Can I Remove My Double?

April 6, 2005 9:14 AM

Would it be possible to auto delete a post if the original author flags it as a double post? I double posted, I flagged it, but it is still there, perhaps I should be able to remove it?
posted by jonah to Feature Requests at 9:14 AM (52 comments total)

The problem here is that someone might post something, get ridiculed, and then remove it. Metafilter is as much about links as it is making fun of posters.
posted by chunking express at 9:25 AM on April 6, 2005

I agree. The card laid is the card played. Let the deleted thread stand as a reminder to poster and reader not to double post.

Also, double-posts are fun for others to play on before the sysop d-bombs 'em. You wouldn't want to ruin all the fun, would you?
posted by breezeway at 9:25 AM on April 6, 2005

Here's what you do:

Dress ceremonially. Then seat yourself on special cloths with your sword in front of you. Write yourself a death poem. Open your kimono, take your sword, and plunge it into your abdomen, first making a left-to-right cut and then making a second, slightly upward cut, to spill out your intestines. Afterwards, have an assistant perform daki-kubi, all but decapitating you, leaving a slight band of flesh attaching your head to your body.

Hope this helps.
posted by driveler at 9:28 AM on April 6, 2005

You would be eliminating a whole host of amusing double-post related puns and jokes.
posted by ORthey at 9:33 AM on April 6, 2005

I think it's a good idea.
posted by mcsweetie at 9:45 AM on April 6, 2005

pft. if the community could affect the community, then it wouldn't be a community, it'd be mathowie's personal blog. no, wait...
posted by quonsar at 9:48 AM on April 6, 2005

To me, the worst infraction is the inline images.
posted by dfowler at 9:50 AM on April 6, 2005

they wouldn't be so bad if they were at least remotely funny.
posted by crunchland at 10:11 AM on April 6, 2005

i see quonsar remains ineffectual ;o)
posted by andrew cooke at 10:11 AM on April 6, 2005

Remotely funny images.
posted by breezeway at 10:23 AM on April 6, 2005

You wouldn't want to ruin all the fun, would you?

One day, I hope to be the number one "enemy of fun".

In all seriousness, if a post is going to be deleted as a double post, I don't see the harm in letting the author delete it. Perhaps if the author and "x" number of non authors flag it as a double post, then it could be deleted automatically.

In the end, the post will be deleted. I am suggesting a way to save some manual labor by Matt having to review flagged posts.
posted by jonah at 10:32 AM on April 6, 2005

Would like to auto-delete this double post?
posted by casu marzu at 10:38 AM on April 6, 2005

The pile-ons on to-be-deleted threads aren't personal. They're the only place MeFi offers pure, unstructured fun. Without dustbin posts, legitimate threads would be cluttered with jokey inline images. MeTa would be cluttered with callouts for them, and Matt's "manual labor" load would increase with all the time-outs and bans he'd have to institute.

Too bad he hasn't figured out a way to sort these things out without heavy physical work. That is what you meant, right?
posted by breezeway at 10:46 AM on April 6, 2005

I think it's a decent idea as well. The only drawback is that if people have an escape hatch, they aren't as well-motivated to get their post right the first time. I think the fear of ridicule has a positive impact on posting quality. So while we might yank duplicate posts from the front page faster, this way, more duplicates might hit the front page in the first place.
posted by scarabic at 10:46 AM on April 6, 2005

I agree that it's a good idea. There's no benefit from keeping a double post up, it just gives people a license to act like jackasses in a thread.

How about make it so that it only gets deleted automatically if both readers and the poster flag it as a double post?
posted by Hildago at 10:47 AM on April 6, 2005

Your jackass is my Jesus.
posted by breezeway at 10:49 AM on April 6, 2005

There's no benefit from keeping a double post up, it just gives people a license to act like jackasses in a thread.

Now what's wrong with a little jackassery?
posted by papercake at 10:52 AM on April 6, 2005

Well, I for one am disgusted by the fact that that poor thread is only three comments away from having the most posts all day.
posted by dfowler at 10:55 AM on April 6, 2005

Whew.
posted by dfowler at 11:06 AM on April 6, 2005

Your jackass is my Jesus.

HEE-HAWLELUIA!
posted by quonsar at 11:07 AM on April 6, 2005

they wouldn't be so bad if they were at least remotely funny.

There's nothing quite so lame as advertising one's vegetative sense of humor. These jokes were good natured, and it's not as if they were planted in your front lawn. Why should anyone care that you don't find them funny?
posted by underer at 11:10 AM on April 6, 2005

Whew.

And now we may never get to meet johnj's underpants-monkey. An opportunity lost.
posted by papercake at 11:16 AM on April 6, 2005

posted by dfowler at 11:24 AM on April 6, 2005

Weird OJ container, monkey pants.
posted by breezeway at 11:33 AM on April 6, 2005

casu marzu - The previous post you linked about users deleting their own posts was before the flagging function. My thought is to relieve some of the work needed to review and delete posts, that's why I think that if a post is flagged by both the author and some threshold of readers, it should just be deleted.

Double posts are automatic deletions, there really isn't judgement involved, even if there is good discussion in the second post. I wouldn't apply it for all flags, just for double posts.

Hopefully it wouldn't make people less likely to see if a post was a double before posting (didn't work for me though, even though I did scan the pages since April 2nd, when the item I linked was created).

I didn't mean for this MeTa post to be a joke fest too. Also, I can take pretty much any piling on me, I'm not worried about that.
posted by jonah at 11:47 AM on April 6, 2005

Ok, seriously, we weren't making fun of you, jonah.
We were making fun of this guy.
posted by dfowler at 12:10 PM on April 6, 2005

I'll admit that some people might find those inline images amusing. But those people are idiots.
posted by crunchland at 12:16 PM on April 6, 2005

Double posts are automatic deletions,

Not really. Look at togdon's meta thread for an example where a !triple! didn't get deleted (even though the double of the trifecta did).
posted by Mitheral at 12:20 PM on April 6, 2005

crunchland, on your user page, you describe the online community that you run as "friendlier" than Metafilter.
Is that because you are less of an asshole over there?
posted by dfowler at 12:36 PM on April 6, 2005

When in Rome...
posted by crunchland at 12:45 PM on April 6, 2005

...be a dick?
posted by breezeway at 12:57 PM on April 6, 2005

in this case, absolutely. Thanks for proving my point.
posted by crunchland at 1:03 PM on April 6, 2005

Why not have fun, then, on the to-be-deleted thread where all the Romans are having fun? Dick?
posted by breezeway at 1:04 PM on April 6, 2005

a) I'm not a Quonsar-wannabe, nor do I hold him in such high regard.
b) even I have some standards.
posted by crunchland at 1:15 PM on April 6, 2005

posted by breezeway at 1:21 PM on April 6, 2005

Heehee...
posted by AlexReynolds at 1:32 PM on April 6, 2005

I wouldn't apply it for all flags, just for double posts.

Someone can flag their own post as a double, even if it's not.
posted by smackfu at 2:00 PM on April 6, 2005

Someone can flag their own post as a double, even if it's not.

But if it was required that both the author and a minimum number of non-authors flagged it as a double post, it would be a fairly good indicator.
posted by jonah at 2:26 PM on April 6, 2005

Perhaps if a post receives a more than X flags as a double the author then has the option/ability to flag it a double and delete it him/herself?

on preview: agree with jonah.
posted by shoepal at 2:31 PM on April 6, 2005

I'm wondering whether this happens so frequently that the proposed feature would really save Matt all that much effort.

I don't see the big deal one way or the other, though. The thread would still be around long enough for people to make some noise in before it got closed, wouldn't it? You could look at it as rewarding the more efficient noisemakers. Out of this action would evolve the elite MeFi doublepost noise squad, sitting at their keyboards, ready to pounce on a double post and fill it with inline images before the original poster and six of his closest friends can get it deleted. It's the eternal battle between light and darkness, yin and yang, peanut butter and chocolate, only on a less cosmic scale.
posted by anapestic at 2:40 PM on April 6, 2005

hellloooooooo?

you people know of anything here that is automated to that degree? do you seriously think this will get implemented? or do you just get kicks out of making up little rules?

if so (kicks), you should really learn to code. you get to tell something much more logical than anyone else here what to do in excruciating detail, and they follow your every whim to the letter.

unless you already are programmers, i guess. in which case i probably need to point out that matt is not your computer.
posted by andrew cooke at 2:42 PM on April 6, 2005

good fucking thing matt made the quonsar subroutine recursive.
posted by quonsar at 2:52 PM on April 6, 2005

But if it was required that both the author and a minimum number of non-authors flagged it as a double post, it would be a fairly good indicator.

Yeah! We could do it like kuro5hin!
posted by grouse at 3:14 PM on April 6, 2005

Out of this action would evolve the elite MeFi doublepost noise squad, sitting at their keyboards, ready to pounce on a double post and fill it with inline images before the original poster and six of his closest friends can get it deleted.

Heh! :-)
posted by 327.ca at 3:52 PM on April 6, 2005

good fucking thing matt made the quonsar subroutine recursive.

there's a joke somewhere in there about using the y combinator to stick your head up your arse. but i can't be bothered to work it out and, even if i did, i suspect the audience is limited.

so i guess i should go make dinner.
posted by andrew cooke at 4:08 PM on April 6, 2005

Andrew Cooke, cut the condescending tone, please, it's insulting, and anyway you're wrong, so it makes you look silly.

You've got a false premise. The thread started out as a question, which might be construed as a suggestion, but never as an instruction. It continued in this manner. In fact I don't see anywhere where anybody who thinks that double posts should have a mechanism for poster-deletion is instructing Matt to do fuck all.

(Those who disagree do make some declarations about what should be done, but this is tangential)

If Metatalk isn't for discussing Metafilter, what is it for? If the "feature-request" category isn't for requesting features, what is it for?
posted by Hildago at 4:11 PM on April 6, 2005

sure, it's for discussing things. i have no problem with that. what bugs me - and i'm sorry if i sound condescending when i'm just pointing out how fucking stupid you all are - is when it ends up with "well, why don't we make rule x, and tweak it with y, and then our little rules will make everything work ok".

ok?
posted by andrew cooke at 5:17 PM on April 6, 2005

Well, to sum up this discussion:

- Most people agree that a poster should not be able to delete their own double post by themselves

- Some people agree that a group of MeFi members, including the double post author should be able to delete a double post.

- Some people agree that users should not be able to delete a double post because there is a tradition of having fun in the comments of the double post.

Concensus not reached, no clear winner. The world's problems have not been solved.
posted by jonah at 7:08 PM on April 6, 2005

WE HAVE FAILED MISERABLY ONCE AGAIN.
posted by quonsar at 7:58 PM on April 6, 2005

posted by puke & cry at 11:01 PM on April 6, 2005

You guys? The more egregiously and frequently the image tag is used here, the more likely it is that Matt will end up disabling it altogether, which will be a damn shame, because sometimes ( r a r e l y, kids!) it's excellent to have the option of using it.
posted by taz at 5:38 AM on April 7, 2005

sure, it's for discussing things. i have no problem with that. what bugs me - and i'm sorry if i sound condescending when i'm just pointing out how fucking stupid you all are - is when it ends up with "well, why don't we make rule x, and tweak it with y, and then our little rules will make everything work ok".

ok?

Well, no, cause now you're acting like a dick. You're basically saying that everybody who uses Metatalk the way it was intended to be used is being stupid, which isn't true. You're also putting words into people's mouths: you're implying that a feature request is some pie-in-the-sky vision of how to make everything perfect, when nobody has said that but you. You may need to just not read Metatalk if its intended use bothers you that much.
posted by Hildago at 2:07 PM on April 7, 2005