Detect Deleted Deletion Detector

February 28, 2007 12:03 PM

For over a year or so I've had a very handy java script application in my toolbar called "Detect Deleted Metafilter Threads" that finds the hidden axed threads. In the last few weeks it stopped working. Does anybody know why or if there is a new working version?
posted by fucker to Feature Requests at 12:03 PM (19 comments total)

Much thanks to the Mefite who designed it btw, I don't remember the original thread I found it in, but I've used it like crazy for a long time. Here is the now nonfuctional code (cut and pasted, I don't know if it'll post right; not a code guy):

javascript:void(A=document.getElementsByTagName('a'),N=[],M=[],f=');for(i=0;i<a .length;i++){ void(h=A[i].href,p=h.indexOf('/mefi/')); if(p!=-1 && h.indexof('#')=-1 && a[i].parentnode.tagname.tolowercase()='span'){ void(k=h.substring(p+6,h.length),N[N.length]=k,M[k]=1)}} for (i=N[0]; i>N[N.length-1]; i--) { if (!M[i]) f += '<a _blank href=http://'+location.host+'/mefi/'+i+'>'+i+'</a>\n'; } void((W=window.open()).document.write('Deleted threads: ' + f)); void(W.document.close());</a>
posted by fucker at 12:05 PM on February 28, 2007

Yeah, they changed the URL format. So that they have names and stuff now. I bet that's it.
posted by rbs at 12:07 PM on February 28, 2007

Plutor is the member, and here is the script; re-download and install it, and everything should work fine. It worked for me.
posted by exlotuseater at 12:16 PM on February 28, 2007

unless there's another one I don't know about...
posted by exlotuseater at 12:17 PM on February 28, 2007

No... not that long one (which probably works like a charm in FireFox...). There was a single (albeit enormous) one-line script that would do this.

I recently asked the same question, but never got a good answer. The old one would work in Safari, which is a good thing.

Is anyone better at parsing JavaScript than I am, and can they help us out by fixing the existing one?
posted by jpburns at 12:35 PM on February 28, 2007

Mod note: fixed fucker's code to display correctly
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:37 PM on February 28, 2007

A bit of Google turns up this person, and this recent comment:

Update 2007-02-05:

- since the activation of the new Metafilter url scheme, this bookmarklet is broken; I'm working on a new version :)

So, I guess, there's my answer!
posted by fucker at 12:39 PM on February 28, 2007

o i failed
posted by exlotuseater at 12:44 PM on February 28, 2007

I've been using Plutor's ever since the milov script went tits up. It works pretty well, though I liked the way milov's opened a new window with the list of threads—made it a lot easier to get caught up quickly without a lot of scrolling.

With Plutor's, I've found that it works best to run the script three times in a row—deletions become big blocks with plenty of whitespace, so you don't have to look hard to see 'em.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:49 PM on February 28, 2007

Go read the last two or three threads on this topic. Sheesh.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:29 PM on February 28, 2007

I wrote one that's basically the same but uses the new url form, if it doesn't work on Safari I can probably force it to later.

I know it'll be a mess if I try to post it here, but you can go to this page and drag the bookmarklet link into your wherever you kids drag these things.

NB there are probably better versions in the last two or three threads on this topic but I didn't read them either.
posted by moift at 4:19 PM on February 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

OH THANK YOU MOIFT YOU ARE NOW MY HERO!!!!!!
posted by quonsar at 5:19 PM on February 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Thanks moift. I had no idea what to do with a page of code, but drag I can do.
posted by poxuppit at 6:46 PM on February 28, 2007

Thanks moift, but still doesn't seem to work in Safari. I really should be using FireFox, but there's something about it I just don't like (something intangible).
posted by jpburns at 4:50 AM on March 1, 2007

Try it again after a refresh jpburns, I got it working in my test (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/418.9.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/419.3)
posted by moift at 11:22 AM on March 1, 2007

Funny, I get: "SyntaxError - Parse error" in the JS console.
posted by jpburns at 12:12 PM on March 1, 2007

I can't figure out how bookmarklets are supposed to work in Safari and assumed you had a better method, but what I had to do was to view source on the page, copy everything in the href (between the double quotes), go the bookmark editor, control+click and edit address, and paste it in. That way it translates correctly.

If you just drag it and drop it in the bookmark bar in Safari it saves with automatic url encoding, which changes (among other things) spaces to %20 and mucks it all up.
posted by moift at 12:21 PM on March 1, 2007

Thank you!!

That's so strange how that's hosed in Safari.

Works now.
posted by jpburns at 12:47 PM on March 1, 2007

whoa it's my fishless friend.
posted by fishfucker at 3:42 PM on March 1, 2007