posted by Mitheral at 10:25 AM on September 27, 2007


Solution: Merciless taunting of anyone who does this. That goes double or triple if the mystery link is to youtube.
posted by Artw at 10:43 AM on September 27, 2007


Actually, those posts have nothing to do with each other, Mitheral; q's is about the Vista-to-XP downgrade eggfacing, and the other's about a bizarre Excel edge-case failure as a means toward an introduction (for some readers, at least; to others, mere lemon juice in the wound) to the binary v. decimal exponentiation issue.

While mystery meat posts can lead to doubles, that wasn't one of 'em.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:49 AM on September 27, 2007


You know, the difference with hama7's posts is that the text of the FPPs actually describe -- albeit briefly -- what the link goes to.

There's a bit too much crap where people add a link per word (or per letter!) in an FPP that's just an obscure sentence that only has a tangential bearing on the links.

If I wanted to solve a puzzle, I'd take out my sudoko book.
posted by deanc at 10:53 AM on September 27, 2007


Mitheral—
Those are your examples? The chinese one has title attributes, so that's pretty easy to understand. The lolmicrosoft pretty much delivered lolmicrosoft. The adipose (nsfw) let me know that it would be naked pictures of fat women. Mukasey, I can't speak to because I did already know about Mukasey's nomination. And the "." rawr post got deleted.

I dunno, man, looks like the system works.
posted by klangklangston at 11:13 AM on September 27, 2007


We'll have to agree to disagree. I don't see LOL Microsoft as descriptive (especially since the LOL meme is visual) and I don't see how you got naked pictures of fat women out of Adipositivity nsfw. Adipositivity isn't even defined in webster's, the free dictionary, Google Define or wiktionary (the dictionaries in my search bar). Maybe it's some sort of slang?

cortex writes "Actually, those posts have nothing to do with each other, Mitheral;"

Sorry Fezboy!, obviously I was confused. Still it's too bad quonsar's post wasn't more descriptive.
posted by Mitheral at 5:33 PM on September 27, 2007


Work it out from the root, "adipose". Add "positivity." Awaken the allusion to "sex positive". Though I confess that I saw the word, thought "I don't have time to figure out this shit," and passed.
posted by lodurr at 5:49 PM on September 27, 2007


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