a paragraph break callout December 25, 2006 12:42 PM   Subscribe

I know that it's Christmas, and filmgeek seems like a great guy, and this is indeed a great post. But are the paragraph breaks really necessary? It seems like they don't really add anything to the post, and they don't make the link any more clear or insightful. I don't really see why they have to be there, and they kind of throw off the eye when browsing the blue.

Sorry if this is the Worst Callout Ever. I realize that the topic of line breaks has been touched on before, but as far as I can tell, we haven't gotten into the paragraph breaks too much. What is the policy on this? (To be clear, I don't intend this as a filmgeek callout, just a paragraph break callout).
posted by rossination to Etiquette/Policy at 12:42 PM (30 comments total)

Incidentally, I apparently don't follow my own advice, as I had meant to put the second paragraph in this first comment. Obviously, I botcheded it.
posted by rossination at 12:43 PM on December 25, 2006


I was expecting to see some insanely long post, not 3 damn lines.

Yeah, I'm gonna go for possible candidate for Worst Callout Ever.

Seriously, if this sort of thing really sticks in your craw that much, you need to have a few egg nogs and relax.
posted by twiggy at 12:57 PM on December 25, 2006


Fair enough. Maybe it was the Christmas carols that were getting to me.
posted by rossination at 12:59 PM on December 25, 2006



Yeah, I'm gonna go for possible candidate for Worst Callout Ever.


A post to MetaTalk != callout. MetaTalk is where you talk about style, standards and policy.

Some weeks ago, I resisted posting about PreacherTom's exact duplicate postings between MetaFilter and Slashdot, confining myself to an in-thread comment instead, for precisely this reason -- that so many people think that MetaTalk is exclusively for berating someone. (In the event it did turn out that he needed berating, but the time I was more interested in what seemed a minor ettiquette issue.)
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:07 PM on December 25, 2006


*gives filmgeek a noogie*

There. That seems like a fair punishment.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:11 PM on December 25, 2006


Ow crash.

Now I have to go find a brush.
posted by filmgeek at 1:13 PM on December 25, 2006


I removed the line breaks.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:12 PM on December 25, 2006


One thing the not-called-out post does bring up, is that filmgeek said he did an "exact search for www.jeffdeboer.com and it came up blank." and indeed, if you search for www.jeffdeboer.com on metafilter's search, you come up blank.

so with just jeffdeboer, also.

it appears that no part of an embedded link is searchable.

what's someone wishing to avoid a double to do? especially given all the fpp's with one word/phrase, no context links.
posted by 3.2.3 at 2:39 PM on December 25, 2006


Bah. Humbug.
posted by Kwine at 2:41 PM on December 25, 2006


3.2.3, I was wondering about that just the other day. I hear people talking about searching for doubles by the url, and I'm not sure how to do that.
posted by mosessis at 2:50 PM on December 25, 2006


There used to be a URL search that would pull up previous posts. Don't recall why it was removed, but it'd be my pony request for 2006 to get it back.
posted by mediareport at 2:55 PM on December 25, 2006


MetaTalk is where you talk about style, standards and policy.

I'd expect fewer posts if that were true.
posted by ryanrs at 3:04 PM on December 25, 2006


The URL search is still there, functioning just as it always has, but it only searches for the stuff in the first URL field.

hint: you could just put a snippet of a URL there, it doesn't have to be http://www.example.com/.

Basically, you prevent double posts by searching on the most unique part of a URL possible (sometimes just the domain, sometimes a keyword, sometimes the filename).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:06 PM on December 25, 2006


hint: you could just put a snippet of a URL there, it doesn't have to be http://www.example.com/

doesn't work. search for just jeffdeboer and see.
posted by 3.2.3 at 3:32 PM on December 25, 2006


Christ, what an asshole.
posted by grouse at 3:43 PM on December 25, 2006


3.2.3, put jeffdeboer in the URL field, put foo in the description, hit preview, and it works. See?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:54 PM on December 25, 2006


Christ, what an asshole.

Hell of a thing to say on his birthday.
posted by George_Spiggott at 3:58 PM on December 25, 2006 [2 favorites]


doesn't work. search for just jeffdeboer and see.

It works just fine for me. Searching for either "jeffdeboer.com" or "jeffdeboer" both work. Are you sure you didn't neglect to change "in the past year" to "since day one" in the date range?
posted by Rhomboid at 3:59 PM on December 25, 2006


Hell of a thing to say on his birthday.

rossination or filmgeek?
posted by grouse at 5:12 PM on December 25, 2006


The URL search is still there, functioning just as it always has, but it only searches for the stuff in the first URL field.

Matt, I tried that before posting my comment, using the url http://jeffdeboer.com/. Just so you know, that does not work. It probably should, along with http://www.jeffdeboer.com.
posted by mediareport at 5:13 PM on December 25, 2006


mediareport, the nature of the search is one for exact strings. I can't easily search with and without www. and with and without all the slashes and http's.

It works when you figure out the most unique thing about the post/url you want to make, then search on it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:24 PM on December 25, 2006


Here, if you need proof.
posted by mediareport at 5:24 PM on December 25, 2006


Oh, ok. I'd have thought searching with and without "www" would be easy. S'how much I know about search programming.
posted by mediareport at 5:25 PM on December 25, 2006


Matt ...

Whoa. I don't post a URL/Link title (usually) when I post on the blue. I like to (obviously) format my posts manually.

I specifically did the search from the Yahoo search in the corner.

I'll stop extra line formatting from the future, but personally I find that things like breaks make things more readable.

I can't stand the posts to the blue where it's just one mega-paragraph. I have a feeling this has more to do with how one looks at MeFi. I tend to use an RSS reader and not the site itself (to minimize reloads).
posted by filmgeek at 5:49 PM on December 25, 2006


I hate line breaks on the front page, because it hogs space and looks ugly. If your post is more than one paragraph, put anything past the first paragraph inside. Because if readers are interested in your post, they will click to go inside, and if they aren't, they don't want to see the whole thing and aren't reading it, anyway.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:15 PM on December 25, 2006 [1 favorite]


I hate line breaks on the front page, because it hogs space and looks ugly. If your post is more than one paragraph, put anything past the first paragraph inside.

Listen up, people. She's a superhero, she knows what she's talking about. Knock it off witht he damn paragraph breaks.
posted by languagehat at 5:54 AM on December 26, 2006


Yeah.
posted by dame at 6:26 AM on December 26, 2006


Double. :)
posted by monju_bosatsu at 6:34 AM on December 26, 2006


The paragraph breaks, but the summary quotes bend.
posted by cortex at 7:35 AM on December 26, 2006


3.2.3, put jeffdeboer in the URL field, put foo in the description, hit preview, and it works. See?

dude, i see your png image. what i do not see is a search page accessible from any link i have access to on the site which looks anything like that. not the search link at the top. not the one at the bottom. not from anywhere on the "post a link" page even. none of the search pages i can find have a "url" field or a title of "link search."

on preview: after further hunting, i see what i have to do is "post a link" and then preview, not that link i am trying to post, but the aforementioned significant portion of the link.

this is a usability problem.

the funny thing, though, is *now* searching on jeffdeboer *does* return the previous posts from the regular search link.

seeing y2karl post a double today after searching for his link made me come back to this thread to check to see if there was an answer. this is a usability problem that is obviously causing confusion for more than a couple of people.
posted by 3.2.3 at 12:05 PM on January 5, 2007


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