Should I filter MetaFilter (asks mathowie)?

August 29, 2001 1:10 PM

This thread sucks. The link doesn't jump down to the story, the subject matter isn't very funny or interesting, it's just stupid. The post is too long, the comments are pretty pointless. I would delete it, but it could create more trouble than it is worth. What should be done about sub-par links? Anything? Take the good with the bad?
posted by mathowie (staff) to Etiquette/Policy at 1:10 PM (25 comments total)

What's worse than the post itself are that there are two "first post" comments. I restrained myself from saying: "first post? first post?? Kindly set your ingrate fucking self on fire immediately."

I came to my senses and hit the back button...but it was close.
posted by frykitty at 1:19 PM on August 29, 2001

If it was me, I'd smite it but good.

However, it's *not* me, so I don't have to deal with the inevitable squealing of 'censorship' and 'elitism' that would result. Which makes it a tough call.
posted by Sapphireblue at 1:26 PM on August 29, 2001

I didn't even notice the first post attempts. That's even dumber than the post itself. It's gone.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:28 PM on August 29, 2001

Maybe if you smite it, they'd get annoyed at you and not come back. That'd be good.
posted by transient at 1:29 PM on August 29, 2001

Matt, I think it's time you stopped worrying about being judged elitist and just went for the monomaniacal dictator image. Delete posts at random. Add embarrassing lies to user profiles. Change the background color to fuscia. If people ask you why, say "Because I'M THE MOMMY!"

And I'm only half kidding.
posted by frykitty at 1:32 PM on August 29, 2001

Elitism isn't automatically a bad thing. There's a reason colleges have entrance standards. Not every forum and venue needs to be targetted at a mass audience.

If you think its presence is a detriment to MeFi, then away it goes.
posted by NortonDC at 1:33 PM on August 29, 2001

I feel the same way guys. I looked at it and was about to post: Why would you want to do that, virtually or otherwise? etc.

Then I figured why even bother. There does seem to be a huge increase in new people being stile-project types.

like this (which I was going to post on the front page but won't) from "abelincolnjr":

"Thanks for the advance warning...whatever it is I ain't clickin! Besides Burning Man is L-A-M-E! Get over yourselves "Psychonauts"!"

people who have been on MetaFilter for more than one day don't usually make such comments.

It seems like the idiot quotient is rising fast. And I don't really care one way or the other about the Burning Man. What I do like is people being open-minded. This guy doesn't get it.
posted by Kafkaesque at 1:33 PM on August 29, 2001

For some reason we've gotten into a real Ananova-Stile-Rotten.com rut today.

My prediction is that with the same tactics Matt and the rest of the community has always employed (using MetaTalk, emailing the worst offenders, having patience) it will blow over. It always has.
posted by cell divide at 1:35 PM on August 29, 2001

I would like to see some way of filtering on the basis of voting. Instead of leaving a comment, a person can say "This is good/bad" by clicking a link. Then people can consult a view of highly ranked posts from that day.

For junkies like me who hit refresh all the time, it wouldn't do much good. An alternative for the 100-visits-a-day member would be a way to click a link to hide or filter out posts in the current offering, one by one. The flagging of posts wouldn't apply to viewing archives or visiting links to posts, just on the index.html page.

In terms of editorial decision, rather than customization feature, I think an arbitrarily applied editorial policy is asking for trouble. If it were me, I would be sorely tempted to delete many posts on a case-by-case "this sucks" basis. But such would be emotionally based---not a good way to build trust.

(Totally unrelated, but, then what about users building trust with Matt? Seems there's no requirement of good faith right now.)
posted by rschram at 1:38 PM on August 29, 2001

The reason why I deleted it was to discourage an monkey see, monkey do syndrome, which happened just a few minutes later.

"I was having doubts [about posting this thread about a guy getting his testicles ripped off], but I figured with the previous post, what the heck"
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:41 PM on August 29, 2001

Is it me of are some of the new folks trying to make another Slashdot? Can a cookie be set to send those posting "first post" to Slashdot when they intend to come to this wonderful place called <music class="angelic"> MeFi </music>.
posted by vanderwal at 1:44 PM on August 29, 2001

There was also a triple post and a no real link post today. (I actually thought the latter was a fairly interesting thread.)

Matt, I know you have a day job, but some sort of lightweight filtering system on the order of what rschram is talking about sounds like a good idea.
posted by snarkout at 1:46 PM on August 29, 2001

Does that mean you'll kill that thread, too? You should, to be consistent.
posted by briank at 1:47 PM on August 29, 2001

Idea: what about positive reinforcement?

Matt--if you really like a thread, perhaps there could be a little "Matt's Choice!" graphic beside it. You would end up with people actually trying to get that little tag by starting quality threads.
posted by frykitty at 1:48 PM on August 29, 2001

sorry matt... I normally don't do crap like that. By all means... kill it.

I was actually hoping to actually not talk about the article itself.
posted by tj at 1:55 PM on August 29, 2001

What was thread 9725 about? I got here too late.
posted by D at 1:58 PM on August 29, 2001

sorry my * first * was intended to be ironic (I posted it about 10 minutes after the first couple of posts) - I'm sorry if I'm seen to be encouraging such behaviour
posted by johnny novak at 2:00 PM on August 29, 2001

You could actually stand to be a bit more elitist and make us damn newbies bust our balls to get any acceptance, that might keep the people out that don't really care about the community.

Ok
On topic, several times I've wanted to post and tell people:
Portal of Evil would probably appreciate this more than the people here. The metafilter community is ultimately smart, mature, and non-judgement, if you can't post links that appeal to that community, you shouldn't post links.

Notice I haven't posted any links? That's called self restraint. I post the links to my website, or somewhere other than Metafilter. That's simply the way you do things if you're playing in someone else's sandbox.
posted by fuq at 2:06 PM on August 29, 2001

for the record, I'm the monkey.. not the originator of the (original, for now) deleted post.
posted by tj at 2:09 PM on August 29, 2001

I think you need to address the issue - I suspect you getting near tipping point in terms of users - either you are going to have to install a K5 or /. style rating system or make arbitrary decisions about posts.

The first may mean some work in the short term but may save you hassle in the long term, it would also make us truly self-policing.
posted by johnny novak at 2:17 PM on August 29, 2001

fuq--I think the link should engage the community, but I don't like the idea that it has to appeal to the community. Challenge the community, show it things they don't like (maybe solely because they don't know it). Picking links just based on imagined appeal to the community is the road to insularity.

There are pitfalls to this approach, too: outrage does not equal challenge.
posted by NortonDC at 2:43 PM on August 29, 2001

Say, can I have my background color switched to fuscia?

posted by dong_resin at 8:36 AM on August 30, 2001

I keep checking my profile to see if anything untoward has shown up.
posted by frykitty at 9:04 AM on August 30, 2001

NortonDC, Not necessarily appeal, but something that fits the community. I'm trying to think of a good way to clear it up, but I'm braindead right now (the machines are the only things keeping me alive) not that everyone has to like the link, but one should stay away from things that just don't fit, like news stories about people getting their balls cut/torn/ripped/bit off, or the one about the (fake) japanese arcade game where you shove your finger up the ladies ass (I believe it's gone now too) simply don't fit on Metafilter.
posted by fuq at 2:11 PM on August 30, 2001

I've been coming to metafilter (lurking) for a whole of a heck of a long time before I signed up. I always thought it was about fun/interesting things until it kind of moved to just general stories (this isn't bad). My point is what's wrong with the fake Japanese arcade game? Say the linker didn't even know it was fake, my friends and I had a good laugh at the kooky japanese. If anything I'm concerned about the sheer number of links a day. I just kind of feel left out when a link is 5 hours old and already at the bottom of the page with a ton of comments. Also I've noticed a lot of complaints about the number of people. This happens to come up ever say... 3 days... I don't think it's a problem when 60 people contribute and 10000+ just sign up because of whatever strange reasons (I know a ton of people who just run for the nearest sign up page without even lurking).
posted by geoff. at 4:01 PM on August 31, 2001