New user posting limits

April 17, 2006 10:15 AM

Why do you need to have a certain amount of comments in order to be able to post a link to the front page?

I've just come across this brilliant documentary about Richard Feynman, but I'm not allowed to post it.

You cannot post to the front page at this time. This can be due to one of several things. You may not have been a member long enough, you may not have posted enough comments, or you may have already posted a link in the past 24 hours.

I've been a member for quite a while and haven't posted any link on the front page yet, so the reason must be that I lack the required number of comments. I understand that people need to have an idea what kind of links are appropriate on the front page; the question is whether the amount of comments one makes is a good metric to determine this. I don't often feel the need to comment on front page postings.
posted by koenie to Etiquette/Policy at 10:15 AM (42 comments total)

It's one of the only metrics there is. Check out this guy who's making my Spidey Sense tingle.
posted by interrobang at 10:19 AM on April 17, 2006

Metafilter has had a problem with people signing up for accounts, paying their $5, and then bouncing to the front page to post spam.

At which point Matt or Jessamyn tiredly delete the spam, and kick that user off the system -- who then signs up for another account, pays another $5, and does it again.

In part to prevent that kind of thing, they seem to have established a comment threshold to make it so that someone has to have participated in the site in a reasonable way before making FP posts.

You've been caught by the heuristic, but try to understand that it wasn't anything personal.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:21 AM on April 17, 2006

The metric was put in place before we had people who were contributing heavily to the site other places like AskMetafilter, which you definitely have been. On the other hand, MetaTalk is not really the place to make your FPP as a back-up.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:23 AM on April 17, 2006

Since no one has said it explicitly yet, let me: "Matt, please change this algorithm so it uses the sum of blue, green, and grey comments. Or maybe just blue and green."
posted by Plutor at 10:24 AM on April 17, 2006

Just make one more comment to metafilter, and you can post it (the minimum is 3, you already have two).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:30 AM on April 17, 2006

Aww, Plutor. I think it should be decided purely on MeTa comments. That'd teach 'em!
posted by klangklangston at 10:44 AM on April 17, 2006

Yes, Plutor's suggestion is a good one!

koenie, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out has been mentioned several times, but since it was not viewable online until now, it probably hasn't ever been a post. Once you get around to posting, please consider [more inside]'ing Minds of Our Own and possibly Lt. Bunny Wigglesworth's comment in the If they can't even play with trucks correctly ... thread.

There are lots of other Feynman mentions in AskMe and MetaFilter, but it would be a lot of work to dig them all up and figure out which ones are worthwhile, I guess..
posted by Chuckles at 10:45 AM on April 17, 2006

Ok, will make extra comment. I second Plutor's suggestion though :)
posted by koenie at 10:48 AM on April 17, 2006

While your post may be good, I'm sure you can see why people would be hesitant to let someone post to the blue without ever contributing to the site (Although you do contribute, just not to the blue so in your case the algorithm is off base).

I like Plutor's idea, but I'd suggest we might want to increase the number of comments, or have a month-long waiting period or something, since the number of self links seems to be going up.
posted by delmoi at 10:48 AM on April 17, 2006

Especially in your case, I don't understand how hard it is to make another comment.
posted by keijo at 10:50 AM on April 17, 2006

good god, people. It's 3 posts. *3*. Don't get all muh muh muh muhhhhh about this participatory bar. It's as low as it can realistically get.
posted by boo_radley at 10:53 AM on April 17, 2006

Plus, isn't the idea to try and ensure the poster has been around long enough to know about conventions like using "more inside" and not posting your link to meta, she asked, laying the snark on needlessly thick?
posted by CunningLinguist at 11:12 AM on April 17, 2006

I don't think the total should be changed to count all comments at other parts of the site. Three comments is not that high a bar, and a good FPP is very different from a good AskMe question. Just because one has read AskMe a lot it does not follow that they know what a good FPP is.

The thing about needing to make comments on the Blue before posting is that it means that one has to at least open one thread before making an FPP. That seems like a reasonable, if too low, expectation for getting to know the site before contributing to it.
posted by OmieWise at 11:13 AM on April 17, 2006

good god, people. It's 3 posts. *3*.

Fair enough, but see how wonderful it is to have blink back!
posted by Chuckles at 11:13 AM on April 17, 2006

interrobang, is that guy making your spidey-sense tingle for a reason other than the fact that he writes english poorly?
posted by shmegegge at 11:28 AM on April 17, 2006

good god, people. It's 3 posts. *3*. Don't get all muh muh muh muhhhhh about this participatory bar. It's as low as it can realistically get.

This isn't mentioned on the "d'oh" page, so how was I supposed to know? I haven't complained about not wanting to make an additional post, now have I?

I also apologize to those people who are offended by me posting the link in question here in MetaTalk.

Additionally, since it is so nicely illustrated by this as well as my other thread on MetaTalk, I'd like to mention that the thing bothering me the most on MetaFilter is the high level snarkiness and wise-assery in the comments. This, by the way, is also why I prefer not to post comments in the blue. Methinks this kind of behaviour drives away lots of potential contributers to this otherwise great community.

Plus, isn't the idea to try and ensure the poster has been around long enough to know about conventions like using "more inside" and not posting your link to meta, she asked, laying the snark on needlessly thick?

When posting a question in the green, there is a separate input box for the "more inside". In my opinion, adding it here would make the user interface a bit more consistent. Again, my apologies if I have offended.
posted by koenie at 11:44 AM on April 17, 2006

A good comment to make in one of the threads would be "where is the quality control?"
posted by LarryC at 11:49 AM on April 17, 2006

I also apologize to those people who are offended by me posting the link in question here in MetaTalk.

Which would be me? Or maybe CunningLinguist? I think both of us were just saying "Um, that's not really the way things are done here" I think it would be a stretch to call either of us offended.

Your MeTa comment seemed to be saying that you had a problem with the comment quota for posting, and people were trying to explain to you what the purpose of it was. This part of the site has the highest snark:info ratio. MeTa, AskMe and MeFi work on slightly different codebases and I think the reason there isn't a "more inside" option here is to discourage really long posts.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 12:09 PM on April 17, 2006

Yeah, but you said it with typical niceness and reason, whereas, I, you know, didn't.
posted by CunningLinguist at 12:11 PM on April 17, 2006

Apologies for any snarkiness, I thought that the requirements were writ large on the new user page but I cannot find them now. I'm sure they were a couple of years ago at least?
posted by keijo at 12:30 PM on April 17, 2006

Which would be me? Or maybe CunningLinguist? I think both of us were just saying "Um, that's not really the way things are done here" I think it would be a stretch to call either of us offended.

Of course not, I appreciate your kind advice. My comment was directed to those who could potentially have been.

Your MeTa comment seemed to be saying that you had a problem with the comment quota for posting, and people were trying to explain to you what the purpose of it was.

Yes, some have explained it quite nicely, and slight improvement to the algorithm has even been proposed. I just tried to clarify my position for those for whom my formulation might not have been clear enough.
posted by koenie at 12:37 PM on April 17, 2006

And you didn't offend me, either. Really.
posted by boo_radley at 12:41 PM on April 17, 2006

No problem, keijo.
posted by koenie at 12:41 PM on April 17, 2006

koenie: you still only have to make one more comment on the blue and then you can have your FPP. So go ahead and do that.
posted by delmoi at 1:05 PM on April 17, 2006

I thought that the requirements were writ large on the new user page but I cannot find them now. I'm sure they were a couple of years ago at least?

I believe the idea was to leave the exact number purposely vague so people didn't just go comment in three random year-old threads.
posted by gleuschk at 1:22 PM on April 17, 2006

I'd like to mention that the thing bothering me the most on MetaFilter is the high level snarkiness and wise-assery in the comments.

*resists temptation*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:45 PM on April 17, 2006

*fails*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:48 PM on April 17, 2006

I agree that green posts should count. Why add to the assholery so common on the blue, when folks don't really have anything to say by encouraging any old kind of post just to be able to share something?

If someone has been reading the blue, and trying to provide answers in ask.metafilter, that shows they know how to make a useful contribution. And, what is a FPP but an attempt to make a useful contribution to the site?
posted by QIbHom at 1:58 PM on April 17, 2006

QIbHom asks, "Why add to the assholery so common on the blue[...]?"

Well, you could buck the trend and add something useful and thoughtful if you wanted.
posted by boo_radley at 2:19 PM on April 17, 2006

How about everyone is required to post once to each of the three parts of the the site (MeFi, MeTa, AxMe) before doing an FPP. If they don't do this every month, they get banned and their user number gets recycled. Their $5 membership then gets paid (in true pyramid style) to the oldest members who remain active. Anyone who stays active for month than 12 months receives a 28-day "overachiever" posting ban. This gives them a 2 day window to post, otherwise they are removed from the matrix collective. Upon completion of the aforementioned process, $1 will be placed into a special account to buy memberships for people nominated by a random selection of members voting in a "hot-or-not" type private forum. In the event of a tie, an electoral college would be formed from among the membership of MeFi, properly selected to represent a cross-section of nationalities, ethniciities and pancake admiration. These members elected by common vote, would be given the right to post 2 questions to AxMe in their first week, then no questions in the second week. Their comments would be correlated to FPP, and anyone with a ration above 5:1 would be banned, their posts deleted, and all record of them expunged. For every one of these "elected members" that were banned, the three lowest active user numbers would be deleted, as a way of punishing the membership for its poor choices. Any member posting more than 10 times in any given month would be awarded one bonus membership which they could assign to a family member or action off to another member to use as a sockpuppet. The proceeds from this auction would go into a server upgrade fund, and possibly to employ someone full time to keep a "Rules and Regulations" wiki up to date. The number of deleted posts, members and comments would be available and constantly updated and each user page would list the number of deletions for each user. Each comment deletion would result in a 48-hr posting ban, a deleted FPP would mean a 1 week ban, and after ten such offenses, any attempt to login to MeFi would force the user to be redirected to boingboing.net for the remainder of the year. Users could be sanctioned back into MeFI by creating a project listing why the user should be allowed back, and voting would occur. Once the offender receives either 2/3 of the popular vote, or 7/11ths of the electoral college vote, or a number equal to 7/3 times the number of deleted users, they would be put on probation and only allowed to answer AskMe questions. This would last for the period of 3 months, or the time between 3 full moons if the re-instatement occurs during the weekend, or on a leap-year.*

* further details of these rules, and many others can be found in my soon to be published book "How to Screw Up MetaFilter by imposing random rules which really have no purpose other than to satisfy the whims of random people on the internet." coming in June 2006 from Prentice-Hall publishers.
posted by blue_beetle at 2:22 PM on April 17, 2006

I was thinking after reading that, blue_beetle, that you have too much time on your hands. I realized upon further consideration, however, that since I read the whole thing I probably have too much time on my hands as well.
posted by spaghetti at 2:33 PM on April 17, 2006

Blue_beetle is a hack. They ripped off that whole ruleset from the missing pages of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition. Gygax is going to be pissed.
posted by loquacious at 2:59 PM on April 17, 2006

Hey loquacious keep trying, I hear they pay people for being funny!
posted by cellphone at 3:26 PM on April 17, 2006

There's just something about the structure of this near-tagline that makes it compelling:

Metafilter: the high level snarkiness and wise-assery in the comments
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:10 PM on April 17, 2006

Damn, those Freudian slips always bite you at the worst possible time!
posted by koenie at 6:45 PM on April 17, 2006

Administrators, please hope koenie's spelling! (Feynam should be Feynman, of course)
posted by Chuckles at 8:32 PM on April 17, 2006

I'd like to mention that the thing bothering me the most on MetaFilter is the high level snarkiness and wise-assery in the comments. This, by the way, is also why I prefer not to post comments in the blue. Methinks this kind of behaviour drives away lots of potential contributers to this otherwise great community.
Those are exactly the kind of crybabies we want to drive away. To everything a purpose.
posted by dg at 9:15 PM on April 17, 2006

I fixed the typo.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:52 AM on April 18, 2006

Thanky you jessamyn.
posted by Chuckles at 7:03 AM on April 18, 2006

And thank you, Chuckles.
posted by koenie at 7:14 AM on April 18, 2006

koenie writes "I'd like to mention that the thing bothering me the most on MetaFilter is the high level snarkiness and wise-assery in the comments. This, by the way, is also why I prefer not to post comments in the blue."

Instead of running away start posting and set an example of what you'd like to see.
posted by Mitheral at 7:40 PM on April 18, 2006

Great Idea! +Digg!
posted by jimfl at 6:40 AM on April 19, 2006