December 11, 2003

6:20 AM

I've noticed (myself included) that comments to a FPP are often posted within minutes, even though the links on the FPP would take a lot longer to read. This means the poster probably did not read the FPP links. One thought to have a comment moratorium period (coded) to encourage the reading of the FPP links before posting. There sometimes seems to be a /. "first post" mentality to get a comment in as quick as possible near the top of a thread.
posted by stbalbach to etiquette/policy at 6:20 AM (20 comments total)

How do you know that the commenter didn't read the article already, or whether they are a recent graduate of Evelyn Woodhead? A rush to comment, or a rush to judgement? You decide.
posted by machaus at 7:00 AM on December 11, 2003

Then the extra time will give time to plan out a thoughtful post. The idea is to keep posts from showing up for the primary reason of being first in line to give time for those who actually read it a chance to post near the top of the thread /. had this problem forever and as MeFi is more popular it will too and untill it has a scoreing system, or unless it keeps new users down, what to do.
posted by stbalbach at 7:11 AM on December 11, 2003

Howard Berg. He taught his technique to the children of the president of Evelyn Wood. Now there's a man who knows about speed readin'!"
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:13 AM on December 11, 2003

We could make each user write a content exam on the post's links before allowing them to comment in the thread. Something quick and straightforward, maybe lasting about three hours, with a combination of short answer questions, a couple of essay questions, and about a hundred fifty multiple choice.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 7:14 AM on December 11, 2003

I find when writing my annoying jokes that it's really unnecesary to read the article at all. Focusing on how the post was written leads to an immediate punchline in the first few comments. So nyaah.
posted by Stan Chin at 7:19 AM on December 11, 2003

Maybe we just need some relabelling:

I've noticed (myself included) that comments to a FPP are often posted within minutes, even though the links on the FPP would take a lot longer to read. This means the poster probably did not read the FPP links. One thought to have a comment moratorium period (coded) to encourage the reading of the FPP links before posting. There sometimes seems to be a /. "first post" mentality to get a comment in as quick as possible near the top of a thread.
posted by stbalbach to etiquette/policy at 6:20 AM PST - 6 annoying jokes (5 new)

posted by DrJohnEvans at 7:33 AM on December 11, 2003

Trying to engineer thoughtfulness and relevance into an unmoderated discussion forum is a clear sign that a person doesn't know enough about discussion forums to engineer them.
posted by y6y6y6 at 7:46 AM on December 11, 2003

Maybe you're just a slow reader, stbalbach.

Seriously, though. Does everyone have to have read every line of every link in a post before they comment? Some of those famous letter by letter posts still wouldn't have any comments. If a post has more than 3 links in it, the chances that I will read all of them is somewhere between 0 and 0.2%. I read the ones that appear to be the main ones, and comment - if I want to - based on that.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:01 AM on December 11, 2003

stbalbach, you drove a post off the MeTa front page for this? I second Stan Chin's nyaah.
posted by languagehat at 8:13 AM on December 11, 2003

Frequently, people link to Guardian articles or editorials, often I will have read them in print in the morning as they will tend to be the more interesting and internationally relevant parts of the newspaper in order for someone to have judged then worth posting. I imagine this is true for a number of other MeFites, given what a bunch of pinko scum us Brit members tend to be.
posted by biffa at 8:16 AM on December 11, 2003

As well, there are people who frequent the chat group #mefi who preview their posts there (to get feedback from other MeFites about the approach to take, supporting links, etc.) and then announce when they've made the actual post. Often the IRC gang will be first in with comments, having had a heads-up on the actual content.
posted by filmgoerjuan at 8:54 AM on December 11, 2003

There was a time when I was going to force a clicked link, so that if there was a post about a story, you couldn't get a comment box to show up until after you clicked on the link, so I could be sure that people at least tried to read about them before commenting.

The idea was eventually scrapped because it was a pain to record everyone's clicks in a database and for the people that had already seen the article it would be a hassle, and for people wanting to make jokey posts, it wouldn't be much of a detterent, because they would just click on the link, ignore it, then say what they wanted to.
posted by mathowie at 10:02 AM on December 11, 2003

Good point although one may read links posted elsewhere: the net is the largest multiple post. Your solution which may end it for a user: pointing a comment their way uncovering their false reading. Being a self-policing community it will show & they will be "IDd". Think if a poster was to post enough times trying to be first, Matt would see it and delete it too. I find myself skipping the first or last comments: the body is an essential part too. Some member do read the comments first then checkout the article causing this too.

With new sign ups your right we will have this; again we are a self-policing community and these things seem to peter-out in time and again.

Ps here is an example I described above. A FPP I commented first: had read the article 3 days earlier. Having had plenty of time deeply thinking about it, made a short comment. Later I fully explained, wanted to read otehr thoughts too.
posted by thomcatspike at 10:25 AM on December 11, 2003

A comment posting delay would pretty much kill "[more inside]".
posted by bradlands at 1:18 PM on December 11, 2003

enough with the fascist link reading, you will not make me do anything, you bastards!!!!!!!!!!
posted by jbou at 3:58 PM on December 11, 2003

having observed the entire slashdot debacle unfold, it is truly amusing to watch as the same "let's engineer a fix for something unfixable by engineering" meme begins to float upstream here. comment posting delays, code to expose the underlying urls of links due to repeated goatse decoys (hello? status bar?), and other kneejerk coded responses serve only to turn the site into an unuseable minefield which a comment may or may not survive on its way to a thread. just to satisfy a few overly verbose anal nit-humpers who spend more time in MeTa whining about what's wrong with MeFi than they do contributing on MeFi. might as well just install the slashcode.
posted by quonsar at 5:00 PM on December 11, 2003

Once again proving that someone will find something about which to bitch.
posted by mischief at 8:18 PM on December 11, 2003

Metafilter: a few overly verbose anal nit-humpers

I'm with thomcat--I often have already read the article or one just like it, especially if it's a current events post, and a glance at it tells. Or when it's a very meaty post, like plep's Canadian archive post up now, I'll look around it a little, bookmark it, and comment before exhausting it (which would be impossible in many cases). It's not really a problem, and funny when someone is called out for obviously not reading/knowing about it.
posted by amberglow at 8:33 PM on December 11, 2003

funny when someone is called out for obviously not reading/knowing about it.
Honestly what would this place be w/o its humor?[pokes head inside computer; finds a crickets & dust balls]
posted by thomcatspike at 9:53 AM on December 12, 2003

"Honestly what would this place be w/o its humor?"

The MetaTalk front page?
posted by Blue Stone at 4:09 AM on December 13, 2003