Display reasons for deletions on the deleted post?

January 11, 2006 11:45 AM

Thanks to bloglines, I often see Ask MeFi questions that were deleted in my updates, only to see the "Nothing to see here, move along..." error when I try to view the question. This bothers me, for some reason. Is there any way to make the page for a deleted question show why the question was deleted?

For example, why was this deleted? It doesn't seem out of scope for Ask MeFi:

"If you could take a sabbatical from everything in your life, what would you pursue? Forget the job, forget the kids, forget the mortgage. Take one year of your life and do something inspirational, heroic, adventurous, altruisitic, or any adjective. Do not worry about money, do not worry about health insurance, do not worry about coming back. What would you pursue, why would you choose it, and how would you do it?"
posted by bobot to Etiquette/Policy at 11:45 AM (21 comments total)

Please note that this isn't an effort to backseat-moderate, and I'm not the person or in any way related to the person who posted the example question- it's entirely curiousity that motivates this post, not offense.
posted by bobot at 11:46 AM on January 11, 2006

ChatFiltery.
posted by Plutor at 11:46 AM on January 11, 2006

It's chatfilter survey question. It's actually more chatfiltery then most deleted survey questions.
posted by delmoi at 11:47 AM on January 11, 2006

In general, if you need to ask a survey question, you should articulate some reason why you need to ask it. (at least, that’s what appears to be the difference between deleted and non-deleted chatfilter)
posted by delmoi at 11:48 AM on January 11, 2006

The question was just an example, really- what really bugs me is that there's no "why this was deleted" page for people to learn from. Doesn't the blue show why a post was deleted? Could that be moved to the green?
posted by bobot at 11:48 AM on January 11, 2006

there's no "why this was deleted" page for people to learn from.

There are plenty of ways for people to learn about what's appropriate for this site. Reading the guidelines, for example, is a pretty cracking way to start.
posted by scody at 11:52 AM on January 11, 2006

Fair enough. Thanks for the answers, folks.
posted by bobot at 12:03 PM on January 11, 2006

There is a "why was this deleted?" box for AskMe that Matt hasn't coded into being visible on the site yet. The why was this deleted reason for that post is "chatfilter" I wrote the poster an email explaining what that meant and to suggest other venues for his post, but the email bounced, so maybe he can pick this up here.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 12:05 PM on January 11, 2006

I think that was a perfectly fine question. That one should have stayed.

Too bad it doesn't work like the blue where deletion just closes the thread and removes it from the listing of threads, yet it is still there if you want to look.
posted by caddis at 12:06 PM on January 11, 2006

I haven't coded up the closed thread w/ reason yet, but I'll try that after lunch.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:17 PM on January 11, 2006

pass the spaghetti, please.
posted by quonsar at 12:36 PM on January 11, 2006

I beg your pardon?
posted by spaghetti at 12:53 PM on January 11, 2006

I'm guessing he flushes the comments so that it doesn't cloud the overall quality of askMefi.
posted by furtive at 1:16 PM on January 11, 2006

This goes back to the fundamental differences between MetaFilter, which gets the best freshest code and the most attention from Matt, and MetaTalk and AskMeta that are both running on code that isn't up to the same speed as MetaFilter. For example, the oft cited time zone bug, the inability to see the number of comments in a thread from within it - (you can on The Blue but nowhere else).

Meanwhile we get shiny new headers.
posted by geekyguy at 3:44 PM on January 11, 2006

geekyguy, it's more like MetaFilter gets the best freshest experimental, most-likely-to-break code that I eventually get around to applying site-wide.

No one has ever asked for # of comments in a thread on the other sites, but I'll add that, and I'll add timezones when I add the deletion reason (probably tonight, since I spent all day making the plain text theme work across the sites).

It's not that I neglect the other sites, I just try new stuff first on MetaFilter then apply to other sites when the bugs are worked out (like tags, etc). If you're looking for any evidence that I don't neglect Ask MeFi, notice that it's the only section that has an automatic More Inside feature.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:50 PM on January 11, 2006

PissingInTheWindFilter
posted by matteo at 3:51 PM on January 11, 2006

This is a really totalitarian idea, but I sometimes wish there was a Reason-for-flagging tag that was along the lines of "This person obviously did not do a simple google search before posting this question!"
posted by elisabeth r at 3:51 PM on January 11, 2006

pure pasta.
posted by quonsar at 3:52 PM on January 11, 2006

I spent all day making the plain text theme work across the sites).

for which i thank you! I've been waiting for this feature ever since askme came out.

i'll never have to see green again.
posted by fishfucker at 4:40 PM on January 11, 2006

I didn't mean to imply that you were neglecting anything, (snark about the headers aside).

Things are looking good around here, thanks mathowie!
posted by geekyguy at 4:54 PM on January 11, 2006

Incidentally, as far as sections being neglected, I'd love to see Projects get the 'standard' CSS (ust for consistency's sake). It would be nice to see 'the red.'
posted by clgregor at 6:28 PM on January 11, 2006