Previously On Metafilter... *cut to montage*

September 21, 2010 2:04 PM

Is there an appropriate way to note follow-up on a closed MeFi post?

I noticed in today's NYT that there have been several arrests made of members of the Bell, CA city council. There was a post this summer (For Whom The Bell Tolls...) about the outrageous salaries some city officials were making in this small incorporated area of LA.

Of note, the arresting district attorney clarifying that ''Being paid excessive salaries is not a crime, illegally obtaining those salaries is a crime.''

Can we add a "follow up" link or such? Does anyone else care? I'm still new and not sure what the policy on this sort of thing is.

posted by maryr to Etiquette/Policy at 2:04 PM (15 comments total)

The short answer is that there's no specific function for doing follow up links or amendments to existing posts. So it comes down to a question of whether to make a brand new post either over on the blue or here in the grey, and that's subject to this basic rubric:

- If it's a genuinely post-worthy piece of news in its own right, make a good post out of it and include a "previously" link to the older post.
- If it's not really worth a new post, maybe just let it go and trust that folks interested in following the story will be able to find out the news on their own.
- If the post was somehow something very notable in a metafilter-specific way, making an update post about it here in Metatalk can be okay.

For this specific story, I actually wondered if someone was going to mention it because I recall the discussion back in July from the original post.

If you want my personal opinion, it doesn't seem like something that needs a new post on the blue or something that's really notable enough from a community-specific perspective to merit an update here on the grey either. That the obviously corrupt people are getting some legal comeuppance for being obviously corrupt seems more like a matter of inevitability than anything substantially surprising or new, so those of us who remember the whole Bell, CA thing are probably just going to either notice the arrest news or not and that's good enough.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:11 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

You could use MetaTalk to give the update and links.

Wait a minute: you already have used MetaTalk to give the update and links.

The thing about MetaTalk, though, is that it's reserved for extremely important news like Imogen Heap tweeting that she granted permission to Jason Derula to sample her song in his song.
posted by John Cohen at 2:19 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Alternate Solution: Start your own Metafilter website (aka MetaFilter-Two) run by alternate versions of our mods: Mathurty, Kortecks, Jessamax, and (occasionally) FriesianCow. Only doubles are allowed there.
posted by blue_beetle at 2:55 PM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

I eagerly await the illustrated Crisis On Infinite Metafilters line of comics
posted by blue_beetle at 2:56 PM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

blue_beetle: To start my own parallel MetaFilter, I would not omit pb.
posted by Cranberry at 3:05 PM on September 21, 2010

Fortunately, most developers exist in their own reality, so we would still only need one pb.
posted by blue_beetle at 3:13 PM on September 21, 2010

<Quantum>pb</Quantum>
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:26 PM on September 21, 2010

I hereby give Imogen Heap permission to sample any sound I might make, purposefully or otherwise. You know where to send the checks, right, Math Owie?
posted by Devils Rancher at 3:40 PM on September 21, 2010

FriesianCow?
posted by cjorgensen at 5:40 PM on September 21, 2010

No thanks, I'm high enough already.
posted by not_on_display at 7:01 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Pffft. A Friesian cow is basically just a Holstein. vacapinta is not a common dairy cow! Maybe a Dutch Belted - they're rather dashing.
posted by catlet at 7:42 PM on September 21, 2010

The Apis Bull

Bulls with the Apis markings where given apartments in the royal palace and cow-harems. When they died they where mourned as royals.
posted by The Whelk at 6:51 AM on September 22, 2010

That the obviously corrupt people are getting some legal comeuppance for being obviously corrupt seems more like a matter of inevitability

Would that it were so.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:45 AM on September 22, 2010

So to speak, then. Understandable cynical distrust in the notion of inevitability of justice being served notwithstanding, the news here is "the system is working", not anything more notable than that as far as updates go.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:59 AM on September 22, 2010

I'm thinking this is worthy of a new FPP. I'm amazed they were arrested. I think they won't get prosecuted, in the end. Hard to prosecute for legal enactments.
posted by Ironmouth at 4:15 PM on September 23, 2010