An end to double posts! February 24, 2007 12:06 PM   Subscribe

Is the "The link you entered (http://etc/) was found in 1 previous thread." warning new? Cool, helpful feature! I had used the search field to check for previous posts, but hadn't found it - presumably because I was linking to a different page on the same site. (Won't it be funny if someone posted this before? [nervous laughter])
posted by serazin to Feature Requests at 12:06 PM (10 comments total)

w0t?
posted by delmoi at 12:25 PM on February 24, 2007


It's been there for three years or more.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:32 PM on February 24, 2007


out of curiousity, why doesn't it search all the links in the posts?
posted by empath at 12:33 PM on February 24, 2007


Three years? Well, in geologic time I'm right there on the cutting edge!
posted by serazin at 12:40 PM on February 24, 2007


On the subject of searching, am I doing something wrong when avoiding double-posting by checking for previous posts? I was checking to see if the Vindolanda tablets had been linked to before, and neither the search within Metafilter or a site specific Google search picked up this post - I found it in the end by searching for Hadrian.
posted by paduasoy at 12:48 PM on February 24, 2007


Since the word "vindolanda" wasn't used in the thread, a search wouldn't find the thread.
posted by Kattullus at 12:54 PM on February 24, 2007


Sorry, I meant I was searching for the URL.
posted by paduasoy at 1:06 PM on February 24, 2007


why doesn't it search all the links in the posts?

It's a pain to parse them all out, so I never bothered. I should though, now that I think about it, it's not that hard to do.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:13 PM on February 24, 2007


You'll turn up more previous posts when you search for just the domain name as your new post ... that's what I do before I start making a new post. I fill in the URL field with just the domain name. No www. No file names or directory names. Then I see what comes up. For some sites, like the Library of Congress or YouTube, you'll end up with hundreds of previous posts. But for most links, it'll catch a double post regardless of any webmaster tomfoolery. like changing the name of the html file or whatnot. It works for me about 99% of the time. (And lately, 99% of the time that I find something cool to post on the front page, I've found that someone already posted about it last month.)
posted by Dave Faris at 1:16 PM on February 24, 2007


I should though, now that I think about it

Yes, please!
posted by mediareport at 4:21 PM on February 24, 2007


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