Good posts are new?

July 12, 2011 10:00 PM

Question about good posts: "new"?

The wiki says "A good MetaFilter post links to something on the Internet that's new and interesting."

Does that mean the website or webpage should be newly created, or only that it should be new to MeFi - no one has posted about it before?

I assume it means new to MeFi, but I thought I'd double-check.

posted by kristi to Etiquette/Policy at 10:00 PM (13 comments total)

Yes, that's a good reading of it. "New to MetaFilter" is a pretty good badge for a post to have. Not strictly necessary though. MeFi's been collecting cool stuff on the Internet for nearly 12 years now, and there's bound to be some overlap. Sites die and reappear at different URLs, or significantly expand or change, or there's other new development. That sort of thing differentiates and legitimizes newer posts from older ones that are otherwise ostensibly the same.

Nothing wrong with 'newly created' either in a post (though there's gotta be some there there, you know?) but I don't think that's what the spirit of that text is going for.

You should probably clarify on the wiki. Or something.
posted by carsonb at 10:06 PM on July 12, 2011

If something (not the TLD, but the actual content) has been posted before, it would be a double. So, if the TLD itself is new and interesting, that's great. Else, the actual content should be new and interesting. Reading "new" as "new to MeFi" is better than reading it as "newly created", though there is nothing wrong with that as long as the content is substantial.

However, newly created content on websites that are very widely read (NYT, for one), has to cross a higher bar for "interesting".
posted by vidur at 10:13 PM on July 12, 2011

I think beyond "new to MeFi," the guideline encompasses a general sense of "new to MeFites." In other words, no one wants to see tired old memes that happen to have never been the subject of a FPP post, because we've seen them all elsewhere. Similarly, an FPP like "hey there's this game called Portal 2 and a lot of people seem to like it, so here are some links and reviews" might not be pointing to sites that have been on MeFi before, but it's still not exactly topical.

If your post is basically just a rehash of something that has already been posted to Digg, Reddit, Boing Boing, and friends with little to no added value, it's probably not a good MetaFilter post. If your post covers an overlooked gem that's been around for ages, that can be, in my opinion, pretty darn cool.
posted by zachlipton at 10:16 PM on July 12, 2011

PEDANTRY ALERT: examples of TLDs are "com", "net", "org", "gov", "edu", etc. If you want to label something like "someserver.com", that's just a "domain", not a "top-level domain".
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:22 PM on July 12, 2011 [9 favorites]

Thanks. That wasn't pedantry at all. I stand corrected and educated.
posted by vidur at 10:36 PM on July 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

Our general rule of thumb is we'd like stuff to be new-to-Mefi but we realize that a lot of people weren't here seven years ago and so might not have seen stuff. That said, anything that's a repeat of something posted in the past few years will likely [but not always] get deleted as a double.

Otherwise, if folks haven't seen it, the content itself doesn't have to be new, though if it's some sort of newsy thing it's better off if it's recent and not from a few months or years ago. We're pretty flexible here generally and there's no real problem even if your post is deleted as a double, we just like people to do a little work [check the URL, check the tags] to see if something's been here before and especially if it's been here recently.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:37 PM on July 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

Thanks all - most helpful.

I was pretty sure several of the cool FPPs I'd seen were new-to-MeFi but not brand-new-to-the-world, but I wanted to make sure I wouldn't be committing a breach of etiquette if I posted something that's been around a while.

In appreciation for the clarifications, I'm off to update the wiki.

Thanks!
posted by kristi at 10:39 PM on July 12, 2011

Similarly, an FPP like "hey there's this game called Portal 2 and a lot of people seem to like it, so here are some links and reviews" might not be pointing to sites that have been on MeFi before, but it's still not exactly topical.

OTOH, there was a well-received Nation States post this year and that game has been around longer than both Portals.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 10:58 PM on July 12, 2011

Yeah but I'd never heard of Nation States before and it doesn't seem like I can leave my virtual front porch without running into approximately 10 million people shitting themselves over Portal.

That's right. 10 million.
posted by NoraReed at 2:57 AM on July 13, 2011

There are times when the TLD is new, though, and that can make for an interesting post. For xxxample.
posted by Lemurrhea at 3:47 AM on July 13, 2011

Do try to avoid commonly linked domains, though, like nytimes.com, huffingtonpost.com, youtube.com, and so on.

lol j/k, post the shit out of those fuckers
posted by Eideteker at 4:17 AM on July 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

All these domains are yours, except Cracked.com. Attempt no landing there.
posted by crunchland at 5:20 AM on July 13, 2011 [4 favorites]

jessamyn: "Our general rule of thumb is we'd like stuff to be new-to-Mefi but we realize that a lot of people weren't here seven years ago and so might not have seen stuff. That said, anything that's a repeat of something posted in the past few years will likely [but not always] get deleted as a double."

By the way, if your post does contain content that has been posted before but isn't a double, you might consider noting that by adding in a "Previously" link. (For an example, see the last few words above the line on this post.) It's absolutely not necessary or required. But I have long suspected that including a "Previously on MeFi" link may cut down on the frequency of people declaring, "This is a double!"
posted by zarq at 7:21 AM on July 13, 2011 [1 favorite]