Would this be a new FPP?

September 28, 2009 6:59 AM

I don't understand how to make a good FPP.

This is a specific example of a general question. I ran across this article today, and I think it would make a good FPP. But my recent endeavors have all been shot down. I don't trust myself. I can imagine it would fit under this previous post. But that post garnered a lot of attention. The businessman in me believes that indicates latent demand for new posts. Frankly I think this could stand alone. But the kid in me doesn't want his feelings hurt by another archived topic.

Thoughts?

posted by jefficator to MetaFilter-related at 6:59 AM (66 comments total)

It probably wouldn't be deleted unless people really hated it but I doubt there would be much interest in it. Dawkins posts get attention because people know who he is. And it's generally just the same few people arguing in the religious threads anyway.
posted by smackfu at 7:15 AM on September 28

It's an interesting interview on an issue that's often engendered heated disputes on MetaFilter. I think it would make for an interesting post to the blue, with some context as to who Harvey Cox is and maybe other articles by and interviews with him and criticisms of and replies to that interview. Your other deleted posts were on Israel/Palestine and a an issue, Obama and Henry Louis Gates, that was already being discussed elsewhere and your link wasn't especially notable except for its relevance to that discussion. I/P is such a long-running thorny issue that it even has it's own acronym and posts about it have to clear a higher bar than normal. The same goes for posts about religion but I don't see why your link couldn't be presented in a thoughtful manner.
posted by Kattullus at 7:19 AM on September 28 [1 favorite]

Don't assume I know who Harvey Cox is (I don't, for that matter) so I have no clue why this interview is relevant to anybody at all. He's no sarah palin, so your FPP would need to address that. I also don't know why this interview, which I only skimmed through very, very briefly, would be interesting for me to read. A good FPP would address both these issues.

Something like: Harvey Cox, who recently did X, Y and Z, and is well-known for A, B and C, now has an interview out where he addresses K, L and M in a way which is sure to get reaction P out of group R.

And those last bits, about the reaction and such, can probably be better left out unless it's novel.
posted by DreamerFi at 7:22 AM on September 28 [3 favorites]

Well its interesting to me. You keep seeing articles about how awful Wikipedia is becoming because the community has (d)evolved into a rigid legal hierarchy where top-level members comment to one another with one liners and content is banished for failing to comply. I read all the little Guides to MeFi and Unofficial MeFi wikis I can, but this place is still remarkably esoteric and I don't suspect at all that wanting to do anything about that is any more than a "meta" example of this precise problem.
posted by jefficator at 7:22 AM on September 28

I/P is such a long-running thorny issue that it even has it's own acronym

Perfect example. It took me a lot of googling to find out what on earth I/P means.

And at this moment I will bet my life that I'm just opening another meme that probably has its own acronym. Someone please tell me what the shorthand version of "MetaFilter is too Esoteric" is.
posted by jefficator at 7:24 AM on September 28

jefficator: "Someone please tell me what the shorthand version of "MetaFilter is too Esoteric" is."

$20 SAIT
posted by Plutor at 7:29 AM on September 28 [6 favorites]

DreamerFi I found that extremely helpful, frankly.

But here's a followup. Everyone in the Study of Religion knows Harvey Cox. He's a Dawkins in our field. How would I know you don't know him? Such an FPP might look like this:

Harvey Cox, one of the foremost American theologians of the twentieth century, recently retired from Harvard, where he held the oldest tenured professorship in the nation. He has argued that atheism is a passing fad, but acknowledges it emerges in response to factors that will change the face of faith in the coming generation. Lately, he is best known for exercising his ancient right to graze cattle in Harvard Yard.
posted by jefficator at 7:32 AM on September 28 [2 favorites]

Wait, are you looking for advice, or do you want to complain about metafilter? If the former, then DreamerFi gave you a fine example. If the latter, well, I guess this is a good place to do it, but don’t expect it to go well.

As far as acronyms, I’m relatively new and I tend to just ask if I don’t know, or put a bit of research into it, or just avoid them completely. This site’s cadre of power users is not nearly so closed as wikipedia’s or others, all it takes to get into it is participation.
posted by Think_Long at 7:32 AM on September 28

You know those information-free little blurbs at the top of airline magazine articles?

For hundreds of years, man has yearned to X. In the next 10-15 years, that dream may become a reality thanks to Joe Schmo's Amazing Discovery.

Write one of those but don't go on to write the paragraphs that usually follow:

Joe Schmo squints as he looks around the restaurant, as though looking into a future I can't see. The tall slender scientist is soft-spoken but passionate blah blah blah blue jeans blah blah

Instead, make some of the keywords in your blurb links to related material. Basically, you want the teaser to tease (like an airline magazine) but you also want the teaser to end up delivering (unlike an airline magazine).
posted by DU at 7:34 AM on September 28 [3 favorites]

Lately, he is best known for exercising his ancient right to graze cattle in Harvard Yard.

If you want the discussion to be about religion, definitely do NOT end on a lulzy link. It would be auto-derailing enough, but at the end of the post it makes it look like the punchline that people are "supposed to be" talking about.
posted by DU at 7:37 AM on September 28

DU, that's also extremely helpful. Thank you.
posted by jefficator at 7:37 AM on September 28

My interest in this as an FPP would be something like this: Here's an old codger who has made predictions about religion since the fifties. He's done it using careful research and examination. Most of his predictions have come true. Now he's predicting that atheism is on the way out and free-form "spirituality" will overtake both non-belief and faith. To a scholar of religion, that's interesting.
posted by jefficator at 7:40 AM on September 28

I doubt what your example would get deleted, but the number of people who'd realise the interview was the bit you wanted them to read and then go ahead and read it would be close to zero. I'd lose most of the clutter and just link to a bio and the interview.

(though I think fundamentally some dude waffling about his opinion on religion to plug his book in a very dense and inaccessible way is not the kind of thing the average MeFite comes here to read - is there a more accessible article about his ideas you could add as an appetiser?)
posted by cillit bang at 7:41 AM on September 28

The businessman in me believes that indicates latent demand for new posts.

See, that's your problem right here. Things that have been discussed to death do not make for good FPP-s (well, not in general). A good FPP should be able to stand by its own merit, not propped up by previous posts on the same topic. It should be about something you think others might find interesting now, not something they've found interesting before. I haven't read the interview you linked, but if it's only a response to the Armstrong-Dawkins debate, then I don't think it deserves to be posted as a new FPP. You should make an FPP about it only if you think it really does add something new to the old religion vs atheism debate.

On preview - re your last comment, that's actually a nice angle. And also what Kattullus said.
posted by daniel_charms at 7:42 AM on September 28

One of my pet peeves is that people will be motivated to post by one particular link, but then will link a bunch of other stuff as background and we can't tell what the "good" link is. Then they will complain that the discussion wasn't about what they think they posted about, as if we are mind readers.

I suggest explaining the background in words, not links, then maybe including some links in the more inside.
posted by smackfu at 7:42 AM on September 28 [4 favorites]

So maybe it takes the form:

Harvey Cox, one of the foremost American theologians of the twentieth century, recently retired from Harvard, where he held the oldest tenured professorship in the nation. He has argued that atheism is a passing fad, but acknowledges it emerges in response to factors that will change the face of faith in the coming generation.

And then inside a bonus about the cow? Or just drop that "lulzy" bit altogether?
posted by jefficator at 7:46 AM on September 28

Yes, what smackfu says. That approach would give people useful context and an introduction to a person many of us have never heard of before right in the FPP, and the links used in [more inside] would be useful without distracting us from the importance of the initial link. (I should remember that option the next time I make a multi-link post.)
posted by maudlin at 7:50 AM on September 28

That one looked good to me jefficator, and I say put the cow post on the inside – I would want to make the connection between what I’ve heard in the news and what you’re talking about, even if it’s mostly irrelevant
posted by Think_Long at 7:52 AM on September 28

Alright. Well let me finish girding up my loins and then make the post. We'll see what happens.
posted by jefficator at 7:53 AM on September 28

smackfu: One of my pet peeves is that people will be motivated to post by one particular link, but then will link a bunch of other stuff as background and we can't tell what the "good" link is. Then they will complain that the discussion wasn't about what they think they posted about, as if we are mind readers.

Yeah, putting the focus where you want it to be is important. The main link should be the first link of the post. I don't have any data to back me up but my feeling is that the second most looked at link is usually the last link. Don't go too heavy on explanatory linkage, usually one such is enough.

Lulzy asides work best for links that don't really need much discussion, e.g. a collection of pretty pictures, but they will almost inevitably derail any discussion of more serious matters.
posted by Kattullus at 7:57 AM on September 28

Aha. Upon attempting to post, I discovered why this one would have died. Previously.

Oh well.
posted by jefficator at 7:58 AM on September 28

Although in hindsight, that entire post was about the cow.

How do you know when it's okay to tag a "Previously" in your post?
posted by jefficator at 8:00 AM on September 28

But my recent endeavors have all been shot down...

Wait... the Deleted Thread blog only shows 2 deleted FPPs. One, because it was already being discussed in an open thread, and the other because it was a single-link OpEd that some people saw as ranty.

Buck up, little Mefite!!!! There are plenty more deletions to come! And it doesn't keep you out of heaven until you get well over a dozen.
posted by The Deej at 8:00 AM on September 28 [1 favorite]

The Deej, you have made me smile. :-)
posted by jefficator at 8:02 AM on September 28

KEEP THE COW BIT ON THE FRONT PAGE. It's funny. jefficator, your formulation here is a damn good post.

Fondly,
The Keep The Cow Society
posted by mediareport at 8:07 AM on September 28

Er, oops.
posted by mediareport at 8:08 AM on September 28

If I were making the FPP, I'd link "recently retired" to the cow-grazing post.
posted by parudox at 8:09 AM on September 28

You need to keep the cow because, even I, who'd never heard of him, knew about the cow, so someone would undoubtedly post it in the thread anyway.
posted by Obscure Reference at 8:11 AM on September 28 [1 favorite]

Yeah, the cow's been done. Given that it was far from the point of your post, just make it a (Previously) link at the end.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:16 AM on September 28

I say you make it really controversial in some way. Since you have already pre-called yourself out in, you know.
posted by cashman at 8:19 AM on September 28

Well it is up. Let's time how long it takes to come down...
posted by jefficator at 8:22 AM on September 28

Ah crap. Can we get an editing feature? Like just a window of a few minutes to fix typos.
posted by cashman at 8:22 AM on September 28 [1 favorite]

You keep seeing articles about how awful Wikipedia is becoming because the community has (d)evolved into a rigid legal hierarchy where top-level members comment to one another with one liners and content is banished for failing to comply.

Really? Links?
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:43 AM on September 28

Really? Links?

Not that the source is super impressive, but this article seems to have gotten some attention.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:49 AM on September 28

As a member of group R, I find L and M very offensive, but honestly, I'm ok with K.

http://OkWithK.org
posted by blue_beetle at 8:51 AM on September 28

I'm already thinking how face of faith will change to be about afterlife of cows and other creatures we eat. They deserve it more than us.
posted by Free word order! at 8:51 AM on September 28

Good luck with your post Jeff! I just wanted to jump in and say, if your post gets shot down, don't worry too much about it. Or about FPPs in general. We all contribute to the site in different ways, and maybe you're not the homunculus of front page posting. I say this as someone who struggles too. I can't seem to make a good FPP for the life of me. It cracks me up at this point, because every time I see something on the blue that I had thought about posting myself, I look at it and realize how I would have done it differently...in a bad way. I gotta laugh.
posted by iamkimiam at 9:10 AM on September 28

Everyone in the Study of Religion knows Harvey Cox

Draw a venn diagram with on the left hand the Set of People Who Study Religion, on the right hand the Set Of People Who Read Metafilter.

Observe the overlap.

But your rewrites in the thread show that you're indeed getting the hang of it. Well done!
posted by DreamerFi at 9:23 AM on September 28

iamkimiam and DreamerFi, thanks :-)
posted by jefficator at 9:27 AM on September 28

I/P is such a long-running thorny issue that it even has it's own acronym

Not confined to Metafilter either...it's a thorn in the side of many fora.
posted by mippy at 9:38 AM on September 28

Looks like this one is staying! Congrats!
posted by cashman at 9:44 AM on September 28

Although I do think it has some of the same failures of I/P threads, that it's just "today's religious debate thread", and that maybe a few people read the link, but most people just respond to the comments.
posted by smackfu at 9:59 AM on September 28

I'm late to the party, but the things that jumped out at me:

The businessman in me believes that indicates latent demand for new posts.

Fire him. Posting to mefi is not a business, mefi is not intended to be a market, and as folks have discussed pretty well already what makes for a good post usually has little to do with trendspotting and followups to existing posts. When it makes sense to make another post related to something that's come up recently, it's because there's something substantially new and interesting to link to that happens to be related to a previous post, not because two posts about the same thing are better than one, essentially.

This seems like a situation where there was indeed new and interesting tangentially-related stuff, so, cool! But be sure to try and look at it through that lens, not through the lens of a businessman sizing up the market for a link.

But here's a followup. Everyone in the Study of Religion knows Harvey Cox. He's a Dawkins in our field. How would I know you don't know him?

Assume your readers do not share your specialization. You will almost always be correct, and the folks who do know about it already will probably be happy to jump in and drop some science on the folks new to the subject.

read all the little Guides to MeFi and Unofficial MeFi wikis I can, but this place is still remarkably esoteric and I don't suspect at all that wanting to do anything about that is any more than a "meta" example of this precise problem.

Mefi can be kind of esoteric. Those of us who have been around for a while find it kind of charming in that respect, as I suppose any longtimer tends to feel fondness of the idiosyncrasies of their old haunt.

But it's not intentionally esoteric, and we don't really want people who are new to the site and trying to participate in good faith to feel unnecessarily confused. If you don't know what's up with something and aren't finding answers with some searching, you are totally free to ask. Metatalk is an appropriate place for that sort of thing much of the time (this seems like an example of it working well), but you're also welcome to hit up us mods via the contact form (find the link in the bottom right of every page) if you want to ask about something without making it a community discussion.
posted by cortex at 10:10 AM on September 28

First, be smart from the very beginning. Pulverize all teeth, burn off fingerprints, and disfigure the face.
posted by The Whelk at 11:08 AM on September 28 [3 favorites]

DreamerFi's example is, in my opinion, the worst kind of post, with a dozen plus links of which the article that you thought was postworthy being the eighth or ninth. Put the things you want people to click on first, and then if you really must pad it out with wikipedia cruft and other background, do that in a [more inside] segment.
If the article you want to link to wouldn't be interesting to people who don't already know the background, it's not a good post.
If you care about the discussion, don't derail it with irrelevant crap about cattle. Remember though, that it's supposed to be about the links not the discussion. "Here are the wikipedia links you need to read to get you up to speed on this subject I want to talk about" doesn't often work as a MeFi post.
posted by nowonmai at 11:44 AM on September 28

I really like the workshopping of the post that is happening here. I almost wish there were a spot on the site devoted to these kinds of workshops where people workshop their way toward better posts and better metaliteracy. Or is metatalk already that spot?
posted by i'm being pummeled very heavily at 11:51 AM on September 28 [1 favorite]

oh good god no workshops nooo....
posted by The Whelk at 11:54 AM on September 28

Is metatalk already that spot?

Yea, if that happened more often on MeTa I would be super happy, this discussion was awesome.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 11:55 AM on September 28

Sorry whelk :p
posted by The Devil Tesla at 11:55 AM on September 28

So you posted to the grey, the blue and the green all in a few hours on the same subject. Is this some kind of record? Or just a stunt? Because if stunt, you could probably post it to projects. And then write a song about your exploits.
posted by CunningLinguist at 11:58 AM on September 28

A general tip: There's no rule that says you have to participate by posting to the front page (or any other pages.) It's really OKAY if you sit back and participate by discussing what other people post.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 12:01 PM on September 28

The grey was a realization that I understand and participate best in discussions that surround my area of study. I wanted to get this question right.

The blue was in interest of adding an insight from an important thinker. The green was perhaps pushing it. But the blue post made me realize that I've always assumed an atheist is someone rejecting "my" idea of God. But who is to say I'm correct in my assumptions about God? Oddly enough that had never occurred to me.
posted by jefficator at 12:03 PM on September 28

jefficator, I don't (think) I saw anyone else linking to this, but the Mefi Wiki can sometimes be really useful for those acronyms and other inside joke annoyances that plague you when you first start reading the site.
posted by librarylis at 12:17 PM on September 28

I'd make it about the future of faith and get other opinions on it. Your first line would be: What is the future of faith? Harvey Cox (previously) says Atheism is a fad. In response, X says Y, A says B.
posted by Ironmouth at 12:43 PM on September 28

I'm not really sure what you're up to, but this was a terrifically crappy AskMe post that only stayed up as long as it did because cortex and I are both travelling. I'm all for people who want to talk about Big Ideas and figure things out in their own minds, but chatty stuff, especially about hot button topics [LIKE ATHEISM, which should not surprise anyone here] should be phrased with a modicum of care so that they don't become insta-wrecks.

Honestly, from a context perspective, we're pretty much full up on atheism threads for the next few days and probably were yesterday as well.

The businessman in me believes that indicates latent demand for new posts.

No. It's easy to get attention here. It's hard to get a good reputation for being someone who makes good posts, participates in good discussions and is helpful in AskMe or creative in Projects/Music. A lot of serial posting on a short list of topics is a one way ticket to GYOBville.
posted by jessamyn at 1:20 PM on September 28 [1 favorite]

jefficator, I agree with nowonmai on this point: don't bury your primary link, use that one first. If people click an ancillary link or two, that may be it ... my experience is that most people have a limited tolerance and attention span for links in a post. True fans of the topic will click every link, but I doubt that most do. So while I like your first rewrite with the grazing cow, I would reformulate to get the main link up front. (Do as I say not as I always do.)
posted by madamjujujive at 1:30 PM on September 28

that's a weird askme; it's like self-link spamming to your own fpp, creating a vortex of metafilter popularity greed.
posted by Think_Long at 1:33 PM on September 28

It's kind of funny that it got 90 comments even though everyone knew it was chatfilter.
posted by smackfu at 1:59 PM on September 28

Chatfilter or not, I found it helpful. I didn't realize there were atheists who still had space for the metaphysical. That is simply fascinating to me.
posted by jefficator at 2:05 PM on September 28

Chatfilter or not, I found it helpful.

I'm not really getting the feeling that you're realizing that you're one person in a very large community here sometimes. I am getting a weird vibe off of you today.
posted by jessamyn at 2:30 PM on September 28 [1 favorite]

jefficator, you say above that you are in the field of religious studies, but you seem to have a weirdly caricatured view of what atheists might think. There are people who believe in, or disbelieve in, just about any combination of entities you care to name. Atheists and agnostics are a decentralized population. There's no central body of doctrine that atheists hold, so why think they all believe the same thing?

Further - a useful distinction for you might be the distinction between atheism (believing that there are no gods) and agnosticism (believing that we can't know whether there are gods). And of course, within both terms there's a family of positions that people hold.

A middle-ground position is what I think of as "as far as we know" atheism -- the position that our best evidence shows, so far, that everything can be explained solely by reference to natural forces. But as a logical possibility, we could eventually discover that some things can't be explained solely by reference to natural forces, and if we did discover that, then one should start believing in whatever supernatural forces are required to explain what we see.

On the other hand, why might someone reject God but believe in supernatural things? Well, even devoutly religious people have debated, intensely, over thousands of years, how exactly there can be a being with the attributes monotheism usually thinks of God having (omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, eternal), and how/whether we can have knowledge of God at all. So, no surprise that there would be people who think those attributes can't coexist, but that there could be other supernatural entities.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:51 PM on September 28

I didn't realize there were atheists who still had space for the metaphysical.

As people who take a stand on metaphysical questions, I think every atheist has space for the metaphysical, at least theoretically. You may be thinking of agnostics.
posted by DU at 5:16 PM on September 28

Or of Smart Cars. Those things are TINY.
posted by cortex at 5:19 PM on September 28 [3 favorites]

I like the post you put together, jefficator, but I think some of the problem you are having is that you are trying to post about subjects you've thought a lot about, and you're unable to step back and see them the way another person might. I've never been able to put together a coherent, non-editorializing post about a subject I'm an expert in. Mine have all been impulsive "wow, this is cool or informative or fascinating. I want to share" posts. With one of them I didn't read the article all the way through until several hours later.
posted by zinfandel at 5:44 PM on September 28

Just post the one link you want people to check out. Seriously, people can find shit with Google if they really need to. Or post extra crap in the comments later.
posted by chunking express at 8:23 PM on September 28

Also, my trick to figuring out what will make a good post is to just post what I like and then see what doesn't get deleted. Actually, I supposed this is a way to make adequate posts.
posted by chunking express at 8:24 PM on September 28