Where did they go?

April 6, 2009 10:39 PM

So when did lofi stop showing deleted posts? Is this a new feature or a temporary bug?
posted by caddis to Bugs at 10:39 PM (15 comments total)

It was a casualty. A victim of...

The Hackening!

(spooky) Wooo!

(Well, the ensuing cleanup, actually.)
posted by Pronoiac at 10:55 PM on April 6, 2009

I thought lofi was kind of abandoned. (That would explain why the only subsite linked at the top of lofi is Metatalk.) I'm pretty sure pb + matt don't really touch it any more.
posted by koeselitz at 11:53 PM on April 6, 2009

What's not to touch?
posted by mattoxic at 12:17 AM on April 7, 2009

Friday, February 13 2009. Scroll down for the cortex and jessamyn responses.
posted by tellurian at 12:32 AM on April 7, 2009

Deleted posts were showing up on lofi precisely because we didn't touch lofi. But during the hack cleanup we had to decide if we were going to completely remove lofi or completely retool it. We opted to rewrite it, and deleted posts were removed in the process. If we had been maintaining that page all along, they would have been removed a long time ago.

And now that the page has been completely rewritten for security and efficiency we're back to not supporting it.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:04 AM on April 7, 2009

Now, if you go to xtreemlofi.metafilter.com...
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:44 AM on April 7, 2009

*grieves a little for the old lofi

So are there any convenient scripts, preferably something that doesn't require Greasemonkey? There used to be an old script that found them, but it stopped working when the thread links were changed to include the titles.
posted by caddis at 6:51 AM on April 7, 2009

There's the milov javascript bookmarklet, here, which I used to use back in the day. He mentions it being broken and an update being in the works, but that was in 2007, so, heh.

I don't know if he ever patched it, or if anyone else ever did. It may be fairly trivial to fix for someone who can parse javascript, I dunno.

I think the rest of the scripts that I'm aware of are all Greasemonkey-driven.

There's also the deleted threads blog, which isn't as good for instant gratification because it's updated by hand, but it does give you archives if you're of that bent, and hence makes for a good target to search against if you're trying to track down an old deletion.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:02 AM on April 7, 2009

Yep, that milov bookmarklet was the one I used to use.
posted by caddis at 7:10 AM on April 7, 2009

i use this:

javascript:void(as=document.body.getElementsByTagName('a'),ids=[],links=[]);for(i%20in%20as)if(as[i].href%20&&%20as[i].parentNode.className=='smallcopy'&&(m=as[i].href.match(/^http:\/\/(www|ask)\.metafilter\.com\/(\d+)\//)))ids.push(m[2]);for(i%20in%20ids.sort())if(i>0)for(d=parseInt(ids[i-1])+1;d'+d+'');void((W=window.open()).document.write('Deleted%20threads:%20'+links.join()));void(W.document.close());

and I have no idea where it came from or how to make it into a bookmark...
posted by HuronBob at 7:21 AM on April 7, 2009

Someone updated it for the new naming scheme and posted the source code in the milov thread. It seems the easiest way to install a bookmarklet is to make a link out of it here and drag it to the links bar. The author claims it is untested, but it does appear to work on the blue. It isn't as easy as lofi as you have to click the links to find out what the thread was about. Perhaps I should try the GM script. I have avoided greasemonkey in the past as I just assumed that it was one more vector through which an attack could be launched at my machine.

on preview: you can use that trick to install a bookmarklet using live preview but the script itself doesn't survive on preview and presumably posting. (That makes sense from a security standpoint.)
posted by caddis at 7:22 AM on April 7, 2009

Just to cover all the bases: you can create a bookmarklet by creating a regular bookmark with any URL. Then edit that new bookmark and replace the existing URL with your code.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:45 AM on April 7, 2009

I pre-emptively make posts that I know will be deleted, then add bookmarks for them. I'm ahead of the curve.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:21 AM on April 7, 2009

An even earlier thread about Lofi leaving out deletions.

I don't see HuronBob's script anywhere else - it's definitely not at milov's site. It doesn't seem to work for AskMe or Mefi for me.

The 2007 script from the comments at milov works for Mefi but not AskMe, apparently. Let me see if I can link it here:
* bookmark this, then edit it by removing the http://example.com at the beginning.
* iPhones & iPod Touch: You can do the above, but you might also be able to sync it using Safari on your computer.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:09 PM on April 7, 2009

Oh, that was a stupid name for the link. How about Show Mefi deleted threads instead?
posted by Pronoiac at 3:12 PM on April 7, 2009