Troll?

December 4, 2002 6:24 AM

This reminds me of a large mythical creature that lurks under bridges, and also smacks of lots of news.
posted by The Michael The to etiquette/policy at 6:24 AM (51 comments total)

agree, it's a very trollish post. I almost made a comment as such, but didn't want to derail the thread.
posted by mkelley at 7:20 AM on December 4, 2002

Because of [link], [link] and [link], I think [personal opinion that may or may not be substantiated by the link].

Lots of warebloggers do this, but it doesn't go over very well on MetaFilter when someone posts something like this.

If posts that link to an opinion piece lead to discussions that MetaFilter doesn't do very well, then a post that drags together a few links in order to justify the poster's opinion is doubly bad.

Besides, the point of the post then becomes the poster's opinion, when it should really be about what the poster found on the web. The poster should be as invisible as possible.
posted by mcwetboy at 7:21 AM on December 4, 2002

Totally. When will people learn it's about the links, not the issues.
posted by Summer at 7:21 AM on December 4, 2002

the "Let's-invade-NorthKorea-instead-of-Iraq" and the "it's all about the oil" things are, well, a dead horse at this point

also, the FPP's links are nothing special

*kicks dead horse*
posted by matteo at 7:35 AM on December 4, 2002

Christ, here's another one that assembles unrelated links in order to make another (Bush-is-bad) opinion-of-the-poster post.

MetaFilter is making me sad this morning.
posted by mcwetboy at 8:27 AM on December 4, 2002

I'm pretty sure any post that screams "AGREE WITH ME DAMMIT!" is in bad taste. Unfortunately, that's about 35-50% of all Metafilter posts in the last 2 years.
posted by Stan Chin at 9:17 AM on December 4, 2002

It's actually about 75-90% of all political Metafilter posts, and 5% of the others.

It's still out of hand, and I'm completely baffled as to how people who have been graciously invited into Matt's place can shit on the carpet and then act as though it's unacceptable censorship when people point out that we have a host and he has expressed his wishes.

The current level of political discourse on MeFi is uniformly at a high school level. Dhartung is the only exception, and I'm surprised that he fed the trolls with his well-crafted post in that deleted thread. On the other hand, I'm not at all surprised that he says that "I'm easing away from Metafilter; it's getting a little crowded, and too much like Fark." I'm doing the same. It pains me to say this, but the political discussion on Plastic is light-years ahead of MeFi in maturity and intelligence.

I have no hope that FAQ will change anything without some very agressive deletion by Matt, something he probably doesn't have the energy for. Is there anything we can do to get the daily troll opinion posts and the content-free "Bush bad! Agree with me!" comments to go away?
posted by fuzz at 11:04 AM on December 4, 2002

I'm pinning my hopes on the voting system mathowie's planning.
posted by timeistight at 11:10 AM on December 4, 2002

Is there anything we can do to get the daily troll opinion posts and the content-free "Bush bad! Agree with me!" comments to go away?

Permanently ban any user who makes such a post/comment? That's a wee bit draconian, I suppose (and I'm pretty sure I've got a comment or two in my history that would put me on the list).
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 11:18 AM on December 4, 2002

Could part of the problem be that people don't know which FPPs have been deleted? Both of the posts referred to in this thread have been deleted so I don't even know what they linked to, but I can still read the comments.

Pardon me if something like this has already been suggested, but is this a good idea: when a FPP is deleted, generate a MeTa post "DELETED THREAD: Bush is evil, blah, blah, blah". This would give folks an idea of what was being deleted.
posted by turbodog at 12:09 PM on December 4, 2002

you're forgiven.
posted by crunchland at 12:10 PM on December 4, 2002

I'm pinning my hopes on the voting system mathowie's planning.

Wait, what did I miss?
posted by oissubke at 3:52 PM on December 4, 2002

jesus, today's been a real shitstorm, my delete finger is getting tired.

I think it's high time to do some coding tonight to fix a few things. Mcwetboy's post pefectly describes the current problem. People aren't "filtering" the best and most interesting of the web to bring here, they're grabbing the first thing that happens to be on the web and supports their position, then they bring it here for the sake of furthering their point of view or starting a discussion.
posted by mathowie at 3:56 PM on December 4, 2002

Everybody, STOP POSTING PARTISAN LINKS TO WORTHLESS NEWS STORIES FOR PARTISAN REASONS. Why [the fuck] is this so hard to do?

Steve, you complain about how left the front page is. You're absolutely right (ha ha). But why do you think the correct response is to add more political bullshit to the mix, when you know it's not what the site is for, and it's not going to have any effect besides pissing people off? The opposite of noise is not a different kind of noise, it's signal.

There's no way that I can think of to phrase this without sounding like I'm picking on you, but I'm really not trying to. It just confounds me that posts like these continue to be posted by people who I KNOW have to be aware of the effect they have on the community.
posted by Hildago at 3:59 PM on December 4, 2002

my delete finger is getting tired.

Want some help?
posted by timeistight at 4:01 PM on December 4, 2002

Want some help?

Yes, because we all know if there were a dozen editors stamping out anything remotely partisan, we'd never get more posts like this to metatalk. And everything would be better.

More user education combined with tools for that is necessary, as people seem to be in the complete dark as to what makes for a good metafilter post.
posted by mathowie at 4:08 PM on December 4, 2002

Matt, I would also suggest putting FryKitty's (et al.) FAQ somewhere prominent on Metafilter. Whether in the guidelines, or my suggestion right on the Post A Link page? A lot of work went into it (none from me of course), and I'd hate to see it go to waste.
posted by Stan Chin at 4:09 PM on December 4, 2002

I've followed a few publications that write about the Web for a while, and one thing has become clear. A couple years ago, their focus was on finding new sites that most people hadn't heard about. Now, "look at this cool thing" articles have more or less disappeared. These days, it's about trend stories, controversies and discussions about established sites, and the writers have to do a lot more work to make it interesting (sometimes they don't: look at the "online college sex columnist" stories.) It doesn't stop with finding a cool link anymore; writing about the Web is closer to TV criticism now. There are a number of reasons for this. The main one is probably that making money on the Web is no longer a reasonable expectation, and getting a lot of publicity for yourself by being the first to do something is rapidly becoming a distant possibility too, so there are fewer innovators out there. Also, the rise of blogging ensures that a neat link can become stale in a couple hours.

So I really think there's more to the lack of "filtering" than newbies who don't get what the purpose of the site is. There's been a complete shift in the way people look at the Web in the last couple years.
posted by transona5 at 4:13 PM on December 4, 2002

but transona5, you could still have a TV criticism site that rooted out the interesting bits of television.

If this site was about TV, we'd all be sitting around complaining about the 10,000th discussion of Seinfeld or Friends or Survior, instead of the posts linking to 3am feeds on Univision of masked mexican wrestling, or a new cooking show featuring a transgender person that juggles.

It is really hard to find something amazing on the web, and that's my original justification for building metafilter as multi-user: I could only find one thing a day if I surfed for 8 hours, and finding a couple a week is more my speed. That's not enough content for an active weblog, but if there are a few dozen (or thousand, or tens of thousand) members, eventually something really amazing and interesting will show up daily, as a great number of people stumble upon interesting bits.
posted by mathowie at 4:33 PM on December 4, 2002

But why do you think the correct response is to add more political bullshit to the mix

Ummm excuse me? The post of mine that was deleted was about The New York Times not allowing it's Opinion Writers to voice their Opinions.... I had not seen this anywhere else today, so it is not "Breaking News" and secondly, I made no judgement or prognostication based on the article... I simple posted what had been reported.... The issue was NOT Left vs. Right... It is a story about what is going on at one of the biggest (if not the biggest) newspapers in the world, that is not getting much coverage. Am I the only one that finds it disturbing that a major newspaper that claims to be so unbiased that it is "All the news fit to be print", is looking for conformity in it's writers to stay the company line?

I am fine that Matt deleted it, it is his site, I can post it to my own weblog (I did). But do not accuse me of "Posting partisan links to worthless news stories for partisan reasons"... There was nothing partisan about it.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 4:36 PM on December 4, 2002

It doesn't stop with finding a cool link anymore; writing about the Web is closer to TV criticism now.

I don't know about that. First, we aren't major media looking for the next trend story to follow. Also, I think there's still plenty of cool or weird shit that people could post here. -- Not necessarily those links since I for one filtered that stuff out rather than into the site (although that's at least a little about not wanting to add too much to the noise).

Still, the fact people are posting news stories and political rants for discussion has more to do with user perceptions of what the site is for, than it is some reflection of what the web currently has to offer.
posted by willnot at 4:37 PM on December 4, 2002

Okay, I think I understand the rationale behind the "link is king" insistence a little better now with mathowie's explanation. The one thing is that before, you were limited by time in how many amazing links you could come up with. Despite the vastness of the Web, I really believe that a single person is now also limited by the breadth and novelty of a lot of what's out there, at least to a greater degree than before. And I think that's why there's a lot of op-ed posts - the belief, sometimes false, that the writer's observations are new, in the absence of entire sites that are new and original.
posted by transona5 at 4:44 PM on December 4, 2002

Am I the only one that finds it disturbing that a major newspaper that claims to be so unbiased

Does the NYT claim to be unbiased? Maybe I run with the wrong crowd, but everyone I know (including myself) considers NYT left leaning (how far left depends on who you ask).

It just didn't seem like new information (sort of like if someone posted a article pointing out that *shock!* fox news sometimes leans right) nor did it seem all that startling. I'm sure they shit-can articles all the time that don't lean left like the paper, as every other paper does. How is that interesting?
posted by mathowie at 5:13 PM on December 4, 2002

Eventually, you have seen it all.
posted by rushmc at 5:18 PM on December 4, 2002

we all know if there were a dozen editors stamping out anything remotely partisan, we'd never get more posts like this to metatalk.

Not a dozen – just me. And years of fatherhood have completely immunized me against kiddies whining "that's not fair".

Oh well; your loss.
posted by timeistight at 5:18 PM on December 4, 2002

If you could stamp out the crap without mercy, then match that with stamping out the whining in MeTa, I am sure people would get the message eventually. You don't want any life outside MeFi do you mathowie?
posted by dg at 5:38 PM on December 4, 2002

GET YOUR METAFILTER ON
posted by Stan Chin at 6:15 PM on December 4, 2002

hysterical! stan, you rizzule!
posted by amberglow at 6:27 PM on December 4, 2002

Hey, isn't that Bryant Gumble? He has...what - a 9" monitor? And the other guy has a phone attached to his elbow. Cracked me up. Best laugh I had all day, Stan Chin.
posted by iconomy at 6:38 PM on December 4, 2002

Stan is most assuredly the man.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:50 PM on December 4, 2002

Does the NYT claim to be unbiased? ... I'm sure they shit-can articles all the time that don't lean left like the paper, as every other paper does. How is that interesting?

Yes, they do, and no, of course they're not, nobody is... but they're considerably less biased than Fox, and they do a far better job of keeping opinion separate from news. (And as a side issue, they're "left-leaning" only in the sense that they support "lifestyle leftism": gay rights, etc. As a rich and powerful corporation, they support all sorts of things, especially in local politics, that real leftists abominate. Anyway--) They have also made a point of having columnists who do not agree with the editorial line; they hired Safire many years ago and keep him around despite his conservative slant. I have read the paper for many years and I was shocked by Steve_at's link; I think it was interesting, it was good and important information. Matt, you can delete anything you like, of course, but I think in this case you were influenced by the jerks first responders who treated it as a troll post when it wasn't. (And I disagree with virtually all of Steve_at's political positions.)
posted by languagehat at 6:51 PM on December 4, 2002

Stan, that is genius!

And thank you LangHat...
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 7:28 PM on December 4, 2002

Fo shizzle my nizzle!
posted by hama7 at 7:45 PM on December 4, 2002

I think the problem is people either choose to be willfully ignorant, or they've read the guidelines and don't give a rat's hiney whether their post is appropriate or not.
There are still gems to be found on the web, but they don't fall into one's lap...there would be far fewer posts but we would all have the time to ENJOY the good stuff without having to sift thru the poop.

Meanwhile metatalk has turned into the webby version of "Groundhog Day."
posted by konolia at 8:51 PM on December 4, 2002

Ummm excuse me? The post of mine that was deleted was about The New York Times not allowing it's Opinion Writers to voice their Opinions....The issue was NOT Left vs. Right...

So you're telling me that your opinion of the New York Times is neutral, and by posting something which questions their journalistic integrity you are not grinding an axe of any kind?

Sure, dude, whatever you say. I believe ya.
posted by Hildago at 9:55 PM on December 4, 2002

Okay dude....

My opinion of the Times may not be neutral, but that last post was. Just because I have an opinion, does not mean that every post I make has a motive behind it, unless you read it that way.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 10:23 PM on December 4, 2002

That explains why it wasn't brought to metatalk, almost unanimously torn apart, then deleted. The first step is admitting you're wrong.
posted by Hildago at 11:06 PM on December 4, 2002

Steve, I agree your last post was worded about as neutral as possible, but I pulled it based on the weak link. It wasn't surprising for me to see it, nor was there much to talk about it. The comments that were posted while it was up were along those lines or worse, questioning why you posted it, since the article linked wasn't all that earth shattering.

If it was left up, what do you think would have happened? I'm pretty sure it would have gotten worse, not better. More people yelling troll whether or not it was warranted (I'm thinking not), more people attacking Steve personally for posting it, etc.
posted by mathowie at 12:14 AM on December 5, 2002

Don't know who did this, and I'm sure it was linked when it first came out, but it sure is funny.
posted by thatweirdguy2 at 2:33 PM on December 5, 2002

Indeed it was linked. It spawned a rather famous thread.
posted by yhbc at 8:11 PM on December 5, 2002

Now that you mention it*, there are eight posts with different names and the same number.

*[disregard the preceeding if it has been commented upon before]
posted by hama7 at 9:23 PM on December 5, 2002

...and then the server died when everyone started pulling up the dead thread again.
posted by crunchland at 5:20 AM on December 6, 2002

That thread will never die, crunchland. It's just quietly lurking now, waiting for its chance to softly digest your sanity.
posted by walrus at 6:13 AM on December 6, 2002

digesting me softly with it's song...
posted by quonsar at 8:38 AM on December 6, 2002

Go placidly amid the fucking noise and haste, and remember fuckin' what peace there may be
in silence.

: )
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:31 PM on December 6, 2002

hama7,

I think Matt (or someone who can flip the secret switches) played around with that thread for future generations. For instance the post with the comment:

'Comment closing the italics tag'

has '' listed as his user-name, but if you click on the name, you see its actually 'iceberg273'.
posted by dgaicun at 9:54 PM on December 6, 2002

D'oh. . . .has '[/i]' listed as his user-name.

Sorry, I can't type it with the '<>' brackets.
posted by dgaicun at 9:59 PM on December 6, 2002

dgaicun & hama7: no secret switches. iceberg273 made one big post that looks like 8 seperate posts. he imitated the mefi script in his post, changing font size for the various "posted by", "username" and "time" entries. he could have linked to real, existing user pages instead of his own, and linked the time to real comments rather than the mefi front page for even more yummy confusion.
posted by john poindexter at 6:03 AM PST on December 7



what the dweeb with the big database said.
posted by quonsar at 6:07 AM on December 7, 2002

I'm tempted to make this a front page post, but [Nixon voice] that would be wrong [/Nixon voice]. Too bad this thread is basically dead, but for the record: the Times has caved in:

The New York Times has decided to publish revised versions of two sports columns on the Augusta National Golf Club's men-only membership policy that editors previously rejected.

Executive editor Howell Raines said the paper's editors had asked the writers, Dave Anderson and Harvey Araton, to resubmit their work and reassured them their opinions were not at issue, The Times reported Saturday.

The columns are scheduled to run Sunday.

This should embarrass both those who thought the Times was automatically leftist and of course they pulled the columns and those who thought Steve_at was trolling. But it won't, because they'll never see this. *sigh*
posted by languagehat at 7:08 AM on December 7, 2002

I saw it languagehat. I saw it.
posted by Hildago at 11:10 AM on December 7, 2002

...
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 3:43 PM on December 8, 2002