MetaTalk posts tagged with deletions

Popbitch

Artw — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:30:48 -0800

Did we really need to delete this FPP just because various defenders of MeFis indie street cred shat in this thread and presumably flagged it a lot? That's kind of a shame, because other people were enjoying it.

Flag flag flag

disillusioned — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:28:46 -0800

What is the mod policy on noting when comments have been removed? I've seen jessamyn and others say "cleaned up the thread a bit, stop being fuckwads, kthx", etc, but it appears not to happen for one-off offenders. Is it just something you do if you're removing shrapnel left and right? This comment is clearly referring to a comment now deleted. No big deal; I know most housekeeping is done under the radar and mentioning every single deletion would clutter up posts pretty quickly, but I was just curious.

When a user plans to get an AskMe thread deleted

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 12:52:49 -0800

Should a user purposely post something in their AskMe thread, with the idea that they can get it or the thread deleted or made anonymous later?

automation

plexi — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:24:40 -0800

Could we get an email when one of our posts is deleted?

Oh man

Rafaelloello — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:18:18 -0800

Thanks for killing my new gig cortex! You ruined the boss cross-Marketing deal I just closed with Bloomberg and Whole foods! I've been pitching this campaign for over 6 months. My research shows a high correlation for a potential but as of yet *UNREALIZED* synergy between dried tofurazzis and Bloomberg readers. FYI, the bonuses here at Freddie Mac are not really a shoe-in this year, get it?

Palinfilter

jenkinsEar — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:12:49 -0800

3 FPP Palins in one day? Enough already! I realize that Ms. Palin EATS BABBYS and WANTS US ALL DEAD, but maybe we could have a day or two off? Maybe just two anti-Palin posts a day would be enough?

I guess some thought "something" was right with my post...

sixcolors — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:56:55 -0800

Cortex, "weird" posts are now deleted? Where is that in the guidelines? Or, more specific, my "weird" posts are deleted, because I see weird posts on AskMeFi quite often that aren't deleted. Chatfiltery? I don't really see how it was that, either, it was a post about me asking how can I increase my situational awareness and for some examples. Chatfilter accusation aside, what I found really offensive was the post being deemed as weird. What on earth was weird about the question?

Please delete a mistaken comment

sindark — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 12:30:35 -0800

I just posted a thoroughly incorrect comment in response to my own AskMe thread. Could an admin please remove it? It is at: http://ask.metafilter.com/102955/How-can-I-travel-between-continents-without-emitting-much-CO2#1492050

Jesus Christ, this is stupid.

Electrius — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:47:06 -0800

For God's sake, can we delete this moron post using two poorly written old articles to set up a point-counterpoint that is as trite as it is pointlessly inflammatory? I thought posting things just to forward one's own opinions and to stir up meaningless, hot-air controversy was against the guidelines.

Huh?

dinger — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:28:51 -0800

What was wrong with my post? I just submitted the following comment to the question about the futures markets giving Hillary a 1 in 55 chance of winning the election and asking how that could happen exept for Obama's assassination: "Third party candidacy. I can see it now: Clinton/Lieberman. No wait…Clinton/Clinton." How is that offensive or innappropriate? How is it more innappropriate than speculating about assassination?

deleted...why?

HuronBob — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:43:00 -0800

I'm curious as to why this was deleted I've had my share of posts deleted, and usually I understand the reason... this FPP, not so much... It seemed like a topic worth discussing. Some feedback would be useful...what do you all think ?

Palestine

timsteil — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:18:26 -0800

From whatever mod deleted it, I just wondered why my repsonse to this post was deleted, and what exactly is so offensive about it that it needed to be removed. A Mefi mail is fine, but if you want it public that's OK too. Thank you. Truly, I don't care about the deletion, but am truly interested about the policy/ethics involved.

It's Quiet - Too Quiet

pupdog — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:39:03 -0800

Did anyone notice that there were NO deleted posts on the Blue for all of June 7th? How common is that? I'll admit I haven't searched every day or kept any sort of journal, but it seems like there's usually at least one 'oops' a day that has to get weeded out. How often do we go a whole 'clean' day like that?

Why the gender discrepancy?

Jaltcoh — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:28:14 -0800

What are the disadvantages of being a woman? ---> Fine. What are the disadvantages of being a man? ---> Deleted. Why was one of those questions OK and the other wasn't? The only thing different was the gender. In fact, if anything, the disadvantages-for-women question was chattier, as it brought in race and sexual orientation.

The first one is always easy.

From Bklyn — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:44:01 -0800

Vacapinta's first kill. This is going to work out just like we've been asking. I drink (coffee) to the glory of your new might, vacapinta!

deleted militarization thread

ornate insect — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:10:27 -0800

Not sure why the "Militarization of Consumer Companies" thread by five fresh fish was killed? It seemed to me like a legitimate discussion? Granted it was a one-link post to an LA Times Op-Ed piece (albeit an op-ed w/substanitive claims and subtantial, detailed factual data), but I've seen similar posts that were one-link to opinion pieces that were not deleted?

Go, go, gone!

Guy_Inamonkeysuit — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:35:01 -0800

SPEED RACER, R.I.P. That thread sure didn't last long... just as well. I can breathe again! Seriously, though, cortex had it right -- no one gives a crap about a bad movie that was universally expected to be bad. Q.E. fucking D.

Are snarky one-liners being deleted in the Blue?

SeizeTheDay — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:02:47 -0800

Is there a new policy now where Matt/Jess/cortex are deleting comments in the Blue that are a bit snarky/one-linerish? Because I remember a one-liner in the Lyndon Johnson thread that's no longer there. Is that because Matt thinks that the first few comments set the tone for the thread, so ya'll are trying to keep things on-topic from the get-go? BTW, I'm well aware that I basically set myself up here for a rapid succession of one-liners. Have at it, folks.

Temporary commenting lockout for bad behavior in AskMe?

baphomet — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:37:52 -0800

Temporary commenting lockout for bad behavior in AskMe? Details and thoughts inside. This MetaTalk thread got me thinking about ways to discourage people from providing "noise" answers in AskMe. It's been previously established that AskMe works because people enjoy answering questions- they enjoy helping somebody solve a problem, sharing their knowledge and/or experience, or they just enjoy sounding smart. All of these are perfectly valid reasons for posting answers and contribute greatly to the helpful and informative atmosphere of AskMe. That said, the MeTa linked above got me thinking- why do people post the types of answers that the poster knows the mods will delete, and which the mods are obviously growing frustrated with cleaning up after? There are, to my mind, 3 different types of answers that qualify as such:

Answer that is generally unhelpful or non-topical
Answer that is inflammatory/constitutes a personal attack on the OP or another commenter
Answer that is obviously a throw-away joke which the poster expects will be deleted

Looking at the categories above, the reason people post such noise answers is because they know there's no penalty for doing so. It's a cheap thrill- I'm breaking the guidelines! And there's no consequence!- and while I realize that repeat offenders get "reached out to" by the mods, it seems like there isn't any real deterrent. This results in an excess of noise and clean-up work for the mods. My solution, then, given the motivations for participating in AskMe listed above, is to temporarily remove someone's ability to post in the Green when an answer qualifying as (2) or (3) above is deleted. Ideally the lockout would be progressively longer with repeat offenses- starting with one day, then escalating as necessary from there. The system could be designed to MeFi Mail the offender when they get a lockout, and could be designed so that a prolonged period between warnings would take them back down the scale (example: 2 warnings in one week results in 2-day lockout, but if the poster goes a year without a lockout they'd be back to a 1-day for the next offense instead of a 3-day). Note that this system would only pertain to (2) and (3) above, as answers qualifying as (1) are usually benign and are not ill-intended. Now I realize that the MetaFilter community is ideally self-policing, and that community pressure is the preferred method of discouraging bad behavior, but the real question there is: does community pressure scale well enough to the size of the community? At a certain point, introducing stronger moderation to AskMe (the era of jessamyn and then cortex) was completely necessary as, when the community reached a certain point, community pressure and standards couldn't keep up with people's basic propensity to misbehave. I would argue that somewhere out there in AskMe's future there is a point at which a formal negative sanction will be necessary to discourage this kind of behavior. I've considered the benefits and detriments of such a system, or a similar one, but this post is long enough and I'll leave it to you all to debate it.

Relevance and hating the US

Phanx — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:41:26 -0800

What's the rationale for deletion here of Planet F's comment? The stated reason is please stick to answering the question, the question is not "do you hate the US" where a good answer is answering in the affirmative That reads like two reasons, but from memory I can't see that either apply in that particular case. Planet F was saying, if I remember right, as politely as is consistent with frankness, that as a Canadian he wouldn't want to be annexed to the US, and that he and many of his compatriots would probably leave if any such thing were in prospect. That seems to me to fall a long way short of expressing hatred, and it's clearly relevant to the question. In fact the question specifically mentions Canada and asks whether the lack of expansion is due to other countries not wanting to join the USA. Perhaps there were more hate-inspired comments that I missed, and this got swept up along with them? (I believe one of my own disappeared in the same purge, but I assume that was because it breached the no-humour rule). What makes it worse is that there actually is a great deal of irrelevant stuff in that thread which has survived unscathed. The question is about the expansion of the US, not about whether it should or does have colonies, rule the world, etc. I'm aware that some are arguing that the US doesn't need to expand because it now has a mighty empire, forces lesser nations to accept the dominion of its websites even against their will, etc etc, but most of the nationalistic noodling is quite beside the point. I'd point to wfrgms' first comment as an egregious example, which talks entirely about US colonialism without ever making any link to the actual question, and moreover has an unhelpfully patronising tone. It looks pretty bad if a Canadian who answers that no, he wouldn't like his country annexed, thanks, is deleted as irrelevant or hateful to the US, while a free platform is given to nationalistic self-congratulation which really is beside the point.

It's hard to be a mod.

incessant — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:57:21 -0800

I think Jessamyn needs a hug. First there was this and then this. I liked the sarcasm of this one and was thankful she stepped into this !narcoterror! thread. Frustration bubbles here and then, in the best delete ever, explodes.

Double bad.

puke & cry — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 22:20:16 -0800

I'd just like to point out the very first double mod deletion. Congratulations guys, you're the Harlem Globe Trotters of Mefi.

Comment Deletion Whining

DU — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:16:25 -0800

Either a comment has been deleted in error or a different comment has failed to have been deleted. Either we both called each other out or neither of us did. It cannot be the case that he didn't while I did.

Deletion of post about racist Australian Mayor.

seanyboy — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:22:02 -0800

I think the deletion of this post by indienial is a bad call. The continued destruction of all things Aboriginal is a big fat important & undercommented issue, and one which I was looking forward to reading comments about. I think that the state of Racial inequality in Australia (With highly contentious policies like AACAP) is drastically misrepresented internationally. Ironically, for the "stolen generation", the continued plight of the Aboriginal people of Australia is pretty much ignored. Racial policy in Australia is not in the same place as it is in America. I know why the post was deleted, and I don't really know enough about Oz politics to make a definitive call about how parochial a story it is. However, I feel something important may have been missed, and would suggest (by way of a fix to this problem) that maybe further posts on the subject could be run by a trusted Australian metafilter member to get a feel for how big or important the story is.

1 + 1 = 0

loquacious — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:08:30 -0800

Answer the question or don't already, 1. Once again - snark is unwelcome in AskMe. Unless you actually have something to useful to contribute STFU and GTFO. Comment in question reproduced below:

Gee, I wonder which one of you wrote this. Please never write anything in this style again. To paraphrase the always reprehensible and should-never-be-quoted-or-paraphrased-by-anyone-in-any-circumstances Ayn Rand, "when good and evil compromise, evil always wins." Which is to say, any compromise between polyamory and monogamy is still polyamory. There is no middle ground here. And really, you were "confused" when she was hurt? Come on, she made a good faith effort and it didn't work. It's kind of fucked up for you to resent her for being hurt by you. Ugh, OK now I'm getting kind of pissed off at you for convincing her that your relationship is somehow not "fair" to you. How is it not fair? Nobody's forcing you to be in it. She's been very clear about what she needs, and you've decided of your own free will to be in a relationship that doesn't meet your ideal and then, it seems, guilt-trip her about it. And for the love of god, don't write another post in the style of this one. posted by 1 at 10:35 PM on March 6 [+] [!]