deletedthread.blogspot.com

February 17, 2010 1:42 PM

How does deletedthread.blogspot.com work? Do the mods update it manually, or is it somehow automated? If the latter, how long does it take for a deleted thread to pop up over there?
posted by Shepherd to MetaFilter-Related at 1:42 PM (62 comments total)

No clue, none of the mefi mods have anything to do with it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:43 PM on February 17, 2010

Ain't nothing modly about it. puke & cry does it because he loves and hates you.
posted by Burhanistan at 1:43 PM on February 17, 2010

We have nothing to do with it.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 1:44 PM on February 17, 2010

puke & cry updates them manually, i believe, so there's no set time for how long they take to post.
posted by nadawi at 1:46 PM on February 17, 2010

I remember someone saying that if the most recently posted thread was deleted, it would not show up on until there was another thread posted so you can tell there is one missing by looking at the numbers.

Maybe I made that up in my head.
posted by soelo at 1:47 PM on February 17, 2010

It seems like it could be automated, the same way that the metafilter deleted posts greasemonkey script works. Look at the front page, check the sequence of posts, see where there are gaps, look at those gaps.
Check every so often, and it should work.
posted by Lemurrhea at 1:49 PM on February 17, 2010

Ah, I was probably confusing the greasemonkey script and the blogspot.

This comment by puke & cry leads me to believe it is manual.
posted by soelo at 1:51 PM on February 17, 2010

I'm pretty sure he collects them via a script and posts them manually.

So.... Does anyone else tend to, whenever puke & cry comes up, find themselves singing "Twist and Crawl" by The English Beat, but substituting "Puke and Cry" for "Twist and Crawl?"

Anyone?

Okay, so anyway...
posted by nanojath at 1:57 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

(I know it's a Dinosaur Jr. song, it's just... never mind, never mind, I don't want to talk about it any more).
posted by nanojath at 1:59 PM on February 17, 2010

I like the word 'modly'.
posted by iamkimiam at 2:00 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

deleted posts can't be deleted from the RSS feed, or at least if you pick up the RSS feed often enough you'll see everything before it gets deleted. It's not rocket surgery.
posted by GuyZero at 2:03 PM on February 17, 2010

Anyway if you look at the posting patterns it's pretty clear they're being posted in batches at not particularly regular times. He does do an admirable job of keeping it up.
posted by nanojath at 2:03 PM on February 17, 2010

I like the word 'modly'.

I'm more of a 'moldy" fan.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:07 PM on February 17, 2010

Not me. I'm a fan of the modly crew.
posted by yeti at 2:12 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

The process is fully automated, and involves multiple colobus monkeys incentivized by juice rewards.
posted by killdevil at 2:13 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

You guys are nuts. Clearly the choice here is for "OMD-ly," a commonly deployed term for describing bands who are sonically indebted to a certain squishy 80s synth group.
posted by Skot at 2:19 PM on February 17, 2010

In the old days an infinite set of monkeys could get you Hamlet. With inflation now all you get is retreads of deleted threads and you have to give em juice to get even that much.
posted by Babblesort at 2:20 PM on February 17, 2010

I'm a fan of modly sarcastrars.
posted by cashman at 2:20 PM on February 17, 2010

I do it by hand, so there's a lag in turnaround. I usually update it in the evening sometime but my power was out all weekend so that meant there was no posts for that whole time.
posted by dead cousin ted at 2:22 PM on February 17, 2010

Ah, I didn't know you were thou.
posted by Burhanistan at 2:23 PM on February 17, 2010

did somebody say All Mod Cons?
posted by scody at 2:26 PM on February 17, 2010

nanojath : So.... Does anyone else tend to, whenever puke & cry comes up, find themselves singing "Twist and Crawl" by The English Beat, but substituting "Puke and Cry" for "Twist and Crawl?"

Well, that's just about the silliest thing I've ever heard. I mean, seriously, you are coming off like a crazy person here.

It obviously is meant to go with "Twist and Shout" by The Isley Brothers, mainly because if you replace all instances of "twist" and "shout" with their respective alternatives, you end up with a song that is lyrically somewhat disturbing.
posted by quin at 2:45 PM on February 17, 2010

I prefer modly to moldy, but OMD has me singing along.

If I'm not the only one up for embracing the cheese right now: If You Leave, Dreaming, & dozens more.
posted by Pronoiac at 2:48 PM on February 17, 2010

If you want deleted threads to appear inline on MeFi, there's this Greasemonkey script.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:49 PM on February 17, 2010

MetaFilter: It's not rocket surgery.
posted by brina at 3:04 PM on February 17, 2010

You know, rocket surgery is not nearly has hard as everyone thinks it is. You simply take the rocket, point it at the patient, light it, and seek cover.

Granted, it's not a very precise form of medical care, and the casualty rate is remarkably high, but difficult? Not so much.
posted by quin at 3:25 PM on February 17, 2010 [6 favorites]

My aunt had rocket surgery in Russia. Upside: quick! Downside: Frightens Norwegians.
posted by longsleeves at 3:26 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

This seems inevitably leaning towards video clips of suburban teens shooting bottle rockets out of their arses.
posted by Burhanistan at 3:27 PM on February 17, 2010

There's rockets = bad.
There's rocket surgery = great.

Heh.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:28 PM on February 17, 2010

substituting "Puke and Cry" for "Twist and Crawl?"
...
"Twist and Shout"...


I've never thought that before, but I will now.


Actually, this just makes me want to have a baby so every time it spits up on my shoulder, I could sing the parody version of my song that I'm writing now in my head.

"Puke it up baby now, puke it baby. Puke and cry. Puke and cry..."


(Yeah, that's all I've got so far. I've got to be inspired before I get into Weird Al territory.)

posted by MCMikeNamara at 3:39 PM on February 17, 2010

Rocket Sugary is when you've had so much candy you're flying through the ceiling.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:26 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Rocket Augury is when you've had so much divinity you're crashing and burning your way to hell. Or a retro metal cover band.
posted by iamkimiam at 5:05 PM on February 17, 2010

Rocket Topiary is complicated and best left to professionals.
posted by quin at 5:09 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

I used to perform rocket surgery all the time. Of course the rockets were made by Estes and the surgery took place because the parachute failed to deploy.
posted by Sailormom at 5:12 PM on February 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Rocket is what Brits call Arugula.
posted by fixedgear at 5:27 PM on February 17, 2010

Rocket Perjury
posted by oulipian at 5:51 PM on February 17, 2010

Rocket Arugula is redundant and superfluous then?
posted by iamkimiam at 5:57 PM on February 17, 2010

Well, I went to the ATM machine and put my PIN number in so I could withdraw some cash on my way to the market to buy some Rocket Arugula, so yes.
posted by fixedgear at 6:03 PM on February 17, 2010

cash money, that is.
posted by iamkimiam at 6:16 PM on February 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

for the market store.
posted by iamkimiam at 6:16 PM on February 17, 2010

So since three mods have weighed in, what's the mody opinion of deletedthread.blogspot.com?

I like it. Sometimes I disagree with the deletions. Usually not. I learned what would and wouldn't fly when making a post from that site. It makes me laugh. Both from what people thought would work and cortex's deletion koans.

I can also see the site as schadenfreude.

I think since it lacks commentary, and includes all deleted threads, that there are no judgments being made, but at the same time, it circumvents the whole idea of deleting a thread in the first place, so I can't honestly decide how the "official" stance would come down.

Do the mods love it, hate it, or completely ignore it?
posted by cjorgensen at 6:20 PM on February 17, 2010

So since three mods have weighed in, what's the mody opinion of deletedthread.blogspot.com?

I'm fine with it, same as I'm fine with the deletion-detection scripts. It's unofficial but it's not secret information or anything, and the presentation is pretty straightforward. For people who want to go looking, it's a utility.

It'd be dicier if there was some bubbling catty culture of explicit post-hoc mockery going on over there, but comments seem to be few and far between so it's not really an issue either way.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:24 PM on February 17, 2010

It's totally fine. The only time it is not totally fine is when we delete some SEO spammer shit and it winds up over there and people get into the comment and trash the guy, really trash him. And then he emails us and is all "wtf, besmirch my good name you rapscallions!" and we're all "the hell?" and then we remember deletedthread and are like "O HAI" and sometimes it's a pain. I can remember this happening just a few times ever so it is no big deal.

And I can say with some amusement that I did not until now know that puke & cry and dead cousin ted were the same person.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:27 PM on February 17, 2010 [3 favorites]

It'd be dicier if there was some bubbling catty culture of explicit post-hoc mockery going on over there, but comments seem to be few and far between so it's not really an issue either way.

Yeah, I was going to say that despite the ability to leave comments there, I can count on one hand the number to times someone left something shitty there, and usually that's pretty mild.

The only time it is not totally fine is when we delete some SEO spammer shit and it winds up over there and people get into the comment and trash the guy, really trash him. And then he emails us and is all "wtf, besmirch my good name you rapscallions!" and we're all "the hell?"

The only incident I've actually had trouble with was when someone made a comment totally outing a self-linker, who subsequently gave cortex shit about it instead of contacting me. I ended up deleting the whole thing by request just to end it as simply as possible.

And I can say with some amusement that I did not until now know that puke & cry and dead cousin ted were the same person.

Oddly enough, I made a comment under my old name after I got this one and got a message from you telling me not to keep that up. I don't really remember the details but I figured I set off some flag in the system. It wasn't that big of a deal so I'm not surprised you don't remember it.
posted by dead cousin ted at 6:52 PM on February 17, 2010

Holy modly rapscallion sarcastrars! This list of awesome words is just getting longer.
posted by cashman at 6:52 PM on February 17, 2010

got a message from you telling me not to keep that up

Hmm so you did... My short memory keeps me happy!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:55 PM on February 17, 2010

I used to perform rocket surgery all the time. Of course the rockets were made by Estes and the surgery took place because the parachute failed to deploy.

At one point in my misbegotten youth, we decided that Estes' stock cardboard tubes were for wussies and that real rocketeers used large-bore copper electrical conduit and bunches of the largest model rocket engines we could order. Eventually we decided that ordering rocket engines was also for wussies, and started making our own using instructions we got off some BBS.

And that was when we learned that the distinction between "model rocket" and "dangerous missile" is a subjective one, having less to do with design than with the kinetics of descent, and that which side of that fine line you come down on mostly turns on whether you're the red-faced property owner, the annoyed, sweaty policeman, or the kids frantically hiding their lighters, explosive chemicals and launch apparatus in the woods.
posted by killdevil at 7:12 PM on February 17, 2010 [7 favorites]

Excuse me but that's roquette not rocket. Do not google roquette surgery unless you have a strong constitution.
posted by tellurian at 7:27 PM on February 17, 2010

killdevil, you reminded me of the day I became certain that adults are endlessly capable of being full of shit. It was at Boy Scout camp, over the summer, and me and a few friends of mine did the merit badge in Rocketry. We ended the week with a left-over engine, so that night we did the only reasonable thing possible, which was to toss it in the fire. Our timing was pretty bad, because an administrator happened to be walking up to the site as we did this -- naturally, he started yelling at us for throwing a battery in the fire. We weren't too sure whether it was in our best interests to correct him or not, but the choice was made for us by another kid we didn't know, who told the guy that it was a rocket engine.

At this point, we were all sent to our tents pretty early, and there was a lot of flashlight-aided fussing out in the campsite on the part of the adults, which had us a little on edge (it turns out that the camp staff were in the process of looking for a kid who had gone missing, making the rocket engine thing doubly bad timing). When we woke up in the morning, the lineup to go to the mess hall proceeded as usual, except my friends and I were held back. The administrator guy showed us a spent rocket engine in a plastic bag, and told us that we had been identified by fingerprints, which they had supposedly gotten by surreptitiously going into our tents over the course of the evening and taking our prints, with the assistance of the local police.

We were pretty flabbergasted for a little bit, until we realized that it was a shitty cover for the fact that one of the many kids standing around the camp fire had ratted us out (my tent-mate offered as proof the fact that his hand was in his pants when he went to sleep and was in his pants when he woke up). After that, we were still flabbergasted, but now at just much of a stupid ridiculous lie that was. The whole thing was so surreal that it was totally worth cleaning the mess hall for the three remaining meals we had left there.
posted by invitapriore at 11:38 PM on February 17, 2010

While we're sort of on the subject of the Deleted Posts script for Greasemonkey that Plutor so kindly whipped up -- wouldn't it be amazing if it worked with Chrome and or Safari? Plutor, if you're ever bored and want to make someone's day, could you update it to work with these? Standing offer: fresh, baked goods via FedEx overnight upon completion.

Please :)
posted by cgomez at 12:12 AM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

While we're sort of on the subject of the Deleted Posts script for Greasemonkey that Plutor so kindly whipped up -- wouldn't it be amazing if it worked with Chrome and or Safari?

Seconded.
posted by Captain Cardanthian! at 1:58 AM on February 18, 2010

puke and cry is a maniac mansion fan? Well there's some cool points I hadn't allocated yet.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:26 AM on February 18, 2010

You're one of like three people that's ever mentioned it, so you get cool points as well.
posted by dead cousin ted at 2:06 PM on February 18, 2010

Metafilter: besmirch my good name you rapscallions!
posted by pompomtom at 2:44 PM on February 18, 2010

Hush, you, or I'll turn on the shower!
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:55 PM on February 18, 2010

This is like my third "make this Greasemonkey script work in Chrome please" request. Guess I'll have to go install it. SIGH.
posted by Plutor at 3:49 PM on February 18, 2010

Voilà. I had to in-line jQuery 1.3. Since it's tired and I'm late, for now you need to install this other script so that the caching doesn't make things asplode.

No baked goods necessary. A pledge of loyalty to my army in the upcoming JavaScript Wars is sufficient.

I hope to get to the scroll tag script and incorporate the smartness into this script, too. But this should tide you over.
posted by Plutor at 6:51 PM on February 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

Wooooooooooooo-hooooooooooooo!

(ahem)

Thank you, Plutor. I've been sticking by Firefox for Mac's bloated side for months because I missed having that script. The baked goods offer stands if you ever find yourself in Santa Barbara.
posted by cgomez at 9:18 PM on February 18, 2010

I've updated both Deleted posts and Scroll tag to work with Chrome. As a side-effect, this should make them work in both Opera and Safari, also. I'd appreciate some confirmation of that, though.
posted by Plutor at 6:24 AM on February 19, 2010

Wicked, Plutor. Thanks so much. Now if only matthewr could magically show up with MeFi/Mecha Navigator updated to work in Chrome...


(Sure, I could MeMail him, but where's the fun in that?)
posted by SpiffyRob at 6:47 AM on February 19, 2010

Plutor: no dice in Safari 4.0.4 with GreaseKit on Snow Leopard.
posted by cgomez at 11:19 AM on February 19, 2010

It's only rockets roll.
posted by Artw at 4:09 PM on February 19, 2010