Honor killing deletion

July 12, 2010 6:21 PM

I don't agree with the deletion of this post.

We've had two discussions, as far as I can tell. They're both from 2007. The deleted post is an incident in my own country that I would not have known about otherwise. Although I did not agree with the tone of many of the comments, I don't think deleting the thread was the appropriate response.

posted by piratebowling to MetaFilter-Related at 6:21 PM (89 comments total)

http://www.metafilter.com/40117/The-Death-of-a-Muslim-Woman

Top hit for "honor killings site:metafilter.com".
posted by DU at 6:22 PM on July 12, 2010

Fine, the internal search missed a few, I'm sure. My point remains, that story was from 2005.
posted by piratebowling at 6:24 PM on July 12, 2010

I don't agree with the deletion of this post.

Hey, keep me updated as further events warrant.
posted by carsonb at 6:29 PM on July 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

Also, that post was like a pointy stick jabbed into the soft underbelly of MeFi. Maybe if it had been a bunch of pointy sticks corded together with a rubber band and jabbed into the soft underbelly of MeFi, maybe then it could have stayed. But a one-link news-horror post to the front page? Spare me.
posted by carsonb at 6:30 PM on July 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

Single link outrage filter.
posted by BeerFilter at 6:30 PM on July 12, 2010 [7 favorites]

There's no way the thread could have been anything but a shitstorm.
posted by rtha at 6:30 PM on July 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

What is there to discuss about it? "Oh man. That's fucked up." is about the long and short of it, isn't it?
posted by crunchland at 6:31 PM on July 12, 2010 [5 favorites]

My point remains, that story was from 2005.

Has there been some sort of ethical breakthrough in this subject that makes a single link to a specific incident more or less wrong? No? Shit happens everyday - not sure it warrants discussion (except to grind your own axe).
posted by SeizeTheDay at 6:31 PM on July 12, 2010

I read about this in the Phoenix newspapers this spring, and it turned my stomach. Definitely scary to know that such a thing happened in my own back yard, more or less. I'm not sure it really makes a good MeFi post devoid of other context, though.
posted by Alterscape at 6:32 PM on July 12, 2010

I agree with the deletion, I flagged the hell out of that puppy.

Single link outrage filter.

Yeah, that.
posted by marxchivist at 6:32 PM on July 12, 2010

The subject has come up more than twice, sometimes directly but without that exact phrase in the post (e.g. this from March of this year), sometimes a bit more incidentally (e.g. July of last year). It's showed up in a whole pile of comments, aside.

Which, I'm not looking at it as purely a "we've discussed it so no more discussing it" thing—we don't really do that for general topics—but it's not a new idea to metafilter, and a post really needs to be more than basically "here is another incident of an awful thing that we know has happened before" without some sort of clear context for why, other the awfulness, it's being put on the front page.

For what it's worth, I deleted because of the above feeling and because it was getting flagged a bunch. I didn't like the tone of some of the comment either but that wasn't the deciding factor.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:34 PM on July 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Perhaps a better reason for the deletion is that it offers no context and simply links to an awful news story.

IMO, it's important to put some effort into such heavy stories and offer something more in them than "This completely horrible thing happened. The End."
posted by new brand day at 6:35 PM on July 12, 2010 [5 favorites]

There's no axe to grind. Honestly, I'm just amazed that this happened and it wasn't national news.

I can see I'm in the minority here and that most saw it as too news/rage filter-y. If any mods want to close up this thread, please feel free.
posted by piratebowling at 6:35 PM on July 12, 2010

Again, it seems like that kind of post could have been a good one with more than just one link. I mean, Afshan Azad being assaulted by her father and brother for her refusal to leave her boyfriend is horrible but posting it just as a single link doesn't make for good discussion.
posted by Wuggie Norple at 6:38 PM on July 12, 2010

Dateline: The Internet

Honor deletings have been on the rise on the popular "blog-o-net" MetaFitler...
posted by DU at 6:41 PM on July 12, 2010

I don't agree with your not agreeing.
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:51 PM on July 12, 2010

I'm just amazed that this happened and it wasn't national news.

It was national news. I remember hearing about it, and I don't live in Arizona.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 6:57 PM on July 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

It is none of the following:

a) "best of the web", in the subjective sense that is something noteworthy and interesting that most people have not seen before
b) a news event that has not been covered before and is grounded in a collection of links that provide context, enabling an interesting discussion within the community to occur
c) a news event of such significance or immediate relevance that standing alone it might generate said interesting discussion

I submit that the post, tragic as its underlying story is, is none of those three things. A single link to something bad that happened somewhere in the world sometime in the last few days without any particular context is far, far below the standards of MeFi.
posted by modernnomad at 6:59 PM on July 12, 2010

Maybe if it had been a bunch of pointy sticks corded together

You know who else was into bunches of sticks corded together?
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:00 PM on July 12, 2010 [4 favorites]

Mistree Helga, in her Dungeon of Love®?
posted by new brand day at 7:04 PM on July 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

A single link to something bad that happened somewhere in the world sometime in the last few days without any particular context is far, far below the standards of MeFi.

Now, had it been a single link to a video on youtube ...
posted by crunchland at 7:06 PM on July 12, 2010 [6 favorites]

Yep.

It's hard to imagine a way to frame this subject without igniting a shit-storm.

I would LOVE for someone to prove me wrong.
posted by snsranch at 7:06 PM on July 12, 2010

You know who else was into bunches of sticks corded together?

Me! (I'm also fond of the edible reproductive bodies of seed plants.)
posted by Sys Rq at 7:09 PM on July 12, 2010

I couldn't think of a way to make this into a tasteless joke about how the thread got honor-killed, so I'm doing the next-best thing.
posted by grobstein at 7:11 PM on July 12, 2010

This was national news. It was widely reported when it happened.

What, you think the American media would miss a chance to portray all Muslim Americans as barbaric savages? So we have to make sure the image gets driven home here, cool.
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:20 PM on July 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

I would LOVE for someone to prove me wrong.

I imagine it would be very difficult to set fire to a storm of shit, especially if the faeces were still moist. Perhaps if the storm involved lots of methane, you might be able to get away with it, but overall I'd say the odds are squarely against any possibility of igniting a shitstorm.
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:20 PM on July 12, 2010 [4 favorites]

You know who else was into bunches of sticks corded together?

Is this a faggot joke?
posted by qvantamon at 7:26 PM on July 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm just amazed that this happened and it wasn't national news.

There are around 18,000 homicides a year in the US. And they're all awful. But we don't need to make a post about each one.
posted by octothorpe at 7:28 PM on July 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

I dunno, Ubu, I'm sure BP could find a way to add flames to a storm of poo.
posted by item at 7:28 PM on July 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

What, you think the American media would miss a chance to portray all Muslim Americans as barbaric savages?

Were you reading the same article I read?
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:29 PM on July 12, 2010

i think a really well thought out post on honor killings that wasn't just "hey, shitty people are shitty" could stay up. this wasn't that. metafilter isn't and shouldn't be a news ticker site.
posted by nadawi at 7:35 PM on July 12, 2010

I dunno, Ubu, I'm sure BP could find a way to add flames to a storm of poo.

I initially parsed "BP" as Blazecock Pileon, and was trying to work out where you were going with that, until I remembered that oil slick thingy you guys are trying to fix.
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:40 PM on July 12, 2010 [5 favorites]

("you guys" = Americans, as per customary usage)
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:41 PM on July 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

This was national news. It was widely reported when it happened.

I would have liked the post to stay up, but come on. Metafilter has to have higher standards than "national news ... widely reported."
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:41 PM on July 12, 2010

I imagine it would be very difficult to set fire to a storm of shit, especially if the faeces were still moist.

It is possible if the shit was very dry, and had crumbled into a sort of shit-dust, wind (from a blowhard of course) could kick up all the shit-dust into a shit-dust-storm. Since the shit-dust is dry, burnable material, it could probably be ignited by an open flame, bad electrical wiring, carelessly thrown cigarettes or declawed cats. Because it's so dry, it would probably burn itself up very fast, but the damage from it's combustion could be dangerous and deadly at worst, and obnoxious and snarky at best.

Also the comment by TwelveTwo "A klingon would not approve." was completely inappropriate, tone deaf, and awesomely hilarious. One of my favorite comments, I liked it so much I said it out loud when I read it. Fortunately, I wasn't at work, or around anyone. Qaplaa!
posted by fuq at 7:52 PM on July 12, 2010

Ignite, start, make happen...ah, semantics.

*makes Maori war face and waggles tongue at UbuRoivas*
posted by snsranch at 8:21 PM on July 12, 2010

ohno! war face & tongue waggling!

*hides in outside toilet*

i live, i live...i die, i die...

*strikes match*
posted by UbuRoivas at 8:26 PM on July 12, 2010

I was hoping we were going to talk about this deletion. I find it hard to see a qualitative difference between "recommend a non-fiction book" and "recommend a non-fiction book about the Hanseatic League." There's more possible answers to the former than to the latter, to be sure, but I don't see any good reason to draw an arbitrary line on the general-to-specific continuum of RecommendToMe questions.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:28 PM on July 12, 2010

I find it hard to see a qualitative difference between "recommend a non-fiction book" and "recommend a non-fiction book about the Hanseatic League."

The former is an invitation to folks to just go nuts; the latter is trying to get some guidance on a fairly specific query. There's some general mushiness to this particular stripe of question and honestly we're a bit more lenient about broad "recommend some media" questions in practice than I think we would be if we were consistently strict on a subject-independent basis regarding the chatfilter guideline, but when it gets to the point of having literally no guidance other than "good" and a broad category, that's fairly likely to get nixed.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:34 PM on July 12, 2010

I find it hard to see a qualitative difference between "recommend a non-fiction book" and "recommend a non-fiction book about the Hanseatic League."

I find it easy.
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:39 PM on July 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

The article is actually really good and six pages long, getting in-depth on this specific case. I didn't know much about the issue before and it seems like other stories linked on here were just outrage-bait. This at least gets to the human motivations of the rest of the family and the buildup to the tragedy.

I vote someone rewrites the post with a lot more info and posts it again. Or, I guess, everyone who can hear me just go and reads it, because it's really a great piece of journalism.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:44 PM on July 12, 2010 [5 favorites]

I agree with Potomac Avenue. People seem to be assuming the article is pointless trash without reading it.
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:56 PM on July 12, 2010

It would have stayed if it had been in Slate. Single link Slate posts always survive.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:57 PM on July 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

In my city, it seems that at least twice a month there is family on family murder--some of it really horrid shit like mothers drowning kids, fathers shooting up the whole family before turning the gun on themselves, hell, just yesterday there was a father who beat his 6 year old to death because he wasn't sleeping. I think I'll go post that one to the frontpage.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:14 PM on July 12, 2010

Also, here be a spammer.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:19 PM on July 12, 2010

Also, here be a spammer.

You know this isn't the awesome-est way to point this out to us, right?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:25 PM on July 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

I haven't read the piece, but a good article is a good article, regardless of whether similar FPPs have been posted a couple of years ago - pretty dang weak excuse, I think - or if MeFites take it as reinforcing anti-Muslim prejudices.

Now, having not read this article, I have to go recommend some UK television shows to some guy on AskMe.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:26 PM on July 12, 2010

Oh, right. Contact form. My apologies.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:27 PM on July 12, 2010

Burhanistan! I brought the torches and pitchforks as soon as I heard! Wow, we sure have the awesome-est defense mechanism in the whole neighborhood!!!!
posted by yhbc at 9:29 PM on July 12, 2010

I came for the spam and stuck around for the awesome-est.
posted by item at 9:39 PM on July 12, 2010

Mmmm! Spam -- pitchforks -- all we need is marshmallows and we could have s'mores! Only that would be disgusting, so we could call them n'thankses.
posted by ottereroticist at 9:44 PM on July 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

a good article is a good article

And a good post is a good post, and the presence of a good article on the other end of a link does not automatically make the post that link is in good. Our job is more about evaluating the posts as they stand in context on metafilter than declaring any given link officially good or bad, as much as there is in the ideal case an overlap between good post and good link.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:44 PM on July 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

This was my favorite post today. :D
posted by zarq at 9:51 PM on July 12, 2010

We know where the shit-dust is. It's in the area around El Mirage and Phoenix and east, west, south and north somewhat.
posted by fleacircus at 12:23 AM on July 13, 2010

People seem to be assuming the article is pointless trash without reading it.

To be fair, the first page is pretty damn trashy.
posted by fleacircus at 12:38 AM on July 13, 2010

People seem to be assuming the article is pointless trash without reading it.

nope, not me at least. i'm saying that a topic as touchy as honor killings either deserves a fully fledged post that delves into the history, the laws, the movements against, the similarities with other religions/crimes/etc, the problem with misreporting and over-reporting or it needs to be left alone.

a singular story, no matter how well written, just isn't given the subject matter the weight it deserves.
posted by nadawi at 12:48 AM on July 13, 2010

zarq: This was my favorite post today. :D
There should be a simple filter that basically blocks all posts that contain 'visit my site' (or even just 'my site') - those are never any good.
posted by Ms. Next at 1:54 AM on July 13, 2010

This was my favorite post today. :D

What the hell? That motherfucker. He was warned about that shit.
posted by maqsarian at 1:57 AM on July 13, 2010

On the bright side, I found it heartening to see so many people quick to point out that when a non-Muslim kills a family member for similar reasons, it's just called "murder". I know the discussion or potential thereof doesn't make the FPP, but still. That sorta brightened up my evening.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:07 AM on July 13, 2010 [2 favorites]

I would have liked the post to stay up, but come on. Metafilter has to have higher standards than "national news ... widely reported."


I was arguing that this was a reason NOT to have an FPP on the story.
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:01 AM on July 13, 2010

Was this story about the woman who tracked down the son she gave up at birth, and then had sex with him, also widely reported national news?

Because that would also not be deserving of an FPP.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:34 AM on July 13, 2010

I was actually also sorry to see this post go - I thought the article was very interesting and I wasn't aware of this particular story.

If the rule was "no single-link" FTPs, then I would support the deletion. However, these rules don't really seem to apply at all, or I see numerous other FTPs that are single-linked so I don't understand why it applies to some posts and not others.

I've seen numerous FTPs linked to things such as ....(I'm not linking to them because the goal isn't to point out a poster, but just to point out that the trend exists)

The exerise regimen of zombies? That wasn't even a real event and looked like it linked to a blog that probably took 2 minutes to create. That post definitely wasn't deleted and was it left up because it had a unique zombie angle?

I know I've also seen lots of single-link YouTube videos. Now if the youtube videos had a unique angle, background story - okay, but I honestly saw one that was just a dog playing with a baby.

The application of the so-called rule appears to be arbitrary - I guess that is the main thing that bothers me after seeing the rationale behind the post deletion.

Aaaaand time to step away from the metatalks
posted by Wolfster at 5:36 AM on July 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

If the rule was "no single-link" FTPs,

There's no rule like that, and it's really unlikely there's going to be a rule like that. It got deleted because a post really needs to be more than basically "here is another incident of an awful thing that we know has happened before" without some sort of clear context for why, other the awfulness, it's being put on the front page.

For what it's worth, I deleted because of the above feeling and because it was getting flagged a bunch.

Thin post + flags will usually get something deleted, even if it's a nice video of kittens or whatever.
posted by rtha at 5:53 AM on July 13, 2010

Hit post too soon. I meant to add that a single link to a video of kittens might escape the deleting because it doesn't get flagged the way this fpp got flagged. If it's not attracting a lot of negative attention, the mods don't know it needs deletin'.

So maybe, just maybe, it's not "mods are unfair and arbitrary!" Maybe it's "mefites don't want to see this posted this way and flagged the shit out of it."

In other words, it's our fault.
posted by rtha at 5:58 AM on July 13, 2010 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: peer-reviewed cage match
posted by lris at 6:38 AM on July 13, 2010

That scans better as "cage match peer review", but technically one is supposed to make a tagline from actual comments rather than make a gestalt commentary on one's own.
posted by Burhanistan at 7:09 AM on July 13, 2010

Ah good. I'm glad the principle is proving sound.
posted by lris at 7:14 AM on July 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

You're welcome.
posted by Burhanistan at 7:20 AM on July 13, 2010

I would have liked the post to stay up, but come on. Metafilter has to have higher standards than "national news ... widely reported."

I was arguing that this was a reason NOT to have an FPP on the story.

Oh. Wait, how does that make sense? If we're going to ban FPPs about national news, this will become a very different website.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:26 AM on July 13, 2010

The interpretation I got was that "national news, widely reported" is not a sufficient criterion for the creation of a FPP, rather than an exclusionary criterion.

If you add up all of the negatives:
1) Single link
2) Similar incidents discussed previously
3) More or less predictable levels of loathing (really, who is going to say "honor killing, yay" here?)
4) Newsy, rather than being news.

versus the positives:
1) An interesting slice of life about a promising young woman who is now dead

It looks like one of thousands of daily tragedies. "Forty thousand men and women every day," like the song says.

Probably the only interesting discussion which could have arisen would have involved how "Islamic" honor killings are and looking for parallels in the rest of the country's culture as a way of saying "Yeah, it happens here, we just don't call it X when it does," a bit like the right-wing terrorism conversations.

When you add in the "flagged to hell and back" in the negatives column, it's pretty much toast.
posted by adipocere at 7:41 AM on July 13, 2010 [2 favorites]

The application of the so-called rule appears to be arbitrary - I guess that is the main thing that bothers me after seeing the rationale behind the post deletion.

What jessamyn said to this, and, as she noted, what I already said in here about the deletion yesterday.

It's not a so-called rule—we've never called "no single-link posts" a rule nor would we want to, there have been tons of single-link posts in the past and much of the time they're fine. In terms of matching framing to subject, though, it is one of several aspects of post presentation that we take into account, and in a situation like this the post being only a single link without any context was not something working in its favor. "Points against, considering the context", not "single link, that's a deletion!".
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:17 AM on July 13, 2010

"This completely horrible thing happened. The End."

Yeah, that's why I flagged it.
posted by Deathalicious at 8:19 AM on July 13, 2010

I have no strong feelings about the deletion of the post and it hadn't occurred to me to object.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:23 AM on July 13, 2010

Interesting. This post is basically the same thing, except it has no religious angle, and is about mass killing of geese, and yet, people apparently have no problem with it on the front page. As I write this, 3 people have even marked the thread as a favorite. What's the difference?
posted by crunchland at 3:16 AM on July 14, 2010

Jeez, so is this one.
posted by crunchland at 3:27 AM on July 14, 2010

Single link outragefilter is only approved if the outrage isn't directed toward things tea partiers get upset about. Use this rule of thumb, and you'll be fine.
posted by planet at 7:07 AM on July 14, 2010

crunchland, I agree that the geese post is pretty thin gruel, as is the Iran huffpo blog post. I guess they're getting flagged less.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:13 AM on July 14, 2010

You mustn't dissect Gossamer.
posted by Burhanistan at 7:16 AM on July 14, 2010

What's the difference?

People like hearing about geese killin'.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:23 AM on July 14, 2010

Interesting. This post is basically the same thing, except it has no religious angle, and is about mass killing of geese,

Um. It's the same thing...except for being totally different?

Thin posts stay up all the time. Why is this mysterious? They stay up because people don't flag them and because people don't fill up the thread with namecalling and asshattery.
posted by rtha at 7:27 AM on July 14, 2010

What's the difference?

Geese are not people?
The thread is thin but not thin + outrage like the other one?
The post has something to talk about that isn't "OMG DEAD GEESE horrible people sure are horrible aren't they?"
It's the first dead geese post we've seen on MetaFilter?
The post wasn't flagged and disliked as much as the other one? The post doesn't hit any hot button MeFi topics?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:55 AM on July 14, 2010 [1 favorite]

Plus, some MeFites really hate geese.
posted by zarq at 8:08 AM on July 14, 2010

Once as a kid, I was bitten by a goose at the zoo. Fucker just lashed out and bit me right on the nipple. Fuckin' geese.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:42 AM on July 14, 2010

I, too, have been attacked by a goose.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:43 AM on July 14, 2010

I knew a lady who had a bungalow close to downtown in my city, and kept two of the bastards (er, a male and female actually) in her fenced in front yard specifically for intruder detection. She was also kind of insane.
posted by Burhanistan at 8:45 AM on July 14, 2010

I was bitten by a swan once.
posted by rtha at 9:00 AM on July 14, 2010

It's the first dead geese post we've seen on MetaFilter? Lies!
posted by crunchland at 9:01 AM on July 14, 2010

One fine day my wife and I went to the zoo. It being a not particularly good zoo, there were many empty exhibits and pocket gophers everywhere. As well as geese. After making our way past the depressed and depressing bears and sad monkeys and ennui-filled tigers, we entered the bird section, and found a lone Canada Goose in the Albatross Habitat. "Hey!" yelled I at the interloper. "You're no albatross, you're just a damn goose! Get the hell out of there!" The goose feigned indifference, but it was obvious that my taunting had touched some dark part of its soul, or whatever geese have that pass for souls. My wife and I continued on our way, and shortly rounded yet another huge hill-cum-gopher mound to find, almost as though waiting for us, a Canada Goose in our path. My wife, being of a gentle and yielding nature, stepped back, but I continued upon the path. Suddenly, the goose spread his wings not unlike the archangel Michael above slumbering Egypt, and charged at me with so much hissing of tongue and snapping of bill that I had no choice but to run and hide behind my most loving and beloved wife. The fierce brute soon tired of his cruel sport and retired with a triumphant and derisive honk, leaving me quite shaken and shamed before my lady.

Now I cannot say with all certainty that the goose which had so emasculated me was the same that I had righteously chastised a few minutes prior, but is beyond disputation to say that regardless of whether they are vindictive creatures of begrudgery or generally malicious bullies, they are cruel and blighted creatures and certainly deserve to be dispatched with whatever means are available, and in as many numbers as is possible.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:12 AM on July 14, 2010 [2 favorites]

And then of course, there's this goose. The wrong aquatic bird to mess with.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 1:20 PM on July 14, 2010