shopping days until WH indictments

October 22, 2005 10:19 PM

What are we getting for Fitzmas? [mi]
posted by aaronetc to Etiquette/Policy at 10:19 PM (21 comments total)

If the during and after parts of the Hurricane Katrina story are any indication, the (potential) announcement of White House indictments next week is going to set off a firestorm of newsfilter, agendafilter, double (or more) posts and all the attendant squawking. Is there any reasonable way to forestall this, so that we can have good discussions that don't get drowned in noise?
posted by aaronetc at 10:19 PM on October 22, 2005

All potential FPPs should simply be posted as comments in a single thread.

Just tryin' to help.
posted by soyjoy at 10:33 PM on October 22, 2005

Wellll. One could simply skip any post that appears to deal with the dread subject, yes?

And I don't think there is any reasonable way to forestall it.

Is this like a pre-call out?

Don't think it is going to go well
posted by edgeways at 10:35 PM on October 22, 2005

1. Make sure to insist that the fitzmas tag is included on all such.
2. Ask our new nanny to provide the "require/disallow these selected tags" pony.
3. ???

Oh aspen tree, oh aspen tree, your roots are all con-nec-ted
posted by Aknaton at 11:07 PM on October 22, 2005

Fitzmas. tee. hee.

This is not quite Hurricane Katrina. Hopefully we'll just get one FPP, and dupes will get deleted.
posted by delmoi at 12:06 AM on October 23, 2005

Sorry, can't help. Too busy sharpening the knives.
posted by fleacircus at 1:34 AM on October 23, 2005

I think that this is a bit of a ridiculous pre-callout. It's hard to prove, mind you, but I don't think that "we get too many posts about x" MeTa threads have ever worked. Neither has a sidebar note nor a emboldened chastisement on the posting page ever made a significant dent in the Iraq/Katrina/whatever deluge. People are going to post what they want to post, and it's just going to be snarked or deleted (or, most likely, both). It's just going to be a lot of work for Mathowie and Jessamyn trying to cull the threads that don't matter before they spawn too much any reasoned discourse of their own.

All we can really do is help them by keeping a finger on the flag link, and trying to pretend to have high standards for our own posts.
posted by Plutor at 4:36 AM on October 23, 2005

I think this would be better summarized as "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", rather than a "pre-call out".
posted by Bugbread at 5:05 AM on October 23, 2005

Is this the pre-callout callout, or the pre-pre callout?
posted by fixedgear at 5:39 AM on October 23, 2005

fixedgear : "Is this the pre-callout callout, or the pre-pre callout?"

Either pre-callout callout, or pre-callout, but not pre-pre callout. To do that, you'd have to find another upcoming issue, and post to MeTa saying "Could we avoid callouts in advance of this here upcoming event?"
posted by Bugbread at 5:56 AM on October 23, 2005

This pre-callout seems to go well with the fake-pre-announcement.
posted by R. Mutt at 6:17 AM on October 23, 2005

look, let's not pre-varicate here people. A little pre-science and a little pre-parartion go a long way towards pre-venting clutter on the front page, which is pre-cisely what this post is pre-dicting.
posted by allen.spaulding at 6:24 AM on October 23, 2005

R. Mutt is right. That FPP is about the lamest post in a long time.

I'm looking forward to an exciting and well earned political scandal, and I anticipate at least some worthy debate and discussion about it on Metafilter. This case will be probably more significant to the future of American Democracy than either Watergate or the Iran-Contra scandals. I know that well mannered debate on MeFi is hoping for a lot these days, so maybe Matt should set aside a MetaGhetto for scandal oriented posts.
posted by zaelic at 6:53 AM on October 23, 2005

On the indictions somebody makes a FPP, a catch all for any future ones in the administration as well. This goes on the sidebar. Any other attempts at FPPs about it are pruned with prejudice.
posted by substrate at 7:01 AM on October 23, 2005

What substrate said
posted by cillit bang at 7:22 AM on October 23, 2005

It looks like Fitzmas has started early, and our gift is a bunch of shit on the front page.
posted by marxchivist at 8:33 AM on October 23, 2005

Oh yes indeed, that shit (Fitgerald's Website) was first announced here by ericb but now gets its own thread. That's how it will go I am afraid. Let's hope it stays contained to a few posts.
posted by caddis at 10:40 AM on October 23, 2005

Prevention is indeed the idea; every other MeTa discussion about there being too much of story X clogging up the front page has come after 800 story X threads have already been posted to the front page.

This is a MeFi policy question -- can we set a policy of containment ahead of time? What should that policy be? This place is not an anarchic collective; if we have a discussion about this now (as opposed to declaring that the discussion itself is dumb, which seems to be the reflexive response to both reasonable and unreasonable policy threads), perhaps it's something mathowie will agree to put into action.

One big thread per day? Strict deletion of content-free FPP's? This is the "self" part of self-policing.
posted by aaronetc at 11:15 AM on October 23, 2005

I tend to think substrate's idea is a good one. whether that's what we do or not, though, I think this would depend a lot on mr. haughey and jessamyn and a consistent moderation rubric. will that happen? who knows?
posted by shmegegge at 12:19 PM on October 23, 2005

If it does happen get ready for the torrent of metatalk threads complaining about the injudicious censorship.
posted by substrate at 12:40 PM on October 23, 2005

Make sure to insist that the fitzmas tag is included on all such.

I prefer the frogmarch tag, myself.
posted by madamjujujive at 12:44 PM on October 23, 2005