MetaTalk posts tagged with policy

A reasonless What's-Your-Favorite

kalapierson — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:25:20 -0800

I'd like to post a "What's your favorite X" AskMe. I'm using it to find the one answer I need for a specific use (and I'd be happy to update about my project in the thread later), but I think talking about my use in advance would bias people toward a too-narrow set of responses. I tried this without mentioning any reason and the post was rightfully deleted. (I did get three really promising responses that make me really excited to hear more!) When I try posting again, can I say there is a specific reason/use but I want to not mention it in order to avoid restricting what people think are good responses? I want to ask this because googling keeps giving me only the same popular results that are interesting more as pithy short quotations (not interesting as the evocative, somewhat longer fragments I know mefi users will have in their heads).

Statute of Limitations in AskMe

Megami — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 05:06:45 -0800

I know that I am a bit of a misanthrope, this is not the first time I have been a whiner over AskMeFi, and that MeFi is not my private playground BUT is there anything that can be done to help/hinder people who ask again, and again, and again about their relationship on AskMeFi, chronically ignore what everyone says, and then are back a month later to ask about their relationship? Note: I am not going to single anyone out. Maybe it is just me, but this seems to be happening a lot more often lately. Someone will post a long question about their relationship trouble - usually romantic/sexual but sometimes with co-workers, family or society in general. There will be a ton of answers. Then they will come back again, usually with the same problem in a different guise, or the same problem just with a new partner, to the point that people will answer 'reading through your posting history about this relationship...' Could we not try to implement a (not official of course) policy of either a) politely just pointing out to people that perhaps they should read the answers to their past questions about this rather than posting about it yet again and then leave it at that or b) is there a possibility of flagging as a 'they have asked this kind of thing before, why is it here again' thing. I ask here in MeTa because I am not about to do it myself if I am actually just being a jerk. I am not just leaving it alone because to me it feels like a few people are starting to develop a pattern that is both harmful to themselves (not realising that if you ask for answers there is a good chance there is a good answer so take it, not keep making the same mistakes) and harmful to MeFi if it gets 'clogged up' with the same questions all.the.time.

Surely This

Proofs and Refutations — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:25:09 -0800

The level of naked bigotry in the comments to this thread is absolutely appalling to me. Is it really okay on MetaFilter to flat out claim that transfolk are just making it up?

Doxxing Policy

wolfdreams01 — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 08:30:19 -0800

I'm going to an IRL meetup later today, and as an extrovert I love meeting new people, adding them to my friends list on FB, and inviting them to fun things. However, I like to maintain boundaries between my online and offline personas, and my privacy will take precedence over establishing new friendships in 99% of all situations. I know that MetaFilter has penalties for doxxing somebody on MetaFilter itself (for example, if somebody posted my FB profile on MetaFilter) - but how severe are they, and generally how good do they tend to be at discouraging this sort of behavior? The reason I ask is because I'm trying to figure out what my trust level with other MeFites needs to be at before I decide whether or not to add them as a friend on FB.

Does Meta/Ask have a 'Trigger' etiquette for posts?

Faintdreams — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 02:18:12 -0800

Is there a 'triggering' etiquette here? If so what is it, because I can't find any reference to tagging posts as 'triggering' on the FAQ. Apologies for not seeing it if it is readily available in the F.A.Q., but I was just wondering if Metafilter and Askmetafilter have any kind of 'Triggering' etiquette that members follow (or should follow). For those of you who don't know what a Trigger is, Wikipedia defines it thus:

A trauma trigger is an experience that triggers a traumatic memory in someone who has experienced trauma. A trigger is thus a troubling reminder of a traumatic event, although the trigger itself need not be frightening or traumatic. Triggers can be quite diverse, appearing in the form of individual people, places, noises, images, smells, tastes, emotions, animals, films, scenes within films, dates of the year, tones of voice, body positions, bodily sensations, weather conditions, time factors, or combinations thereof. Triggers can be subtle and difficult to anticipate, and can sometimes exacerbate post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition in which trauma survivors cannot control the recurrence of emotional or physical symptoms, or of repressed memory. A trauma trigger may also be referred to as a trauma stimulus or a trauma stressor.

Full Wikipedia Link here for those that need it. I know that some people consider Trigger warnings in and of themselves problematic because having a tag that says 'contains sexual assault' might in itself be Triggering. but I was just wondering if *some* warning is better than none in all circumstances - at least as far as Meta and Ask posts are concerned? If this has already been hashed out in MeTa please provide a link, because I couldn't find previous discussions. Please note that any time I placed a word in ' .. ' in this post it's to differentiate it from the colloquial meaning. I am not air-quoting anything. Also my grammar abilities suck today. TLDR: I just want to know if site members follow any kind of 'Hey heads up this post might upset because of some graphic or upsetting content' Eg a tag for NSFW but with more specificity, such as 'may contain assault' or 'features bad things happening to kittens' or 'depicts suicide'. Those are just examples off the top of my head.

where do i belong

luriete — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 08:56:25 -0800

I posted this to the blue last night, and it was (rightly!) deleted by Taz because of the self link (I should note that she gave me the chance to delete the self-link and I didn't want to). My question is, where is a good place to post it? I apologize for forgetting about that rule. You'll see the self-link the last para. So, my question is, what's a good place to post it? Reddit's folk music categories don't seem to allow posts structured like this, with all the links embedded in the text etc; is there another site that would be a better fit? I wanted to keep the self-link in, as that was what was the impetus for writing the article and doing the research, and the only reason I write these folk music posts once every 4 or 5 years on the blue is that Mefi is sometimes missing a little ... I dunno, soul? maybe. Too much dry talk about world politics and science and technology, and dry bios, and nothing to tie it into individual human lives. So I wanted to keep that in to show how I was integrating the song into my life, and I didn't feel like it belonged in a comment (but that was a good idea, @Taz, so I appreciated it). I'm really just wondering where a good place to put it is. I figure there must be some place with the right audience, since it garnered more favorites in 1 hour than anything I've ever posted had before.

What more was there to say?

ferdinand.bardamu — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:42:14 -0800

I said "fuck you" and got deleted. To this comment in this shitshow of a post: I see their point on a lot of the stuff about the South. In fact, the older I get and the longer I live in the North, the more I see the South as a warped, quasi-feudal society that seems to in a lot of ways pine for a time before the US was a developed country with a large prosperous middle class. This is disgusting divisive hate speech. Seems my reply was an entirely appropriate reaction.

Two new tags: Updated and ReAsk

alms — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:06:55 -0800

Let's create two new special tags for AskMe: Updated and ReAsk The "Updated" tag would indicate that the OP has posted a follow-up comment letting us know that there's news about their situation. Maybe they've followed some of the advice or tried something else. The "ReAsk" tag would indicate that the OP is still looking for an answer to their question. Maybe there have been some replies so the question doesn't appear in the "Unanswered" section, but none of the replies have done the trick. The ReAsk tag could also indicate that the OP has posted a clarifying comment and is now looking for another round of answers. Each of these tags would satisfy a common need on AskMe. People often say "Get back to us and let us know how it worked out." Even when people don't say that, they often think it (at least I do), and maybe they favorite the question so that they can keep tabs on it in case the OP checks back in again. The point, though, is that updates from OPs are generally interesting. If people started using the Updated tag, I would regularly read ask.metafilter/tags/updated just to get some good stories, and I'm sure other people would as well. That page would help close the paying-it-forward loop and build community. The ReAsk tag would give people a second shot at asking their questions without cluttering up the AskMe home page with a slightly rephrased version of the question. They'd get a new set of eyeballs on the question. If people started using this tag I would regularly scan ask.metafilter/tags/reask to see if I could help out with any tricky questions that haven't yet been satisfactorily answered. I'm putting this in the Feature Request category, but it doesn't necessarily require any actual new features in the AskMe user interface. We could adopt these tags by convention (as we initially did with the special Resolved tag), and people could add them and read the tagged posts without any new MetaFilter UI. On the other hand, the tags would get a lot more use if there was some indication in the UI that they could be added and browsed.

Sigh.

nickrussell — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 08:07:07 -0800

Deleted comments discouraging. Am becoming increasingly discouraged with deleted comments on both the main page and AskMe. Nothing in specific, I can understand why they were deleted, in some light. However, increasingly I find myself not posting because it takes a lot of time to contribute, and if it's just going to be deleted, then what's the point? Seeing a lot of comments here about deletions. From my perspective, it's feeling very 'rule of man' rather than 'rule of law'. Which is fine, benevolent dictation is the right of the site, but it's certainly discouraging. I think the moderators do a tremendous job, thus the criticism is not aimed at them at all, but rather, perhaps as the site grows, there may be the need to adopt different structures. I will laugh if this is deleted. That would be quite funny actually.

Give full disclosure; get deleted.

ZenMasterThis — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:18:49 -0800

Give full disclosure; get deleted. So I made this post on The Blue because it incorporates several favorite MeFi subjects: Louis C.K., DRM and content distribution / business models. Incidentally, it happened to be written by a personal friend; a freelance journalist. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of disclosing this fact, and the post was deleted. If I had WITHHELD this fact, the post would NOT have been deleted, and a thoughtful and lively dialog would have continued to ensue. Perhaps "no friends" is a rule, but how does this make sense and how is it good policy? Perhaps posts like mine should be judged more on a case-by-case basis? Perhaps full disclosure shouldn't be unconditionally punished, lest it be withheld by future FPPosters?

That was an ad.

diorist — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:49:36 -0800

Today there's a post that is only a series of links to a single retail website. The thread head offers no critique or external perspective: it's a glowing recommendation. If I were going to write an ad for that store (knowing mefi is my target sales demographic), it would look a lot like that thread. Why is the thread OK? And if it's OK, why wouldn't any link to any website, ad, or Ugg-knockoff warehouse be similarly fine? This smells like arbitrary policy to me---which actually smells sorta like corruption---so I'm really asking.

Bewildered

stavrosthewonderchicken — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 06:40:27 -0800

So I posted a comment in this thread that was deleted. Poor me, too bad, so sad. My comment, ten or fifteen deep inthread as I remember it, said some shit like 'In a perfect world, we'd have a Metafilter where members didn't link to revenue-generator Gawker link-bait posts' or some loosy-goosy crap along those lines. I'm not upset about having my special immortal words deleted -- it was a short and offhand comment after all -- but I am kinda bewildered because I don't understand why it was canned. That just don't seem right to me. Seems awfully arbitrary.

confused about how to successfully ask anonymously

akomom — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:40:45 -0800

If asked anonymously and waited for more than 4 days, and your question does not show up, does that mean your question was rejected? or it means you need to wait even longer. There got to be some response to it so you can decide on what to do next (rephrase your question, ask again using userid, or rephrase question, ask anonymously again hoping to get it pass through the second time). Please explain the policy to me.

Topical Topics

j03 — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 02:50:00 -0800

Editorial handling of longitudinal and/or multi-faceted topic posts. What I mean by way of example is a topic like "Occupy Wallstreet." A topic that generates news and commentary over a lengthy period of time and also has many different aspects of commentary and meta-commentary. Is there a general editorial policy on how FPP approved or deleted based on sub-topics of on-going news stories? I ask because I recently had an FPP deleted, I assume it was because it had the words "Travon Martin" in it. The article was indeed a response to the Travon Martin murder, but it wasn't specifically about Travon Martin per se. Where is the cut-off? For example, in yesterday's NYT Opinion column, Paul Krugman implicates the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the killing of Travon Martin (among other things). The piece only briefly references the Travon Martin murder, but if posted, would it be deleted for that sin? I think big news stories shouldn't necessarily be contained in a single FPP, especially ones that evolve and grow over time.

Under the radar Blockbusters?

bongo_x — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:52:47 -0800

I guess I’m unclear on what’s an appropriate post. I find the summer blockbuster movie links to be weird, but wasn’t going to mention it, but then there’s the whole discussion about an article being to mainstream because it appears on CNN.com. It seems as if every Big Studio Blockbuster has a post here. It almost seems like astro turfing to me. Is there really a concern that people won’t hear about the Avengers movie, or that there aren’t any places on the internet to discuss it? Do the studios really need more help with advertising? I’m not picking on that movie, there are many examples, and I’m not really that bothered by it, just a little confused in light of other things that get deleted. What’s the thinking here?

Best of the Web (except cnn.com?)

drlith — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 04:44:59 -0800

When did "you can find this on your own" because a reason to delete an FPP? The stated reason for the deletion of this post linking to an in-depth exploration of the institution of slavery in Mauritania was "...a CNN Special Report isn't really something that people can't find on their own." Now, I am assuming that there were flags on this post that drew the attention of the mods in the first place. I can imagine that some flaggers viewed the subject matter as falling under the rubric of "outrage filter". And in my searching for the existence of any prior policy on the matter I've discovered there's a vocal anti-CNN contingency amongst us. Regardless, the reason that the mod chose to explain the deletion was simply that you can find it on your on your own (reading "readily" between the lines). If that's the case, can't we say the same thing about any single-link post from a relatively popular site? Although I'm a relative newcomer in the grand scheme of things, nevertheless my understanding of Metafilter is that it aims to be the Best of the Web. Not Best of the Obscure, Deep Web. Nor Best of the Web Except Those Sites that Any Responsible Web Denizen Already Has On Their RSS Feed. I could trot out several samples of single-link-to (IMHO thinner)-CNN articles that have stood, so I'm not sure why this one was different. I found this to be a good piece of long-form journalism and provides good fodder for discussion and reflection--it's not just "look at this shitty thing that f'ed up people in some African backward do." Obviously, I am capable of finding things on my own on the Web. I come to MetaFilter because other people can do that work for me, filtering out the mundane and leaving me with the bits that are interesting, eye-opening, and worth reading/watching/hearing. I thought this article fell into that category.

SocialStuffs

zamboni — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:57:28 -0800

Perhaps it's time to consider changing the guideline about requesting additions to the "Also On" feature? There is a page on the MetaFilter wiki called SocialStuffs which is where you can suggest a new social site. That page has additional information on the information that pb will need in order to add the site. We try to add a group of new sites every few months. This may be confirmation bias, but it feels like this guideline is more honoured in the breach than the observance. If you actually followed the guideline, you'd likely be waiting a while for the service to be added, and you may not notice it when it does get added. If you make a metatalk post asking for it to be added: e.g. (1), (2), there's a non-zero chance that pb will add it immediately, and everyone gets to have a nice chat about the service, its merits, and what our account names are. Given the incentives to ignore the rule, is it still a sensible one?

baby, baby

lalex — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:16:29 -0800

I am really surprised that this comment was allowed to stand. The question is not about adoption, at all, and I think this comment is a borderline solicitation.

Come on gguys

phaedon — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:16:27 -0800

I cracked a joke and it got deleted. Guys, you melted my snowflake. I'm surprised to see any mention of the phrase "dickwolf" in the Paul Christoforo thread sanitized so thoroughly by the mods. I wrote "God Forbid a dickwolf get between a gamer and his controller," which in short is me tying this incident in a funny way to something else very public that Penny Arcade was involved with in the past. He's a pretty relevant part of both stories. To me in this thread, it looks like as if its okay to go through Paul Christoforo's dirty laundry, because we haven't done so before; let's get to the bottom of him. But let's not touch Gabe's hamper, because we've already been down that road.. Is that the gist of it? That conversation has already been formulated somewhere else on the site? We should focus on how much of a douche Paul is? I mean, while posting Paul Christoforo's unrelated domestic violence charge is not considered a derail, you've pruned any tangential mention of the phrase dickwolf. That's pretty rich. I'm sure it's probably occured to some people that just because Christoforo is such an insane ass, doesn't mean that everyone else involved in the story is perfect. But that point can't even be explored, or even gently teased out, because there is such a tight leash on what can and can't be discussed. You've essentially shaped the conversation, away from something that's fair game and kind of funny to talk about, and more importantly, into something it wasn't. Ick, not a huge fan. Seems to me sometimes you guys delete way too heavily. Couldn't my joke have stood along with taz's note that followed? Is deleting any evidence of deviation one of the tactics you use to put out fires?

One of these things is not (apparently) like the other.

unSane — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 04:39:03 -0800

Is seems curious to me that this post was deleted for editorialising while this post remained. The first post doesn't really have any editorialising. "Why does this keep happening?" is a question, with an assertion ('this keeps happening') wrapped up in it. It does appear to keep happening, so there's that. The second post made no pretense at getting the other side of the story (eg from Columbia) and apparently misrepresented Dodik's position. It presented one side's assumption of what transpired ('they refused entry to everyone with a Bosnian surname') as fact. Both posts are borderline newsfilter, but the second is more clearly outragefilter. There was no problem in the discussion of the first but the second had comments removed from the OP who clearly wasn't happy with the amount of outrage that was generated.

Correcting assumptions in AskMe?

smorange — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:25:22 -0800

Bad deletions. I didn't post, but I did see the deleted posts. What this guy is doing is possibly illegal--and possibly not. I don't see how this is different from any other time posters have corrected bad assumptions in AskMe, which they've generally been allowed to do.

rar bad idea may become bad law

Foci for Analysis — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 07:25:26 -0800

Is this a good reason to delete a fpp: Can we maybe have this discussion once something has happened and not "rar bad idea may become bad law"? Surely we can discuss laws before they are actually made?

Why are threads closed?

b33j — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 06:42:16 -0800

Why are threads closed to new comments after 30 days in AskMetafilter? I'm not saying it's a bad policy, just wondering the reason why? I came across something today, via google actually - I should have known AskMe would know about estranged parents dying of cancer and reconciliation etc that I wanted to post to, but couldn't. I knew nobody would probably ever see my post but that was okay, I just wanted to say, you know, me too, this is what I'm dealing with, it's surprisingly difficult after you've spent years... Okay whoops.. So please the policy on why threads get closed? It's probably really simple and obvious. Thanks.

Nobody to blame but myself...

running order squabble fest — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:58:05 -0800

If a link has been posted and deleted, am I right to assume that reposting the link, even as a sub-link in a post leading on another link about the same thing, is a bad idea? Having not seen it on MetaFilter, I just wrote a post on the Powersgaming LAN party controversy, which I thought had brought up some interesting questions about intersectionality, in particular, in the discussions around it. When previewing, it turns out that there was a post about it, which contained two links and nothing else, and restless_nomad had deleted it, on the grounds that it was "Look at these assholes" material - with a dash of LOLTexas, to boot. So, I'm guessing that what I should do at this point is crumple my post up and bounce it into the waste paper basket. Is that right? If a link is already on MetaFilter, one shouldn't post a double, either even if or possibly especially because the first one was deleted?

You know that Flickr thing? Don't do that.

unSane — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 07:18:02 -0800

What exactly is it we're not supposed to do with Flickr links? Evidently there's something we really really can't do but unfortunately there's no clue as to what it is. Can someone enlighten me?