Asana va bitch July 12, 2011 8:47 PM   Subscribe

Why didn't this thread get deleted?

I'm not being snarky or angry or anything, just curious. I've seen much better posts get deleted, and I thought this was pretty thin, as did another commenter.
posted by MattMangels to MetaFilter-Related at 8:47 PM (30 comments total)

No one felt like deleting it.

or the cabal has a thing for yoga. but remember kids: there is no cabal.
posted by zachlipton at 8:52 PM on July 12, 2011


Ask not why something didn't get deleted, but rather why other things did.
posted by Justinian at 8:52 PM on July 12, 2011 [5 favorites]


I'm guessing it didn't get many flags. Did you flag it?
posted by Gator at 8:56 PM on July 12, 2011 [1 favorite]


Wasn't great, wasn't terrible, didn't seem to be starting any fights, and I'm not sure anybody on Team Mod is enough of a yoga person to have a strong context for knowing whether it was interesting content on that front or not?

Borderline "not great" stuff is just that: borderline. Sometimes it stays, sometimes it goes, there's a lot of chance and circumstance involved in that fuzzy grey area stuff. No small part of the difficulty in analyzing it is that different people have different feelings about which posts are better than which, etc.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:59 PM on July 12, 2011 [1 favorite]


It was a tumblr blog about cats... oh wait...
posted by TheBones at 9:09 PM on July 12, 2011


I woke up and deleted two heavily flagged threads this morning and that one seemed like next on the chopping block and then I figured I was just being crabby and deletion-crazy and so left it alone. Didn't like it, but it got a few flags trickling in all day and never really hit our "this has to go" radar.

I thought this was pretty thin, as did another commenter.

We deleted a few "this sucks" comments from the thread, yours and someone else's, but otherwise discussion seemed to be going okay and I wanted things to settle out a bit more, personally. There's an ebb and flow to how things go around here and two threads being deleted in rapid succession may make the next not-great thread ever so slightly less likely to get deleted. That is my best explanation.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:15 PM on July 12, 2011 [1 favorite]


Gator, I was going to flag it but I thought, "naw, there's no way this isn't getting deleted so why bother". You guys sure showed me!

Satisfactory answer, cortex. Do you guys wanna talk about something else?
posted by MattMangels at 9:16 PM on July 12, 2011


Oh, and Jessamyn I don't blame you for deleting my comment. I too was in a somewhat bad mood since I was at Dulles waiting on a delayed flight.
posted by MattMangels at 9:17 PM on July 12, 2011


Didn't like it, but it got a few flags trickling in all day and never really hit our "this has to go" radar.

and
Borderline "not great" stuff is just that: borderline.

along with a pretty safe post, as in not a whole lot of arguments means that even a thin post will stay up I guess.
posted by TheBones at 9:36 PM on July 12, 2011


then I figured I was just being crabby and deletion-crazy and so left it alone

Be deletion-crazy! My 11th grade AP English teacher was a bit of an idiot but the greatest teacher cause he constantly marked us down. We had to write practice AP test essays every week and only one student in both of his classes ever got a perfect score all year (won't tell you who it was but it rhymes with fills an illicit yawn) and only one student got a 5 on the practice AP test that he graded (samesies) and yet at the end of the year something like one third of the class or more got the highest score possible on the AP exam. The lesson? Constant rejection makes people better.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 9:37 PM on July 12, 2011 [2 favorites]




Regardless of the content of the post, it's a serious dick move to deep link to an anchor which makes the page jump to the middle of the article, forcing you to scroll up to read it.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:45 PM on July 12, 2011 [2 favorites]


The thread does seem like an outlier on the thin post continuum.


got to use "outlier."
posted by longsleeves at 9:47 PM on July 12, 2011


It's ok to love your Metafilter, but you gotta treat it right.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:01 PM on July 12, 2011


Why didn't this thread get deleted?

Because Life is fulfilling when you are rooted in the essential Beingness of 'I Am'.
posted by vidur at 10:05 PM on July 12, 2011


MetaTalk: Getting to use "outlier"
posted by a humble nudibranch at 10:28 PM on July 12, 2011


I guess that's why this post has stayed up when it's so much worse.

If you enjoy this game, keep guessing. Otherwise feel free to straight up ask us. At that point we'll probably tell you that it seemed like a dorky harmless fun video posted a few hours ago and not collecting a lot of flags.

We're really happy to answer contact form email asking us this stuff or answering people's MeTa questions. That said, turning one MeTa thread into a referendum on why-everything-didn't-get-deleted-that-you-didn't-like is sort of mission creep. The general rule of thumb is that something needs a reason TO be deleted not a reason not to be deleted. Sometimes we can elaborate, often we can't.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:47 PM on July 12, 2011 [3 favorites]


cortex: "... and I'm not sure anybody on Team Mod ..."

I still prefer to call it the Mod Squad.
posted by bwg at 10:51 PM on July 12, 2011 [1 favorite]


Constant rejection makes people better.

When I was doing A levels, many many years ago, there were two teachers for each subject. The junior history teacher gave an essay an unexpectedly high mark, and I finally felt I was getting somewhere. Then, that week, for some reason, the senior teacher decided to remark those essays and knocked everyone's mark down. I think I went from a 10 (out of 20 - it's not as if I was a high flyer even under lenient conditions) to a 2. At which point I more or less gave up, as I obviously wasn't getting anywhere.

Constant rejection is also an effective way to remind people that they're rejects.
posted by Grangousier at 11:14 PM on July 12, 2011 [2 favorites]


Metafilter: Should we delete it, yet?
posted by clavdivs at 12:47 AM on July 13, 2011


Ask not why something didn't get deleted, but rather why other things did.

Ask not what MetaFilter can delete for you—ask what you can delete for MetaFilter.
posted by armage at 1:35 AM on July 13, 2011


won't tell you who it was but it rhymes with fills an illicit yawn

I'm not sure that does rhyme with villanelles at dawn (too many syllables, no?), but you clearly know more about poetry than I do, so perhaps I should defer to your judgment.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:57 AM on July 13, 2011


I was going to say the French Kissing Dog post is just weird. How many flags has that gotten?
posted by wheelieman at 5:24 AM on July 13, 2011


Flagged as fantastic, I hope you mean.
posted by Lemurrhea at 5:41 AM on July 13, 2011


Gator, I was going to flag it but I thought, "naw, there's no way this isn't getting deleted so why bother". You guys sure showed me!

So you crapped in the thread (which got deleted), and started a MeTa wondering why the post wasn't deleted, but you didn't think it worth your effort to take two seconds to flag it? Wow.

Also, Metafilter: Mission creep.
posted by aught at 6:09 AM on July 13, 2011 [2 favorites]


How many flags has that gotten?

A bunch. I was waiting for cortex to take a look at it. We sort of think that people are like "Ew kissing dogs gross" and not "this is a bad post for MeFi" but it's tough to tell sometimes.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:33 AM on July 13, 2011


My 11th grade AP English teacher was a bit of an idiot but the greatest teacher cause he constantly marked us down.

I think he's ready to hand out at least one more F.
posted by yerfatma at 7:34 AM on July 13, 2011


Yeah, I gotta say, no one should have to watch people pretending to mack on dogs if they don't want to, but that UCB video is mostly just totally fucking hilarious by my reckoning.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:37 AM on July 13, 2011


I'd like a dummy text field for flags. We could all rant in it about why the post is terrible, and how badly we want it deleted... perfect catharsis. And if the data just dumps when you hit submit, the mods will never need to read it.
posted by Stagger Lee at 10:10 AM on July 13, 2011 [4 favorites]


seriously, the mods answer contact form questions really fast. There's no reason for MetaTalk threads about deletion reasons, esp because it's just the mods who can really give an answer anyway.
posted by sweetkid at 3:43 PM on July 13, 2011


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