Flag or favorite

March 12, 2007 6:21 AM

There's a flag for "fantastic post". Is that used for anything, or have favorites replaced it?
posted by smackfu to Etiquette/Policy at 6:21 AM (30 comments total)

flagged as "fantastic post"
posted by horsemuth at 6:27 AM on March 12, 2007

i use it as a "sidebar this awesome shit!" proxy vote.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 6:28 AM on March 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yeah, there's favorites, and, like Sgt. sandwich, there's the fantastic post flag, which means, for me "sidebar it!"
posted by notsnot at 6:34 AM on March 12, 2007

It's pretty much obsolete. Matt recently mentioned plans to scrap it from the flag list since, yeah, positive-minded favorites do a much more thorough job these days than the flag.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:52 AM on March 12, 2007

Losing it would be sort of unfortunate. Favorites is not really a flagging tool, it's a bookmarking tool. I can think something is fabulous, but unless I want to see it again, there's no point in having it on my favorites list, while the flagging option let's me mark something as fabulous for possible sidebar status without having it show up on a list of things I apparently care about.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:59 AM on March 12, 2007

I understand the objection, jacquilynne—languagehat has made a similar point a few times—but the inescapable facts are these:

1. Almost no one uses the "fantastic post" flag, these days at least.
2. All kinds of people favorite the hell out of good stuff.

So as a means of finding neat things on the site, the favorites db is yards and yards ahead of the "fantastic post" flags. It doesn't it put it upon you to start favoriting things; there are plenty of people who will.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:18 AM on March 12, 2007

I use favorites as a book marking tool, not a "this is great!" tool, which is what I use the flags for.

In askme, Favorites are sometimes used as a "Me Too" option.
posted by muddgirl at 7:19 AM on March 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

Stuff people want to bookmark for later is usually good stuff or contains good discussions, so I think following favorites for the sidebar will still work out.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:28 AM on March 12, 2007

BTW, the popular favorites page is a bit of a mess. Would be much better if it included the complete posts and the complete comments, maybe each type on distinct pages.
posted by smackfu at 7:45 AM on March 12, 2007

If "fantastic post" is going to be removed (yes please, it's confusing as it stands), I would also like to request the following for improved usefulness:

1) Options that are currently treated as the same by admins (e.g. "noise/offensive/derail") could be rolled into a single option.

2) "It breaks the guidelines" should be replaced by "self link" - breaking the guidelines in other ways would be covered by "noise etc".

3) One or two new flags for "admin, please fix broken link" or "admin, please fix broken formatting".
posted by teleskiving at 7:50 AM on March 12, 2007 [2 favorites]

Can we also have one for "Male Answer Syndrome"?
posted by popechunk at 8:27 AM on March 12, 2007 [4 favorites]

We only need two flags "Admin this post is very bad" and "Admin this post is very good" and if Matt wants to get rid of the good flag then we don't even need a selector. The flag function could be all ajaxy like favourites.
posted by Mitheral at 8:32 AM on March 12, 2007

I use "fantastic post" for something that I really like but know I will probably never look at again.
posted by Mister_A at 8:33 AM on March 12, 2007

echoing Mitheral.
posted by boo_radley at 8:35 AM on March 12, 2007

"1. Almost no one uses the "fantastic post" flag, these days at least.
2. All kinds of people favorite the hell out of good stuff.

So as a means of finding neat things on the site, the favorites db is yards and yards ahead of the "fantastic post" flags. It doesn't it put it upon you to start favoriting things; there are plenty of people who will."

Y'know why I use the faves instead of the flag? Because the flag is more of a pain in the ass. New page, pulldown, confirmation page... pause while page reloads. It also fucks navigating by "back."

So I use the fave button for both "I wanna see you again, baby" and "Hey, high five!"

Though I do totally support Teleskiving's reforms on the flag options. I've said they needed reevaluation before and got the "they're for admin convenience" response, but they're unweildy for users, which undercuts actual usefulness to admins.
posted by klangklangston at 8:39 AM on March 12, 2007

favorites are not for voting, they are for easily finding posts you want to go back to. That differs from "fantastic." Some things are really fantastic but once read you don't really want to go back. Some things are kind of neat, not fantastic, but you might want to go back later, such as recipes. You could be more explicit with the "fantastic" flag and just call it a "vote for sidebar status" flag.
posted by caddis at 8:43 AM on March 12, 2007

That being said, peacay's post today is both fantastic and worth going back to later.
posted by caddis at 8:45 AM on March 12, 2007

Stuff people want to bookmark for later is usually good stuff or contains good discussions, so I think following favorites for the sidebar will still work out.

At one point during the brawl over anildash's change AskMe's background suggestion, five people had favourited it. Was that because they liked it or because they wanted to watch the carnage?
posted by timeistight at 8:54 AM on March 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

carnage, but we don't automatically add anything to the sidebar based on favorites, so it's a moot point.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:06 AM on March 12, 2007

At one point during the brawl over anildash's change AskMe's background suggestion, five people had favourited it. Was that because they liked it or because they wanted to watch the carnage?

Carnage/historical reasons seem more likely. But so what?

I don't think many people have suggested that everyone always uses favorite to mean "hey good", or that people are or should be obliged to use favorites that way, or that favorite-as-proof-of-goodness should be taken robotically and without exception to feed the sidebar or whatever.

However, enough people do use favorites to correlate to "this is good" that it works pretty well. In aggregate—discounting the big-picture significance of how you or you or you specifically like to use your + button—favorites work well. The big list of top-favorited stuff for the last seven days is chock full of likeable, interesting posts; I don't see any carnage peeking in there, despite the rubbernecking that happens around contentious metatalk threads and other miscellaneous meltdowns.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:11 AM on March 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

What about replacing 'Flag as good post' with 'nominate for sidebar'?
posted by serazin at 9:14 AM on March 12, 2007

It's usually easy to tell just by the progress of a thread whether a post is favorited because it's ugly, pretty, or useful. Add to that people bookmarking a post because they expect it to be deleted, and you have an all-in-one marker.

But yeah, I prefer using my own favorites list for things I want to return to, so I'm pretty parsimonious with marking comments and posts as favorites. I'm all for reforming the flagging mechanism.
posted by ardgedee at 9:19 AM on March 12, 2007

I found I wasn't using my favorites as bookmarks, so now I just use it as a public "attaboy".
posted by smackfu at 9:25 AM on March 12, 2007

We really need a flag to say, "I don't care much one way or the other, and I want everyone to know it."
posted by Mister_A at 9:32 AM on March 12, 2007

In aggregate—discounting the big-picture significance of how you or you or you specifically like to use your + button—favorites work well.

I guess I just feel like I want a way to contribute my vote without having something end up on my favourites list. But if the reality is you don't need my vote, I guess I can live with my insignificance. I am not, after all, a unique snowflake.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:28 AM on March 12, 2007

I actually agree with you, from a personal-practice perspective. I use favorites a bookmarks and not as votes—specifically because I do want to find the things I favorite in the future, I'm disinclined to litter up my favorites list. I'm not a snowflake either, it turns out.

I think of it as a question of intent: are we building a mechanism to make sure every mefite's voice is heard in a quality-tracking system, or are we building a mechanism to make sure that cool stuff is made visible to Matt and to anyone poking the Recent Favorites-type lists?

For the former, something like the "fantastic post" flag is better, because, yeah, it doesn't conflict with non-vote uses of favorites. Right now, that system doesn't work—very few people use it. If Matt AJAXifies the flagging cue and reverses his position on nixing that flag, we might see a turnaround, but who knows.

For the latter—which seems like the big win, for me—we've already stumbled into a very functional system with the favorites: even if it's a muddled and inconsistent approach to things on a user-by-user basis, as a whole it really does work. If I think something is awesome but don't want to use my favorites to vote, no worries: if it is awesome, others will. If it's not awesome at all, they won't.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:08 AM on March 12, 2007

teleskiving: 1) Options that are currently treated as the same by admins (e.g. "noise/offensive/derail") could be rolled into a single option.
2) "It breaks the guidelines" should be replaced by "self link" - breaking the guidelines in other ways would be covered by "noise etc".
3) One or two new flags for "admin, please fix broken link" or "admin, please fix broken formatting".

1. Agreed.
2. Ok, but in Ask not all guideline breaks are self-links. There are also "hypothetical/chatfilter"; "advocating illegal activity"; maybe a couple others. Would it be workable to have separate flags for these?
3. Agreed.

This probably depends how it looks from the other side of the mirror. Do the admins want to have queues that are prioritized -- one queue for "Code Red" offenses, one for lesser stuff that they can get around to later?
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:49 PM on March 12, 2007

Please add a "admin hope me" flag of some sort, for broken links/formatting.
posted by blasdelf at 10:05 PM on March 12, 2007

I agree with Cortex completely... & the posts I choose to "favourite" may not even be that great, but in some way they may be relevant to my life, so I bookmark 'em.
posted by Laura in Canada at 7:24 AM on March 13, 2007

An "admin hope me" flag would be all sorts of useful.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:35 PM on March 13, 2007