Rio post no different from Apple posts

July 29, 2002 6:36 PM

I disagree with the deletion of the post comparing the Rio with other portable MP3 players. We see new Apple product announcements every couple of weeks here; this was no different.
posted by BlueTrain to etiquette/policy at 6:36 PM (27 comments total)

This was the post:

Rio is famous for pioneering MP3 portable players. While they weren't the first, they were the first to really come to market with something viable. Their new player, Rio 900, features 192MB of space, Nickel Metal Hydride battery, and features fast USB connectivity. [More Inside]
posted by BlueTrain at 6:37 PM on July 29, 2002

There was a longer comment inside, thus the [More Inside], I was just trying to keep it short to keep the front page clean.
posted by benjh at 6:39 PM on July 29, 2002

Not only that, but the [more inside] portion was a pretty decent synopsis of why Rio is falling out of favor in the marketplace.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:39 PM on July 29, 2002

And the accompanying comment was this:

SonicBlue's attempt at a hard drive based MP3 player, the RioRiot, is flopping miserably, with most stores selling it well below list price. With competition from Apple, Archos, and Creative, as well as others, are Rio players, once the "pioneers" of the technology, now completely irrelevant, and probably doomed never to catch up, or can their company compete with better products?

At $249, the new player has a fraction of what a $299 iPod has, has slower connectivity, and a battery form that has memory issues, and unlike Lithium Polymer batteries, can not fully recharge without having to be discharged, and lose power on subsequent charges.

All I'm left wondering "so? and?" A new product came out and it has flaws. What is there to discuss?

At least the ipod threads were somewhat exciting.
posted by mathowie at 6:40 PM on July 29, 2002

and by exciting I mean when the ipod was actually new. The recent release on top of other apple threads that day was a bit much.
posted by mathowie at 6:41 PM on July 29, 2002

My only thought was the relevance of Rio, which was really the first major MP3 player producer, which is now producing products over a year behind the times.
posted by benjh at 6:41 PM on July 29, 2002

another thing that didn't help matters was there weren't any links to opinion pieces, merely the product pages built by marketing departments.

If there was a c|net story on how the Rio has faltered, I could see that. But it'd be like me posting links to popular Nikon digital cameras and saying their lens technology is past its prime. Not a terrible post, but not exactly great post or discussion material.
posted by mathowie at 6:48 PM on July 29, 2002

As opposed to this thread whose sole link was to Apple's iPod site?

Or this thread, again, solely to Apple's sites?

Or this thread, solely to Sony's and Apple's sites?

Or this thread, solely to Rio's site?
posted by BlueTrain at 6:48 PM on July 29, 2002

If I seem like I'm coming after you, please understand that I'm not. In fact, as I stated in a MeTa thread a few months ago, I hate product threads that only lead to manufacturers' websites; IMHO, however, this thread did not need to be deleted, when compared to the others.

As a sidenote, I think this post was made to drive discussion, something else I'm conflicted with. Link vs. discussion and such...::shrugs:: I just don't know anymore.
posted by BlueTrain at 6:52 PM on July 29, 2002

As opposed to this thread whose sole link was to Apple's iPod site? [etc.]

so i'm guessing that when matt said "and by exciting I mean when the ipod was actually new," it took precedence over his statement that "another thing that didn't help matters was there weren't any links to opinion pieces." the words, "another thing," framed the following words as an aside in my mind -- apparently not in yours.
posted by moz at 7:06 PM on July 29, 2002

Was this just cut and pasted from some marketing piece? Gawd, no wonder it got deleted. Looks more like viral marketing than anything else.

I do think we go crazy over the Mac stuff here. I wouldn't mind seeing more trimming along those lines too.
posted by skallas at 7:17 PM on July 29, 2002

My post, while sounding like a marketing piece, was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek sarcasm towards their "great features" they are touting, which we all know are not that great.

It was my thought to start discussion about Rio in general, their relevance to the marketplace then and now, and what the "Pioneers of Portable MP3" might do to further crash and burn in the future. As BlueTrain said above, he is correct, the reason I posted it was to drive discussion, not so much "this is what someone at CNET thinks, so are you going to agree or disagree?"

I apologize, and will be more careful in the future.
posted by benjh at 8:21 PM on July 29, 2002

I was recently given a Rio Riot as a present, and it kicks butt in so many ways. I hear that it was bought on sale for about $229, which is a good $70 less than the retail price for a 5GB iPod. Yes, it was slower than an iPod would be, but that is more of a problem with Wintel design than with the player design... most boxen don't have Firewire.

I dumped 20 gigs of relatively unsorted and somewhat atypical MP3s into it and it did a very nice job indeed in sorting the music into artists, genres, etc. I can't tell you how nice it is to be able to tell the player that I want to hear dub, techno, gothic, rai, funk, etc... and not have to program it myself. Took it on a roadtrip from the Bay Area to Portland and it performed like a champ the whole way there... and that's a long drive!

Does this mean that iPods suck? Hardly. They're well-designed, stylish, with good software. Does this mean that the Rio sucks? Hardly. They do the job well too for most people, and are a lot of bang for the buck. Will the iPod suddenly put Rio out of business? Only 5% of computer users would possibly think so...

The iPod is just barely starting to make inroads into the Wintel marketplace, but if it does gain some marketshare, that's great news for consumers, and will only make the Rio and other players that much more competitive.

Now, when will they release an OS for Wintel?! ;->
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:40 AM on July 30, 2002

I'm having a hard time understanding why posts like this where people engage in the worst sort of ad hominem attacks, barely dealing with the article content are deemed a-ok, while innocuous posts about MP3 players are somehow determined to be delete-worthy. Sheesh.
posted by MrBaliHai at 6:28 AM on July 30, 2002

I think Matt generally knows where a post will probably end up when he sees the FPP. If he thinks it doesn't offer anything new, or thinks it's headed into the sewer, he terminates its command.

I'm not Matt's spokesmodel, I'm just a dedicated Matt-watcher.
posted by websavvy at 6:45 AM on July 30, 2002

I don't think it's useful to find examples that you believe are as bad, if not worse, than something that was deleted. More than 100 links are posted to the front page a week, and Matt has often let poor links stick around if he didn't see them until they were salvaged by a good discussion.

As BlueTrain said above, he is correct, the reason I posted it was to drive discussion, not so much "this is what someone at CNET thinks, so are you going to agree or disagree?"

There's the problem. Links that use a few obvious sites as a means to have a discussion are often deleted. There needs to be some kind of new or unusual link that stands on its own as an interesting thing to post, even if there is no discussion.

I think the new RioRiot selling below list price is interesting enough to be on the front page, especially with the context provided in your posts. But there ought to be a new story on CNet or somewhere else in the link.
posted by rcade at 6:51 AM on July 30, 2002

rcade: I didn't notice any good discussion arising out of the thread I referenced. It dove almost directly into the muck and pretty much stayed there. And I think that in this case it's valid to point out a post that was worse than this one because in my opinion, many people have been expressing concern recently about the lack of civility in discourse here, yet I'm left feeling things that contribute directly to a hostile atmosphere are left undealt with while relatively innocuous stuff like this MP3 thread receives too much attention.

However, I realize that Matt's control is by nature arbitrary, and he's certainly entitled to delete whatever the hell he feels like deleting.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack the thread any more than I already have or grind this particular axe too much. I just felt it needed to be said.

YMMV, naturally.
posted by MrBaliHai at 7:27 AM on July 30, 2002

MrBaliHai, that thread was utter shit, and I should have deleted it when I first saw it. Postroad's ax grinding aside, I saw it when it only had three comments, and didn't see it again for a few hours. My hunch was to ax it when I first saw it, knowing it would go south. Looking at it now, it has absolutely no redeeming quality.
posted by mathowie at 7:53 AM on July 30, 2002

Cheers, Matt. I realize that you can't spend your whole day reading every comment in every thread. I felt that particular post was just so egregious, that I was kind of flabbergasted when it didn't get cut and assumed (quite wrongly) that you must have somehow approved of the content. My apologies.
posted by MrBaliHai at 8:46 AM on July 30, 2002

Matt, could the post have been better, threaded in a MetaTalk post? As the poster wanted to create a discussion. Yes, I do agree with all of the above.
posted by thomcatspike at 12:25 PM on July 30, 2002

thomcatspike, if I had a clue what you were asking, I might have an answer.
posted by mathowie at 12:53 PM on July 30, 2002

Thom, although MeTa's a better place for linkless discussion, the conversations here should pertain to MetaFilter, so I think posting it in the grey would have been even less appropriate.
posted by Marquis at 1:11 PM on July 30, 2002

Matt, if this post in question that was deleted( I did not see it), was better. As the criteria above was posted in it. Would it have been better, if it was originally here in a MetaTalk post as a thread of a discussion on the product itself? Rather than as a FPP on Metafilter. As the member who posted it said that he wanted to discuss the the product itself not talk about it being just released on the market. Ok, Marquis, that makes sense, was not sure as the grey is a discussion area, yes makes complete sense why, not me o'well. I know Metafilter, filters the news of a product or event by everyone discussing it. So you would never use some form of a media for a Metalk post (besides my babble) except for maybe reference points. I want to make sure my succinct points are spelled out. Plus it may help the new people that is why I asked, as I had forgotten the full difference of the two, grey and blue.
posted by thomcatspike at 2:52 PM on July 30, 2002

MetaTalk
sure as the grey is a discussion area

new tagline.
posted by moz at 3:00 PM on July 30, 2002

thomcatspike, you seem to have a deep misunderstanding of what MetaTalk is for. It is not a place to post suboptimal links or discussions, it is only destined for discussions surrounding MetaFilter issues.
posted by mathowie at 3:57 PM on July 30, 2002

this is the second thread in which i've seen postroad's deleted thread mentioned. i'm sure it was probably uncalled for because it seems to have raised the ilk of several members, but i have to admit i'm curious...what in the hell was it about? if it's not worth discussing here - will someone email me? [e-mail]
posted by centrs at 4:10 PM on July 30, 2002

sure as the grey is a discussion area

moz I left out a comma in between, "sure" and "as"
nice how ones words taken out of context to the whole sentence just adds more meaning......;)
posted by thomcatspike at 5:45 PM on July 30, 2002