Are we allowing doubles now?

September 21, 2003 11:04 PM

Matt, has the policy on double-posts changed?
[more inside...]
posted by anastasiav to Etiquette/Policy at 11:04 PM (38 comments total)

Matt, I know you can't be here 24-7, and I'm not expecting you to be, but it does seem like the policy on double-posts has changed a great deal in the past few months. Where once two posts on the same topic (in this case, a death) posted minutes apart might have been combined into one, now double-posts go undeleted, even when a double is posted when the original is still on the front page.

More examples: found in this MeTa thread; also 10/12 original and 9/7 repost; 5/13 original & 9/9 repost; and finally this 9/11 original & 9/19 repost.
posted by anastasiav at 11:05 PM on September 21, 2003

Matt, has the policy on double-posts changed?

Too much irony too early in the morning.
posted by Space Coyote at 11:11 PM on September 21, 2003

Space Coyote, notice that I linked the MeTa thread you reference in my [more inside] comment. Also, Matt never replied to the original thread - thus I took the liberty of asking the question again, with additional examples.

Sorry if I added too much irony to your coffee.
posted by anastasiav at 11:17 PM on September 21, 2003

Space Coyote, has the policy on irony changed?
posted by PrinceValium at 11:20 PM on September 21, 2003

Okay, but was the link to the 9/19 post a joke, anastasiav? Or were you honestly asking Matt why he didn't delete his own post?
posted by jonson at 11:59 PM on September 21, 2003

I was away for most of the past three days. I find that 24 hours after something is posted, even if it should be deleted, it's usually pointless to do it that far after the fact.

You should still not double-post, so no guidelines have changed.

I'm just busy with other things like work and leisure time. I need to code a "notify matt something is wrong with this thread" button that sends me a quick email with some information so I can be more proactive at pruning the site while still being able to complete a 10 hour day working on other things.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:12 AM on September 22, 2003

I just got a bad "page sysop" flashback.

It was at 4800 baud, so it's still hanging around.
posted by dhartung at 1:54 AM on September 22, 2003

*re-acquints himself with the 'preview' button*

Still, it's only been a week since we've had this discussion.
posted by Space Coyote at 6:51 AM on September 22, 2003

I need to code a "notify matt something is wrong with this thread" button

What, no Mattsignal in the sky?
posted by ashbury at 7:26 AM on September 22, 2003

I posted something that had been done so previously last week, had it pointed out to me, and just sent matt a quick e-mail. It was deleted within 30 minutes. That's probably a bit more responsibility than most members are willing to undergo, but it's an effective way for those that, you know, care.

I'd encourage only those that posted the thread to e-mail matt though, and not just normal users, so that he doesn't have a barrage of notifications in his inbox 3-5 times a day.
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:07 AM on September 22, 2003

Perhaps people should just be more careful when posting. IIRC many of the double posts are followed up with the poster going OOPs in the first post. Uhm do a search before you post not after!
posted by carfilhiot at 8:13 AM on September 22, 2003

btw, carfilhiot, yes I did search for "poshtots" "posh tots" and posh tots via the google search. Nowhere in the post or the thread did the name of the company appear, hence my desire for more descriptive posts. Also, the main page of the company was not linked in the FPP either. I maintain that descriptive posts could help reduce the number of doubles. Style's cool, but throw in some keywords that people could find.
posted by Ufez Jones at 8:19 AM on September 22, 2003

Perhaps the addition of a data field for "keywords" would facilitate the search process?
posted by PrinceValium at 8:24 AM on September 22, 2003

Or a URL substring search, for when the post doesn't mention the specific URL, but the domain would be obvious (minus, of course, the trailing slashes, index.html's etc).
posted by jonson at 8:37 AM on September 22, 2003

jonson, as I understand it the search already covers all the HTML code inside the post, which would include the URL of the link. See this. Title tags are also searched. These might be a good place to stick keywords.
posted by PrinceValium at 8:49 AM on September 22, 2003

Perhaps the addition of a data field for "keywords" would facilitate the search process?

Post title, link title, and description already exist as de facto metadata fields, you just have to be prepared to put appropriate keywords in them. We do have the facility to index MeFi in useful ways, if we so choose. The problem is choosing appropriate keywords that will flag the original post when you do your own pre-post search.

And what PrinceValium just said.
posted by carter at 8:51 AM on September 22, 2003

I usually run a quick url search on blogdex as well as here on Mefi. Sometimes I have found a prior posting there that didn't turn up in my search here.

Plus, sometimes I think a link is *new* or *different* but after running it through blogdex, find that it's a stale old thing that's been all over the place for years already.

Knock on wood, so far it's worked for me.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:13 AM on September 22, 2003

Matt, we know you have a lot of feature requests and things you're working on (like, um, MoJo), but rather than wait until there's a cool button to push, why not add this sentence - as per Ufez - to the posting guidelines and effectively have a new policy on double posts?

If your post turns out to be a double, email Matt [email link] immediately with the thread number, requesting it be deleted.

I think this is a good fix, at least temporarily, putting some onus on the double-posters, letting them do something to rectify the situation rather than overblown mea-culpas ("OMG, I'm going to kill myself") or justifications ("it was all of three months ago, and some people hadn't seen it"). The system might also be for the poster to comment within the thread that Matt has been e-mailed; this could lead to more silliness, yes ("since this is going to be deleted..." etc.), but not to those occasional comments that wind up making the death throes of an otherwise useless thread that much more painful.
posted by soyjoy at 9:21 AM on September 22, 2003

Sounds like a plan.
posted by timeistight at 9:42 AM on September 22, 2003

While we're making feature requests, can I have a pony?
posted by christian at 12:41 PM on September 22, 2003

btw, carfilhiot, yes I did search for "poshtots" "posh tots" and posh tots via the google search.
yep it's wierd that google doesnt pick it up but mefi search does. i always thought google indexed urls. btw i wasn't specifically thinking of your fpp when i wrote that :) I was thinking of the Home&Garden one yesterday.
posted by carfilhiot at 1:01 PM on September 22, 2003

What feature requests?
posted by timeistight at 1:02 PM on September 22, 2003

Oddly, carfilhiot, I don't even bother with the MeFi search, as for the most part it's very flawed. Guess I should've, maybe it would've come up. And I was just answering the question you asked in that thread before it got axed, but I didn't take anything personally, don't worry. You learn not to around here.
posted by Ufez Jones at 1:10 PM on September 22, 2003

This bit about the MeFi search being "flawed" cracks me up.

Here's a challenge: Show me a double post and I'll show you a simple MeFi search that will find the original.
posted by timeistight at 1:19 PM on September 22, 2003

it IS flawed. a search for the word 'gore' yesterday failed to turn up my october 2000 post about a gore rally in my town, though it turned up many other instances of the name.
posted by quonsar at 1:51 PM on September 22, 2003

Hmmmm… that *is* fucked up, isn't it?

Hey, this crow takes just like the Colonel's!
posted by timeistight at 2:10 PM on September 22, 2003

quonsar, I think that entry should be disqualified on technical grounds - it was a self-link.

Does the "since day one" search actually only go back to early 2001 or something?
posted by soyjoy at 2:30 PM on September 22, 2003

SELF LINKING SLUT!
how long will this blorted behavior continue....
posted by clavdivs at 2:52 PM on September 22, 2003

Near as I can figure, "day one" means here.

Nothing before that thread shows up.
posted by timeistight at 3:28 PM on September 22, 2003

Almost nothing, that is.
posted by timeistight at 3:34 PM on September 22, 2003

Google's not perfectly indexing ancient Mefi pages either. This page contains a (virtually) unique typo 'yearI've', which fails to show up in either a regular Mefi search or in a turboGoogleMefi search.
posted by dash_slot- at 4:14 PM on September 22, 2003

It *does* show up for me on your turboGoogleMefi search link above – go figure.
posted by timeistight at 4:29 PM on September 22, 2003

TiT - did you search with a space? Just 'yearI've' [alloneword] returns nowt - not a mention of Mefi at Google.
posted by dash_slot- at 4:59 PM on September 22, 2003

Yes but 4937 is before 4943-5, which is roughly the cut off date for Mefi searchable threads. YearI've shows up on Google for me too.
posted by carfilhiot at 5:05 PM on September 22, 2003

No, I just clicked your link. You don't get a hit when you click that link?
posted by timeistight at 5:06 PM on September 22, 2003

Nope. None of my 3 posted links - Mefi/GoogleMefi/Google - return a result featuring that thread [I take your point carfilhiot].

That is simply bizarre.
posted by dash_slot- at 5:18 PM on September 22, 2003

I just got a bad "page sysop" flashback.
I'm pretty sure the damned "page sysop" thing is why there's such a dearth of bbss these days. well, maybe this internet business contributed some too

dash_slot- googledance? I wouldn't think a page so old would be affected, but I don't know much about the googledance.
posted by duckstab at 6:22 PM on September 22, 2003

What, no Mattsignal in the sky?

The Mattsignal?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:13 PM on September 22, 2003