Posting pony petition

July 24, 2009 11:44 AM

So I posted a double of the awesome wedding dance, and now I have a pony request that might be useful.

I know, I know, it's still on the front page, which I discovered after the fact...I haven't been on the site much lately and was in a bit of a rush. My searches didn't result in any hits, nor did the preview feature find my link. Herein lies the problem.

I was referred to the youtube video from another site, and that site added some referrer info to the url which I didn't notice until after everyone cried "double." I am far less than web-savvy, but would it be possible to add something to the mefi search that could lop off the "&eurl" code, and check that url against what's been posted? Everything before the code is identical to the original post's link, and presumably would've resulted in the posting page telling me that I'm blind and doubleposting.

posted by nevercalm to feature requests at 11:44 AM (37 comments total)

One of your tags matched. AskMe searches for tags, why doesn't the FP? (I thought it did, but I just did an experiment and it doesn't.)
posted by DU at 11:47 AM on July 24

Yes, let's make things easier for not-very-web-savvy users who are in a hurry. As much forethought and effort as possible should be technologically stripped from the FPP-posting process.
posted by chudmonkey at 12:01 PM on July 24 [8 favorites]

I would have thought the real thing was not to post an FPP when you're in a rush.

Not trying to be snarky, it just doesn't seem to me like something where urgency should win out over quality
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:02 PM on July 24 [2 favorites]

Yes, let's make things easier for not-very-web-savvy users who are in a hurry.

I think you are being sarcastic, but what is the harm in trapping for another common mistake, when we already trap for some mistakes?
posted by dirtdirt at 12:04 PM on July 24 [4 favorites]

This seems like a one trick pony, so to speak.

I can't see how this could be generalized to tackle this issue across many sites without a lot of manual maintenance of per-site rules. More care before posting, followed by flagging and moderator intervention when that fails, seem like the most efficient way to handle this.
posted by FishBike at 12:06 PM on July 24

I think you are being sarcastic, but what is the harm in trapping for another common mistake, when we already trap for some mistakes?

Because then some might miss a chance to be a snarky and contribute nothing to the conversation?
posted by nevercalm at 12:07 PM on July 24 [1 favorite]

Mefi does in fact search for tags - it will say "one of your tags (foo, bar) matched within the last 24 hours"

Since wedding is not a common tag, especially in the last 24 hours, you probably should have checked.
posted by desjardins at 12:12 PM on July 24

Here's the exact text on the preview page:

The URLs you entered were not found in previous threads. However, 3 posts have been tagged with one of your tags ( wedding computer history art ) within the past 24 hours. You might want to check the search page for duplicates, just to be sure.
posted by desjardins at 12:13 PM on July 24

Don't worry about the criticism nevercalm. That fucking dancing wedding is like G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate. 99.9% of the population think it is great but whenever the other .01% of us come into contact with it even tangentially, it just makes us want to GET OUR HATE ON!!!!ARRRRGGHHHH!
posted by ND¢ at 12:17 PM on July 24

*hugs everyone*

'cept for that weirdo in South London.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:19 PM on July 24

We should make it much harder to post to the front page. A couple of logic puzzles, a short trivia quiz and then The Gauntlet of Whirling Knife-Missles on Fire Over a Lava Pit Filled with Lava Sharks.
posted by loquacious at 12:26 PM on July 24 [5 favorites]

Don't worry about the criticism nevercalm.

Oh, I don't care, really. I know the following things:

1-One should never rush when posting, even one-off awesome youtubery.
2-One is never as great as one might think, maggot.
C-I shouldn't really be reading Huffington Post anyway.
4-This place is all about being the bestest, cleverest place on the planet, which is why I don't visit many other places. I love it here, even when I'm being shown that I'm an ass.
posted by nevercalm at 12:27 PM on July 24

mmmm, Lava Sharks^TM
posted by blue_beetle at 12:43 PM on July 24

99.9% of the population think it is great but whenever the other .01%...

What about the other other .09%?
posted by cortex at 12:48 PM on July 24 [10 favorites]

Since wedding is not a common tag, especially in the last 24 hours, you probably should have checked.

Aha, "wedding" was not in fact used in the last 24 hours, is the problem. It lists all your tags in that error message, not just the ones that were recently used.

So, two suggestions:

1) 24 hours seems too short IMHO considering it takes a few days for things to wander around the blogosphere.

2) Improve the tag check message. Currently it reads like this, "One of your tags was used, and of course the server knows which one, but we're not telling you."
posted by smackfu at 12:49 PM on July 24

Don't use math at me. I'm like a crazy mad max space cannibal.
posted by ND¢ at 12:56 PM on July 24

What about the other other .09%?

.017% think it's great but snark for the favorites.
.024% think it's great but snark because they were about to post it.
.033% don't care but snark just for the in-thread attention.
.016% don't care but are continuing long-standing personal vendettas.
posted by Durin's Bane at 12:58 PM on July 24 [2 favorites]

nevercalm: 4-This place is all about being the bestest, cleverest place on the planet, which is why I don't visit many other places. I love it here, even when I'm being shown that I'm an ass.

cortex: "99.9% of the population think it is great but whenever the other .01%..." What about the other other .09%?

Metafilter: the bestest, cleverest place on the planet
posted by booksherpa at 12:59 PM on July 24

Now that I think about it, those numbers need to be way higher.
posted by Durin's Bane at 1:00 PM on July 24

It's a Zeno's paradox of demographics anyway.
posted by Burhanistan at 1:01 PM on July 24

As someone who can't fix this personally but can chime in on it from a modly perspective, smackfu's ideas sound goo to me

- let the poster know WHICH tags matched
- search more than 24 hours

Generally speaking, if I'm posting something that has one clear tag associated with it, I always just look for that tag on MeFi and see what's been posted on it recently. In this case

http://www.metafilter.com/tags/wedding

pretty much nails it. With YouTube stuff this is pretty much necessary since sometimes stuff can come from multiple accounts on the YouTube. In any case, no one likes a librarian who explains to them how to find something when you explain to them how you can't find something, so I'll say "yeah I agree with you" but also "I'd suggest some other searching options too, next time"
posted by jessamyn at 1:21 PM on July 24

Yes, let's make things easier for not-very-web-savvy users who are in a hurry. As much forethought and effort as possible should be technologically stripped from the FPP-posting process.

Jack, meet Ass. Ass, Jack.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:46 PM on July 24

smackfu's ideas sound goo to me

Man, those library jackers are really starting to get to you.
posted by Skot at 2:03 PM on July 24 [2 favorites]

Assjack
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:05 PM on July 24

smackfu's ideas sound goo to me

With the right drugs, everyone's ideas can sound goo.
posted by Meatbomb at 3:10 PM on July 24

I thought the whole reason we had moderators was so that we didn't have to think about our posts.
posted by Eideteker at 3:55 PM on July 24

so your double got deleted, so you posted the link to the video again here?

I think you've missed projects, music, jobs, and askme.... go for it..

and, I just saw the crappy thing on network news... we're doomed!
posted by HuronBob at 4:02 PM on July 24

Mefi does in fact search for tags - it will say "one of your tags (foo, bar) matched within the last 24 hours"

Maybe it had been past 24 hours when I tried it myself and didn't get that message.
posted by DU at 4:45 PM on July 24

desjardins writes "The URLs you entered were not found in previous threads. However, 3 posts have been tagged with one of your tags ( wedding computer history art ) within the past 24 hours. You might want to check the search page for duplicates, just to be sure."

Like others have said this is a pretty useless message if you have more than a couple tags. I always^* get that message when I post. I wonder if the posting page couldn't link to the posts that match or at least tell you which tag matched.


[*] The _one_ time I didn't I thought I was doing something wrong because the posting page didn't look right
posted by Mitheral at 6:31 PM on July 24

I ran smackfu's ideas past pb and he sounded pretty good with it, but I guess we can wait for him to chime in here. Twitter seems to think he's travelling.
posted by jessamyn at 7:43 PM on July 24

What about the other other .09%?

Science shows that a full 0.9% of metafilter posts contain the word 'meh'
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:34 AM on July 25

Uck. A full 0.09%, obv.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:36 AM on July 25

Post in haste, repent at leisure, Nevercalm (ahem, eponstyrical). However, any tweaking that helps catch doubles is all to the good.
posted by theora55 at 9:54 AM on July 25

Flagged as double.
posted by Eideteker at 8:47 PM on July 25

We'll make that tag message more useful sometime this week. It's officially on my to do list.
posted by pb at 7:00 AM on July 26 [1 favorite]

For YouTube videos, the video files themselves have a unique ID string. so when the site's checking a new post submission for matching URLs it's only the youtube.com domain name and the video's ID string that should be matched; everything else is affiliate linking, format type, account ID or referral info.

There are other sites for which you could do that to, but given the volume of YouTube links we see here it's probably only youtube.com URLs that deserve the extra parsing. (And, no, it won't match reposted videos, but it would help at least a little.)
posted by ardgedee at 1:44 PM on July 26

The post preview page now has a better message for duplicate tags that goes like this: "other posts have used these tags within the past 48 hours: art (5), history (1)." So you only see tags that have actually been used, and you get the number of posts with that tag in the last 48 hours.
posted by pb at 9:44 AM on July 27 [2 favorites]