Impressions on rereading old posts

January 19, 2005 7:03 PM

Adding tags means going back through your old posts, and if you are like me, rereading them for the first time. Any impressions?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy to MetaFilter-Related at 7:03 PM (41 comments total)

I was under the impression that most of my posts were pretty mediocre-- but I found one or two that I am quite proud of. The big surprise was my first. It was about the possible flu vaccination shortage of 2002 and the (interesting to me)priority lists set by the government. Nobody else was interested-- I guess I was just 2 years ahead of schedule.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:08 PM on January 19, 2005

I'm shocked that NY Times link from 2002 still works fine. I always thought they had 2 week expirations.
posted by smackfu at 7:14 PM on January 19, 2005

And also that in 2000, I could post absolute crap posts without being jumped on. Any of those three today would be deleted after attracting utter vitriol.
posted by smackfu at 7:25 PM on January 19, 2005

I created a "terrible" tag for some of my older posts.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 7:41 PM on January 19, 2005

It would be great to use the Wayback Machine or some other such device to battle linkrot.
posted by euphorb at 7:45 PM on January 19, 2005

I posted a World Weekly News article about a woman who killed someone with her breasts, or something like that.

Impression: I suck(ed).
posted by scarabic at 7:48 PM on January 19, 2005

I created a "terrible" tag for some of my older posts.

This made me laugh...
It never would have occurred to me to do this. Maybe I should put in "crap" tags to the worst of the worst?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:49 PM on January 19, 2005

People don't comment much in my posts. But I don't mind that.
posted by interrobang at 7:51 PM on January 19, 2005

I made five posts to the blue in 2000, and they were all absolutely awful. At least I learned my lesson and never poasted again.
posted by Zosia Blue at 7:58 PM on January 19, 2005

Or posted. I guess I was thinking of roasting.
posted by Zosia Blue at 8:02 PM on January 19, 2005

roasted posts?
posted by SpecialK at 8:24 PM on January 19, 2005

My FPPs are all frickin' awesome. All seven of them.
posted by neckro23 at 8:30 PM on January 19, 2005

I was completely unaware of how Utah-centric my posts have been.

Now that I know, however, I think it is totally kewl.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:41 PM on January 19, 2005

I have always been sad and dismayed by the reaction to my first post. Believe it or not, it is still something I think about (and bothers me) occasionally.

I was doing some independent research for work, when I discovered that DISCUS (The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States), the trade association for the marketers and makers of alcohol in the US, was behind "health.org." health.org is a site that extols the evils of drugs (now, drugs and alcohol.) Further, health.org either has official government sponsorship or was made to look so. What I found way back then was that the entire DISCUS website was a subdomain on the health.org site. DISCUS has since grabbed their own domain. But I had always hoped that my little post on MeFi would have been passed along to someone who passed it along to someone who could have made it into a larger story. To me, it was clear evidence of a vile truth: the sad commingling and teaming up of of the nations liquor producers with the government to fight their competition-- "illegal drugs". Only 7 replies and it slid into oblivion. *Sigh*.
posted by limitedpie at 9:17 PM on January 19, 2005

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!
posted by wendell at 9:27 PM on January 19, 2005

[gack]
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:31 PM on January 19, 2005

I'm impressed how one person using a single fairly unique tag can effect the tags page. (Yes, all those posts are mine.)

I am noting trends in my posting habits that I hadn't realized I had before. Now, I knew I tended toward certain topics (everyday objects, origami, photoblogs, postcards) but I hadn't really realized some of the other trends.

I also got to revisit the one post that I think is my best-ever Mefi post, but that didn't get much attention at the time. I wish there was a way to tag that. ('readme!' maybe? 'personalbest'?)
posted by anastasiav at 9:40 PM on January 19, 2005

I also got to revisit the one post that I think is my best-ever Mefi post, but that didn't get much attention at the time. I wish there was a way to tag that. ('readme!' maybe? 'personalbest'?)

Please, nobody do this.
posted by interrobang at 10:31 PM on January 19, 2005

The main theme through most of my posts has been the miscarriage of justice angle. That and it was alot of fun to reread the threads again.

So far it looks like Art, Flash and Music are the big winners in the early rounds of the tag wars.

One thing I'm learning is that I suck at tagging my posts but am strangely very good at tagging others. Why is that?
posted by fenriq at 10:37 PM on January 19, 2005

I've only made 3 FPPs. Looking back, the first two are relatively old and quite horrible. The third I like.
posted by DyRE at 11:52 PM on January 19, 2005

That was a great post, limitedpie, but why do you say "only 7 replies"? I'm seeing over 20.

I had a pretty good time going through my old posts. I found a lot of things that were really nice to see again, and a few where I thought "Meh. Why did I post that?". (I also realized that there were a lot of things I thought I ended up posting, but didn't.) But I also remembered why I had decided more than once not to post anymore. The one-or-two comment wonders were discouraging, and the negative comments (especially as the first response) were depressing, so I went for months only posting the things I liked on my blog - even though later many of them would show up here and people would really like them.

So all in all, I've found that it's very difficult for me to predict how something will be received, which surprises me, because I'm usually pretty good at stuff like that (she thinks). People ended up liking this recent post a lot, but according to past experience, I would have expected it to be quite lonely — and, in fact, I only posted it here because the recent membership expansion seems to have made things a little more welcoming. For a while I had decided that what I think of as "passive" posts (art, museum, history) were not really great for posting here, but "active" (news-ish, pop cult, personality, meme, tech) were. Now, I just think that the site as whole tends to go through personality changes, moods, and trends, and that the criteria for what will engage people is always subtly (or sometimes radically) shifting. I also realized how much one learns by posting. I looked back on some of mine and thought "wow, I would never do that again": "hiding the lead", being overly enthusiastic, too much exposition, not enough exposition, etc.
posted by taz at 12:36 AM on January 20, 2005

It is an interesting exercise to do, tagging (and in my case, re-reading) all my own posts. I was very kindly received, as a new poster, even though my first few were a bit ropey (and possibly some later ones, too - it's a subjective opinion).

Standards here have definitely evolved: maybe we're more jaded, and in the last coupla years, more demanding. Mefi has been convulsed in the 24 months leading up to the Bush re-election, and one's history is dragged around like the wake of a boat. I love politics, and newsfilter, but I'm glad I post them less - even though good things show up here after I've seen them. Sharing the fun and glory, most worthwhile stuff gets here soon enough, right?

I also saw a bit of a pattern in my posts, thematically: though I'm not a scientist, I see anthropology and science coming up a lot. Mainly, I've posted them 'cos I want further explication from Mefi's userbase on subjects I know will have great interest for us, and knowledgethat members want to share. Well, that and the inane quizzes: I reserve most of them for Viewropa nowadays (there's a certain lightheartedness over there, which Mefi, being a grown-up website, is somewhat disdainful of)
posted by dash_slot- at 1:28 AM on January 20, 2005

For a while I had decided that what I think of as "passive" posts (art, museum, history) were not really great for posting here, but "active" (news-ish, pop cult, personality, meme, tech) were.

Oh God, I hope that changes. Please, passive posts aplenty!
posted by painquale at 1:54 AM on January 20, 2005

I just tried to register at Viewropa (which I was going to do long ago, but I got distracted by a shiny thing), and 'stavrosthewonderchicken' is too long for a username.

*cries*

[/offtopic]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:58 AM on January 20, 2005

oh no! don't give up! Please come play with us, stav. We'll ask dodgygeezer about the name thing. I know it's a built-in parameter of B2Evolution, but don't know how easy/hard it is to modify.
posted by taz at 2:35 AM on January 20, 2005

Thankee, taz.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:12 AM on January 20, 2005

I have learned that I should never try to make a post humorous. Even if the content is supposedly supposed to be supposed humor.
posted by sciurus at 3:42 AM on January 20, 2005

I found a disturbing number of mine basically boil down to "look at the stupid person."
posted by CunningLinguist at 5:45 AM on January 20, 2005

So far, there's only 1 article tagged with "crap"...several for poop...and kudos to those helping the Pepsiblue tag take off...
posted by tpl1212 at 6:14 AM on January 20, 2005

'stavrosthewonderchicken' is too long for a username.

When I run into this I go with PSTail or P.S. Tail. STWChicken?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 6:29 AM on January 20, 2005

Maybe stavthefabchick would fit?
posted by Wolfdog at 6:38 AM on January 20, 2005

I noticed that the slightly offensive boyzone comment on my first post ever seems to be gone now. Yay. It really pissed me off at the time, although the rest of the discussion that developed was heartening.
posted by Karmakaze at 7:05 AM on January 20, 2005

Great posts, taz and limitedpie.

I honestly didn't get the point of tagging. I thought it was an an anal-retentive librarian thing. But the tags page is incredibly interesting, and all of a sudden I have an easy way to waste huge amounts of time browsing the MeFi archives. Damn you, Mr. Haughey!
posted by fuzz at 7:29 AM on January 20, 2005

I learned that I suck at tagging. Hopefully they'll be editable soon.
posted by kenko at 7:53 AM on January 20, 2005

I thought it was an an anal-retentive librarian thing.

No, we anal-retentive librarians would answer (to our own satisfaction, if not to anyone else's) all the questions about how tags should be created (caps? multiple words squished together, underscores, dashes? preferred term among synonyms? how to distinguish among multiple meanings of one word? plurals? standards for personal names?) before beginning the actual application of terms to the posts. Tagging expressly declines to provide any answers to those questions and lets any convention evolve over time by consensus of the users, or not. There are both advantages and disadvantages to this method.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:16 AM on January 20, 2005

For a while I had decided that what I think of as "passive" posts (art, museum, history) were not really great for posting here, but "active" (news-ish, pop cult, personality, meme, tech) were.

Oh God, I hope that changes. Please, passive posts aplenty!
posted by painquale at 1:54 AM PST on January 20


seconded. i'd rather read a "passive" post even if it doesn't bring forth a heaping pile of comments (read: a news or politicsfilter argument) and enjoy the link in solitude if need be. but that's just me.
posted by ifjuly at 9:14 AM on January 20, 2005

Anal-retentive librarian thing?!?!?!?! Just when I get to apply my mad metadata-ing skills somewhere other than work, someone calls it anal-retentive? < *cries*>
posted by Lynsey at 9:18 AM on January 20, 2005

I re-read my own posts on a monthly basis. Why I do this, I don't know.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 12:46 PM on January 20, 2005

I've discovered
- I'm very thoughtful when I post or comments
- My personality has changed a lot since I became a mom
- I don't like to start threads
- I started using the shift key more recently than I thought
posted by raedyn at 1:08 PM on January 20, 2005

I'd be thrilled if the chicken of glorious reknown rested his flirtatiable wings and opined with his mellifluating beak at our classy new joint. Not much poo so far, Stav, but it's early days!
posted by dash_slot- at 5:48 PM on January 21, 2005

I post too much.
posted by homunculus at 11:08 PM on January 23, 2005