MetaFilter

Running a site as large as MeFi without a TOS for years is less than optimal.

It's a minor miracle that it's worked this well, true, but it's taken a lot of trust and input from the community

But sure, let's talk optimal in a trust-no-one sort of world

- we'd have 24-hour mod teams
- we'd have, according to some, a crystal clear set of absolute guidelines that we always letter-of-the-law... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 4:12 PM on February 28, 2010

Popping this back open for half a second to supplement.

I still want to know why the mods thought it was okay to delete a MeTa puzzle post.

It wasn't a puzzle post, it was a policy-headcheck post from the same user who posted the puzzle askme. I think both could have and in an ideal world should have stood, but the fact is that we have historically honored poster's request to remove their own regretted content. It's something... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 6:55 AM on February 28, 2010

I get really frustrated on this issue because there is a lot of stuff I wish I could see disappeared from when I was a kid and it seems pretty cold for people — especially people old enough not to have to worry about things they wrote at 14 being googleable for all time — telling me I just have to suck it up in the name of some purism about the sanctity of long-dead threads.

First, I sympathize. I'm not as old as maybe you think, and am perfectly... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 12:04 PM on February 28, 2010

it's just not going to matter very much that digg or /. doesn't let you delete comments

My point in mentioning other similar sites is that I always thought MeFi followed accepted behavior, much like you see on other similar sites. I can't remove any comment I've made to blog on Movable Type, Typepad, or Wordpress blogs. I can't removed my submissions from other similar communities. I suppose I could legally threaten site owners, but the software... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 6:31 PM on February 28, 2010

People have to realize that, unlike other sites, Mefi does not allow its users to delete their contributions wholesale.

Again, I'd like to stress that "other sites" that allow this are pretty rare. I can't get a comment deleted from BoingBoing using any tools. I can't wipe my entire Digg history by clicking any button. Stuff I said in 1997 that made me sound like a jackass are still on slashdot, without any way to remove it.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 5:12 PM on February 28, 2010

enn, I think we're discussing two different things. If you want a few embarassing things deleted that you wrote ages ago, email us, but a wholesale whitewashing of every contribution including best answers, posts, and comments is a different animal.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 12:32 PM on February 28, 2010

So the policy is "no, unless you're willing to pay a lawyer to send a nastygram"?

When you get right down to it, that's the case for a lot of things in life. This is not something we approve of doing, at all, and we will argue very strongly against it to anyone who tries to make such a request. On most of the rare occasions that it has come up, that's been the end of it.

Ultimately, people can be nutters with... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 10:39 AM on February 28, 2010

Even if long-time and frequent commenting members quit they should be able to delete the substance of their comments and have them replaced by a placeholder.

Show me a community where this happens. I don't see Digg, Slashdot, or anyone else offering such a feature. It would be horrible for communities to do this.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 10:24 AM on February 28, 2010

What cortex said and to address what cjorgensen said about copyright, you still keep your copyright, but a TOS will make clear that posting to mefi gives mefi a license to display your content, regardless of who owns the words.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 10:04 AM on February 28, 2010

Our policy is "no, we will not do that".

Deleting a specific thing that you regret or that is causing privacy issues is one thing, and we'll accommodate that sort of thing generally when it comes up (whether in tandem with an account closure or not), but requests to wipe an entire account's activity are not something we're okay with.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:58 AM on February 28, 2010

does not work in court, business, real life...and shouldn't work here on Metafilter.

Appearances to the contrary, MetaFilter is actually real life.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:55 PM on February 27, 2010

jwz is kind of a nerd idol of mine and I can dig the entertainment value and bragging rights that comes with cracking into a good puzzle, but I honestly don't feel great about trying to nuke a legit problem-solving askme in an effort to make the internet at large a spoiler-free zone.

We're willing to chew on third-party requests for deletion in the case of e.g. inadvertent (or intentional) breaches of privacy and such, but that's generally about as low as the bar for... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:41 AM on February 27, 2010

The classy thing to do would've been to honor the request.

We're not talking about Matt making a post on his personal blog and jwz being like "oh hey can you amend that blog entry". The request is to remove someone's good-faith question and cut off lots of folks participation in a totally legitimate use of this site as the community space it was designed to be.

I don't think classiness is a very clear-eyed frame in which to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:58 AM on February 27, 2010

if the author of a post asks you to delete their post, will you just do it, or does their reason for wanting deletion have to match one of a handful of acceptable reasons? If the latter, what are those reasons?

In almost every case, we'll delete any thread at the poster's request. Occasionally we'll ask a poster in AskMe, if their reasoning is "It's embarrassing to have it associated with my username" if anonymizing the post is okay with... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 10:34 AM on February 27, 2010

It feels like a camel's nose to me. I think we ought to be leery of creating the impression that people are entitled to ask us to conceal content (that isn't libelous or egregiously privacy-violating), because that will only lead to ever-escalating requests to do so.

I don't totally disagree, but I'm okay with us doing as a one-off here even with those reservations. Certainly better than deleting the whole mess.

I'll happily... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 1:10 PM on February 27, 2010

Yeah...saying "wait wait wait...we'll do this here...but it doesn't set a precedent" does not work in court, business, real life

This is not court. Real life in general actually involves an awful lot of context-specific flexibility on a lot of folks parts. There's an awful lot of that sort of flexibility in play on metafilter pretty much constantly, which is part of what makes our jobs doable and keeps this place from descending into a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 2:44 PM on February 27, 2010

how can you NOT condemn atrocities done in your name

For starters, I would have a complicated notion of "what is done in my name" I'm aware the US Government does a lot of shitty things, things that I am against. However, I do not feel that it's a necessary part of interacting on MetaFilter that I condemn these atrocities before I participate in a discussion about them. Partly this is because I think it's obvious that I am, for example,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 3:42 PM on February 23, 2010

I'm not sure why this is hard for people to grasp, but I was raised without religion so it comes sort of naturally to me to see the difference between "these Christian homeschoolers did some terrible things" and "this gigantic religion is, to a person, culpable for what happened, including every member of that religion"

I want people to make an effort to not make the same shitty derails they always do. Overgeneralizing about religion is no more appropriate than... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:51 PM on February 23, 2010

It's one of those things I thought might be looked down upon.

The awesome thing about MeFi is that people will look down on pretty much anything you do, so it can be freeing to use this an excuse to do pretty much what you want.

It seems weird to me when people give everyone in a thread best answers, but giving out a few? Five? Ten percent? I don't know, more than one has always seemed okay to me.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:33 PM on February 22, 2010

So do the posters get a rebate for the week on their deleted post, or is it a "better luck next time!" sentiment?

Better luck next time, often if it comes down to communicating with someone about it in more detail with an offer to vet their redraft ahead of time to let them know if there's anything problematic with it.

The 7-day limit is hardcoded into the site; we'd have to go out of our way to change something to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 10:12 AM on February 22, 2010

I cleared this with cortex before deleting it. Both of us felt that it was pretty much textbook chatfilter and the "hey help me make a list" sort of approach made it just feel wrong in addition to the number of flags that were on it. I know it's very close to a question that would have not been deleted, as you said. However we've been clear that phrasing matters [i.e. "what is the problem to be solved" needs to either be explicit or fairly obvious [I want to read a book, for... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 10:00 AM on February 22, 2010

cortex: I gather that there are various other threads of interaction and dislike that some folks carry in their whatever-it-is against her

The Nielsen Haydens came of age in a certain kind of environment, pre-internet Fandom, in which various behaviors were completely acceptable (e.g. using obscure insults like nithing is horseplay, like friends calling each other bastard, knucklehead etc.) but that do not translate outside of that context. For most... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Kattullus at 2:49 PM on February 22, 2010

What proactive MeTa threads do allow us to do, however, is delete off-topic ranting as derails and direct people who want to continue to off-toplically rant to this existing thread, a thread that they would have not created themselves.

Really, without putting too fine a point on it, it's a little embarrassing how a few polite and slightly-less-polite requests to take that sidebar elsewhere were totally ignored with even more "no she really IS horrible"... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 12:06 PM on February 22, 2010

So can someone give me the tweet version of the history justifying the vitriol directed at TNH?

This is as short as I can make it and still capture most of what I think the story is:

When the Xeni-unpublishing-Violet-Blue thing broke back in summer 2008, no one on BB publicly responded to the sudden blogospheric interest about the whole situation; questions like "what was deleted" and "why" went unanswered,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 1:05 PM on February 22, 2010

God help me but I think this is the way it went.

- TNH had a very popular blog with a small community at her personal website.
- She came up with this idea of "disemvowelling" problematic comments
- Other people latched on to this and gave it a lot of "OMG AWESOME" props
- Because there's not really much to say about moderation other than "be good at it"
- And people like to think they can... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 12:58 PM on February 22, 2010

when did TNH stop being a BoingBoing moderator?

It's been months. I went digging around trying to find a specific "I am leaving" or "she left" post, but I know she's not a moderator there anymore and I know it's been a while.

So at some level -- and again, I don't know TNH personally and have good and bad opinions about her -- I feel like "Okay, you think she was a bad moderator, guess what she's not... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 12:29 PM on February 22, 2010

the mods decided there'd been too much politics filter

We deleted a bunch of crappy posts, this has nothing to do with us deciding "too much politics" at all. Sometimes a newsy political topic winds up destined for the front page but that doesn't mean that any crappy post stays up because it's topical and/or important. Make a good post.

Mods have made it clear that only one obit per corpse will survive;... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:26 AM on February 22, 2010

What? I don't follow you at all. There's the usual "we look at the flag queue then make a decision" formula like there always has been. If I don't personally like a post but the flag queue says almost no one agrees with me, it stays. If I love a post and everyone else seems to hate it, it usually goes.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:58 AM on February 22, 2010

Either way, it isn't moderating, it's escalating, and more in the style of Teresa Nielsen Hayden than Mefi.

One "goddamn" isn't escalating. You can take or leave the advice and polite requests but if that's really what you were intending to get across, you were misunderstood. Taking swipes at cortex just seems like sour grapes.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:13 AM on February 22, 2010

makes us "bigots".

The difference between saying these polls are "bigotry disguised as science" and calling any particular MeFite or MeFites in general "bigots" is a large one. It's totally appropriate to come to Meta and say "I don't like these sorts of posts, how do other people feel" without having people get all up in their posting history. Do not do that. Thanks.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:31 AM on February 22, 2010

I don't like the poll posts particularly and I don't see what they have to really offer the MeFi community. Surprised more people don't flag them since they seem like an excuse for a five-minute hate.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 6:16 AM on February 22, 2010

You misunderstood.

You did not make yourself clear, and the chorus of negative readings to your comment kind of strongly suggest that the misunderstanding wasn't just mine. That's why I'm saying be explicit: say what you actually mean instead of posting some little selective stats dump and declining to actually state any constructive criticism that you feel merits airing.

That aside, "post something better", while... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:20 AM on February 22, 2010

Okay it's become apparent from this comment that a comment that made an observation that the thread was likely to devolve into Texas (or more a more broadly, religion) bashing was deleted.

The comment was in its entirety that quoted text, and it was the first comment in the thread. It goes up there with "This will wendell" and "*makes popcorn*" and other such things as kind of obnoxious FRIST POST doomsaying—the thread will... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 10:04 AM on February 22, 2010

Could I have some clarification as to why that observation was removed?

It falls completely under the "early threadshitting considered harmful" axiom as well as the "don't doom a thread before it's gotten started" principle. Sometimes decent threads go bad out of the gate because there are a bunch of early "This will not wendell HURF DURF" comments which fuck it up before anyone can read and/or comment on the links. We... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 10:04 AM on February 22, 2010

MeFi: 0 posts

As several other people have said, don't do this. It's a cheap tell-off that makes the foolish presupposition that posting output maps directly and invariably with the validity of commentary about posts.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:13 AM on February 22, 2010

Please don't do what?

Please don't selectively quote someone's posting stats back at them as some sort of dismissal of their opinion. I don't see how that's even ambiguous. It's a crappy, substanceless kiss-off. It says nothing except that you're willing to dismiss them because of a number.

You are totally free to rebut FuManchu and explain why it is that you object to their perspective on the situation, but use your goddam words.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:25 AM on February 22, 2010

No it is not a hellban. It's contextually appropriate. It lets you type really long comments and then when you try to post them it says the thread closed five seconds before you hit "post." You're only banned for comments that take longer than ten minutes to type.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:47 PM on February 21, 2010

I'm going to start banning people for that "this thread is closed to new comments" stuff, fair warning. I have a whole new type of ban too. I'm sort of excited about it.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:44 PM on February 21, 2010

Attention, citizens of the internet: that clown car joke you're thinking about making? The one about vaginas? Other people made it already. Sort of stupid, unlikeable people, people you avoid getting stuck in conversations with because you come away from them feeling awkward and embarrassed just by association. Those people are really proud of that joke, because it gives 'em a great chance to (a) be totally witty and shit and also (b) mention vaginas.

You're... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 8:55 AM on February 21, 2010

Making a MeTa post about the absence of a MeFi post is really not how you do this. Make the post if you want to.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:19 PM on February 20, 2010

Enough people flag any post (probably even one about ADORABLE BUNNIES AWW) and it will get deleted.

Not really. Flags are strong influencing factor on how we look at a post, but they don't overrule our judgement about whether to delete or keep a post. In this case, flags were definitely a factor because we were all varyingly on the fence about it and it was getting heavily flagged, which gave us an indication that folks in volume... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:09 AM on February 18, 2010

That thread stayed and has footage of the guy dying. So much for consistent standards.


The post itself had no footage of the guy dying, actually. Plus it was flagged significantly less. The thread had very little in the way of lulz and there were a lot of people discussing how reasonable it was or was not to have any footage of the guy's death at all, even though it was also captured from a variety of angles. It was actually a lot of... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:34 PM on February 17, 2010

Sorry, I didn't really mean to be that harsh, You Should See the Other Guy, but you're kind of tilting at windmills.

I could see this kind of emotional investment about some art, or maybe even a politically focused thread or something genuinely redeeming or controversial, but this is a hell of a windmill to tilt at.

The mods are also human, not robots, and the sort of consistency you seek in this kind of web community is considered harmful.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by loquacious at 7:32 PM on February 17, 2010

Heh, my first callout (well, partially mine anyways) - hi Mom & Dad!

My problem with this has nothing to do with how gruesome the video is. I agree - it is quite bloodless. I just think it's...what's the word....heartless to post a video of an accident in which four people were killed and many more injured, essentially for our entertainment, and without any other redeeming content. I fully comprehend the fact the people are suffering and dying around the world as... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Salvor Hardin at 7:17 PM on February 17, 2010

There are better ways to protest the deletion of your thread than making a rant in Metatalk. Maybe message the mods. But seriously, you can't think that this thread is going to result in any sort of positive outcome. Your whole tone is antagonistic and condescending. Just because your post wasn't deemed amenable to the site doesn't mean that anything is wrong with Metafilter. I certainly don't think that the thread in any way resembled, "the best of the web." Maybe you should... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by anansi at 7:12 PM on February 17, 2010

And to be a little more verbose, cortex and I talked about this and were both like "well mathowie commented in it... so maybe...?" and decided to leave it alone but then mathowie decided to delete it. A lot of people flagged it, quickly, and it was one of those cases where we might have gone either way but the rapid flagging made us feel "hmm people really don't like this" which was a stronger push than our particular feelings which I think were more mixed.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:11 PM on February 17, 2010

Sorry I wasn't able to get back to your email sooner, kaiseki, but Metatalk really isn't a good place for this either—generic chatty do-overs aren't part of what this part of the site is for. There's not really a good way to do this on any part of Metafilter as such; I'm not sure if there's some way to rework your question into something more concrete and less like "what's the deal with x", but if we can figure something out (feel free to hit us up via the contact form or drop... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 4:16 PM on February 17, 2010

This is not what MeTa is for.
posted to MetaTalk by fixedgear at 4:06 PM on February 17, 2010

I don't think you're trolling, but this is framed pretty much as a general chat session without a real clear problem to be solved.
posted to MetaTalk by youarenothere at 4:05 PM on February 17, 2010

I like the word 'modly'.
posted to MetaTalk by iamkimiam at 2:00 PM on February 17, 2010