Celebrity Dead Pool.

July 22, 2009 12:42 AM

A lot of discussion has been had lately on obituary threads and more specifically on how crappy the initial post(s) of well known people are as posters try to take advantage of Metafilter's usual first post stays policy. Several people have proposed that Metafilter run a vetting system for obit posts or take other actions to reduce the need for multiple post deletions along with their attendant comments. One suggestion was for users to maintain a prewritten obituary pool for famous people similar to those used by news services. I've set up a proof of concept on the wiki here.

This is very rough at the moment. Among some of it's weakness is the index page is ugly and hard to parse and the obituaries themselves use wiki markup for links instead of html. The latter means a simple cut and paste isn't going to work when it comes to posting the obituary though a light editting should be given anyways to provide a cause of death.

I'm not a professional writer so the obituaries linked off the index should be considered as barely above Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. I don't think discussion of the contents is warranted except in the case of style. Just go ahead and change it and reserve the back and forth on details to the associated talk pages.

posted by Mitheral to etiquette/policy at 12:42 AM (60 comments total)

Keep in mind while the tense of the posts is that the person is dead they wouldn't be on the page if they weren't alive. Adherence to the Wikipedia policy on biographies of living persons is probably a good idea and anything contentious or argumentative can just be relegated to early comments in the eventual thread. It's less likely to cause a huge thread derail that way anyways.
posted by Mitheral at 12:43 AM on July 22

Doing this would seem to be an endorsement of celebrity obitfilter. I understand that celebrity deaths are notable, and fine for community discussion, but giving them special treatment as sanctioned content for the blue seems like the wrong way to go.

I'd vote to either flag it and move on, or drop a comment in the thread reminding the OP that "a good thread values uniqueness over novelty."

If it stays, it stays. If it gets deleted, fine. In the end I suspect it doesn't much matter, obitfilter threads will trend towards respectful discussion or trainwreckville more or less independently of the quality of the post.
posted by Riki tiki at 12:58 AM on July 22

Or people could, you know, read the guidelines and post accordingly. Another vote for flag it and move on.
posted by allkindsoftime at 1:01 AM on July 22

This seems incredibly creepy to leave out in the open. The reason that newspapers can keep obits on hand is that they're not public. MetaFilter is a public space, the wiki is a public space. Can you imagine how weird it would be to come across your obituary somewhere or that of a loved one?

Also, can you imagine the e-mails the admins would get from people FREAKING OUT about having found an their still living grandmother's obituary on a MetaFilter associated website?
posted by Kattullus at 1:10 AM on July 22 [2 favorites]

You know, another thing newspapers do online is they publish a barely passable sentence or two about The Big Story, and then they replace that with something better when they have it. Sometimes that happens here with Obit posts, sometimes it doesn't. (Of course a lot of these Obit posts aren't obits at all, just people saying "Hey - someone died!!!").

Anyway that list is just begging to be messed with and I'm not sure that's a good thing.
So FIAMO for me too.
posted by awfurby at 1:18 AM on July 22

I'm not going to comment on whether this is A Good Thing or A Bad Thing. But it strikes me that its definitely A Thing That Won't Work.
posted by Jofus at 1:27 AM on July 22

it strikes me that its definitely A Thing That Won't Work.

Should we add it to the list then?

"The Prewritten Obituary Pool ObitFilter list died this afternoon after being hit by the MetaTalkTruck."
posted by awfurby at 1:34 AM on July 22 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I don't think this is workable. The current method might be occasionally messy, but in the end it seems to work pretty well. I'm more concerned about shitting in Obit threads than if the mods can judge whether it is worthy of staying or worthy of the recently deceased.

This idea of pre-written obits feels like it goes against the MeFi philosophy of crafting interesting posts about the best-of-the-web - and it sanctions getting it up fast rather than getting it up well, since the people who read MeTa and the wiki aren't the same audience as post to the blue. And this plan could - in some cases - override a better written post by someone else, since these pre-written Obits would be already "sanctioned".

And, to be honest, the worst recent example was in regard to Michael Jackson's death - and that probably wouldn't have been pre-written anyway, since there was no prior signs to this happening.
posted by crossoverman at 2:14 AM on July 22

.
posted by bjrn at 2:18 AM on July 22

It's no fun if you don't surmise on the causes of death for these folks:

• Pulled grandmother out from under a pile of Nazi bikers putting the boot in
• Found asphyxiated and pantsless whilst watching Teletubbies on repeat
• Devoured by a pack of vicious weasels during a holiday vacation in Spain

The weirder, the better.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:44 AM on July 22 [2 favorites]

Why on earth would I contribute to a pre-written well-constructed obituary post when I probably won't get the credit of my name in those big dirty yellow letters on the front page? Because we all know that's what it's about.
posted by chrismear at 3:08 AM on July 22 [3 favorites]

This seems incredibly creepy to leave out in the open.

It could be member only accessible until it is posted. Not that I'm endorsing the idea yet.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:12 AM on July 22

What chrismear said. Obituary posts are at best newsfilter, I don't think they should be acknowledged with this special status.

Unless of course CorpseFilter comes with a betting pool.
posted by Dr Dracator at 3:18 AM on July 22

Set up meatfilter.com for obituary posts.
posted by davejay at 3:31 AM on July 22

I'm old enough now that I wouldn't want to contribute interesting links or material to the pro forma obits of public figures, simply because there is a high likelihood I'll go before they do, and so I'd never get to see my contributions get posted to the Blue. And what's the point of crafting a great FPP, if you don't get to see it go up? Boo hoo on preview...
posted by paulsc at 3:35 AM on July 22

At first I was like, "Cool! I'm gonna write like a million awesome obits for people I love."

And then I was like, "But, if I put it on the wiki, how'm I going to get credit when it gets posted?" I guess I could try to be the first one to cut-and-paste the wiki obit... and we'd wind up with three or four duplicate posts.

So fuck that. (Or, what chrismear said.)
posted by Netzapper at 4:00 AM on July 22

ObDropTheDeadDonkey: "I'm depressed. Can I do some work on the Thatcher obit?"
posted by TheophileEscargot at 4:33 AM on July 22 [2 favorites]

Over thinking a plate of dead beans.
posted by y6y6y6 at 5:52 AM on July 22

Best of the Web
R.I.P.
posted by Eideteker at 5:56 AM on July 22 [2 favorites]

Oh, right.

"."
posted by Eideteker at 5:56 AM on July 22

I still favor replacing the dot with  .
posted by Eideteker at 5:58 AM on July 22

Doing this would seem to be an endorsement of celebrity obitfilter.

In exactly the same way that passing out condoms in school is an endorsement of teen sex.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:18 AM on July 22 [2 favorites]

Practise safe obitfilter.
posted by gman at 6:33 AM on July 22

Personally, I don't find sex ed ghoulish.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 6:36 AM on July 22

Perhaps rather than have a pool of obituaries ready to aid in those rushing for the "me-first-glory" we could have an educational program stressing the importance of taking the time to craft a solid FPP. The program can focus on how a single breaking news bulletin is pretty lame FPP and you'd be better off risking the chance of being beaten by somebody else and actually spending at least a few minutes fleshing out the post.

I envision this program being done as a traveling series of lectures by the mods, complete with snacks, propaganda posters, take-away brochures, and maybe even a puppet show or humorous rap.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 6:42 AM on July 22

Why not just add to a bad first post by adding links in the comments? Or is there some kind of competition that I'm not aware of?

Or, who cares? The story is that X has died. The rest is meaningless. Last time I checked, this is a community web log, not an exercise in journalism.
posted by gjc at 6:49 AM on July 22 [2 favorites]

Why not just add to a bad first post by adding links in the comments? Or is there some kind of competition that I'm not aware of?

I'm certainly glad you're unaware of the competition. Makes it so much easier to beat you.
posted by Netzapper at 6:54 AM on July 22

Competition, no. Standard, yes.
posted by gman at 6:59 AM on July 22 [1 favorite]

How about a pre-resignation wiki? I call dibs on Bobby Jindal.
posted by yeti at 7:15 AM on July 22

Apart from all the other sound reasons why this is impractical and perhaps undesirable, I doubt many people would feel the impetus to contribute to the crafting of an obituary long before a person's actual death. Until the moment of urgency, most people do other things with their attention. Newspapers do this because their economic imperative is to be the source of this information. Our imperative to post something first is merely to show how hooked-in we are. I know that means a lot to people, but I'm not sure it will mean enough for anyone to spend hours compiling research which will then sit idle until they kick the bucket.

If someone is that interesting, actually, you don't need to wait for them to die to make a post about their life's work.
posted by Miko at 7:27 AM on July 22 [1 favorite]

until they kick the bucket.

*ahem* or their subject does. Although this would create the potential for posthumous posting by expired users - something I heard discussed on (I think) Marketplace last night.
posted by Miko at 7:29 AM on July 22

We could lovingly craft obit FPPs for celebrities who are still alive, and then go out and kill them right before posting. That way the good FPPs would get the jump on the bad ones.
posted by BrotherCaine at 7:50 AM on July 22

Perhaps we could just not have obit posts.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:02 AM on July 22 [1 favorite]

I like obit posts, because often even if the post is unremarkable or simple newsfilter, the thread itself contains great links, reminiscences, personal accounts, etc.
posted by Miko at 8:07 AM on July 22

Rather than doing pre-written obit posts for celebrities that are still alive, I think we should start doing obit posts for people who died earlier than ten years ago.
posted by box at 8:12 AM on July 22

Celebrity Dead Pool

Unless of course CorpseFilter comes with a betting pool.

deadpool.metafilter.com

That would be creepy and completely fucked up.


I'm in.
posted by quin at 8:15 AM on July 22 [1 favorite]

This is kind of lazy. I think a better solution would be that as soon as a really good obit post is pre-drafted and thoroughly vetted by the community, then a randomly selected MeFite has to go out and kill the celebrity in question.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:24 AM on July 22 [1 favorite]

"Newspapers do this because their economic imperative is to be the source of this information."

Also, people get paid to write them. Here, it's more like OMG SOMEONE DIED [link to CNN] FAVORITES PLS. Me, I'd rather have the cash. Or, you know, write a quality FPP on something actually interesting^†.

†Death is not news. It happens all the time.
posted by Eideteker at 9:00 AM on July 22

"I'm old enough now that I wouldn't want to contribute interesting links or material to the pro forma obits of public figures, simply because there is a high likelihood I'll go before they do, and so I'd never get to see my contributions get posted to the Blue."

Paulsc, who died today on a treadmill, was first and foremost a family man…
posted by klangklangston at 9:00 AM on July 22 [1 favorite]

gjc writes "Or, who cares? The story is that X has died. The rest is meaningless. Last time I checked, this is a community web log, not an exercise in journalism."

The thing about the rush to post that irritates me is for your non micheal jackson level celebrities there is often no context of who the person is or why we should care that they died. Considering it'll probably be the last time and possibly first time they will be featured on the front page it would be nice if everyone reading metafilter, whatever their time zone, could get an appreciation of why they are significant.

Dr Dracator writes "Obituary posts are at best newsfilter, I don't think they should be acknowledged with this special status."

One of the goals is to raise obituary posts out of the newsfilter ghetto and into decent standalone post territory that just happen to have "died today of Foo" tacked onto the end. Short of a policy change on obitfilter they aren't going away; better posts would be better for everyone. Well except for those who like to be able to bitch about crappy obitfilter posts I suppose.
posted by Mitheral at 9:20 AM on July 22

there is often no context of who the person is or why we should care that they died.

Usually, that sort of information is in the link to the obituary. Of course it's nice if the FPP can give some context - context often (not always) makes for a better FPP - but it's not as if this information is unavailable if you RTFA.
posted by Miko at 9:42 AM on July 22

Blazecock Pileon: It's no fun if you don't surmise on the causes of death for these folks:

• Pulled grandmother out from under a pile of Nazi bikers putting the boot in
• Found asphyxiated and pantsless whilst watching Teletubbies on repeat
• Devoured by a pack of vicious weasels during a holiday vacation in Spain

The weirder, the better.

Tragedy today, as former President Gerald Ford was eaten by wolves. He was delicious.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:51 AM on July 22 [2 favorites]

• Found asphyxiated and pantsless whilst watching Teletubbies on repeat

Andrew Sullivan's dead?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 11:10 AM on July 22 [1 favorite]

What's next? A union for MeFi posters? Buying a printing press? Maybe some complex and arcane rules about how we gather information for FPPs?
posted by GuyZero at 11:27 AM on July 22

To be clear I'm not suggesting all obit posts must come out of the wiki. No one is going to be forced or coerced to participate IE: No unionization. Rather the wiki would be a place where those who are so inclined could work to generate obits and when one of the obits became relevant anyone could zap it over to the front page. Obviously even if the scheme is successful the wiki would account for a fraction of the obit filter that gets posted.

I would hope however that if several obits were sourced from the wiki that it would raise the bar on obit posts generally. Lead by example as it were. Users would feel a bit of pressure to pull together a couple links to explain why we should care that foo died. But no rules for posting; complex, arcane or otherwise. Metafilter gets along fine without them in most cases.
posted by Mitheral at 11:52 AM on July 22

Would I be allowed to add my own obit post? 'Cause that would be awesome.

Beloved MeFite It's Raining Florence Henderson passed away last night after a courageous battle with Ursus arctos horribilis...
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:02 PM on July 22

Only if you are commonly referred to as Metafilter's own.
posted by Mitheral at 12:28 PM on July 22

The thing that pisses me off about obit posts is that the people posting them usually don't post a single damn interesting thing. If they'd wait a week, there'd be so many quality links to choose from — but, nooooo, they've got to have FRIST POST! Best of the web my hairy ass.
posted by five fresh fish at 1:13 PM on July 22 [2 favorites]

                                                                                                    
                                                                                                    
                                                                                                    
                                                                                                    
                                                                                                    
                                                                                                    
                                                                                                    
                                                                                                    
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posted by box at 2:24 PM on July 22 [4 favorites]

This is kind of lazy. I think a better solution would be that as soon as a really good obit post is pre-drafted and thoroughly vetted by the community, then a randomly selected MeFite has to go out and kill the celebrity in question.

It's like The Lottery, only with more lulz. The Lottery 2.0, perhaps.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:26 PM on July 22

box, that is the best piece of ascii art I have ever beheld. Thank you.
posted by everichon at 3:17 PM on July 22

Thanks, everichon--IMG2TXT did most of the heavy lifting.
posted by box at 3:19 PM on July 22

Rather than put this creepy ghoulish shit on the Wiki, why not write high-quality posts about celebrities whilst they are still alive? There's no reason that being dead makes a person more interesting, or information about them closer to being 'something cool on the Web' than it was before. If somebody is interesting enough that they deserve a Metafilter post written about them, why wait until they are dead? You can celebrate their life without enduring the precious, mawkish bullshit that people tend to put in obituary threads. Plus, Celebrity X might pop in to say "hi" and become "MeFi's Own Celebrity X" which is awesome. (Although a celebrity commenting on MeFi from beyond the grave would be significantly more awesome, it's less likely.)
When someone who has had this treatment finally shuffles off this mortal coil, all of the shitty kneejerk obituary posts can be deleted as both weak newsfilter AND doubles without a second thought.
posted by nowonmai at 4:48 PM on July 22 [1 favorite]

*wheels creaky cart full of celebrity corpses down the cobblestone streets of MefiTown*

Bring out your celebrity dead! Bring out your celebrity dead!

*wheels away with five fresh corpses*
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:23 PM on July 22

Can we get some input from a moderator on this? This is essentially an off-site project, not a pony request, so I don't think it needs greenlighting or anything but I'd be interested to see some reflection on how this would tie in with existing policy and how it would affect moderation.

I think it might benefit the site for these reasons:

-When a very well-known person dies, there will be an FPP. Having a well-rounded post just sitting there when it happens may help reduce one-liner newsfilter posts and cut down on the mod's headache when a post is a little thin but already has a hundred comments.
-Collaboration may increase the quality of the obitfilter posts per se.

I agree with Miko that often obit posts make for interesting discussions, but I can't see how anyone would argue against the idea that given this fact, it makes sense to start with a good post.

To respond to some of the arguments against the idea:

Kattullus: "The reason that newspapers can keep obits on hand is that they're not public.

Good point, but surely it would be feasible to do this somewhere not accessible to the general public, or at least somewhere noindex, nofollow. Even if it is all out in the open one could put a banner or something on top of the page unambiguously informing the reader that the subject is in all likelihood still alive.

Can you imagine how weird it would be to come across your obituary somewhere or that of a loved one?

If it were my own, I'd be flattered. But seriously, I doubt this would be a problem: in my vision of what this project could be, I'm thinking Margaret Thatcher, Chuck Berry, J.D. Salinger here, not so much Internet Famous cartoonists or blogebrities. Although standards of notability are of course a discussion of their own, I'm not realy worried about startling the Iron Lady should she Google herself.

awfurby: "Anyway that list is just begging to be messed with and I'm not sure that's a good thing."

Sure enough. But vandalism is a risk to any wiki project, and reverting an edit is easy. Plus, let's be realistic, this is probably never going to be a high-profile thing of any sort, so I doubt jackassness would ever be anything beyond a nuisance on such an out-of-the-way project.

Riki tiki: "Doing this would seem to be an endorsement of celebrity obitfilter. I understand that celebrity deaths are notable, and fine for community discussion, but giving them special treatment as sanctioned content for the blue seems like the wrong way to go."

Not sanctioned content so much as just a couple people collaborating on having a decent post handy when fate strikes. Do your own post? Fine. No special treatment, no official status, just a repository of freely accessible obit content.

crossoverman: "it sanctions getting it up fast rather than getting it up well, since the people who read MeTa and the wiki aren't the same audience as post to the blue.

I don't see how it would sanction that at all, because (1) the point of this is doing it well, or having it both ways (I don't care much for speed, but pre-written does of course mean less time spent writing) (2) when a high-profile person passes people will be in line for the front page anyway, I don't understand see how this would change that for the better or the worse.

crossoverman: "And this plan could - in some cases - override a better written post by someone else, since these pre-written Obits would be already "sanctioned"."

No: better post is better post. This project (again, in my perception) would just provide a complete post, or a starting point, which any poster would be free to copy, incorporate, or ignore.

In conclusion, I suspect many of you will agree that we can do better than this, and I expect that when Queen Elizabeth II dies, or Fidel Castro, or Nelson Mandela, Metafilter will still be around, and I don't see why I should not support an effort to make that inevitable post a better one.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:29 PM on July 22

FWIW, this is a decent HTML-Wiki markup converter. The MeFi wiki uses the MediaWiki dialect, like Wikipedia.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:04 PM on July 22

I'll toss out my previous suggestion: when someone dies, the first (crappy) post becomes a placeholder on the Blue. Then the thread is locked by a mod with the note that there is a 24 hour moratorium on direct posting about the topic. Those 24 hours are used for MeFites to compose posts. We could either submit all the posts to the mods on our own and let them choose which to put onto the Blue for the . parade, or we could use that 24 hours to work on a wiki obit post which is then moved to the Blue by one of the mods.

Either way, we will all have what we want, which I believe is a relatively fast notice about something major which happened via one of our favorite sources of information, and then a short time later a quality post in which we can all reflect and share.
posted by hippybear at 9:46 PM on July 22 [2 favorites]

Again, I second hippybear.
posted by Netzapper at 11:37 PM on July 22

I mentioned at the 10th meetup making obit threads like anonymous posts where they have to get approved by a mod first. Not sure if that would make too much work for the mods though.
posted by silkygreenbelly at 12:33 AM on July 23

"Is this an obit thread? [yes]/[no]"
"Do you have more than 2 links? [yes]/[no]"
"Is this person confirmed deceased? [yes]/[no]"

....

"Thank you for submitting an obituary post. Moderators will review your post on a first come, first serve basis and judge its merits."
posted by silkygreenbelly at 12:41 AM on July 23