No snark here.

January 31, 2008 12:50 PM

This post was flagged and the system worked as it usually does with cortex quite rightly deleting it.

Before that occurred however, there were a few comments effectively ridiculing the question as LOLnOOb (these were deleted before the thread came down). Flags are generally effective on AskMe. Some snark is tolerated on MeFi and of course it's a free for all on MeTa, as the snark that will undoubtedly rain down on me for this post will show, but this triage of snarkery has worked quite well for the mods and by extension for us.

The net effect of this incident is that Smilla who was making his/her first post on MetaFilter, member for only a few weeks, appears to have quit Who knows? Perhaps Smilla had some small treasure that might have been shared with the community had she or he not received the point-and-snort treatment on the first question. Perhaps not, but I see no gain in this.

As many of us have been admonished before, flag it and move on.

posted by Neiltupper to Etiquette/Policy at 12:50 PM (50 comments total)

That deletion discussed here.
posted by whir at 12:59 PM on January 31, 2008

Flagged.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:00 PM on January 31, 2008

Flagged.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:03 PM on January 31, 2008

Moving on
posted by sebas at 1:06 PM on January 31, 2008

That deletion discussed here.
Oops. Never mind. Ah well, now there's a reason to snark. Let it rain.
posted by Neiltupper at 1:08 PM on January 31, 2008

Smilla
Special snowflake

There's a funny one here somewhere.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:08 PM on January 31, 2008

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/treaty of whatchacallit
posted by Mister_A at 1:14 PM on January 31, 2008 [3 favorites]

A better title for this post: Smilla's sense of Snark
posted by vacapinta at 1:15 PM on January 31, 2008 [8 favorites]

(these were deleted before the thread came down).

Actually, just so nobody who was watching the timing gets whiplash here: they were deleted after it came down; I was walking out the door last night when I saw the flags shoot up on that one, took it down, and was finally able to get in and clear out some of the junk this morning.

(For arcane admin interface reasons, flags made on comments in a post before the post is deleted aren't as visible at a glance as flags in still-live threads, so the flags on those comments weren't jumping out in the queue this morning.)

Deletion of thread is generally a higher priority than deletion of individual comments in a deleted thread, though that doesn't make the comments any less noisy or out of line. Don't do that!

I'm sorry Smilla decided to close her account, and if she changes her mind she's of course welcome to have it re-opened. But a bit of snark (and lest the deleted-ness of the comments suggest something sinister in absentia, it was a handful of mildly snarky predictions of deletion or declarations of chatfilter—not cool, but not vicious at all) should probably be the sort of things folks should flag, roll their eyes at, and drop us a line if they want to discuss it, not an account-closure sort of event. To each their own, obviously, but this is a big place and there's bound to be some bumpy moments, especially for someone making (however accidentally) a big faux pas.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:15 PM on January 31, 2008 [3 favorites]

It's kind of a shame that you guys let people that've dramatically closed their accounts reopen them at a later date.
posted by item at 1:18 PM on January 31, 2008

We're all little phoenixes. (Phoenices? Dominatrices? I ride two bi to get on one of nine UC campi?)
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:21 PM on January 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

^^Strangely erotic comment ^^
posted by Mister_A at 1:24 PM on January 31, 2008

Here's another one with lots of "HEY THIS WILL GET DELETED AMIRITE?!?". Just flag the stupid thing. Sheesh.
posted by inigo2 at 1:25 PM on January 31, 2008

It's kind of a shame that you guys let people that've dramatically closed their accounts reopen them at a later date.

Yeah I think people that have only ever had one account and have never closed it and then reopened it should get some special recognition. We just don't spook motherfuckers!
posted by ND¢ at 1:26 PM on January 31, 2008

A better title for this post: Smilla's sense of Snark

Ah, but there is someone here called Smilla's Sense of Snark. I haven't seen her here in a while, though, which is a shame because I quite liked her.
posted by rtha at 1:26 PM on January 31, 2008

That rainbow discussion is pretty darn funny though.
posted by Mister_A at 1:26 PM on January 31, 2008

His phallus was a phoenix that rose from the ashes of detumescence.
posted by Burhanistan at 1:26 PM on January 31, 2008 [2 favorites]

Burhan, God, that sounds like John Irving's sex scenes.
posted by klangklangston at 1:33 PM on January 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

I thought my phallus was a phoenix, but it turned out that the burning sensation was something entirely different.
posted by tkolar at 1:35 PM on January 31, 2008 [2 favorites]

Not the last comment.
posted by Plutor at 1:36 PM on January 31, 2008

The Phoenix Phalluses were, without question, the biggest embarrassment ever to hit women's arena football.
posted by jbickers at 1:38 PM on January 31, 2008

Nobody leave this thread-- it's possible one of us has some small treasure to share with the community!
posted by hermitosis at 1:40 PM on January 31, 2008

"Perhaps Smilla had some small treasure that might have been shared with the community had she or he not received the point-and-snort treatment on the first question. Perhaps not, but I see no gain in this."

Or maybe they were a self linker and their mission is done?
posted by Mitheral at 1:41 PM on January 31, 2008

If someone quits over that, it's hard to feel too sorry.

Take your lumps and move on. That's what I did and look at me now!


Okay. Nevermind.
posted by Doohickie at 1:42 PM on January 31, 2008

Actually, just so nobody who was watching the timing gets whiplash here: they were deleted after it came down

My assumption was wrong, but I avoided the neck problems. Out of curiosity, what is the reason for deleting comments after a question is pulled? (Or has this been discussed before?)
posted by Neiltupper at 1:43 PM on January 31, 2008

Out of curiosity, what is the reason for deleting comments after a question is pulled?

Shitty comments are shitty comments, basically. We're generally not going to go plumbing into the archives to kill silly/snarky stuff from two years ago just for sport, but if it's a recent thread there's a reasonable chance we'll clean it up on the basis that, hey, even if you're right about your deletion prediction, you're still being obnoxious and breaking the guidelines.

I think a big part of the problem there is that on the blue it's not really considered a problem to rend and gnash and get silly in an obviously-doomed thread—we don't tend to do much about that stuff because we don't really have a problem with general silliness in perfectly healthy threads either. It's a tradition which, for all its charms, also has some warts—stinkbombing a thread that isn't, in fact, going to get deleted is pretty crappy stuff, and sometimes people really need to calibrate their delete-o-meter or just learn to second-guess themselves on borderline stuff. It's a big topic, and not really black-and-white.

But in askme, it is at this point pretty stark; while in the very early days of the green the guidelines were fluid and mostly just incremental tweaks to the culture on the blue, it's been a lot firmer and anti-noise, anti-snark for quite a while now. The tradition doesn't really translate into okay behavior in askme, and I think people in their (yes, I dig it) glee at Something Weird Happening forget that and get snarkier than is really defensible in the light of day.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:50 PM on January 31, 2008

Sorry to see him/her go. But you know what they say, you can please 3/5-ths of the people some of the time, and 2/7-ths of the people all of the time, and the rest of the time...oh fuck what's 1-3/5-2/7?
posted by proj08 at 1:51 PM on January 31, 2008 [3 favorites]

Nobody leave this thread-- it's possible one of us has some small treasure to share with the community!

I thought my phallus was a phoenix, but it turned out that the burning sensation was something entirely different.

Well, if tkolar is sharing his small treasure, I think it might be best to leave, or, at least not let him "share."
posted by ericb at 2:10 PM on January 31, 2008

Look, I was responsible for one of the now-deleted snarks. No excuses, I was just in a bad mood.

But you know what? After Smilla came back into the thread to complain about the snark, I said to myself: "you know, that snarkiness was uncalled for. Maybe I can turn this into a learning opportunity." So I took the time to explain that her post had broken one of the clearest guidelines for AskMe. She responded in a manner that suggested to me that she understood what she had done wrong, and I in turn apologized to her for my snarkiness and emphasized that she could rewrite the post in a more acceptable fashion, as twirlypen had suggested.

So to recap: the poster broke the single guideline that is clearly stated on the posting page, got a bit of flak for it, responded relatively civilly, and was apologized to in a likewise civil manner. If she did indeed delete her account following this exchange, I'm not sure what we could have done to ensure that this special treasure would have stayed.
posted by googly at 2:10 PM on January 31, 2008

And tkolar, I'm sure it's only small treasure due to "shrinkage."
posted by ericb at 2:11 PM on January 31, 2008

LAST!!!!11!
posted by Mister_A at 2:42 PM on January 31, 2008

it's possible one of us has some small treasure to share with the community!

Flagged as sizist.
posted by languagehat at 2:48 PM on January 31, 2008

                  ___.-~"~-._   __....__                .'    `    \ ~"~        ``-.               /` _      )  `\              `\              /`  a)    /     |               `\             :`        /      |                 \        <`-._|`  .-.  (      /   .            `;\\         `-. `--'_.'-.;\___/'   .      .       | \\      _     /:--`     |        /     /        .'o \\     ("\   /`/        |       '     '         /  O :`;     `\'\_/`/         .\     /`~`=-.:        /     ``       `._.'          /`\    |      `\      /(    O                     /  /\   |        `Y   /  \                        /  /  Y  |         |  /`\  \   O                   /  |   |  |         |  |  |  | OOO                  "---"  /___|        /___|  /__|OOOOOO

posted by Krrrlson at 3:21 PM on January 31, 2008 [5 favorites]

proj08:

0.11428571428571428571428571428571, give or take.
posted by SteveTheRed at 3:21 PM on January 31, 2008

And tkolar, I'm sure it's only small treasure due to "shrinkage."

I'm trying to find a way to respond to that without undermining my commitment to making metafilter less of a boyzone.

I've decided to go with a self-referential comment that begins by indirectly implying that you are perpetuating a bad social vibe, and follows up by directly mentioning "ericb" and "boyzone" in the same sentence.

I'll let you know when I have that comment together...
posted by tkolar at 3:22 PM on January 31, 2008

This is all a scheme to starve Astro Zombie 3.
posted by Astro Zombie at 3:24 PM on January 31, 2008

In my Recent Activity I saw:

This is all a scheme to starve Astro Zombie 3.
posted by Astro Zombie 4 minutes ago

...and for one horrible moment I thought there was an Astro Zombie 4.
posted by languagehat at 3:36 PM on January 31, 2008

Krrrlson, that ASCII art takes me back to a simpler time, a time when shitting elephants roamed free.
posted by veggieboy at 3:36 PM on January 31, 2008

Wait. You can get relative time stamps on posts, languagehat? I mean, evidently you can. Can I?
posted by veggieboy at 3:38 PM on January 31, 2008

Recent Activity, veggieboy.
posted by CKmtl at 3:44 PM on January 31, 2008

Harden up.

Jesus.
posted by Ryvar at 4:07 PM on January 31, 2008

Harden up.

Jesus.

Yeah, that's just what we need around here. The frickin' Son of God running around and acting all hard and shit.

"What, you think I'm playing, punk? You think this is a game, bitchass?"

*zap*
*frogs on fire rain from sky, competing dealer's pants are filled with locusts, floods ensue*

"Yeah. My street, motherfucker! This is my corner!"
posted by loquacious at 6:21 PM on January 31, 2008

I just actually clicked through to that thread. WHAT THE FUCK? There are actually places where the powers that be are thinking of taking fractions out of the curriculum?

And to think I used to suspect I wouldn't live long enough to be able to drink at America's wake. Here's to you, you stupid bastards!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:49 PM on January 31, 2008

No, really, I loved America. America bought me a beer one time. Just 'cause America wasn't all that bright doesn't mean America's heart wasn't in the right place.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:50 PM on January 31, 2008

...and for one horrible moment I thought there was an Astro Zombie 4.

There is an Astro Zombie 4. He doesn't post here, though.
posted by Astro Zombie at 8:32 PM on January 31, 2008

Is this something I would have to know how to count to understand ?
posted by y2karl at 10:11 AM on February 1, 2008

CORTEX IS ASTRO ZOMBIE 3!
posted by Burhanistan at 10:14 AM on February 1, 2008

Heh.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:08 AM on February 1, 2008

Wow, there really is an Astro Zombie 4. I thought AZ was just making that up.
posted by languagehat at 11:33 AM on February 1, 2008

We got her money, what's the big deal?

Wake me up when Smilla's Sense of Snark returns to the site.
posted by Eideteker at 11:39 AM on February 1, 2008