Closed thread means not-a-double policy

September 11, 2002 8:32 AM

"Um, isn't this a kinda sorta double-post? [/meanie]"
"This thread is over 30 days old, and has been closed for archival purposes."
So it being a repost is not relevant. I propose a mortatorium on such statements, now that it is hard coded that threads are officially dead after one month. Comments pro & con are welcome herein.
posted by ZachsMind to Etiquette/Policy at 8:32 AM (12 comments total)

What does a thread being closed have to do with it? The guidelines say, "A good post to MetaFilter is something that meets the following criteria: most people haven't seen it before, there is something interesting about the content on the page, and it might warrant discussion from others." (My emphasis.)

posted by timeistight at 8:38 AM on September 11, 2002

Sounds good to me!

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted by yhbc at 8:39 AM on September 11, 2002

i vote no on the moratorium. metafilter is not a discussion board, and you don't get to comment on anything you want, even if the old thread's discussion is closed. if it's been closed after 30 days, chances are the discussion's covered most of the points. if not, you should remove the discussion to your own weblog or to a discussion board.
posted by moz at 8:43 AM on September 11, 2002

Comments pro & con are welcome herein.

Big of you. Also, what timeistight, yhbc and moz said. ?
posted by sennoma at 9:06 AM on September 11, 2002

I think that in the given example the repost is relevant, since the September 10 post doesn't seem to add anything that hasn't been discussed in the June 14 thread.

I think it would be OK to post a site that had been discussed before if:

a) the site has gone through a major change, and the new version of the site meets the criteria for a front page post. Example: if Jakob Nielsen decided to redesign his site in Flash in order to demonstrate the principles of usable Flash design that might be front page post material.

b) you can add a new angle or new material that wasn't in the original discussion, and that would meet the criteria. In this case I think it would be a good idea to include a link to the original post and an explanation why you're posting the same site again.
posted by rjs at 9:21 AM on September 11, 2002

tit writes: most people haven't seen it before

Are we assuming, then, that if a link is posted once, most people have seen it?

Hopefully, no lives hinge upon that assumption.

posted by mischief at 9:26 AM on September 11, 2002

mischief: these days you can't count on most people having seen something that's still on the front page. Nevertheless, the ban on double-posting is a MetaFilter rule. Why else do you think Matt deletes them?
posted by timeistight at 9:52 AM on September 11, 2002

If they're double-plus-good mefi readers then they will have, mischief. Present company excluded, of course.
posted by walrus at 9:53 AM on September 11, 2002

It's a double, and posts beyond the 30 days that lead to the same article are still doubles, no need to proclaim moratoriums on anything.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:36 AM on September 11, 2002

It is worth mentioning that a topic has been discussed before, just call it a previous discussion, or something. There's just no need to be snarky about it. When a thread interests me, I often poke around the archives for similar ones.

Blatant double-posts are pretty obvious and are quite different than year-old conversations.
posted by whatnot at 10:42 AM on September 11, 2002

This is yet another of those cases where an overly vague front page post has resulted in a double-post. I knew I'd seen the "Not in Our Name" thing here recently, but a MeFi Google search for those four words turns up nothing. Sure enough, neither nofundy's original post nor the resulting thread contains the four most obvious words I would have used to search. That's why I suggested it was "kinda sorta" a double-post and didn't call out f_&_m here. It was left to Matt to decide, and he did.
posted by mediareport at 1:32 PM on September 11, 2002

I never proposed a moratorium. I proposed a mortatorium. Okay. So. That was a speeling error, but Matt never said anything against there being a mortatorium on this doubleposting crap. So there. =P
posted by ZachsMind at 10:20 AM on September 16, 2002