AskMeFi RSS feed January 30, 2007 12:33 PM Subscribe
AskMeFi RSS feed: Could use some sort of delineation between the question text and the More Inside text.
The solution is clear - get people to stop doing that infuriatingly stupid "there's [more inside]" bullshit and actually just write in complete sentences.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:04 PM on January 30, 2007
posted by Rhomboid at 1:04 PM on January 30, 2007
Yes, but failing that, a paragraph break would be nice.
posted by staggernation at 1:08 PM on January 30, 2007
posted by staggernation at 1:08 PM on January 30, 2007
The solution may be clear, but the implentation remains elusive.
A paragraph break seems like the simplest move, yeah.
posted by cortex at 1:11 PM on January 30, 2007
A paragraph break seems like the simplest move, yeah.
posted by cortex at 1:11 PM on January 30, 2007
Yeah, I can add a couple br's in there.
I really hate the more inside crap. I took it completely out of all previews, so people are totally blind as to how it will look. Also remember that it makes no sense:
- in the RSS feed
- on the comments page
- on many archive/category pages
It only makes sense on the front page, and that's for a short time. Otherwise, you look like a dork doing it, so please for the love of god people, stop.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:22 PM on January 30, 2007 [2 favorites]
I really hate the more inside crap. I took it completely out of all previews, so people are totally blind as to how it will look. Also remember that it makes no sense:
- in the RSS feed
- on the comments page
- on many archive/category pages
It only makes sense on the front page, and that's for a short time. Otherwise, you look like a dork doing it, so please for the love of god people, stop.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:22 PM on January 30, 2007 [2 favorites]
The devil on my shoulder suggests you throw that on the posting page, Matt.
posted by cortex at 1:33 PM on January 30, 2007
posted by cortex at 1:33 PM on January 30, 2007
Yes, please put that on the posting page. And can we somehow devise some kind of "cockpunch-over-TCP/IP" device for people that continue to do it?
posted by Rhomboid at 1:43 PM on January 30, 2007
posted by Rhomboid at 1:43 PM on January 30, 2007
Require that the first part of the question ends with a period.
(or question mark)
posted by cillit bang at 1:55 PM on January 30, 2007
(or question mark)
posted by cillit bang at 1:55 PM on January 30, 2007
Actually, a little bit of investigation suggests two things to me:
1. The problem is not very common at this point.
2. There may be a good programmatic way to conditionally warn against this behavior.
Data, then speculation!
The data: I just read through the most recent five pages of AskMe, covering threads numbering 55840–56041, which includes posts from January 27 through January 30. This is about, and probably slightly less than, 200 posts. I did not check for duplicates.
I was looking for threads that did not end with either period or a question mark. (Note: I did not check for terminal whitespace.) I found 14 such threads, and noted what character they did end with and whether there was an actual [more inside] section. The raw findings are below.
*** [mi]
nopunct, no [mi]
ellipsis char, no [mi]
no punct, [mi]
URLs, no [mi]
nopunct, no [mi]
genuine article!
genuine article!
nopunct, no [mi]
nopunct, [mi]
(mi), [mi]
), no [mi]
nopunct, no [mi], anonymous
!, [mi]
Of these, there are only two genuine articles: too-cute-for-comfort plays on the [more inside] terminator.
The remaining 12 end with alternate punctuation,—exclamation mark, close paren, asterisk, ellipsis entity—or no punctuation at all.
Of those, there are two which end with no punctuation (because the author simply did not punctuatuate) and which also had info in the [mi] section of the posting page.
The speculation: There were no observed instances of cuteness that involved terminal punctuation. There were two observed instances of cuteness, both (as expected) unpuncutated, and two observed instances of unpunctuated non-cute questions with [mi].
Grand total of 2/200 for both the cuteness we'd like to defeat and non-punctuated, [mi] bearing questions we wouldn't want to defeat.
(Since cuteness can only occur when there's a [mi] block, we can ignore all non-[mi] cases for the following.)
Ornate, I'm-not-sure-I'm-serious suggestion: at post preview time, check to see if (1) the [mi] text area has content and (2) the front page text area ends on an alphabetical character.
If so, display explanatory "if you're doing this cute thing, please don't; if not, don't mind this" disclaimer.
BAM.
posted by cortex at 2:02 PM on January 30, 2007 [2 favorites]
1. The problem is not very common at this point.
2. There may be a good programmatic way to conditionally warn against this behavior.
Data, then speculation!
The data: I just read through the most recent five pages of AskMe, covering threads numbering 55840–56041, which includes posts from January 27 through January 30. This is about, and probably slightly less than, 200 posts. I did not check for duplicates.
I was looking for threads that did not end with either period or a question mark. (Note: I did not check for terminal whitespace.) I found 14 such threads, and noted what character they did end with and whether there was an actual [more inside] section. The raw findings are below.
*** [mi]
nopunct, no [mi]
ellipsis char, no [mi]
no punct, [mi]
URLs, no [mi]
nopunct, no [mi]
genuine article!
genuine article!
nopunct, no [mi]
nopunct, [mi]
(mi), [mi]
), no [mi]
nopunct, no [mi], anonymous
!, [mi]
Of these, there are only two genuine articles: too-cute-for-comfort plays on the [more inside] terminator.
The remaining 12 end with alternate punctuation,—exclamation mark, close paren, asterisk, ellipsis entity—or no punctuation at all.
Of those, there are two which end with no punctuation (because the author simply did not punctuatuate) and which also had info in the [mi] section of the posting page.
The speculation: There were no observed instances of cuteness that involved terminal punctuation. There were two observed instances of cuteness, both (as expected) unpuncutated, and two observed instances of unpunctuated non-cute questions with [mi].
Grand total of 2/200 for both the cuteness we'd like to defeat and non-punctuated, [mi] bearing questions we wouldn't want to defeat.
(Since cuteness can only occur when there's a [mi] block, we can ignore all non-[mi] cases for the following.)
Ornate, I'm-not-sure-I'm-serious suggestion: at post preview time, check to see if (1) the [mi] text area has content and (2) the front page text area ends on an alphabetical character.
If so, display explanatory "if you're doing this cute thing, please don't; if not, don't mind this" disclaimer.
BAM.
posted by cortex at 2:02 PM on January 30, 2007 [2 favorites]
MetaFilter: the cuteness we'd like to defeat
posted by staggernation at 2:35 PM on January 30, 2007
posted by staggernation at 2:35 PM on January 30, 2007
cortex, I'm pretty sure I read a while back that Matt was cleaning up the cutesy [mi] stuff to reduce the potential for copycat crimes, so those stats might not be accurate.
Honestly, I think using the phrase "for the love of god people, stop" on the posting preview page is the best idea yet.
posted by stefanie at 3:08 PM on January 30, 2007
Honestly, I think using the phrase "for the love of god people, stop" on the posting preview page is the best idea yet.
posted by stefanie at 3:08 PM on January 30, 2007
Ooh, interesting, stefanie. I didn't realize he was doing that; last conversation I was involved in was the one that led to removal of [more inside] on the posting preview page. Didn't know it had gone farther.
posted by cortex at 3:31 PM on January 30, 2007
posted by cortex at 3:31 PM on January 30, 2007
I removed about three cutesy things this week, but I just started recently doing it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:12 PM on January 30, 2007
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:12 PM on January 30, 2007
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posted by danb at 12:51 PM on January 30, 2007