when your pointless thread is deleted, you repost it.

November 13, 2001 9:56 AM

so, yah. when your pointless thread is deleted, you repost it.
posted by moz to Etiquette/Policy at 9:56 AM (13 comments total)

FWIW, he emailed me about it, and I said go ahead. The link is to something different than "kabul is about to be conquered" it's about the culture of freedom.

Maybe it is time to program a double post button that emails me instantly, instead of people having to post comments saying as much.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:03 AM on November 13, 2001

For your own sake, make it only work the first time it's pressed?
posted by walrus at 10:07 AM on November 13, 2001

i gotcha. sorry, then.
posted by moz at 10:14 AM on November 13, 2001

I said go ahead.

oop. Could you delete my comment (in that thread)? (Sorry!)
posted by mattpfeff at 10:15 AM on November 13, 2001

I'm glad it's gone up again. It was an important, interesting link, and it should never have been flooded. I am glad that Mathowie allowed TTT to repost the link. I have reposted my comment in it as well.
posted by skylar at 10:16 AM on November 13, 2001

I wonder if strovos the chicken understood the strain he was putting on the server by posting so many one liners to the deleted thread?
posted by Mick at 10:28 AM on November 13, 2001

If I could offer a suggestion, TTT could have made it a little clearer what his intentions were in the link text--"when the cat's away..." perhaps gave the impression of a flippant or inconsequential newslink, and encouraged people to respond playfully (I'm not defending that, just saying it). If it's really about "the culture of freedom," saying so might help to focus the initial response and encourage a more interesting discussion.

This may be worth considering in general--link texts that are snarky, tendentious, cryptic or overly focused on boffo laffs will probably elicit similar responses; if you want serious discussion you should offer something thoughtful to respond to (and no, I don't mean "discuss" or Fray style "have you ever gotten a shave?"-type posts).
posted by rodii at 10:31 AM on November 13, 2001

Great point, rodii, I would agree. I came up with "the culture of freedom" after reading the link, ignoring what I saw in the link text.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:37 AM on November 13, 2001

Good catch, Walrus. Imagine the humor(?) of Matt getting several messages about a double-post.
Extending the idea, would it be overly complicated to have the button redirect the person making the claim to a form where they'd have to provide a link to the original?

It'll save you the work of confirming, kill abuse, or at least make it inconvenient, and also serve as a notice in case of an oops. I often tab through links and someimtes miss.
posted by Su at 1:30 PM on November 13, 2001

I think it is a good lesson on how people perceive your intentions. If you just write a clever one-liner, it will take considerable effort for the reader to get the point. I well written post can easily be understood and spark interest, and sometimes be just as witty.
posted by hotdoughnutsnow at 3:43 PM on November 13, 2001

Maybe it is time to program a double post button that emails me instantly, instead of people having to post comments saying as much.

If people could just leave it at one comment DP comment per DP post. Keep the jokes and witticisms down (I'm including myself in this) and please, take any further comments here.

It's like the "Remembrance Day" post. I felt that a whole lot of us were being punished by a few people who thought the post shouldn't exist, and when it continued to exist tried to sabotage it or at the very least, make it impossible to carry on a conversation within it. Yet we weren't responsible for any errors in posting the first post. And we couldn't post it again, or it would be a double post.
posted by lucien at 11:43 PM on November 13, 2001

Maybe it is time to program a double post button that emails me instantly.

How about a double post button with a text box where you can paste the duplicated link. Then you can keep a count of the number of times thread X has been flagged as a DP with regards to thread Y, and delete it when it gets over a "threshold of annoyance". Because some people (I may be in a very small minority here) don't find DPs in the least annoying, and can't work out why anyone would get so worked up about something they can so easily ignore. At least this way, the DP police can keep themselves happy targetting and destroying their most irksome threads, while the ones that don't really bother anyone can be left to fizzle.
posted by dlewis at 4:50 AM on November 14, 2001

If people could just leave it at one comment DP comment per DP post

Yes. A lot of people already do this and the thread rolls happily along until the whole thing is sorted out.
A piecemeal solution could be a permanent Possible Double Posts thread here on MeTa. Users could just bang in their suspected link with a minimun of identification. Something like:
Peruvian coup?
Star Trek memorabilia!
Favourite turkey recipes...

"?! meaning "possible DP"; "!" meaning "definite DP" and "..."meaning "not technically a DP, but hey..."

The Finnish sparseness of the thread would also discourage facetiousness(As if the MeFi bunch wouldn't soon find a witty way round that!

posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:26 AM on November 14, 2001