Blind FPPs suck.

March 27, 2002 8:37 AM

Blind FPPs suck. Is it asking so much to tell me what the link is about?
posted by luser to Etiquette/Policy at 8:37 AM (8 comments total)

Blind, Cryptic, and to a Washington Post article! What, no kittens?!?
posted by techgnollogic at 8:48 AM on March 27, 2002

I thought we'd settled on "suboptimal".
posted by gleuschk at 8:54 AM on March 27, 2002

Textbook example of a bad, and sorta pointless*, FPP.

* I mean "suboptimal." ;)
posted by artifex at 9:02 AM on March 27, 2002

I think it's perfectly obvious that it's a link having something to do with a controversy over suspicious airline passengers.
posted by bingo at 11:30 AM on March 27, 2002

While the wording of the question is a little weird to me, I don't particularly see why the post is "blind." Some people prefer explanations in their post, others teasers. Deal.
posted by Su at 11:40 AM on March 27, 2002

I like when links at least have a TITLE if they're not self-explanatory. But I'm lazy about the TITLE attribute myself.

(Stavros TITLEs like mad, I've noticed on his blog. Sometimes he packs in so much text I have to mouseover his DIVs twice to finish reading the tooltip, but that's cool.)
posted by StOne at 9:23 PM on March 27, 2002

Techgnollogic: "What, no kittens?!?"
Why do you guys play poker with kittens, anyway?

Personally, I prefer teasers that explain the post, but just enough to encourage one to click. One of the many beautiful things about MeFi is that it's not written by one voice. Some people are good at finding new timewaster links. Some are good at catching the news of the day. Others are good at adding pertinent information to add to others' posts. Still others are best at poignant commentary. And yet still others are wonderful at finding just the right punchline which somehow puts it all in perspective.

We can't all be great at making FPPs, but the important thing is everyone tries, and day after day somehow it all works out.
posted by ZachsMind at 6:45 AM on March 28, 2002

One of the things that might be taken into account is that a teaser type FPP with little or no explanatory text may be fun but it makes it very tough to do the research to avoid a double-post, since a lot of the stuff people link to has several URLs that might work. Text in the FPP itself saying what it was about [or titling, does the searcher search the title?] would help this.
posted by jessamyn at 11:07 AM on March 28, 2002