PS: This Post Has Been BALEETED

June 17, 2011 12:19 PM

Suggestion, not critical: perhaps a way to show that a post has been closed/deleted, in the style of the "X New Comments" update at the bottom of the thread?

A number of times I've spent a while on a comment only to submit and find that the post had been closed or deleted, and I think it would be excellent to be able to see that as an auto-update at the bottom of the thread (and thereby stop wasting time, limited brain cells, and aging finger muscles typing the best damn answer/comment ever in the universe.) Not a biggy, but it would be nicey-nice.

posted by taz to Feature Requests at 12:19 PM (53 comments total)

This would be really nice.
posted by zarq at 12:22 PM on June 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I agree, this would be a nice addition to the new-comments doohickey. Either more posts are being deleted these days or I'm spending more time trying to write a good comment on a doomed post; either way I've hit this a few times lately.
posted by hattifattener at 12:23 PM on June 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah this is a great idea.
posted by 2bucksplus at 12:26 PM on June 17, 2011

This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by desjardins at 12:33 PM on June 17, 2011

Good idea. And hey, it could actually just hide the whole comments box.
posted by smackfu at 12:40 PM on June 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

add a small note (thread deleted) next to the deleted link if searching in profile page, seems like some work though.
posted by clavdivs at 1:02 PM on June 17, 2011

Agreed.
posted by jph at 1:03 PM on June 17, 2011

No, because then it would eat whatever glorious erudite witticisms we are in the middle of typing and there will be gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.
posted by elizardbits at 1:03 PM on June 17, 2011

I think this is a great idea and hereby crown taz as the Mefite of the day. SPEECH! SPEECH!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:05 PM on June 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

Narrator: The family continued to chant “speech, speech, speech” for no one in particular.
All: ...speech, speech, speech!
Michael: Gee, after all that, I was kind of hoping somebody would make a speech.
Buster: Speech, speech, speech!
Michael: All right, I’ll say something.
G.O.B.: Typical.
posted by Think_Long at 1:14 PM on June 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

SOLILOQUY! SOLILOQUY!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:16 PM on June 17, 2011

It has to pop up and say what taz suggested, but then it has to redirect you to the open post with the most amount of comments. Just to make it like when you're in the store and you see there's an open space at the checkout line. You blaze past all the suckers waiting behind carts filled with GDP sized loads and the 14 people jammed into the 2 items or less alley. The clerk is there, no one is waiting and then as you get near ... flick... they turn off their light. And now you have to slink your way back into looking at those people whose standing, lifeless bodies you just climbed over, and shuffle on back to the end of the queue and behind the couple of comments, I mean people, that got in line as you were stridently haters-gonna-hating your way into what you thought was glory.

Make it like that.
posted by cashman at 1:37 PM on June 17, 2011

But with a bigger logo.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:45 PM on June 17, 2011

The whole page should turn red and shake when it gets deleted. With animated explosions and a rockin' guitar solo.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 1:50 PM on June 17, 2011 [11 favorites]

I'm certain this has come up in Metatalk before... wish I had time to search, but I remember specifically this request being made.
posted by koeselitz at 1:56 PM on June 17, 2011

I think it should automatically find a similar thread and attach your (obviously brilliant, witty and insightful) comment to that one instead.

(If this comment shows up attached to taz's feature request, I'm gonna be disappointed.)
posted by straw at 2:07 PM on June 17, 2011

I think that when a thread is deleted you should be allowed to comment on it, but for every comment you make on a deleted thread, another comment from your history is randomly excised. Go on . . . PLAY THE GAME
posted by Think_Long at 2:24 PM on June 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ha... I thought about asking exactly this after spending half an hour on a post only to hit send and find out all the work was for naught. Would very much appreciate something like this.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 2:28 PM on June 17, 2011

It should be a thirty-second countdown so we can all get some zingers in.

Obviously.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:30 PM on June 17, 2011

I would like the comment box to slowly shrink its boundaries as the text is enclosed in many layers of <small> tags, then a picture of the mod responsible slides out from one side of the screen, ad-style, with a sad look on his or her face and a shaking finger.
posted by adipocere at 2:45 PM on June 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'm certain this has come up in Metatalk before... wish I had time to search, but I remember specifically this request being made.

That thread got deleted just as I was typing a long insightful comment about it...
posted by kmz at 2:57 PM on June 17, 2011

I would ride this pony.
posted by killdevil at 3:02 PM on June 17, 2011

Yeah, the real problem here is too many deletions. Either the number of poor posts is increasing, or the mods are being overzealous (or over fearful that a particular post will become a headache for them).

A techno-bandaid won't fix that.
posted by orthogonality at 3:07 PM on June 17, 2011

The real problem is that the mods are really fast and I just can't thread-shit in an obvious shit-storm fast enough.
posted by GuyZero at 3:14 PM on June 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

If the number of poor posts is increasing, then the number of deletions is just right, not too many.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 3:19 PM on June 17, 2011

Would it be too much to ask that after the comment box in the post being deleted has grown smaller and smaller, and the picture of the mod responsible sadly shaking his/her finger has appeared, and the whole page has turned red and shook, and animated explosions and rockin' guitar solos have ensued, that the musical stylings of the Bay City Rollers, specifically "Bye Bye Baby", be heard in the land.
posted by likeso at 3:41 PM on June 17, 2011

We need to fit the deal with it sunglasses in there too.
posted by ODiV at 4:10 PM on June 17, 2011

Asked before about AskMe. Thread was inconclusive.

Yeah, we could probably add this. Deletions are fairly rare over on Ask, sometimes we go days without any. It probably averages out at about one/day, I'm guessing. MeFi is a little higher, so it might be more useful there. But the number of people who happen to be composing a comment right before something gets deleted is pretty small. I know it's annoying when it happens, though.
posted by pb at 5:05 PM on March 28 [+] [!]


My feeling as the person who is over there way more is that this is so rare an occurrence as to maybe not be necessary.

If you preview your comment you'll know if a thread has been closed and in most cased I'd certainly hope that people would have a decent idea if a thread were going to be closed before they started answering it.
posted by jessamyn ★ at 5:09 PM on March 28 [+] [!]
posted by oneirodynia at 4:17 PM on June 17, 2011

I agree...so I'm not going to be afraid to ride this pony...HARD!

DAMN YOU RORY MARINICH!
posted by hal_c_on at 4:29 PM on June 17, 2011

Where is pb to crush our hopes and dreams by saying this would require a quantum computer with memory banks that would consume all the silicon in the solar system?
posted by mccarty.tim at 5:34 PM on June 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Either the number of poor posts is increasing, or the mods are being overzealous

We're not deleting more posts than usual. I think we just have a lot of new people which means a lot more posts by people not entirely clear on the concept. Someone can check the infodump [this might have to be cortex?] but my impression is that we're deleting fewer posts, not more. Any time we bring on a new mod there's a period of time where we have better coverage than we've had in the past and so there's likely to be more deleteworthy posts that get axed sooner rather than collecting comments and getting deleted later.

And at some level, if you think we're being overzealous, please feel free to point to actual posts that were deleted that you think shouldn't have been deleted and we can talk about that. It's easy to point general fingers based on things you think are happening. We've deleted four posts in the past day and a bit, two of them were doubles. That's pretty average.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:50 PM on June 17, 2011

Where is pb to crush our hopes and dreams...

Is that I thing I do? I hope not. Yeah, the reason we haven't done this before is that it's a very rare case. Within the last year or so we changed things so that if you post a comment to a deleted thread, you see the full text of your comment so you can copy and paste it to your own personal records.

But yeah, I think we can add this to the new comment notification. I do think it's a rare case but when it happens it makes people very upset so if we can help prevent it we should. There will still be cases where the timing doesn't work out and this will still happen, but it should help a little.
posted by pb (staff) at 6:27 PM on June 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

"Within the last year or so we changed things so that if you post a comment to a deleted thread, you see the full text of your comment so you can copy and paste it to your own personal records."

I've really appreciated this.

"But yeah, I think we can add this to the new comment notification. I do think it's a rare case but when it happens it makes people very upset so if we can help prevent it we should. There will still be cases where the timing doesn't work out and this will still happen, but it should help a little."

Yay!!!
posted by Blasdelb at 7:22 PM on June 17, 2011

Great, check your email! I'll find a suitable guitar solo MP3 for you to use.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 9:11 PM on June 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think if you try to post a comment to a deleted thread, your comment should go to a graveyard full of other comments posted to deleted threads, and the only people who would ever see this graveyard would be the deleted-thread commenters themselves. How weird would it be to get shunted to a comment graveyard, where you could wander around all alone, but not talk to anyone? It would be like a parallel dreamworld, with no links out, that you'd have to close the window to leave. The URL would of course, be ephemeral.

That's what I'd like.
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:00 PM on June 17, 2011 [6 favorites]

Thanks, pb!
posted by taz at 10:20 PM on June 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

orthogonality writes "Yeah, the real problem here is too many deletions. Either the number of poor posts is increasing, or the mods are being overzealous (or over fearful that a particular post will become a headache for them)."

I haven't really noticed an up tick though there seem to be fewer self linkers and more doubles lately. Actually I just checked and the last spammer was May 28th. Are first posts being moderated or something now?
posted by Mitheral at 2:48 AM on June 18, 2011

Actually I just checked and the last spammer was May 28th. Are first posts being moderated or something now?

Nope. We get an email for every first post so that we can promptly check in on anything that smells, but they all go through automatically like normal. It's just been relatively quiet with the front page spam. If anything, I feel like maybe there's a downtick in those over the last year or two, but it's always such a random fits-and-starts sort of thing that that could be a mistaken impression.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:11 AM on June 18, 2011

Where is pb to crush our hopes and dreams...

Is that I thing I do? I hope not.

Actually, pb, you are pretty much the polar opposite of dream-crushing. Whenever you come into a thread, I feel like there's a little pony looking around the corner shyly and you're holding out an apple in your open palm, smiling.
posted by misha at 9:58 AM on June 18, 2011 [9 favorites]

Agreed, especially since the Deleted Thread blog is gone.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:58 AM on June 19, 2011

Deleted Pony
posted by Favorites Pony at 10:03 AM on June 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Cool beans. Does this apply to both Askme and MetaFilter? MetaTalk? (Do MetaTalk Posts(threads) ever get deleted?)

If you preview your comment you'll know if a thread has been closed and in most cased I'd certainly hope that people would have a decent idea if a thread were going to be closed before they started answering it.
posted by jessamyn ★ at 5:09 PM on March 28 [+] [!]

I hate to diminish Jessamyn's hope, but I honestly cannot predict which Posts(threads) or posts(individual responses to initial Post) will be deleted. And, I promise, if I had any idea that a thread were about to be closed, I wouldn't even start an answer. It boggles my mind that anyone would.

Related question: Does anything happen at the mods end when we preview? Would it be annoying if one were to preview several times before finally hitting the send button? (Did that one thread get closed because of something I was about to say?)

On outside preview:
It boggles my mind that anyone would.
counterexample
posted by Tuesday After Lunch at 3:46 PM on June 19, 2011

I hate to diminish Jessamyn's hope, but I honestly cannot predict which Posts(threads) or posts(individual responses to initial Post) will be deleted.

It's impossible to know for sure, but I think you can get a lot of mileage generally out of listening to your own reactions to a post or comment: if there's any element of "really, why would you say that?!" to whatever it is you're reading and feeling compelled to respond to, that's probably something with an elevated chance to disappearing.

Hardly foolproof, but we've had enough reports of like "agh I was totally responding to that!" re: doomed-to-deletion posts, and seen enough comments-replying-to-stuff-already-deleted, that it's clear that some more mileage can in theory be gotten on that front than usually is.

Related question: Does anything happen at the mods end when we preview? Would it be annoying if one were to preview several times before finally hitting the send button?

Nothing happens on our end. We, and the database, know nothing about your comment until you actually post it. You can preview five hundred times over the course of a week and we'd have no idea about it until it actually gets posted.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:23 PM on June 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

It is a rare case, but the new comment notification has the side effect of increasing how it often it happens, since people aren't reloading the page as much anymore.
posted by smackfu at 8:53 AM on June 20, 2011

ok, this is all set. When the inline comment updater asks the server if there are any new comments and the thread has been deleted, the page will be updated with the note "The post was deleted!"

Keep in mind that the inline comment updater checks the server for new comments periodically. So we're still going to have times when folks click "Post Comment" and get the deleted post message. It should help warn some though.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:26 PM on June 20, 2011 [3 favorites]

Thanks for the Baleetepony, pb!
posted by taz at 3:32 PM on June 20, 2011

Ballet pony?
posted by caution live frogs at 7:55 AM on June 21, 2011

The Appaloosa Arabesque. The Quarterhorse Quatrième. The Piebald Pirouette Piquée....
posted by zarq at 11:57 AM on June 21, 2011

Hey, I was just about to post a comment in this thread when a red box appeared, informing me that the thread had been deleted. It works! Good job!

Although, I'm now left with the sadness of knowing that no one will read my thoughtful comment about Umberto Eco and Medieval penis jokes.
posted by MrFTBN at 7:33 PM on June 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

PB, sorry to trouble you, but is there any way to create more contrast between the text and the red box? On the professional white background, the black text is practically impossible to read for this color-blind user.
posted by zarq at 9:28 AM on June 22, 2011

No problem, missed that case in my testing. (I even have a note on my monitor that says: "test plain text theme!") Just pushed out a new version and it should look better now.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:43 AM on June 22, 2011

Thank you! :)
posted by zarq at 9:59 AM on June 22, 2011

I just had my first in-the-wild sighting of this. Handy!
posted by echo target at 12:03 PM on June 24, 2011