keep comments while still killing posts

April 30, 2008 8:25 AM

I was a little sad to see the Purple Reign post deleted; I realize that the post itself was DOA but I loved some of the links posted within the thread. Perhaps there is a middle ground that is a step above killing that would still allow folks to at least see the comments while still culling the post.
posted by zeoslap to feature requests at 8:25 AM (54 comments total)

For all your deleted thread needs, courtesy of puke & cry.
posted by porn in the woods at 8:28 AM on April 30 [2 favorites]

Or Plutor's Deleted Thread Doo Hickey for Greaseymonkeys
posted by Jofus at 8:31 AM on April 30

Yeah, we don't nuke them from orbit, they just come off the front page. People can still see the comments if they feel like visiting the deleted thread, but the front page of mefi isn't really a broken-links-plus-comments showcase.
posted by cortex at 8:33 AM on April 30

Yeah I have the deleted thread GreaseMonkey thingy, but I figure most people don't (and it would be nice if it showed the title and delete reason... Perhaps an option in the preferences to view deleted threads would work.
posted by zeoslap at 8:35 AM on April 30

When you put it like that cortex :)
posted by zeoslap at 8:38 AM on April 30

Doo Hickey, zeoslap. It's a Doo Hickey.
posted by Jofus at 8:48 AM on April 30

It is not, it's a bibblebobber.
posted by cashman at 8:51 AM on April 30

Thingamajig or death!
posted by Kattullus at 8:54 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]

Since it's dead and gone, I'd just like to say that the linked video of Prince with Tom Petty made my jaw drop like a stone this morning:

Cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps
posted by Greg Nog at 9:03 AM on April 30 [2 favorites]

You want thingamabobs? I got plenty!
posted by cortex at 9:03 AM on April 30

I totally have that GreaseMonkey dealie from Plutor and its great. The best part is that it also (sort of) works for AskMe, and the deleted thread blog doesn't cover the green.
posted by burnmp3s at 9:03 AM on April 30

Watchamacallit?!
posted by deborah at 9:13 AM on April 30

That performance of "Weeps" is indeed jaw-dropping, Greg Nog. It even got its own post to the front page, once upon a time. (More than two years ago.)
posted by cgc373 at 9:18 AM on April 30

Displaying a pointer to deleted threads on the front page for all to see, like Plutor's greasemonkey script does, might finally put to rest the erroneous notion that Metafilter is lightly moderated, and allow people to realize how much work really does go into keeping the site from descending into a morass of chaos and madness.
posted by Dave Faris at 9:24 AM on April 30

It's a real shame Prince has got even more aggressive about getting this sort of stuff off the web. He completely flipped out last November, and set the lawyers on three of the best known fan, most loyal sites for hosting fan-taken snaps from his residency at the o2, even going so far as to release a song online taking the piss out of his fans for being angry that he was basically trying to sue their communities into the ground (it included the charming line 'You might not like the taste, but I’ma stick your face in this funk'!).

All seems a bit odd, considering he makes most of his cash off dedicated fans buying multiple tickets to his live residencies nowadays (since he's been giving away his albums for free), he made a stand for artists' rights over their music with the whole 'slave' palaver, and he was pretty pioneering when it comes to distributing music online direct to his fans with the NPG Music Club subscription service (admittedly a wee bit of a rip-off, but still, no one else was doing it at the time).

I just don't see the logic - surely there are plenty of folk who, after seeing his Creep cover online, would be more likely to stump up for a ticket the next time he plays in their town?
posted by jack_mo at 9:27 AM on April 30

It was the Weeps link that prompted this thread :)
posted by zeoslap at 9:28 AM on April 30

(But, yeah, much as I like to witter on about Prince, I can't really see an argument for a post with no working link to stay up.)
posted by jack_mo at 9:28 AM on April 30

man, that post confused the hell out of me for a second thanks to the OP's use of the word "own." I mean, I know that it also means to win, and to be better than or beat competitively, but damn for a second there I thought Prince owned and ran the coachella festival.
posted by shmegegge at 9:31 AM on April 30

cortex: "You want thingamabobs? I got plenty!"

I hate to bring this up, cuz I think that Christopher Walken interpretation is awesome, but...

You got the lyrics wrong.

I've got gadgets and gizmos a-plenty
I've got whozits and whatzits galore
You want thingamabobs?
I've got twenty!
posted by team lowkey at 9:31 AM on April 30

Shit, you know? I actually knew that, too. Dammit.
posted by cortex at 9:35 AM on April 30

My brother and I spent a chunk of a drive back from the beach last weekend yelling at each other in our respective lousy Chris Walken impersonations. A longer chunk of the drive than the three other people in the car should have had to put up with, really, and this is partly why I ended up getting as a birthday gift from my parents a nice hand-made cowbell.
posted by cortex at 9:37 AM on April 30

*resists urge to construct and then to make "cortex's mom + cowbell" joke*
posted by cgc373 at 9:46 AM on April 30

*fails*
posted by cgc373 at 9:47 AM on April 30

Doo Hickey, zeoslap. It's a Doo Hickey.

Since when?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 9:48 AM on April 30

So why are deleted threads closed to new comments? Can't we delete them but not close them?
posted by blue_beetle at 9:51 AM on April 30

So why are deleted threads closed to new comments? Can't we delete them but not close them?

because mefi is the aristocracy of community weblogs, and that would just be so, so common.
posted by quonsar at 9:57 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]

Yeah, and why do we move deleted threads off the front page? Can't they just stay open and visble but still be deleted?
posted by ALongDecember at 9:57 AM on April 30

re: the WMGGW link. prince was one, while petty simply was.
posted by quonsar at 9:59 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]

Since when?

Since I stripped to the waste and brandished this length of 2x4.
posted by Jofus at 9:59 AM on April 30

Waste? Erase *that* from your memory if you can.
posted by Jofus at 9:59 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]

So why are deleted threads closed to new comments? Can't we delete them but not close them?

Oooh, shadowmetafilter. Since we already have the black and the grey, just set it up to be the color of the last bits of the fading sun on a solstice eve. make the address something like 01001010.metafilter.com, where all sorts of shady conversations, mingling and cavorting will go on, below the google radar, out of reach of the masses. The color should fade to night a la the april fools joke. Read fast. Comment faster. Each day append a random digit to the end of urls. And when people get banned, that's where they go. A 4th dimension mefi. Somewhere deep in the shifting threads and colors, holden will wander, trying to comment. A spammer will find himself on a jet black page seemingly devoid of content. The meta pit of despair, if you will.
posted by cashman at 10:03 AM on April 30 [8 favorites]

team lowkey:
I've got gadgets and gizmos a-plenty
I've got whozits and whatzits galore
You want thingamabobs?
I've got twenty!

My daughter used to be obsessed with singing this song over and over, into a plastic Disney microphone. There were 3 princess buttons you could push and whichever princess you chose would prompt you to sing into the mic after they sang the words for you. After you finished there was applause. She sang Part of Your World so many times, and with such commitment, selling it like Whitney Houston or something; she was four.
But she would say, "I got Oozits and whatsits balore." I have video of her doing a very serious performance of it and a bit later I wrote a line about it in a song.

Wow, seeing those lyrics just instantly zapped me back there for a few minutes.

When you pushed the button for Cinderella, she sounded all distracted and embarrassed and she would say, giggling and nervous, "Oh! Hello, you caught me...daydreaming."
My wife and I would give eachother a knowing glance.
posted by chococat at 10:11 AM on April 30 [3 favorites]

Doo Hickey, bibblebobber, Thingamajig, thingamabobs, Watchamacallit?!

The correct answer here is a 'whatsit', except when it's not, in which case it's a 'whatnot'.
posted by quin at 10:31 AM on April 30

cortex: "My brother and I spent a chunk of a drive back from the beach last weekend yelling at each other in our respective lousy Chris Walken impersonations. A longer chunk of the drive than the three other people in the car should have had to put up with, really, and this is partly why I ended up getting as a birthday gift from my parents a nice hand-made cowbell."

My brother and I also torture everyone around us with our terrible Walken impressions, but never the cowbell sketch. The Census is the goldmine.
posted by team lowkey at 10:41 AM on April 30 [2 favorites]

Wow, seeing those lyrics just instantly zapped me back there for a few minutes.

When we sat around and watched the film as a family for the first time years and years ago, and Ariel got to this line:

Up on the land
They understand
That you don't reprimand
Your daughters

...the older of my two sisters let out the loudest involuntary bark of laughter I think I have ever heard from her. I still remember that very clearly.

This has been Mertalk, with your hosts cortex and chococat. Join us next week, when we ask the question on everybody's mind: where's Flounder now?
posted by cortex at 10:43 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]

I wonder who's Kissinger now?
posted by Floydd at 11:03 AM on April 30

Doo Hickey, bibblebobber, Thingamajig, thingamabobs, Watchamacallit?!

The correct answer here is a 'whatsit', except when it's not, in which case it's a 'whatnot'.

It's a jammy, as in hand me that jammy, no not that one, the other one, the one sitting on the jammy.
posted by Divine_Wino at 11:06 AM on April 30

Dingus. It's called a dingus.
posted by From Bklyn at 11:49 AM on April 30

This is weird...last night I clicked on multiple links to deleted videos in the thread, and now I'm unable to access Youtube. Coincidence? Is this happening to anyone else?
posted by casarkos at 11:58 AM on April 30

Dingus. It's called a dingus.

I thought dingus were made from extruded plastic.
posted by quin at 12:15 PM on April 30

In Glasgow, it's a "thingummy." Universal noun around here.
posted by By The Grace of God at 12:59 PM on April 30

Hoojit?
posted by Abiezer at 1:49 PM on April 30

I thought dingus were made from extruded plastic.

That's "dingices."
posted by nebulawindphone at 3:55 PM on April 30

OP, here, just popping up to note that I did have second thoughts right after I posted this, thinking that the link wasn't long for the world and I know that's not awesome FPP material. But damn, I was blown away by the cover and wanted to share and thought the non-video link to the LA Times article was worthwhile.

Finally, I'll note that after 6+ years on MeFi I've finally done something worthy of MetaTalk. Not sure if I should feel dirty or excited that I've finally arrived! ;-)
posted by donovan at 5:35 PM on April 30

You're all barking mad. The correct term is framostat.
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:35 PM on April 30

Since the thread was deleted, I've been stuck for a place to respond to this desperate untruth from benzo8:

Petty's first "Look at you all" after Prince's first 16 bars sounds like he was expecting to come back in, and Prince didn't let him. Like the true professional that he is, Petty then reproduced the line three more times in order to give the sheen of pre-arrangement

I, too, was initially swayed by the notion that Prince's solo in WMGGW was an over-reach justified by the short musician's absurdly excellent grasp, but on reviewing the video for the fourth or fifth time today, I notice a couple of things:

1. Petty's first "Look at you all... While my guitar gently weeps," comes before Prince's solo. He's already set it up.
2. Prince is a showman, but he spends the first part of the song in the background, only appearing at the edge of the frame until he steps up for his solo. This would be strange blocking and camera work if he wasn't intended to leap onto the stage with crazy vibrant musical annihilation.
3. The stagehand who catches Prince as he falls back mid-solo cannot possibly have known what to expect unless they planned it in advance. If it had been a surprise to him, the catch and return would have been significantly more jerky, no matter how light the 5'2" musical messiah may be.
4. The disappearing guitar: seriously, that was planned and required some sneaky technical awesomeness, and it only makes sense to plan such things if you're going to be playing a showy look-at-me solo until the very end of the song.

A bunch of my students got better grades today than they otherwise would have based on that video. Thanks again to From Bklyn.
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:36 PM on April 30

Unless you're in Hawaii, in which case it's Da kine.
posted by shannonm at 6:37 PM on April 30

If FPPs don't get at least one favorite before the sun sets on the third day, they turn into sea foam.

And then, the beautiful comments get put into glass tubes in Ursula's cave .
posted by proj08 at 6:49 PM on April 30

Truth: I only care if threads are deleted during the time that it takes for me to come up with my perfect comment.

Because it's all about me, n'est pas? :::fluffs hair and drapes cat over shoulder:::
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 9:07 PM on April 30

I can't think of Ariel without thinking of that Nick Pitera dude singing Part of This World better than most girls. Ditto Aladdin.

*shudders* overtalented creep.
posted by Phire at 10:58 PM on April 30

"overtalented creep"—I see what you did, there. *golf clap*
posted by cgc373 at 2:46 AM on May 1

So how did the guitar "disappear"?
He had wires attached to instrument, threw it up into the air, techie off-stage reeled in offa the slack?
posted by Dizzy at 6:38 AM on May 1

It's a real shame Prince has got even more aggressive about getting this sort of stuff off the web.

Well, I can't imagine Prince is hurting for cash. Honestly, if I were him, I would be a lot more focused on crafting a self-image that would be remembered historically, and a lot less focused on whether my fans were happy enough with me to pay money. His whole schtick is meticulously-crafted glamour rather than DIY grassroots populism, being one of the few arrogant superstars that actually has the skill to back up his ego. From now until his death, I think it makes sense that image control is his primary concern.

Or:

"Mama didn't tell you what she told me: 'girl, you need Image Control.'"
posted by Greg Nog at 6:40 AM on May 1

That defo makes sense, though part of that schtick involves sticking it to the Man (slightly undermined by recent use of the Mail on Sunday as a Man-sticking medium, admittedly) so he does seem to be having his cake and eating to some extent.

I suspect the reason the heavy-handed legal threats last year caused such outrage was that the same fans Prince was bullying had once got themselves in a tizzy on his behalf when Warners were shitting on him (and bought a bunch of relatively dire records released as a result, to express their support).

Greg Nog writes '"Mama didn't tell you what she told me: 'girl, you need Image Control.'"'

Tee hee!
posted by jack_mo at 10:36 AM on May 1