First complaint about newsfilter? (Oct. 2000) October 15, 2000 6:34 PM Subscribe
Here's an idea I think sucks, but I thought I'd point it out.
There's been a fair amount of moaning and groaning about MeFi becoming nothing more than an echo for CNN, Yahoo, BBC, MSNBC and two or three other major sites for news.
If Matt feels this really is a problem and if he wants to prevent it, he could implement a parser on the "URL" field for new posts which looked for certain source sites, and simply refused to permit them to be used. In other words, if I post an article and the URL field contains "msnbc.com" then the posting code would respond with an error telling me that MeFi is not intended for those kinds of things.
Of course, the people doing the kvetching about this don't own the system, and their opinions don't actually count. But it's come up before and it will probably come up again, and it can be solved technologically. It would depend entirely on how Matt feels about the problem (or if he even thinks there's a problem) and how much work he'd be willing to do to solve it.
I don't expect action on this soon, if ever, since Matt suddenly has other more important things on his mind (or he better damned well have).
There's been a fair amount of moaning and groaning about MeFi becoming nothing more than an echo for CNN, Yahoo, BBC, MSNBC and two or three other major sites for news.
If Matt feels this really is a problem and if he wants to prevent it, he could implement a parser on the "URL" field for new posts which looked for certain source sites, and simply refused to permit them to be used. In other words, if I post an article and the URL field contains "msnbc.com" then the posting code would respond with an error telling me that MeFi is not intended for those kinds of things.
Of course, the people doing the kvetching about this don't own the system, and their opinions don't actually count. But it's come up before and it will probably come up again, and it can be solved technologically. It would depend entirely on how Matt feels about the problem (or if he even thinks there's a problem) and how much work he'd be willing to do to solve it.
I don't expect action on this soon, if ever, since Matt suddenly has other more important things on his mind (or he better damned well have).
Yeah, it's very easy to write something that blocked certain URLs. Very easy. But I never said I'd ban it entirely. I don't think it's that bad of a "problem" personally.
What's up with that last sentence Steven. Are you insinuating that I never I do anything around here? What the hell does "(or he better damned well have)" mean?
wtf?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:18 PM on October 15, 2000
What's up with that last sentence Steven. Are you insinuating that I never I do anything around here? What the hell does "(or he better damned well have)" mean?
wtf?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:18 PM on October 15, 2000
oh wait, I think that's a reference to the wedding. Sorry! :)
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:19 PM on October 15, 2000
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:19 PM on October 15, 2000
Congratulations on your wedding, Matt, and I hope you are very happy.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 2:04 PM on October 16, 2000
posted by Steven Den Beste at 2:04 PM on October 16, 2000
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posted by cCranium at 7:47 PM on October 15, 2000