If it is wrong, why is it possible?

April 10, 2005 10:33 PM

Stupid question: If posting in image on the blue is so wrong, why is it possible?
posted by cccorlew to Etiquette/Policy at 10:33 PM (32 comments total)

who says it's so wrong?
posted by quonsar at 10:35 PM on April 10, 2005

If touching myself is so wrong, why did God give me hands?!
posted by naxosaxur at 10:39 PM on April 10, 2005

Because the hardest part of coding is figuring out what to do if users give you stupid (nonsensical, meaningless, internally inconsistent) input.

While mathowie can and does parse input to remove certain tags, he understandably preferred to allow image tags and rely on user discretion, since some images might actually be useful in a FPP. (Say, for instance, Chinese or Arabic characters for those who haven't added Unicode fonts.)

(Side note: you may have noticed that mathowie's code for input actually parses it as an HTML tree, removing tags he doesn't allow and adding any closing tags required to balance un-closed tags in the input. It's actually reasonably sophisticated -- so much so that it's prevented me from doing a few things I'd thought might be useful.)
posted by orthogonality at 10:42 PM on April 10, 2005

Because XHTML tags, including image tags, are allowed within a post.

The general idea is a mefite will understand the guidelines before posting an FPP, thus negating an image ever appearing on the front page. Unless the image is part of a sidebar advertisement, which is a different bag altogether.

Maybe image tags should not be allowed within the posts or comments of users. But then no one would get to see the fancy 10+ Random Reproach Against Bevet magic cards so painstakingly Photoshoped by Furtive.
posted by Colloquial Collision at 10:44 PM on April 10, 2005

oh. he means on the front page. that IS a big no-no.
posted by quonsar at 10:46 PM on April 10, 2005

I hadn't thought of the Chinese or Arabic characters angle.

Nevermind.
posted by Colloquial Collision at 10:46 PM on April 10, 2005

To provide an outlet for the pent-up frustrations of the membership whenever some poor schmuck fucks up.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 10:51 PM on April 10, 2005

It's an intelligence test to allow users to self-sort themselves. Most pass. Some fail. It is the way of the world.

And it's comedy gold watching the inevitable pile-on when someone voluntarily dons the dunce cap.

To provide an outlet for the pent-up frustrations of the membership whenever some poor schmuck fucks up.

On preview, that too.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:53 PM on April 10, 2005

ahem
posted by felix betachat at 11:12 PM on April 10, 2005

To paraphrase Captain Picard (Season 1, Episode 26), the reason the com system isn't secured is because a certain measure of self-control is expected of all on board.
posted by tweak at 11:19 PM on April 10, 2005

ahem

That was a April fools post from 2000, where I copied scripting news' template.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:34 PM on April 10, 2005

second question ... how can it be against the guidelines when the guidelines don't say a word about it?

come on now ... if you want people to follow rules, you have to state them
posted by pyramid termite at 11:44 PM on April 10, 2005

The general idea is a mefite will understand the guidelines before posting an FPP, thus negating an image ever appearing on the front page.

Why does the guideline page say nothing about posting images, and why does everyone speak as if it does?
posted by troybob at 11:47 PM on April 10, 2005

If they've spend more time either lurking or reading through the archives, it should have been quickly obvious from all the example posts that images are verboten in posts (with very rare exceptions that prove the rule). You can't "rules" and "guidelines" your way into becoming a community member without also observing and acknowledging the group's social and cultural norms.
posted by DaShiv at 11:55 PM on April 10, 2005

troybob, it's likely not mentioned because it's one of those obvious things, like there's no need to write down that 400px tall purple text is bad for front page posts. There are 40 something thousand posts now, and just a handful ever had images in them. I guess I never mentioned they're bad in the general guidelines because I thought it was kind of obvious that no one ever uses them here, mostly because they take up too much vertical screenspace and are visually jarring on a mostly text website.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:04 AM on April 11, 2005

Metafilter: visually jarring on a mostly text website
posted by sebas at 1:13 AM on April 11, 2005

Are we talking about images in FPPs, or comments, or both? Now that we have clear answers coming, it would be good to clarify the question as well.
posted by breezeway at 8:41 AM on April 11, 2005

breezeway, everyone here is talking about stuff on the front page, which I should just filter out programatically.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:50 AM on April 11, 2005

If the blink tag is wrong, why does it exist?
posted by Anonymous at 9:07 AM on April 11, 2005

so i'll accept that i have some lack of common sense...i check in here almost daily, and the image posted on the front page yesterday didn't seem out of place to me...and i figured that just because it never occurred to me to put an image in a FPP, there wasn't necessarily some rule against it...
posted by troybob at 9:37 AM on April 11, 2005

If the blink tag is wrong, I don't want to be right.
posted by Quartermass at 9:45 AM on April 11, 2005

schroedinger writes "If the blink tag is wrong, why does it exist?"

To make the marquee tag look less bad.
posted by orthogonality at 10:12 AM on April 11, 2005

What about a blink tag inside a marquee tag?
posted by shmegegge at 4:19 PM on April 11, 2005

Colloquial Collision, I'd like to give credit where credit is due. The repel bevets card was done by Wytchocolate a farker, and I found it on this thread. Personally I don't see anything wrong with photos in threads as long as they are relevant and not too big.
posted by furtive at 4:32 PM on April 11, 2005

I once posted a BIG-ASSED map of Eastern Europe and the Balkans in a comments thread.

Lucky I didn't get banned. Not even so much as a pile-on, IIRC.

Sorry about that, everyone.

To the people who have said along the lines of "well if you had lurked enough and paid attention it would be obvious" I disagree. For me – an 18+ month lurker before new memberships were being accepted – it was a case of assuming it couldn't be done because I never saw it done.

And then someone did it and it didn't become a pile-on so I thought "cool, images are OK." And then I posted an image and got chastised for it. (Chastised – not piled-upon.) I was rather embarrassed.

But that was in the comments section and it seems that's not as bad as doing it on the front page.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 3:16 AM on April 12, 2005

Fuck, Bevets is on MeFi too? Damn, I missed some good shit. We don't see him often enough on Fark, though he's infamous there.
posted by madman at 3:17 AM on April 12, 2005

I don't think the pictures in comments are so bad are really a problem on this site. Who wants to read a site where people have no fun at all. A little dadaist comedy never hurt anyone.
posted by delmoi at 7:03 AM on April 12, 2005

But marquee doesn't work anymore, even in comments. So Blink is really the worst you can do.

uncanny hengeman like matt said he can't code for every possiblity without going down the WebBBS/uBB code path. He's hoping if you've never seen something done that you will think extra hard if it should be done rather than just posting away on with the thought that anything that works is allowed.
posted by Mitheral at 10:13 AM on April 12, 2005

He's hoping if you've never seen something done that you will think extra hard if it should be done rather than just posting away on with the thought that anything that works is allowed.

I clearly stated that I saw the function worked and that it didn't result in a pile-on.

That's hard enough thinking in my book, sizzlechest.

(It was an excellent map, too.)
posted by uncanny hengeman at 4:32 PM on April 12, 2005

Mitheral : "But marquee doesn't work anymore, even in comments."

It does for me.
posted by Bugbread at 1:33 AM on April 13, 2005

I think image tag usage is something that Matt should turn-off on a user-specific basis. If 20,000 people can use them sparingly and in a way that enhances a discussion, then a few irresponsible ding-dongs should not have the power to completely close that channel.
posted by squirrel at 2:57 AM on April 14, 2005

I use "ding-dong" in the most respectful way, of course.
posted by squirrel at 2:59 AM on April 14, 2005