Link Change?

February 16, 2013 8:17 PM

Rhomboid asked this question about a link on the blue which switched from liveleak to YouTube. I'm curious about this as well, and a little ... concerned? Anybody know what's up there?
posted by Apropos of Something to Etiquette/Policy at 8:17 PM (29 comments total)

Sometimes the mods do this.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:23 PM on February 16

The poster of that thread emailed us, asking us to change it. The original link was to an unauthorized upload, the new link is to the original.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:23 PM on February 16 [4 favorites]

Okay, totally cool. Just wanted to check.
posted by Apropos of Something at 8:24 PM on February 16

you can use the contact form for stuff like this.
posted by sweetkid at 8:28 PM on February 16 [3 favorites]

Why would you be concerned about the video changing?
posted by flatluigi at 8:37 PM on February 16 [3 favorites]

There is no cabal.
posted by killdevil at 8:51 PM on February 16 [1 favorite]

I wonder how many people here knew the word 'cabal' before Metafilter.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:53 PM on February 16 [2 favorites]

The Mod Class gets many bonuses to the Linkomancy skill.
posted by The Whelk at 8:56 PM on February 16

I wonder how many people here knew the word 'cabal' before Metafilter.


I knew it, but am much more likely to play it in any sort of word game these days. (It just happened about an hour ago.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:14 PM on February 16

I love cabals. Great BBQ food.
posted by ODiV at 9:31 PM on February 16

I wonder how many people here knew the word 'cabal' before Metafilter.

Just us retired members of the UseNet cabal. (TINC!)

Er... What's a cabal?
posted by jferg at 9:48 PM on February 16 [4 favorites]

There is no cabal.

...and by "no" I mean there actually is one, but we try to pretend otherwise.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:57 PM on February 16

No cabal? I thought when I got rid of my roof antennae in 1977, I got cabal TV. 100's of channels and it comes in much clearer.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:52 PM on February 16 [3 favorites]

Pretty sure there was no cabal on certain Usenet groups before there was no cabal here, and let's not even mention the secret masters of fandom.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:17 AM on February 17 [1 favorite]

Liveleak used to be ogrish, FYI.
posted by empath at 5:17 AM on February 17 [1 favorite]

Why would you be concerned about the video changing?

Because reputable sites note when they edit posted information.
posted by DU at 6:02 AM on February 17 [3 favorites]

Cabal used to be a trackball-based arcade game.

There was a pizza place in my town that had one when I was growing up.
posted by box at 6:07 AM on February 17

The secret cabal has been not existing for much longer than Metafilter.
It's also the title of a Clive Barker book.
posted by goshling at 6:32 AM on February 17

I wonder how many people here knew the word 'cabal' before Metafilter.

Sean Young thinks there's a cabal keeping her from a comeback and giving all "her parts" to other actresses.
posted by discopolo at 7:10 AM on February 17

Man you stalk ONE director in ONE leather catsuit.....
posted by The Whelk at 7:16 AM on February 17 [2 favorites]

The cabal was invented back in the nineties by a young man with a dream, a backward baseball cap, and an aversion to drawing feet.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:45 AM on February 17 [1 favorite]

Man you stalk ONE director in ONE leather catsuit.....

how the director got into my leather catsuit, I'll never know
posted by maqsarian at 7:51 AM on February 17 [2 favorites]

link changing happened on a recent post i made and i was thankful for it.
posted by nadawi at 9:37 AM on February 17

Because reputable sites note when they edit posted information.

Based on this criterion, Weekend Update (with Chevy "what we meant to say" Chase) was a reputable news source.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 9:40 AM on February 17

Because reputable sites note when they edit posted information.

Well, there's a couple things:

1. Switching from a crappy second-hand rip of something to the originating link where both links are displaying the same content in the same basic format isn't the kind of change that's likely to be practically problematic. This isn't switching from a righty op-ed on subject x to a lefty take or something, and we do switch out links like this now and then when it clearly makes sense and won't otherwise cause confusion. We're pretty adamant about not editing posts for content or even for the most part even style, but if you accidentally use a crappy link and we're made aware of that and offered a better link, it's generally a win-win to switch it.

2. Usually it comes up in the thread itself before the switch happens, which then prompts the switch; someone notices it, clarifies, lets us know with a note or a flag, and we go in and do it, and the whole process is self-documenting. This is an odd case where it happened via private communication from word one, is all. In general, I think it makes sense for us to leave a note in a thread when that happens and probably doing that would have been the best way to be totally unambiguous about the situation, but when it's the poster contacting us directly about a link in their own post for a trivial fix, it's easy to short-circuit that a little bit.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:49 AM on February 17 [1 favorite]

I, for one, welcome our new topical-song-parody-writing link-changing overlord cabal.
posted by softlord at 12:34 PM on February 17 [1 favorite]

Because reputable sites note when they edit posted information.

Some do, some don't. If we edit something on our own for one of the in-the-faq reasons and we think it will be noticeable or a problem, we will often but not always leave a note. If the OP contacts us and asks for a minor edit, we''ll sometimes just do it and not mention it. This is one of those "Trust us, and if you don't trust us or are unsure, you can ask a very public question about it" situations.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:08 PM on February 17 [2 favorites]

I follow the B-Masters Cabal.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 3:15 PM on February 17

Some of us know it from THE GREATER METROPOLITAN YORBA LINDA HERALD-NEWS-SUN-TRIBUNE-JOURNAL-DISPATCH-POST AND SAN FRANCISCO DISCORDIAN SOCIETY CABAL BULLETIN AND INTERGALACTIC REPORT & POPE POOP.
posted by fiercecupcake at 9:24 AM on February 18