Unsurprising posts: Perhaps this should be in Metatalk (and certainly it's more Matt's business than mine), but I want the readers of MetaFilter to read it. Unless I'm confused, the point of a post to Metafilter is to satisfy two criteria:
1. It's interesting to the readership.
2. It's something they're unlikely to discover or encounter elsewhere on their own.
As I look at MetaFilter today, I see several articles which are nothing except digests of news events which I could just as easily have read at Reuters, or the BBC, or CNN, or any of half a dozen other normal web sites. Unless the post here includes an odd editorial slant, just what does it contribute that I can't get from those other sites?
To contrast this, we spent a great deal of time discussing Elian over a period of weeks, and many of those articles included links to the mainline news organizations. But these were
means to permit commentary, not treated as
ends in themselves.
If you want to tell us that
the Dutch truck driver has been indicted, tell us
something else besides which we
can't discover by visiting CNN or Reuters or the BBC. And why were we told about
the end of the hostage standoff in Fiji? What was
added here beyond what I would have discovered on my own at CNN?
Unfortunately, what this looks like is "Gawd, this is neat! I want to participate, too!" syndrome. That part's fine, but before you say something, make sure you have something worth saying!
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Jun 23, 2000 -
25 comments
