self-flagging

December 12, 2009 10:27 AM

Flagging own comments for deletion? Is there a convention?

I made a comment here that, in retrospect, is inaccurate and makes use of the @twit convention. The comment isn't awful exactly, just not particularly helpful.

I'm hoping the mods'll kill it, so I flagged my own comment under 'other'. Do we have any convention for self-flagging?

posted by leotrotsky to Etiquette/Policy at 10:27 AM (85 comments total)

I saw the flag, checked out the comment and assumed it was some irritated MeFite claiming that the @ convention "breaks the guidelines". When we first check out flags, we don't know who is flagging them. It's only later in the game [if there seem to be a lot of weird flags, or someone's flagging a lot in MeTa for example] that we'll check things out. So yeah we have no idea if you self-flag most of the time. I deleted your comment. You can just email or IM us if you need something like that done, fwiw.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:30 AM on December 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

I've killed your comment for you.

Normal convention if you want something of yours gone as a case of commenter's regret is to drop us a note via the contact form post-haste. While it's fine for you to flag your own comment (i.e. it doesn't cause us problems on our end or anything), note that we're going to see it as just another flag, and if something not-really-problematic has one flag on it we're unlikely to do anything about it.

The exception there is stuff like double and display error—one flag like that communicates to us clearly that there's something broken about the comment, so self-flagging on that stuff is often sufficient.

Because we don't look at who flagged what more than once in a blue moon, I have no idea how often people self-flag for non display/double reasons. I might go looking sometime, but I bet it's not too often.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:31 AM on December 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

By the time I had written my comment, cortex had deleted your comment.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:31 AM on December 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

jessamyn: When we first check out flags, we don't know who is flagging them.

Good to know, I'll stop self-flagging and switch to mod-PMing in the future.
posted by paisley henosis at 10:31 AM on December 12, 2009

...the more you know. ♩ ♩ ♩ thanks!
posted by leotrotsky at 10:39 AM on December 12, 2009

I've also deleted your comment, just to be sure.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 10:45 AM on December 12, 2009 [12 favorites]

Deletions will continue until morale improves.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:50 AM on December 12, 2009 [23 favorites]

Delete this.
posted by gman at 10:53 AM on December 12, 2009

I don't work for you!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:54 AM on December 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

Actually, I'm the high bidder on mathowie's ebay auction of Metafilter.
posted by gman at 10:57 AM on December 12, 2009

* cries *
posted by baby_jessamyn at 11:10 AM on December 12, 2009 [19 favorites]

Never ebay while high, gman.
posted by not_on_display at 11:11 AM on December 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

My mom always said self-flagging will make you go blind, so be warned.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 11:13 AM on December 12, 2009

I am part of an ancient order of monks who practice self-flagulation to purify ourselves and repent for the posting sins we commit.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 11:27 AM on December 12, 2009

Note: Everyone needs a flag.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 11:31 AM on December 12, 2009

Let your self-flag fly!
posted by The Whelk at 11:34 AM on December 12, 2009

Can we get a flag that makes it clear to the mods that this is a comment that the user has asked to be deleted?
posted by Effigy2000 at 11:42 AM on December 12, 2009

I think making it relatively hard to "take back" your comments keeps the tenor of the site more even and makes people think (hopefully) a little bit more before hitting Post. Plus, cleaning up holes in conversation? Not fun
posted by The Whelk at 11:45 AM on December 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

No flag no country! These are the rules, that I've......just made up.
posted by lazaruslong at 11:52 AM on December 12, 2009 [3 favorites]

You could spell out the reason while flagging.
posted by Rhomboid at 12:05 PM on December 12, 2009

we all know where this is going....
posted by The Whelk at 12:10 PM on December 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

I pledge allegiance, to Queen Fragg, and Her mighty State of Hysteria...
posted by Skorgu at 12:27 PM on December 12, 2009

Eh, just call Matt.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:36 PM on December 12, 2009

Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:50 PM on December 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

Getting in the sack with a mod will not get you a gold star, however.
posted by hattifattener at 12:52 PM on December 12, 2009

sack
posted by The Whelk at 12:57 PM on December 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

+1 for the tater-sack cross-reference.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:58 PM on December 12, 2009

My mom always said self-flagging will make you go blind, so be warned.

I thought that was self-FAVORITING. Maybe each only makes you go blind in one eye? Or can you go double blind? Does the double negative mean that then you can see again? Or maybe you'll get XRAY VISION.

If Superman can see through anything... then he can see through everything... which is like, not being able to see at all, because where does "everything" stop? Oh, lead boxes. That's where.

I swear to this pretty unicorn that no drugs were involved in the writing of this comment.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 12:59 PM on December 12, 2009

+1 for the tater-sack cross-reference.

THE WHELK HAS LEVELED UP

Do I put more stats in Snark or Hug?
posted by The Whelk at 1:07 PM on December 12, 2009

Never ebay while high, gman.

Right now would be a particularly bad time for that.
posted by gman at 1:21 PM on December 12, 2009

Flagging own comments for deletion? Is there a convention?

I went to the Flagging Own Comments for Deletion Convention last year (FlOwComDeCon).

Worst. Convention. Ever.
posted by FishBike at 1:21 PM on December 12, 2009 [6 favorites]

D'oh!
posted by gman at 1:21 PM on December 12, 2009

Do I put more stats in Snark or Hug?

just get the Florence-rainer 2nd level Quip feat. Don't try to multi-class at this point.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:22 PM on December 12, 2009

Maybe blow it all on the +7 Bracers Of Taters (softcore).
posted by The Whelk at 1:24 PM on December 12, 2009

Right now would be a particularly bad time for that.

*ahem*
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:52 PM on December 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

there's a Vancouver, Washington?
posted by gman at 1:54 PM on December 12, 2009

that's right. focus on the irrelevant details.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:04 PM on December 12, 2009

there's a Vancouver, Washington?

I didn't know either, but there was a story about it in last week's NY Times. They have a little league and a library and everything. No flag, though.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 2:11 PM on December 12, 2009

For most of my childhood I didn't realize there was a Vancouver besides the one in WA. See also: Milwaukee, OR.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:14 PM on December 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

When did you first learn Canada even existed?
posted by gman at 2:18 PM on December 12, 2009

No flag, though.

Liar!
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:27 PM on December 12, 2009

When I was a kid, I didn't know there was a Portland outside of Maine. I knew of Canada, cause my mimere told me all about le nord froid et le feves au lard. The way she told it though, you all were really short and half bleu. So I had to go and see for myself, and this is not the case.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 2:29 PM on December 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

One time when I was young I got India and Indiana mixed up and insisted that India was a state in the US, and hilarity ensued. Well, not really.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:41 PM on December 12, 2009

India is, of course, a state of mind.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:44 PM on December 12, 2009

Liar!

I would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 2:53 PM on December 12, 2009

"When did you first learn Canada even existed"
posted by gman

I'm still not convinced it actually exists.

BURN! Actually I <3 Canadia.
posted by not_on_display at 3:06 PM on December 12, 2009

Err, I mean what Burhanistan said. I am going to leave now, or "take off" as they say in the GWN.
posted by not_on_display at 3:07 PM on December 12, 2009

It's a conspiracy of cartographers, like the England place.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:08 PM on December 12, 2009

Err, I mean what Burhanistan said. I am going to leave now, or "take off" as they say in the GWN.

Try trading in your gold star for a comment edit.
posted by gman at 3:13 PM on December 12, 2009

I tried, but the tattoo place said they're permanent.
posted by not_on_display at 3:19 PM on December 12, 2009

there's a Vancouver, Washington?

The Portland (OR) metro area is known for stealing city names.
posted by qvantamon at 3:21 PM on December 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

London, Ontario has repeatedly messed up my Google searches.

Especially when they have a Covent Garden Market! It baffles me.
posted by vacapinta at 3:26 PM on December 12, 2009

Massachusetts has a Mt. Washington.
posted by not_on_display at 3:42 PM on December 12, 2009

India is, of course, a state of mind.

Or so the hippies I've known seemed to think.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:57 PM on December 12, 2009

the tattoo place said they're permanent.

YOU DO NOT HAVE A GOLD STAR.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:59 PM on December 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

When I was a kid on the east coast I didn't know "Yosemite" was a place and I thought the cartoon character with the sixshooters was named "Old Seven-Eyed Sam."

Also, until I was about 25 I thought the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge were the same thing.
posted by drjimmy11 at 4:25 PM on December 12, 2009

Also I watched "Fresh Prince" for years and years saying "I can't believe he just dumped DJ Jazzy Jeff to be on a sitcom" until one day when I was about 30 it came to me in a flash why Will's best friend on the show was named "Jazz."
posted by drjimmy11 at 4:27 PM on December 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

Who tattoos comments on themselves, anyway?
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:27 PM on December 12, 2009

London, Ontario has repeatedly messed up my Google searches.

Don't get me started on Ontario, CA. That's maliciously deceptive.
posted by qvantamon at 4:30 PM on December 12, 2009

Now I want to get a tl;dr tattoo.
posted by not_on_display at 4:43 PM on December 12, 2009

When I'm driving to the east coast of the US, the road signs for Mexico freak me out. Did I fall asleep at the wheel... for 2000 miles? Oh no, wait, Mexico, NY, not Mexico the country. Carry on.
posted by FishBike at 4:44 PM on December 12, 2009

not_on_display: "Now I want to get a tl;dr tattoo"

Dare I ask... where?
posted by FishBike at 4:45 PM on December 12, 2009

too long; didn't root?
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:08 PM on December 12, 2009

London, Ontario has repeatedly messed up my Google searches.

There's a tiny town called Sydney in Nova Scotia. Occasionally we get news reports of tourists who fly there by mistake, and think "Where the fuck is the opera house? And why is it so fucking cold & bacony here?"
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:16 PM on December 12, 2009

Dare I ask... where?

Probably a tattoo parlor.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:19 PM on December 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

YOU DO NOT HAVE A GOLD STAR.

Maybe you just haven't looked thoroughly enough?
posted by shelleycat at 5:43 PM on December 12, 2009

69 70 COMMENTS
By the Magnetic Fields
posted by The Whelk at 6:39 PM on December 12, 2009

When did you first learn Canada even existed?

I grew up on an Army base in Germany. My parents had Canadian friends, so we'd occassionally go visit them on their base. I remember going to their PX (General Store) and seeing that they had waaaay better stuff. I thought Canada was some kind of Shangri-La. I've never been (yet) so for all I know it is.
posted by TooFewShoes at 7:27 PM on December 12, 2009

Our company has an office in Portland, Oregon and one in Portland, Maine. We refer to the former as Portland and the latter as Maine.

I used to confuse former and latter all the time, until it dawned on me that first and former both start with f and last and latter both start with l.
posted by nooneyouknow at 7:34 PM on December 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

Oh, when you delete a post remember to ask Meatbomb to delete it from the astral plane as well.
posted by qvantamon at 8:02 PM on December 12, 2009

THE ASTRAL PLANE IS THE GRAVEYARD OF POSTS.


IT'S NOT VERY INTERESTING.
posted by The Whelk at 8:25 PM on December 12, 2009

My brother once got a job in Portland, ME and the company folded a few weeks after he got there. He got a job offer in Portland OR and packed up and drove cross country only to have that company fold as well. It was a strange odyssey.
posted by readery at 8:31 PM on December 12, 2009

nooneyouknow, that is fabulous. I made a similar connection in middle school: Republican = red = right = religious. Also, port and left have the same number of letters.
posted by Night_owl at 8:32 PM on December 12, 2009

Through the late 1960s, despite cultural change which made social and even legislative acceptance of self-flagging an increasingly foregone conclusion, much of the psychiatric community continued to regard the behavior as a pathology. Self-flagging's entry in the DSM-II, first published in 1968, typifies the APA's very conservative approach to sexual disorders during the period. The manual's 1969 revision emphatically and unambiguously categorizes the behavior as a Sexual Deviation, albeit one that was thought to be unusually responsive to treatment. One seemingly minor alteration to the diagnostic criteria in 1971, the removal of a suggestion that self-flagging must occur in the context of an underlying Cluster B Personality Disorder, set the stage for some of the more dramatic change to come: in a sense, it decoupled "flaggers" from the more severe pathologies which had for decades justified treatments like electrical aversion therapy and neurobehavioral surgery, and which today are universally condemned. In 1972, at the APA spring convention in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, two young Stanford clinicians went even further, declaring talk therapy and hormone therapy to be preferable in all but the most severe cases of self-flagging (those in which the behavior caused "unusual and persistent distress" to the patient or to family members, those involving civil commentment and/or self-flagging activities in the presence of a minor child, and those deemed particularly refractory to other treatment).

In the early 1970s, a group of young, relatively liberal-minded psychiatrists began to take over leadership of the APA, and challenges to numerous antiquated diagnostic criteria began to find a more receptive audience. In the DSM-II of 1973, self-flagging was quietly reclassified as a paraphilia, and in the disorder's entry it was implied, though not directly stated, that most cases were likely to be benign. A large, though largely unheralded, University of Wisconsin study, which analyzed more than 40 years of United States military personality testing data and concluded that daily and even hourly self-flaggers were just as "high-functioning and well-adjusted" as non-flaggers, is likely to have been the catalyst for the manual's precipitous change in tone. Self-flagging, once thought to be an untreatable and nearly unspeakable perversion, was now officially little more than a minor deviance. Although it would take a further 15 years and two name changes - "Auto-Flagging" was finally dropped from the DSM-IIIR in 1987 - the stage was now set for de-medicalization.

Exerpted from:
Self-flagging and its psychiatric treatment in the 20th century.
Michael Blake II, MD, FRCPsych. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2002;66(12):1287-1289.
posted by killdevil at 8:51 PM on December 12, 2009

this is cause I like taters isn't it?
posted by The Whelk at 8:54 PM on December 12, 2009

There's a tiny town called Sydney in Nova Scotia.

There's a town called Sydney on Vancouver.
posted by jgirl at 8:54 PM on December 12, 2009

Is that in Washington state?
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:08 PM on December 12, 2009

Story has it that they were going to name the state Columbia, but they didn't want it to be confused with the District of Columbia, so they named it Washington.
posted by hattifattener at 1:47 AM on December 13, 2009

It's on Vancouver Island.
posted by jgirl at 7:26 AM on December 13, 2009

Yeah BUUUUUT, The Astral Plane is *different* they ride on the wrong side of the road and stuff.
posted by The Whelk at 5:06 PM on December 13, 2009

So Australia is America's Astral Plane?
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:24 PM on December 13, 2009

(it's either us, or England - I made your choice for you)
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:24 PM on December 13, 2009

It's more like an Alternate Dimension.
posted by The Whelk at 6:17 AM on December 14, 2009

Occasionally we get news reports of tourists who fly there by mistake, and think "Where the fuck is the opera house? And why is it so fucking cold & bacony here?"

There are similar stories going around about the swedish town Vännäs. "Vännäs", you see, kind of sounds like "Venice", so there you go. I very much suspect that all those stories are urban legends, though.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 6:59 AM on December 14, 2009

I saw the flag, checked out the comment and assumed it was some irritated MeFite claiming that the @ convention "breaks the guidelines". When we first check out flags, we don't know who is flagging them.

Oh, poop. I always thought you'd see the names of who posted and who flagged, as a first-order "is this worth checking out or are the children pissing in each others' cornflakes" filter. And, too, a "user regrets own post" flag.

Guess I'll stop flagging my own posts.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:27 AM on December 14, 2009