[previous-filter] mefi checks if fpp links have previously been posted. how about doing the same for a few of the other large sites out there? [more inside]
posted by krautland on Aug 30, 2008 - 42 comments

When I preview my inchoate FPP, the link search informs me that my links were found in three previous threads, but only sometimes. [more inside]
posted by prefpara on Jul 9, 2008 - 27 comments

Searching for a url doesn't seem to work when the url is below the fold.
posted by homunculus on Jun 20, 2008 - 30 comments

My blushes at making a duplicate post to the blue have been spared more than once by the code which scans my proposed URLs and looks to see it there is an existing match. Phew! However I have only ever found a way of accessing this facility after having first of all composed a post to the point where I can preview it - hence wasting quite a lot of time. Is there a way to access this scan directly?
posted by rongorongo on Apr 4, 2008 - 19 comments

New post form's URL search is broken. [more inside]
posted by knave on Jan 6, 2008 - 19 comments

I did a google search, looked through the tags, and did a mefi search (for bee and bees) and found no posts that were related, but this still seems to be a double. Why didn't this show up in my searching? This kind of thing has happened to me on a few of my recent posts -- how can I change my search methods to find archived posts more reliably?
posted by cubby on Apr 3, 2007 - 22 comments

Rightyho, I just made an arse of myself by posting this. In about a femtosecond, folks rightly pointed out that it was a dupe.

But I did search in the MeFi/Yahoo searcher up there, and I have since tried to get Google to give me a clue that it was a dupe, with the link: and site: tags. No luck so far.

Can anyone suggest a bulletproof way of establishing that MeFi has not discussed a subject before?
posted by gdav on May 21, 2006 - 16 comments

In response to the inordinate number of doubles recently (e.g.) which begin:
MeFite A: Look! This is my link!
MeFite B: This is nice
MeFite A: sorry, double, delete

[mi]
posted by NinjaPirate on Jan 12, 2006 - 28 comments

Avoiding duplicate threads with different URLs: In order to avoid posts like this, a tag search might further eliminate dupes. Would it be worth having (for example) the last three FPPs using the same tag(s) listed when you preview a new thread? And would that be easy to implement?
posted by GhostintheMachine on Apr 29, 2005 - 25 comments

Tag problem? Searching for the Jeff Gannon thread to post this juicy update, I found this page, which says there's a tag but doesn't show it. I think it may be a tag for a deleted double post?
posted by CunningLinguist on Feb 9, 2005 - 4 comments

Facts On Farts was deleted within ten minutes of posting. In point of fact, the double post alluded to was all about turds. I checked it myself. Is there some sort of automatic feature that sniffs out identical URL's? Because this was in error, even though I was warned before posting that it looked like a duplicate (but wasn't). FWIW, the fart site actually was written to address a lot of things that any reasonable person might be curious about.
posted by docpops on Jan 31, 2005 - 28 comments

Double Post Suggestion: Part of the reason people double-post is because when they do a search, nothing turns up. This often has to do with the fact that the first poster wanted to maintain an element of surprise and therefore did not put any information into the post except a link. I would suggest that from now on, for each new front page post, that there be an additional, hidden field called 'description' or 'keywords' or both where the poster could put a list of keywords or a description that might turn up in future searches. This field would not show up on the front page, so posters could maintain the element of surprise without making it difficult to find the post in future.
posted by PigAlien on Jul 9, 2004 - 28 comments

Tired of double-posting, even though I search'n'search the key words. What am I doing wrong?
posted by theplayethic on Apr 25, 2003 - 11 comments

So, I did a search here on "search functionality" and found an indepth thread about search terms. What is the deal with searching for an href? Is that not the most important thing? My post a few moments ago was a double. Though no link was provided I trust that it was indeed posted before.

Is url matching the most difficult thing or what?
posted by folktrash on Mar 3, 2003 - 4 comments

This dangling baby . . . it vibrates? Every time Matt kills a "Jacko's dangling baby" post, another pops up to replace it. We've talked about this before, but I think the (general) question needs to be raised: What, if anything, can be done to prevent reposting deleted stories? It's been pointed out that posters may not know that they're posting something that has been deleted before because, um, it's been deleted before! (And with wacky news like this, there can be any number of sources for the same story, sorry.) Short of deleting the story every time it pops up, is there a better solution?
posted by mcwetboy on Nov 20, 2002 - 79 comments

Is the anti doublepost code broken? [1, 2]
posted by mr_crash_davis on Nov 14, 2002 - 17 comments

New member; first post; searched and searched; usual story. Then this comment, by furiousthought, pointing to the fact that my link had already been posted in a thread (albeit, in my defense, long before I joined and cryptically referenced). So I wonder whether the automatic URL search facility which exists when you preview a front page post could possibly be extended to include URLS mentioned in comments? At the very least, we could thank the first users to link to it. Nobody has the time to read all the threads or click on all the links in comments and searches, whether MetaFilter or Google, often fail to point to cryptically described links.

Forgive me if this is impossible to achieve, stupid or has been asked before, of course!
posted by Carlos Quevedo on Oct 27, 2002 - 15 comments

When I posted this it came up as not a double. Then brownpau pointed out this. The HTML for the links seems to be identical, plus I searched the archives (used the google search option). What else should I have done?

posted by PinkStainlessTail on Aug 6, 2002 - 32 comments

so what happened to the asians offended by the A&F clothes story? There were 18 comments, but I never got to read them...
posted by azazello on Apr 19, 2002 - 4 comments

I'm sick of double posting. I want to stop double posting. How can I be sure, without manually searching the source codes of every month in the archives, that I'm not double posting? And is there any point in telling someone they've double posted when there's no way they can avoid it?
posted by swift on Jan 28, 2002 - 18 comments