vestigial more inside sentences

November 30, 2006 10:37 PM

In askmefi, I occasionally see some posts where the first question field ends with "of course ..." as if the rest of the sentence is cut off. In older posts, though, that phrase usually ends with "... there's more" as in "of course there's more." Is it because it's an askmefi cliche and that metafilter users are perpetuating it as a joke, or if it's because that particular sentence is automatically truncated by admins who deem it unnecessary because of the [more inside] denotation?
posted by i8ny3x to Etiquette/Policy at 10:37 PM (16 comments total)

People do it to be cute, most people hate it, and it's been addressed in metatalk before. Also, this will never be resolved, so go back to bed.
posted by interrobang at 10:42 PM on November 30, 2006

It's intentional cuteness by the poster. We discussed it recently in this thread.
posted by cortex at 10:43 PM on November 30, 2006

Damn it, interro, stop reverse-stalking me!
posted by cortex at 10:44 PM on November 30, 2006

There is a large spate of people who try to incorporate the automatic "more inside" text as if it was part of their text, just more cleverness that kind of grows old after the 500th time.

I think the ellipses in the older posts was indicative of a pause, was this prior to the "more inside" feature, when you had to manually enter the MI text after posting?

I don't think there was any particular sentences that where automatically truncated.
posted by edgeways at 10:45 PM on November 30, 2006

oh i see. damn it. I thought I searched for it before posting this. It is kinda annoying, but I guess we can seethe all we like here.

And it's too early for bedtime!
posted by i8ny3x at 10:46 PM on November 30, 2006

It's really lame for RSS feeds. I took it out of the preview page, so the people that continue to do it today actually are doing it while imagining the extra text.

The preview shows what it will look like on the comment page, which is essentially gibberish, but still they do it for the front page joke.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:04 PM on November 30, 2006

My girlfriend made scrambled eggs and tea for breakfast.
The eggshells and teabags were com-
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 12:24 AM on December 1, 2006

Only one person in recent memory has done this so that it worked on the front page *and* in RSS feeds. And they were anonymous, if I recall, so we can't even give them kudos. So I'm just going to put my kudos on a shelf until somebody takes credit for having sack rash.
posted by antifuse at 2:15 AM on December 1, 2006

If no one else will take credit, I would like to suggest the possibility that maybe I have sack rash.
posted by logicpunk at 4:21 AM on December 1, 2006

Matt, if you and Jess strip out the cutesy [more inside] joke from anonymous questions, like the sack rash one, that would probably help.
posted by mediareport at 4:21 AM on December 1, 2006

... most people hate it ...

That might be a stretch. I've always liked it.
posted by knave at 4:32 AM on December 1, 2006 [1 favorite]

kind of grows old after the 500th time.

Now that's tolerance.
posted by peacay at 5:02 AM on December 1, 2006

The simple solution would be to for Matt to programmatically do a search for the string "of course" in the question, and if it is there replace [more inside] with [I'm an idiot].
posted by SteveInMaine at 6:21 AM on December 1, 2006 [1 favorite]

The simple solution would be to for Matt to programmatically do a search for the string "of course" in the question, and if it is there replace [more inside] with [I'm an idiot].

Sounds like a job for a Greasemonkey script. (Not that I'm offering, as I have no idea how to write one, but I love the Wikipedia caret link one.)
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:50 AM on December 1, 2006

woot.com takes the approach of replacing certain words people say a lot in the forums, such as "Bag of Crap" and "refurb" with funny stuff. "Bag of Crap" has been translated to "Bandolier of Carrots", "Badgers on Crack", "Big ol' Carpathian", and many other ridiculous phrases.

Matt probably doesn't want to belittle helpless n00bs, though, so we should all just snicker to ourselves when we see it.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 1:16 PM on December 1, 2006 [1 favorite]

Is it just me, or there even MORE instances of more inside "cuteness" since this thread?
posted by The Deej at 1:41 PM on December 1, 2006