Good Work FPPers!

As of the time of this post, the blue has had an unbroken string of 71 undeleted FPPs (numbers 68210 to 68280). That's almost three full days with no doubles, no self-linkers, no crappy stunt posts, etc. Good work, people! It got me wondering, though, what's the longest string (number-wise and/or timespan-wise) of undeleted FPPs on the blue? Does this mean we're all finally "getting" what makes a good post? Or are people getting better at following the guidelines? Or is this just an anomaly?

Or does my having noticed this mean that I have too much time on my hands and/or should get more sleep?

posted by amyms to MetaFilter-related at 12:33 AM (71 comments total)

Flagged to be deleted in order to satisfy the gods of irony.
posted by davejay at 12:39 AM on January 18 [7 favorites]

and to wake up the mods. hi, mods!

also, yes, you should get more sleep. me too.
posted by davejay at 12:40 AM on January 18

I'm pretty sure everyone is finally "getting" what makes a good post.

/snark
posted by Brak at 12:44 AM on January 18

And in all honesty, most of the posts in that span are pretty solid.
posted by Brak at 12:46 AM on January 18

also, yes, you should get more sleep. me too.

Well, at least you have a good excuse for still being awake.
posted by amyms at 12:53 AM on January 18

It's just an anomaly.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:55 AM on January 18

I think people are getting better at skirting the edges of deletion. There is at least one post from the last couple days that I would have deleted.
posted by Mitheral at 1:42 AM on January 18

There is at least one post from the last couple days that I would have deleted.

Sung to the tune of "If I Only Had a Brain"
(from The Wizard of Oz)

oh there's posts I'd be deleting,
there's posts I'd be defeating,
I'd strike 'em down like God!
oh the posts I'd be chopping
and the posts I'd be stopping
if I only was a mod!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:21 AM on January 18 [18 favorites]

MeMu or GTFO.
posted by grouse at 2:42 AM on January 18

Yay! We self-police. Now we can start hating ourselves for being the man.
posted by srboisvert at 3:18 AM on January 18

No, no, YOU da man
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:01 AM on January 18

Definitely anomaly. Only a matter of time before another blue/givewell/prettyflowers post.

PROVE ME WRONG
posted by the dief at 4:11 AM on January 18

MeMu or GTFO.

Sorry, grouse, but you must make a minimum of 3 comments at MeFiMu* before requesting song posts.

*The correct abbreviation!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:32 AM on January 18

Sez you. I notice that the MetaFilter Music Podcast calls it Memu.
posted by grouse at 4:49 AM on January 18

Heh. Well, what do they know? Whaddya, think the mods are gods or something?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:58 AM on January 18

Actually, Alvy ain't even a mod! Nice guy, though. Eventually he'll learn to abbreviate it correctly!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:00 AM on January 18

I heard Tom Cruise is second-in-command 'round here.
Please advise.
posted by Dizzy at 5:18 AM on January 18

Dizzy! Where you been, you spinnin' foo'? This place can't handle sitting still without you, man.
posted by cgc373 at 5:29 AM on January 18

Chasing after my 16-month-old, doing plays, prepping lesson plans for the Spring semester, traveling, laying low.
Missed you guys so much I had to come back and say Hey!
posted by Dizzy at 5:34 AM on January 18 [1 favorite]

Somehow there's always a relevant xkcd.
posted by DreamerFi at 5:44 AM on January 18

It's an anomaly. I'm sure there were months in the early days when nothing got deleted.
posted by jessamyn at 6:14 AM on January 18

This is the sort of thing that someone should make a graph of, clearly.
posted by cortex at 6:28 AM on January 18

If a million monkeys sat at a million keyboards for a million years typing a million words a minute, I am fairly confident that they could produce an unbroken string of 71 undeleted FPPs.

If not on MeFi, then here.
posted by googly at 6:36 AM on January 18

It wasn't deleted, but wasn't the second squid post a double? A bunch of people thought so.
posted by Nick Verstayne at 6:43 AM on January 18

My money is on anomaly.
posted by Afroblanco at 7:23 AM on January 18

(Working on an answer to the question. An admin with db access could preempt me, since 68k page requests is a lot.)
posted by Plutor at 7:37 AM on January 18

Another undeleted double.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:39 AM on January 18

As a preview, I can tell you that between thread 66000 and thread 67000 (an interval I picked somewhat arbitrarily to test my script), the longest unbroken chain is 47 undeleted posts from 66621 to 66667.
posted by Plutor at 7:40 AM on January 18

Well, what do they know?

::Cries::
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:41 AM on January 18

I like this callout. And I'd like to chalk it up to people learning. Personally, I find a bunch of stuff that I'd like to post, and I agonize over each one (and I'm still working on a couple). Sometimes, I search, and find it's a double. Other times I just look at it and go, "Mmm, no. That's not post-worthy."

Anyway... Hooray for us!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 7:57 AM on January 18

Thanks everyone for putting puke and cry out of work.
posted by localhuman at 8:03 AM on January 18

The longest chain I've found so far besides the current one is 68 from 47124 to 47191.
posted by Plutor at 8:03 AM on January 18

The two conclusions I've come to:

1) As expected, this is significant recently. You have to go back all the way to the middle of 2005 to find a longer chain (92 from 42963 to 43054).

2) Also as expected, if you take the entire history of MetaFilter into account, this is insignficant. Deletions used to be much rarer than they are now. I'm only about halfway back through early 2003, and here are the top five longest chains:

226 from 34353 to 34578
157 from 39971 to 40127
144 from 32965 to 33108
127 from 41445 to 41571
122 from 29126 to 29247

posted by Plutor at 8:14 AM on January 18 [2 favorites]

~~about halfway~~
posted by Plutor at 8:15 AM on January 18

Can you do the analysis by time period rather than by the length of the unbroken chain? (Could you get the time/date of the first and last post in the sequence?)
posted by patricio at 8:19 AM on January 18

God damn I wish I still had ssh access from work.
posted by cortex at 8:25 AM on January 18

Plutor: brilliant
posted by aramaic at 8:27 AM on January 18

Wow, thanks for the info, Plutor! I find stuff like this fascinating.
posted by amyms at 8:36 AM on January 18

In the astral plane there were a number of deletions during this period.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:43 AM on January 18

And now that it's done, I can tell you the longest chain is 370 undeleted posts from 855 to 1224.
posted by Plutor at 8:46 AM on January 18 [1 favorite]

MeFi Circle Jerk!

Pivot Man: NOT IT.

All kidding aside, I was thinking the other day "Damn, there have been a ton of posts to the blue recently." The fact that none were deleted is pretty amazing. Probably just dumb luck.
posted by absalom at 8:52 AM on January 18

Damn Plutor, I am amazed by your internettual trickery every time.

And to answer the question, it's definitely a nomaly.
posted by Mister_A at 8:53 AM on January 18

It's a good streak. Although I think gman is personally trying to stop that.
posted by dios at 9:03 AM on January 18

it's definitely a nomaly

A gnomaly? I knew it! I knew it was the gnomes! Even when they said it was the Irish, I knew it was the gnomes.
posted by aramaic at 9:04 AM on January 18

I think some people have taken this thread as a challenge.
posted by carsonb at 10:10 AM on January 18

cortex, I have ssh access from work. Just send me your MeFi admin password. I'll take care of it.
posted by eyeballkid at 10:19 AM on January 18

The streak is dead.
posted by Dr-Baa at 10:44 AM on January 18

Oops, forgot the link.
posted by Dr-Baa at 10:45 AM on January 18

Oh great, I just had to delete two dumb posts.
posted by mathowie at 11:00 AM on January 18

So now we're going for longest streak of deleted posts?

Cool.

I keed, I keed....
posted by DreamerFi at 11:08 AM on January 18

You missed the banana and peanut butter one.
posted by dios at 11:08 AM on January 18

Oh great, I just had to delete two dumb posts.

I figured. A thread like this is a giant dare.
posted by never used baby shoes at 11:28 AM on January 18

What dios said.
posted by languagehat at 11:43 AM on January 18

Disagree. The farce is strong in that one.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:26 PM on January 18

This facility
has operated
__
|0|

days without
a deleted post.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 12:44 PM on January 18 [3 favorites]

Just wait until another poptart gets another DUI
posted by Cranberry at 1:01 PM on January 18

Terminal Verbosity, we've been there, done that.
posted by cortex at 1:03 PM on January 18

Accounting troll: ... And this is our random number generator:

Random number generator troll: ... nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine ....

Dilbert: How can you be sure that's random?

Accounting troll: That's the thing. You can never be sure.
posted by WPW at 2:12 PM on January 18

also wondering: how long since we've had an FPP up for more than a day without a single (real) comment?
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:30 PM on January 18

Wow, I sorta feel bad for nthdegx. I would post a comment if I had anything to say.
posted by JeffK at 8:02 PM on January 18

So we're up to six deleted posts today, thus far?
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 8:42 PM on January 18

So how many did we get before the streak ended? (Or did I miss that?)
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:19 PM on January 18

I'd be curious if "number of posts between deleted posts" follows a Poisson distribution. Do you see that in the data?
posted by Upton O'Good at 10:38 PM on January 18

1. slip roofies to mods
2. put them in dark, warm, foam-lined pleasure tank
3. post yo shit!
posted by bruce at 12:33 AM on January 19

All y'old grizzlied prospectin' fortune seekers, you might got yer mule, you might got yer pickax, but y'ain't got yerself this data mining tool.

Now that there tool, that'll do yer basic linguistic analysis, what wit' all them fancy con-cept-you-all classifications an' con-text-you-all-eyes-ashuns, an shit, and you got yer basic keyword summythings, and then look it this, it's a box o' gold-seekin' ants and a graphing library!

Now, you wanna go hit them data mines, go claim you some of that there MeTa notoriety, you gotta have this here tool. And the best thing is, it's free. Yours to do whatcha want wit it. Not even gonna ask ya for a cut of yer claim, nosirree!

Now that there tool you just bought yourself? You're gonna want a MacBook fer that there, yassir... ain't no good witout the MacBook.

Damn, eh?
posted by five fresh fish at 12:41 AM on January 19

And now that it's done, I can tell you the longest chain is 370 undeleted posts from 855 to 1224.

Aha! The old days were good! I'm not just a cranky old-timer!
posted by five fresh fish at 12:44 AM on January 19

By a slight generalization of my work in this thread, you can show the following: If the probability that a post survives undeleted is p, then the expected number of posts until a run of r undeleted posts occurs is exactly

(p^r - 1) / ( (p-1) p^r )

Based on the past thousand posts, I believe we might estimate p to be around 0.935. Thus we might expect to wait, on average, about 1800 posts before another run of 71 undeleted.

(With such a large value of r, the formula is quite sensitive to the value of p. Try it with 0.93 or 0.94)
posted by Wolfdog at 7:49 AM on January 19 [1 favorite]

Good Work FPPers! January 18, 2008 12:33 AM Subscribe

Good Work FPPers!
January 18, 2008 12:33 AM Subscribe