Turn and face the strain

July 31, 2007 4:26 PM

There have been a few tweaks to tagging, flagging, and posting. [more inside]
posted by pb (staff) to Feature Requests at 4:26 PM (35 comments total)

Tagging - As jessamyn mentioned earlier, you can now tag your mutual contacts' posts (and vice versa). If someone is on your contacts list, and you are on their contacts list, you can add tags to their post. The original poster has final say and can remove any tags added to their post, and a mutual contact can only remove tags they've added. Behind the scenes the MeFi admins have a new "mutual tagging monitor" to watch for errant taggers.

Flagging - We've tightened up the flagging options just a bit: we've removed "noise" and "derail" for posts, and now you'll see "fantastic post" vs. "fantastic comment" for posts and comments respectively.

Posting - At MeFi we've put in a more thorough double-post checker. If you're posting a link to something that's been linked before, you'll probably get a message about it on the post preview page. This new checker is also looking at tags within the past 24 hours, and will give you a heads up if you're using a recently used tag. This system won't stop you from posting if there's matching link or recent tag, it's just an extra way to verify that your post isn't a double before it's live.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:27 PM on July 31, 2007 [1 favorite]

That is cool!
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 4:38 PM on July 31, 2007

I rarely use the faves, so maybe it's been this way a while, but the ability to unfavorite a post seems to be only available within the post. If you're on the front page and, say, you accidentally hit the favorite button trying to see the new tagging dropdown changes, the next press just gives an already favor'd error.
posted by nomisxid at 4:41 PM on July 31, 2007

we've removed "noise" and "derail" for posts

Cool, thanks.

For what it's worth, though, I've used "noise" for flagging posts before. It seems like the best possible description of posts like this one.
posted by dersins at 4:42 PM on July 31, 2007

nomisxid, in addition to removing favs from the post detail page you can click "Favorites" at the top of the page and remove any favorites there.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:46 PM on July 31, 2007

we've removed "noise" and "derail" for posts

please replace noise with something like 'this is crap' then, since 'other' doesn't quite cut it, and not every bad post is 'offensive content'
posted by blind.wombat at 4:48 PM on July 31, 2007

we've removed "noise" and "derail" for posts

Now can you remove noise and derail from posts?
posted by davejay at 5:01 PM on July 31, 2007 [2 favorites]

not saying you don't do your best, just trying to be funny. the changes rock.
posted by davejay at 5:01 PM on July 31, 2007

I was going to point to the same post as dersins as one that I flagged as "noise."
posted by stopgap at 5:13 PM on July 31, 2007

Just tested the double-checker. It works! Cool.
posted by dw at 5:21 PM on July 31, 2007

Re posts and noise: if a post should be taken down because it doesn't really fit the guidelines for Metafilter, it should probably be flagged as such. One of the problems with "noise" (as well as often-suggested but never implemented cousins like "crap" or "troll") is that it doesn't tell us a lot about the substance of the complaint—with comments there's maybe some more leeway for interpretation, but if a post is problematic in its substance somehow but doesn't break the guidelines and isn't somehow extraordinarily offensive, it's probably a good case for "other".
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:25 PM on July 31, 2007

"this is crap" falls under breaking the guidelines, in that posting crap is generally frowned upon. So at least I tend to use that as a catch-all, maybe that's just me.
posted by Rhomboid at 5:26 PM on July 31, 2007

Here's the thinking on the reasons taken out: "noise" and especially "derail" are descriptions for comments. A comment can derail a thread, and bunch of noisy comments can drown out the signal in a thread, but neither directly applies to a thread itself.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:30 PM on July 31, 2007

Thanks, pb!
posted by sciurus at 5:46 PM on July 31, 2007

Excellent. I like the way you guys are tightening up the site.

Now, would it be a good time to bring up a bug I've mentioned before that never got fixed? If you type <small>posted by&lt/small> anywhere in a comment and try to post it the error message returned is "Your comment appears to be blank, go back and try again," which is misleading and confusing.
posted by carsonb at 5:51 PM on July 31, 2007

Thanks for the heads-up! I'll have to remove Meatbomb from my contacts. None of my posts so far have concerned penis size and it's not a topic I plan to visit any time soon.
posted by Abiezer at 6:00 PM on July 31, 2007

Fabulous! I sold my "Sitewide number of contact links" stock yesterday, and I can practically hear it plummeting now.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:05 PM on July 31, 2007

Flagged as fantastic.
posted by Green With You at 7:02 PM on July 31, 2007

I use HTML / display error because they clearly just posted the wrong link, since no one could have meant to post the link they posted.
posted by smackfu at 7:07 PM on July 31, 2007

I still think there may be too many flagging options. For comments, all you need is three:
Fantastic post/comment!
Needs fixing! (ie for HTML, display errors and double comments)
Needs deleting! (offensive, noise, derail, breaks guidelines).
For posts, you'd also need an option for 'double'.
As a flagger, I would be less confused by this setup, but of course what's more important is whether it's better for the moderators to simplify. There may be information conveyed by the seemingly redundant negative flags that I fail to appreciate.
posted by nowonmai at 8:21 PM on July 31, 2007

Thanks, guys! I'd want to spare anyone the embarrassment of double-posting. It's a weight that the soul bears through eternity. *cries*
posted by SassHat at 8:50 PM on July 31, 2007

I'm with some of the other people here: I've been using "noise" for FPPs to indicate that they're not appropriate posts for MeFi. Am I supposed to use "breaks the guidelines" for that, instead?

(And you're conspiring to make me eliminate my sweetheart contacts, aren't you? I shudder to think what they're going to be doing with tags to my posts from now on.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 9:10 PM on July 31, 2007

-One of the problems with "noise" [..] is that it doesn't tell us a lot about the substance of the complaint-

Although I note with some trepidation cortex that you are the unrivalled king of minutiae extraction from the metafilter portfolio, one must nonetheless consider that sir is overthinking his power console beyond the "good", "bad" and number of flags distribution.

Thanks pb!
posted by peacay at 9:36 PM on July 31, 2007

one must nonetheless consider that sir is overthinking his power console beyond the "good", "bad" and number of flags distribution

There's different kinds of bad. You want the badder kinds fixed quicker? Granularity! The distinction between "noise" and "derail" and "offensive content" is not as useful on comments, for example, as that between any of those and "html/display error" or "double post", so while collapsing the first three together into some general "bad comment! bad! bad!" flag might be a reasonable idea, collapsing the latter two would actually slow us down and make our jobs harder.

It's minutiae, yes, but some of it turns out to be pretty durned useful.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:28 PM on July 31, 2007

How about having the double post checker also check root URLs, to discourage posters from linking to nytimes.com or youtube? Maybe with a little disclaimer when they post something from a domain that's been linked before: "Hey, we've seen this site before. Are you sure you want to post this?"
posted by Eideteker at 4:09 AM on August 1, 2007

Seriously, it's

"something needs an easy fix"
"something needs deleting STAT"
"something needs attention and maybe action"
"someone liked something"
"please look at this"

derail/noise/other all were the last one, in the previous flag-2-mod translation. This works better on our side and I don't think works worse on the user side.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:10 AM on August 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

"Granularity!"

Does this word have another meaning I'm not aware of?
Granny + hilarity = Granularity. Like when they have a granny rapping, or when an old lady hits someone with her handbag or says "Where's the beef?"
posted by Eideteker at 4:11 AM on August 1, 2007

I'll have to remove Meatbomb from my contacts.

Oi, this sucks. I have no intention of tagging anyone else's posts, ever. Don't leave me, my brothers and sisters, it is moments like these that I need you the most.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:34 AM on August 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

How about having the double post checker also check root URLs, to discourage posters from linking to nytimes.com or youtube?

Or the opposite... any hostname that's been linked to only once or twice is more likely a duplicate than one that's been linked to 50 times.
posted by smackfu at 5:43 AM on August 1, 2007

Just joshin' Meatbomb! I would be honoured if a gentleman and scholar possessed of such fine grasp of middle European diplomacy were to tag a post or two.
posted by Abiezer at 7:56 AM on August 1, 2007

you can now tag your mutual contacts' posts (and vice versa)

I'm curious - what prompted this? If I had a bunch of contacts (and I don't, which is why this is idle curiosity and not genuine freaked-out-ness), this would bug me a lot. It seems like the point of contacts is to let you keep track of contributions from people whose work you've enjoyed in the past. Using that as a criteria for who should be allowed to tweak a part of your post (an admittedly small part, but still) seems odd to me.
posted by vytae at 10:02 AM on August 1, 2007

I use contacts as sort of a private little temple, where I keep little digital totems of the mefi dieties I worship.

O_o
posted by Baby_Balrog at 10:18 AM on August 1, 2007

I was a fan of "noise", but I can see why it's problematic for the admins.

The tag search for new posts is an AWESOME idea- so simple, I can't believe no one's thought of it before.

I'm curious whether the mutual-contact tagging will get much play. Is there anyway we, as individual users, could get some kind of report on this activity? I'm not worried about policing my precious posts so much as learning how to tag better, and I think that could be A++ helpful.
posted by mkultra at 11:36 AM on August 1, 2007

The mutual contact thing is a clever bit of social engineering. Anyone who uses contacts ironically, like marking the people they hate as friends, may want to rethink things.
posted by smackfu at 12:06 PM on August 1, 2007

Nifty! Thanks, guys.
posted by deborah at 9:37 PM on August 1, 2007