Lousy outrage filter

April 14, 2012 1:32 PM

This is a lousy post and should be deleted. It's outrage filter and we don't have both sides of the story. Some of the links in the thread indicate that the blogger does not have a history of reliable behavior, so they may be nothing to be outraged about. I think it's bad policy to accept something apparently outrageous prima facie without delving into it further. If you can't find clarifying links, then don't post.
posted by desjardins to Etiquette/Policy at 1:32 PM (160 comments total)

I have nothing against it being deleted. Mainly I wish I hadn't posted it as there are some issues around it being deletedwhich means that may or not be the best course. But wishes and time machines are short onthe ground, so...

/shrugs.
posted by Artw at 1:37 PM on April 14, 2012

(I also have nothing against the text of the post being modified, but have no idea how exactly.)
posted by Artw at 1:39 PM on April 14, 2012

Whatever the truth of the original matter is, the blogger in question has since publicly revealed the personal name and twitter account of the person at Kickstarter with whom she was conversing. A person who in all likelihood was simply the messenger for someone else's corporate decision. That is low behavior, arguably soliciting for that person to be stalked online.

It reeks of horribleness and I reluctantly agree that the thread should be deleted.
posted by chimaera at 1:40 PM on April 14, 2012 [4 favorites]

I agree that the FPP should be deleted. It's tempting to leap to conclusions and assume we know exactly what happened based on a vague blog post, but we actually don't.
posted by John Cohen at 1:41 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

i think there's a really good discussion going on about sources and the validity of them and how to untangle inflammatory blog posts. i imagine it's not as it seems, but i also don't want to take reddit's word for it. i don't see a lot of pitchforking in the thread - some people are questioning what the TOS actually says and what kickstarter actually said. no matter how reliable the narrator, those are still good questions. i'm not opposed to it being deleted, but i don't think it's turned out to be empty outrage filter.
posted by nadawi at 1:41 PM on April 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

I reluctantly agree, there is an interesting discussion about what liability Kickstarter incurs by moderating comments, but the thread ain't going there.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:43 PM on April 14, 2012

I'm not really all that inclined to pull the post. The situation is weird but the discussion about it as things have unfolded has been reasonably interesting and the post isn't pasting the Kickstarter employee's name into google. I feel okay about the post existing as sort of a record of the situation, as far as that goes, in a way I wouldn't if it had been a weird name-and-shame sort of thing. But that's me.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:45 PM on April 14, 2012 [5 favorites]

i also don't want to take reddit's word for it. i don't see a lot of pitchforking in the thread

I agree we shouldn't take Reddit's word for it. I agree there isn't much if any "pitchforking" by anyone on Metafilter. I just think the one link on its own isn't very informative.
posted by John Cohen at 1:46 PM on April 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

What is a transmedia artist?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:48 PM on April 14, 2012

Is mefi about the links or the comments? I mean, I know it's both, but my impression that if a link was not-so-good, the quality of the comments could not automatically redeem the thread.

And my first reaction was similar to the young rope-rider - it's just a single link short blog post.
posted by desjardins at 1:49 PM on April 14, 2012 [4 favorites]

is it the outrage nature of the post or the singleness of the post? because quite a few of the people complaining that it's just a single blog post have made single link FPPs recently. i can see the complaints with the post/thread, but it seems silly to keep focusing on the single link nature of it. that's well worn territory at this point.
posted by nadawi at 1:52 PM on April 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

I suspect that at this moment Kickstarter folks are sending emails back and forth crafting a response from the outraged people at the sites that are talking about it. Once Kickstarter posts its side, someone will post that as a comment and we can discuss that. We've had other posts like that in the past. We'll have more in the future. Unless we decide to start only posting about things until there's a Fair and Balanced™ representation of all sides of the story.
posted by birdherder at 1:52 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

I think mefi is about both the links and the comments. Maybe it isn't the best post, but the discussion is interesting and doesn't seem to be a debacle to me.
posted by snofoam at 1:53 PM on April 14, 2012

Waiting for Waxpancake to weigh in...
posted by furtive at 1:53 PM on April 14, 2012

The thread's done at this point; please throw it down the memory hole.
posted by Leon at 1:55 PM on April 14, 2012

I also have nothing against the text of the post being modified, but have no idea how exactly.

This is a non-option. We never edit posts here, at all, except to make minor typo fixes or other small stuff.

I fall more on the "this is a single link outragefilter" side of this, but the discussion really has been interesting watching what happens. But in answer to your question desjardins, I think we've seen a lot of thin posts that get totally redeemed by the comments and since we err on the side of not deleting I think that's what we did here once we saw the discussion taking shape. I would have liked to see a more fleshed out post about this topic that interests me, but this post is generating the discussion I personally would have wanted to see in that other post so I'm at a personal shruggo impasse.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 1:57 PM on April 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

We don't generally delete the subjects of MeTas, so while I hear you, this one's probably going to live. The thread's been remarkably civil and non-pitchfork-waving, which is part of why it didn't really trigger any of my delete instincts, and the fact that the story is developing in-thread rather than in the post is non-optimal but happens sometime. I'll be keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn't take any weird turns, but it's more or less ok as it stands.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 1:59 PM on April 14, 2012

Transmedia artist is the new term for multimedia artist after multimedia artist stopped meaning "artist who combines media" and started meaning "artist who uses media that have multiple channels, usually audio and video".

She probably does video installations of the sort where the layout of the screens and the timing of the videos on each is key to the presentation. Or audio installations where she's got to build an instrument that uses the rafters under a bridge like a xylophone, so it's also kind of cool to look at. Dunno.
posted by LogicalDash at 2:02 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

After reading the post, I commented critically of Kickstarter. As the discussion continued, it seems that we're only hearing one side of a story from a questionable source. The people asking for deletion are probably correct. There's not a lot of good that can come from the post.
posted by knave at 2:05 PM on April 14, 2012

This seems to me a bad call, and a very bad precedent.

The fact that the moderators are personally interested in a topic does not make this post FPP quality. A post that almost every agrees is far below the bar really doesn't belong here.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:07 PM on April 14, 2012 [5 favorites]

The primary reason for not wanting OutrageFilter posts is that they get people all GRARy, right? This one hasn't. The conversation has been civil and expanded greatly on the post itself (and is in the process of teaching a bunch of people about IPs). Within an hour or so of the post going up, it probably should have been deleted. But now, the conversation has proven that it didn't have to be. Bad post; no deletion necessary. MeFi has saved Artw from himself.
posted by Etrigan at 2:11 PM on April 14, 2012

The fact that the moderators are personally interested in a topic does not make this post FPP quality.

I don't know that any of us are personally interested in the topic, beyond my general interest in online customer service and how not to do it. Once you've seen one customer service drama, you've kind of seen them all. I don't think it's a post any of us are going to vehemently defend, but at this point deleting it seems like it won't accomplish anyone's goals.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 2:12 PM on April 14, 2012

The fact that the moderators are personally interested in a topic does not make this post FPP quality.

Actually it seems like the moderators are more interested in the commentary that surrounds the post, less the subject of the post itself. And as was mentioned above, frequently the commetnary is more significant than the post itself.
posted by Fizz at 2:18 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

There's a phrase that IIRC got its start on 4chan -- Anonymous "is not your personal army" -- and it seems that the blogger is trying to round up her own personal army about a beef with Kickstarter that is months old, and Artw's post (especially if you look at the initial comments in the thread) represents an unintentional (on Artw's part) attempt to widen the reach of the blogger's "personal army" against Kickstarter.

I think knave's comment indicates the problem with the post standing as is.
posted by chimaera at 2:21 PM on April 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

The fact that the moderators are personally interested in a topic does not make this post FPP quality.

I'm not sure where you're getting that. I didn't know anything abut this particular drama until today but the discussion is bringing up aspects of Kickstarter and the surrounding culture that I think are really interesting.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:21 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

This whole story just seems like a wreck on the highway, and we're all rubbernecking.
posted by crunchland at 2:30 PM on April 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

I really dislike callouts, and calls to delete posts, like this. I think it's really bad for the site for users to act as though a thread continuing to exist is causing some harm in the world. Don't like the thread? Don't read it. Disagree with the substance of a linked blog post? Comment and explain why. But merely discussing something that's happening out there on the web is not a bad thing.

There should be a strong presumption against deleting a member's post, which they took time to think about and prepare. And frankly I think it's tacky to urge its deletion. Good job to the moderators for resisting this.

All we're doing here is talking about a blog post that's out there on the web. Every day we live with SLYT of silly cat videos, single links to odd and interesting things, etc. Just because you think the controversy is poorly represented or not balanced by the link is really not a reason for a deletion. It's an opportunity for you to comment and balance it out if you think it needs that.
posted by jayder at 2:30 PM on April 14, 2012 [29 favorites]

I didn't know anything abut this particular drama until today but the discussion is bringing up aspects of Kickstarter and the surrounding culture that I think are really interesting.

I'm confused.

I could swear in the past when people complained that their post might have been crap but it shouldn't be deleted because it might/did lead to a good discussion, the standard line in the past has been that Metafilter isn't about the comments.

I don't care whether the post stays or goes, but isn't this inconsistent? I'm not even stamping my feet for consistency -- it's more that I now feel I must have been misreading or misunderstanding something in the past?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:35 PM on April 14, 2012 [7 favorites]

OutrageFilter is a grey area here as posts about pending legislation or inflammatory (yet documented) news stories are deleted virtually automatically while one-sided blog entries with little or no credible support remain as the equally tenuous follow-up is "interesting".
posted by Ardiril at 2:36 PM on April 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds or something like that. The mods here do a good job of modding by the spirit rather than the letter of the guidelines. Don't fix what ain't broke.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 2:40 PM on April 14, 2012 [6 favorites]

I suspect that at this moment Kickstarter folks are sending emails back and forth crafting a response from the outraged people at the sites that are talking about it. Once Kickstarter posts its side, someone will post that as a comment and we can discuss that.

Not that the web (or metafilter) has to be fair, but I don't really think that's fair to kickstarter. A comment buried who knows how far down a thread, while the post itself is presented as truth? Kinda shitty.

And on preview, I agree with the young rope-rider: "My issue with it standing is that I don't want metafilter to become a place where people purposefully seek to raise ire against Thing X based on a whole lot of nothing."
posted by inigo2 at 2:42 PM on April 14, 2012

I think it should be deleted, too, tbh.
posted by empath at 2:46 PM on April 14, 2012

This is a lousy post and should be deleted. Bitching and moaning about another users posts in a public manner like this is far worse than anything in the other post. It is rude and disrespectful.

This is not a democratic-controlled website.
There is a mechanism in place if you feel a post should be deleted. Use it.
posted by 2manyusernames at 2:48 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

My issue with it standing is that I don't want metafilter to become a place where people purposefully seek to raise ire against Thing X based on a whole lot of nothing.

My view of metafilter is that it tends to self-police those types of issues anyways. Which has been the case here. The entire authenticity of that post and the story was raised/questioned/dissected and continues to be discussed. So no need to worry on that end. The truth will out.
posted by Fizz at 2:49 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Bitching and moaning about another users posts in a public manner like this is far worse than anything in the other post. It is rude and disrespectful.

You must be new here.
posted by empath at 2:55 PM on April 14, 2012 [6 favorites]

This is not a democratic-controlled website.

No yet, but the Mefite Liberation Intervention Front (MLIF) will change that.

Put your pants on and join the intense discussion for the future of the world. Or something like that.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:02 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Heh. I have no problem with desjardens calling the post out, given that the linked article has turned out to be hugely suspect. Now, if that was not the case I might disagree a little, but hey, if clouds were candyfloss we could eat them.
posted by Artw at 3:03 PM on April 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

There is a mechanism in place if you feel a post should be deleted. Use it.

Why so angry? desjardins did -- it's called metatalk.
posted by inigo2 at 3:08 PM on April 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

I think perhaps the mechanism meant was the flag.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 3:10 PM on April 14, 2012

This comment makes the whole thread worthwhile, regardless of the truth of this person's claims.
posted by jayder at 3:18 PM on April 14, 2012

My issue with it standing is that I don't want metafilter to become a place where people purposefully seek to raise ire against Thing X based on a whole lot of nothing.

Since linking to Kickstarter on the FPP has become one of the few pretty absolute no-nos here, one of the inevitable side-effects will be that MetaFilter will temporarily become a prime forum for Anti-Kickstarter content.

But if a thread on this subject was deleted at Reddit, that should give our mods a strong hint.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:23 PM on April 14, 2012

This comment makes the whole thread worthwhile, regardless of the truth of this person's claims.

Delete the post from orbit.
posted by cashman at 3:24 PM on April 14, 2012

one of the inevitable side-effects will be that MetaFilter will temporarily become a prime forum for Anti-Kickstarter content.

How does that follow?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:26 PM on April 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

It's the only way to be sure.
posted by Fizz at 3:26 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

is it the outrage nature of the post or the singleness of the post?

Both. No one's saying it's never OK to have a single-link post. But the outrage aspect is compounded by the lack of any context or detail, and the fact that a blog post by one of the people involved is naturally going to be one-sided.
posted by John Cohen at 3:31 PM on April 14, 2012

one of the inevitable side-effects will be that MetaFilter will temporarily become a prime forum for Anti-Kickstarter content.

Not with our rockin' tight ass.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:33 PM on April 14, 2012 [11 favorites]

Not with our rockin' tight ass.

Crazy people come up with some of the best phrases. This gets better and better.
posted by jayder at 3:35 PM on April 14, 2012

Well, at least it looks like it's resolved now.
posted by cashman at 3:35 PM on April 14, 2012

When I read the post-text on the front page of the Blue I rolled my eyes and didn't click the post because it sounded hyperbolic. After seeing it here and reading the link, it seemed that Kickstarter really did threaten banning for being stalked. That was a definite Wow to me and I'm actually quite glad it got out there because Kickstarter clarified their policy.
posted by Danila at 3:40 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

I don't think it should be deleted. Just because the initial framing was wrong doesn't mean the post doesn't have any value, there is still a discussion you can have. Maybe a note from the mods or something.

It shows how easily people can get worked up just by reading a one-sided blog post, and deleting the FPP is just dumping that down the memory hole to avoid embarrassment.
posted by delmoi at 3:44 PM on April 14, 2012

maybe we can cut it out with the crazy and loony and other insults that end up casting a wider net than maybe you mean to?
posted by nadawi at 3:44 PM on April 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

What is a transmedia artist?

It just means that she isn't a cismedia artist.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 3:46 PM on April 14, 2012 [11 favorites]

But the outrage aspect is compounded by the lack of any context or detail, and the fact that a blog post by one of the people involved is naturally going to be one-sided.

Except that commenters pretty immediately added more context and detail, and there is little outrage in the thread.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:47 PM on April 14, 2012

Yeah, I'm seeing a lot more anti-Rachel wossname rhetoric than anti-Kickstarter rhetoric. Even self-dramatizing people with poor judgment have the right to get better customer service than she got frm that one rep (though her calling for the rep to be fired was a spectacular jerk move).

I appreciate Kickstarter's clarification of its policy. I think it's a sound policy statement, and I also think they did good by not pillorying the customer service rep who made the wrong call in the original correspondence.
posted by Sidhedevil at 3:51 PM on April 14, 2012 [4 favorites]

Goddamn it, there is nothing wrong with posts to Metafilter that are composed of a single link. It is the founding purpose of the site.

This particular link? Well, it's more of the same sort of gawking-at-people-with-poor-impulse-control that the internet at large so enjoys, and.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:07 PM on April 14, 2012 [8 favorites]

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds or something like that.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Also:

• All we want are the facts, ma'am. - Jack Webb
• Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. - Alfred Tennyson
• For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil - Bible
• Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake, play 'As Time Goes By'. – Ingrid Bergman
• You played it for her, you can play it for me. ... If she can stand to listen to it, I can. Play it. – Humphrey Bogart
• Why don't you come up sometime and see me? I'm home every evening. – Mae West
• Come up and see me sometime - Mae West
• Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges! - Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• To gild refined gold, to paint the lily - William Shakespeare
• Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men. - John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
• They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska. - Sarah Palin
• Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast. To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak. - William Congreve
• Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?" - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• Darth Vader: Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father. Luke Skywalker: He told me enough! He told me you killed him! Darth Vader: No. I am your father. Luke Skywalker: No... that's not true! That's impossible!

posted by nooneyouknow at 4:09 PM on April 14, 2012 [13 favorites]

You mess with the bull, you get the horns.
posted by Justinian at 4:25 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Tell Me No Lies writes "The fact that the moderators are personally interested in a topic does not make this post FPP quality. A post that almost every agrees is far below the bar really doesn't belong here."

If the most trusted members of the site who happen to be the only ones who can actually delete things upon careful reflection believe a post is ok that is pretty strong evidence of the appropriateness of the post. Also as of this comment there are only 56 comments in this thread and even then calls for deletion don't make up a majority of those comments (being generous I count less than 10 calls for deletion) so it's a little early to declare a consensus.

oneswellfoop writes "But if a thread on this subject was deleted at Reddit, that should give our mods a strong hint."

I get the feeling that the "hint" is the post should be deleted but I can't see how Reddit should ever inform moderation here with the possible exception of and intersite flame war between us and them. Certainly their deletion policy is wildly different that that here.
posted by Mitheral at 4:30 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

their deletion policy is wildly different that that here.

I see Marlin Perkins narrating as a helicopter tracks a reddit moderator through a comment field. A single dart is fired, tranquilizing GobstOppers_are_chewy, who slowly goes down. Then they examine the tag they attached last year. "Yep, looks like this little fella has been deleting posts left and right. You can look in the eyes here and see he's been staying up some long nights, probably making rage comics when he didn't feel like moderating r/bedheads." And then they hop back into the helicopter and the camera pans down to show he is okay as he staggers to his feet and runs off.
posted by cashman at 4:39 PM on April 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

I may be rude, tacky, and disrespectful but I do have a rockin' tight ass, so there's that.
posted by desjardins at 4:44 PM on April 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

Pictures or it didn't happen!
posted by 6550 at 4:47 PM on April 14, 2012

I may be rude, tacky, and disrespectful but I do have a rockin' tight ass, so there's that.

You forgot foul mouthed.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:51 PM on April 14, 2012

In some neighborhoods it is not a compliment to refer to somebody as tight-assed, but an insult. The meaning is they are overly proper and a goodie two shoes who keeps their anus clenched tightly lest some offensive odor might possibly escape.

Am I to take it that your buttocks are heavily muscled with small narrow strands of fat? Is that the tightness of which your ass consists? Cause that sounds really awesome but it's ambiguous to just describe yourself as tight assed.
posted by bukvich at 5:06 PM on April 14, 2012

Having a tight ass and being a tightass are I think pretty generally recognized as being two different sorts of things. It takes some contrived setup to actually create ambiguity on that front.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:14 PM on April 14, 2012

I thought there was a no kickstarter links rule?

I kid! I kid!
posted by cjorgensen at 5:18 PM on April 14, 2012

I think it's fairly clear that Ms. Marone means that her buttocks are toned. Tight-assed has a different connotation altogether and may even be somewhat archaic at this point -- I have not heard anyone use the term recently, in any event. The only other likely meaning I can see is negated by a reference she makes to her "asshole" quoted in the other thread; if she's drawing a distinction between ass and asshole there, it seems likely to me that her use of "ass" is meant to indicate the buttocks. I'm glad we could have this talk.

On point, Artw's post seems pretty okay to me. This single link -- its veracity aside -- has been making the rounds of Twitter today, and for that reason alone it makes sense to me that it should be put on people's radar. If anyone chooses to believe that story without any kind of corroboration whatsoever, well, I don't know if that's really anyone else's problem. It's clear that Rachel Marone is narrating the tale of woe experienced by herself, Rachel Marone. I think most of us have been around enough to know that this could, possibly, mean we're looking at a narrator who is, if not unreliable, certainly not 100% objective. We should be able to put that together on our own.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:55 PM on April 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

I think it's really bad for the site for users to act as though a thread continuing to exist is causing some harm in the world.

Sometimes, it is. When an FPP presents a one-sided, inflammatory accusation that turns out to have some pretty gaping holes, then MetaFilter is contributing to something bad. And when there's another party on the other side—a person, a company, a state, whatever—then that "bad" can be fairly termed "harm."

It's not some major destructive force in the world, no. It doesn't take food out of anybody's mouth and all the puppies and rainbows are safe. But still, I think it's fair to say that as MetaFilter threads go (i.e., relatively low-stakes), this one is "harmful." It should have been deleted. I think it's telling that so many commenters early in this MeTa agreed that it should be deleted, and I think "The discussion has been good" is a weak counterbalance.
posted by cribcage at 6:13 PM on April 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

This single link -- its veracity aside -- has been making the rounds of Twitter today, and for that reason alone it makes sense to me that it should be put on people's radar.

And I feel like many posts fitting that description would be deleted.

But, it is what it is. Not gonna stress.
posted by inigo2 at 6:23 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

No, I think it should stay up. I think it's been quite interesting to watch the story develop today. The commenters in the thread have been very reasonable, adding interesting links to fill in the information gaps as it came available. Nothing horribly wrong with what's there now. I say leave it.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 6:25 PM on April 14, 2012

I don't think "I saw it a bunch of times on Twitter" is a good metric for a post.

But hey, here are the current US trending topics, if anyone needs some ideas:

#girlwhyyou
#2YearsSinceSoSick
#ThatDepressingMoment
Kemp and Ethier
Creston
Matt Kemp
Bette Midler
Noel Gallagher
Panamanian Beliebers Will NSN
posted by desjardins at 6:34 PM on April 14, 2012 [6 favorites]

Metafilter: It's what's trending on Twitter.
posted by Ardiril at 6:35 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Trending topics aren't stories. This is a story. It might not be true, it may be incomplete, but it's a thing that people were talking about today, and some of those people are people who are sort of a big deal in the arts and/or feminism. It's at least as valid a basis for a post as, "Hey, do you remember Whiz Kids? Here's a bunch of YouTube clips of fuzzy Betamax tapes of Whiz Kids episodes from like 1982. Enjoy!"*

*I actually would enjoy this post, in case anyone needs some ideas.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:39 PM on April 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

Might as well start linking to People magazine.
posted by Ardiril at 6:49 PM on April 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

Uh, sorry you don't like Twitter? A lot of people use it. It's been a thing for a few years now?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:53 PM on April 14, 2012

This is a story. It might not be true, it may be incomplete, but it's a thing that people were talking about today

So what? That doesn't automatically make it an ok FPP, any more than a fast link to a famous person dying is a good FPP. This isn't NewsFilter or TrendingTwitterFilter or even PopularTopicsFilter; nothing would have been lost, and a lot gained, by waiting until there was enough information out there to put together a solid post about it.
posted by Forktine at 6:56 PM on April 14, 2012 [5 favorites]

Using Twitter and Twitter Trends are two different topics.
posted by Ardiril at 7:00 PM on April 14, 2012

This isn't NewsFilter or TrendingTwitterFilter or even PopularTopicsFilter; nothing would have been lost, and a lot gained, by waiting until there was enough information out there to put together a solid post about it.

It's obviously not the post you would have liked, but I think it's pretty solid. It was obviously solid enough to have a lot of people interested. Again, if the story was false or misleading, I think that we had the tools to figure that out, and I think people did tend to engage with the story rather than blindly assume it was accurate because someone wrote it and stuff. I don't mean to hover over this thread, but I am a little surprised this MeTa's even here, honestly.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:03 PM on April 14, 2012

It's Rocking Tight Ass Filter.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:09 PM on April 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

But hey, here are the current US trending topics, if anyone needs some ideas:

Creston actually might make a pretty good FPP. There was baseball-sized hail and 51 tornadoes today; there's been concerns that global warming will lead to an increase in the intensity of these sorts of storms.

Noel Gallagher is trending because a male fan proposed marriage to him, at a gig, in Mexico city. This is not a minor, comic story -- Mexico City recently legalized gay marriage, and, in fact, the Pope is in Mexico right now as part of what is seen as a campaign in the country to discourage this sort of liberalization.

I think Bette Midler is trending because she inducted the late Laura Nyro into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Would Nyro make a good FPP? You bet.

I don't follow the Dodgers, but I'd suspect there is some meat in the Kemp and Ethier trend. At least, sports writers seem to think there's something going on there.

I could continue, but, all told, I suspect that somebody who wanted to could use Twitter trends as a jumping off point to some pretty good FPPs.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:22 PM on April 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

The FPP was a single-link to an inflammatory blog post written by an unknown person with unknown (and it turns out, questionable) veracity. I wouldn't describe it as "pretty solid," as FPPs go. There have been some pretty good ones, especially around December the past few years.
posted by cribcage at 7:25 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Heh, that Laura Nyro FPP was a total stunt post, just to show someone how easy it is to whore favorites.
posted by Ardiril at 7:27 PM on April 14, 2012

Heh, that Laura Nyro FPP was a total stunt post, just to show someone how easy it is to whore favorites.

Well, allowing that perhaps you do noxious stunt posts to score obscure points off MetaFilter, Laura Nyro has a history of being seen as good material for an FPP.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:38 PM on April 14, 2012

Like I said in the thread, keep, so it can be a lesson to us all about "hey here's a thing we can all get outraged about" posts.
posted by Gator at 7:58 PM on April 14, 2012

This is somewhat off-topic, but I really just do not understand the "whoring favorites" thing. Why does someone's number of favorites comments or posts matter even a little bit?
posted by dotgirl at 8:13 PM on April 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

kittens for breakfast: " *I actually would enjoy this post, in case anyone needs some ideas."

OK, so all but one of my posts this month have been 80's nostalgia. And because I was a fan of Whiz Kids, it's actually one of the 8 shows I have started to research for an FPP.

I have links to (I believe) all the Whiz Kids episodes on youtube. Just haven't had time to watch them yet. kittens, if you would like the links and want to put together a post about them yourself, let me know via memail and I'll send them on. Or just give me a few days and I'll get one posted as soon as I can research some more background information to flesh out a post.
posted by zarq at 8:16 PM on April 14, 2012

Heh, that Laura Nyro FPP was a total stunt post, just to show someone how easy it is to whore favorites.

there are things in life that are much more important than whoring favorites and laura nyro is certainly one of them - her music transcends whatever it is you thought you were doing here

i'm just so damned happy she got inducted today - i didn't really think it would happen
posted by pyramid termite at 8:21 PM on April 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

Too late now but I fully agree with desjardins.
posted by special-k at 8:31 PM on April 14, 2012

cribcage writes "Sometimes, it is. When an FPP presents a one-sided, inflammatory accusation that turns out to have some pretty gaping holes, then MetaFilter is contributing to something bad. And when there's another party on the other side—a person, a company, a state, whatever—then that 'bad' can be fairly termed 'harm.'"

For the sake of discussion let's assume that accurately describe the post. Here a horrible one side presentation invariable brings out the other side and usually involves a nuanced discussion of the details and often presentation of additional information. The bad or biased information is chased out by good. And sometimes drive-by accusations of sexism.

dotgirl writes "but I really just do not understand the 'whoring favorites' thing. Why does someone's number of favorites comments or posts matter even a little bit?"

Some people can't help but keep score and there by assign worth to things any time a metric allows for score keeping. See for example parents at rec level sporting events. The only good thing about the favourite scoring metric is it displaced the "number of comments" thread scoring metric.
posted by Mitheral at 9:12 PM on April 14, 2012

The fact that the moderators are personally interested in a topic does not make this post FPP quality.

Actually it seems like the moderators are more interested in the commentary that surrounds the post, less the subject of the post itself.


Sorry, what I was trying to say is what you said there. The moderators appeared to have been listing one of the reasons for not deleting it as their personal interest in the continuing commentary.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:22 PM on April 14, 2012

jessamyn wrote...
I would have liked to see a more fleshed out post about this topic that interests me, but this post is generating the discussion I personally would have wanted to see in that other post so I'm at a personal shruggo impasse.

This is the problematic statement for me, btw.

To me it reads like you are balancing a community good (i.e. well done posts) against a personal good (i.e. the conversation you personally want). Perhaps I am misinterpreting things somewhere here.

In any case it's not the end of the world.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:48 PM on April 14, 2012

Perhaps I am misinterpreting things somewhere here.

Maybe? I think it's one of those situations where we all talked about it briefly, I was leaning more towards deleting it but the other mods had solid reasons for wanting to keep it including "Hey the conversation is actually going pretty well" and I checked it out and agreed. As we said way above, usually the reason we delete single link blog op-ed type stuff is because the threads go badly. On rare occasions, they don't. This seemed to be one of those times.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:06 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

the "whoring favorites" thing

Apparently we can cash in favorite now? For esteem and material goods?

I don't get it either - they are merely 'bookmarks,' after all.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:09 PM on April 14, 2012

If the occasional annoying post that I wouldn't have let through is the price I have to pay for the occasional super-fun post that technically breaks the rules but makes my MetaFilter a happier one, I'll deal with it. In the name of full disclosure I FIAMOd this one and I don't really think the ensuing conversation is so great.
posted by mintcake! at 10:14 PM on April 14, 2012

...but opinions, etc.
posted by mintcake! at 10:16 PM on April 14, 2012

To me it reads like you are balancing a community good (i.e. well done posts) against a personal good (i.e. the conversation you personally want).

Eh, I mean, I'm one of the folks who argued more for keep than delete but I have not been spending the evening (and was not expecting to spend it) sitting around reading that thread. Of course it's impossible for me to completely avoid any whiff of personal coloration in my thinking about this stuff, but for the record it was more that it seemed to be interesting-as-material-mefites-were-digging-into than interesting-as-what-I-personally-want.

If it was the latter we'd be talking about a "Let's Play" breakdown of Economies of Scale or an editorial arguing rightly that The Final Cut was not a Pink Floyd album at all but a Roger Waters solo project jammed ungraciously into Floyd fans' ear canals by a fundamentally unloving God.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:49 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

You hush. The Final Cut was brilliant. It was a shitty Pink Floyd album, and it was only intermittently musical, but it was nonetheless pretty great.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:54 PM on April 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

I feel the same way about Sesame Disco. Everyone knows that Cookie Monster and Big Bird were basically out of the band by that point and Ernie wrote everything himself on his legendary 3AM coke binges at Le Canard En Caoutchouc.
posted by mintcake! at 11:01 PM on April 14, 2012 [7 favorites]

I don't understand why it's so important to people that the post be removed? All the other sites discussing this have figured out that the person complaining is a bit nuts, what's the harm in actually leaving the post up at this point?

There is a difference between, given full knowledge would it have been better to delete the post immediately vs. whether or not we should delete the post now, hours later even though people are having a discussion.

Is it just that it makes kickstarter look bad? The thing is being discussed all over the rest of the internet as well.

In other words how does it follow from "It was a bad post" to "It should be deleted"?
posted by delmoi at 11:11 PM on April 14, 2012

It's been said before, but it's incorrect to assume that any moderator's personal preferences, interests, religion or lack thereof, gender, ethnicity, or political leanings determine what is or isn't deleted. My personal Metafilter would not look like the Metafilter we have, and ditto for the other moderators – each in different ways. But we aren't moderating based on what we would include, for example, in our personal blogs. We are looking at the organism as a whole as well as we can, and that's what occupies us. When we plead that people not be asses to each other in posts about controversial subjects it's because how the discussion goes over time (as opposed to a single post) defines what "Metafilter doesn't do well," which is a phrase I hate and resent, yet it's how we have to weigh things. An inflammatory "some horrible shit happened" post about a polarized subject that is going to end up in personal attacks, derailing arguments, hurt and angry members, Metatalk posts and people deleting their accounts? These are not good for the site, so we're more likely to delete, and more likely to ask that the OP come back with something more even-handed and thoughtful, without editorializing, without shocker quotes, including more than single links to Op/Ed sources, or early, unverified information.

We all know what most of these subjects are: Politics (especially US politics), Religion, Gender Wars, I/P, Police misconduct, Abortion, Abuse, Rape, Obesity/Body issues... more oddly, Apple/Android etc., and Biking, among others. We are much more likely to scrutinize these critically and delete or ask for re-dos because discussion usually goes very badly and a well-sourced, calmly presented, tempered post versus an angry, inflammatory "I'm-mad-and-you-should-be-too!" framing has a direct effect on the tenor and quality of conversation.

One of the things that Metafilter actually usually does much better than most places, in my opinion, is internet-related issues surrounding topics like moderation, censorship, policy, trends, and even teh dramaz. We tend to dissect issues and not take things at face value, and a lot of people here have direct experience with a lot of the content that is presented... and, crucially, with rare exceptions in terms of individual users, we are very, very unlikely to go all mob-justice, kill-the-witch on these topics (and yes, Mefi is big, and old, and someone can pull up examples that will argue against this, but as a general defining aspect I think it holds true).

From the very beginning, one of the subjects that has been of particular interest to members here has been internet culture, and it's not something we typically do "badly," and our moderation guidelines for All Posts are not the same as they are for News/Politics/Controversial Posts, which means something that is an edge case on a topic we are usually rather good at analyzing (or at least fairly neutral about) is not necessarily going to be deleted on exactly the same grounds as something that is notoriously problematic – because the possibility for more light and less heat is far greater. Discussion can bring up more background, links, and context that can help expand and clarify the issue, and if that happens, even an imperfect post on an internet drama that we can evaluate with cool heads can be redeemed.

This certainly wasn't a perfect post, but it was a post about a current topic of interest that isn't one of the subjects that typically devolve into squabbles, outrage, sarcasm and contempt, and the discussion has been civil (for the most part), questioning and analytical, which, to me, weighs more in favor of keeping.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:21 PM on April 14, 2012 [11 favorites]

Cool, restless_nomad and taz have really come into their own.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:54 PM on April 14, 2012

I luvs me some Taz.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 12:10 AM on April 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Hey, that's why I got into the moderation biz... it's like an unstoppable river of flowing love and hugs and cash emotional rewards.
posted by taz (staff) at 12:26 AM on April 15, 2012

> Heh, that Laura Nyro FPP was a total stunt post, just to show someone how easy it is to whore favorites.

You're trying to show how to "whore favorites" from curmudgeons and perhaps a random Laura Nyro-hater?
posted by desuetude at 12:34 AM on April 15, 2012

Metafilter: come for the rockin' tight asses and related melodrama, stay for the unstoppable river of flowing love and hugs and cash emotional rewards.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 1:50 AM on April 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

taz: "posted by taz (staff) at 2:21 AM on April 15 [6 favorites −] [!] [quote]"

Totally thought this was a comment from Jessamyn until I saw your name at the bottom. (This is a good thing.)

Well said. :)
posted by zarq at 4:12 AM on April 15, 2012

I agree, it should have been 'line' of fire, not 'range' of fire.
posted by unliteral at 4:31 AM on April 15, 2012

Zarq, I will be pleased as punch to see your Whiz Kids post upon completion. Whiz Kids is, in retrospect, kind of a fascinating cultural artifact, though I am a little nervous to find out how it plays as, like, a show to our modern sensibilities. We shall see!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:08 AM on April 15, 2012

TBH, I think this story has gone a little septic and the last thing I want to do is associate people with it who, um, may wish to not be associated with it anymore. But if you search Twitter, you can probably find some interesting things.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:16 AM on April 15, 2012

TBH, I think this story has gone a little septic

I think it started that way. And that's why I thought it should've been deleted early.
posted by inigo2 at 6:33 AM on April 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

I think it started that way. And that's why I thought it should've been deleted early.

The MeTa ceremonial hairshirt, please?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:47 AM on April 15, 2012

I like how that post shows how people decide what they want to believe in the presence of not all the information, and then throw out conflicting information no matter how real it is because it goes against their chosen narrative.
posted by fuq at 6:59 AM on April 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Apparently we can cash in favorite now? For esteem and material goods?

This is exactly why I bought the Metafilter fun pass with the unlimited favorites option.

Of course, the downside is you have to remember to cash in 500 favorites every month or you lose them, making it it harder to save up for the big prizes.

I mean, geez, I passed Gold Star a while ago and I'm still a couple hundred shy of Donut Platinum status.
posted by misha at 7:11 AM on April 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Kittens, okie doke. I have some work events that end on Weds, so I'll probably get it posted on Thursday or Friday, I think.

I could not for the life of me remember the name of the show, for the longest time. I only figured it out about a month ago. Shoulda used Ask.....
posted by zarq at 8:00 AM on April 15, 2012

Where's the pre-favorite a post button? (I can wait for the clips in the post... though I may search them out myself.) I LOVED Whiz Kids.

(I wrote this comment yesterday but neglected to hit post, and strangely the conversation has come back around to it.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:20 AM on April 15, 2012

I am not convinced that because the Internet detective squad has decided she's a crazy person who wasn't stalked but instead invited and instigated her own drama that this has gone septic. If there is one thing the Internet is really good at, it's getting things wrong when people playact at being experts.

I mean, sure, it might be that this is all some sort of bizarre codependent psychodrama. It may also be that an immature young woman is legitimately being harassed and because of her immaturity has responded to it in a sub-optimal way, and that's given a legion of people who don't really care about her cause to decide she's in part at fault. Which is different than her actually being at fault. Instead, it's something more like "you can get away with harassing people online if you pick a target that people don't like."

I want to note that this isn't the first such case like this we've seen. There was the young woman with a popular YouTube channel from a year ago or thereabouts who was relentlessly harrassed -- and eventually genuinely stalked by a man who sounded like a sociopath. Her problems were dismissed because she was attention-seeking and she had at times been mean to other online.

There's a disturbing phenomenon of young women being subjected to really vicious or sustained online attacks, and the web digging into their past or their behavior to say, oh, it's not a big deal, look, they're whackos, and then just dismissing it. And, unfortunately, I feel like this is what has happened here. But, you know, the victims of harassment or stalking are not always the best people on earth. In fact, as I said in the thread, often harassers will especially target sort-of margin personalities, because their victims elicit so little sympathy.

Which is why I wanted to focus away from the specifics of this case and on the possibility that this is something that, in general, Kickstarter doesn't do very well. And that's worth considering, because there really is a pernicious trend out there of vicious bullies targeting young women for harassment online, and it's pretty frustrating that right now the web responds en masse by digging into the life of the victim in order to see if they deserved it.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 8:26 AM on April 15, 2012 [10 favorites]

it's pretty frustrating that right now the web responds en masse by digging into the life of the victim in order to see if they deserved it.

It's perfectly reasonable to find out what she's done to the alleged stalker, in deciding whether to believe her claims of stalking.

To me, it's just as likely that THE ALLEGED STALKER is a victim of her, and that what you are describing as stalking of her, is just him responding suboptimally to his victimization.
posted by jayder at 8:37 AM on April 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

Which is why I wanted to focus away from the specifics of this case and on the possibility that this is something that, in general, Kickstarter doesn't do very well.

And that would've been a good post -- when people had some idea of what's going on, rather than simply a one-sided blog post from the person who may or may not be a victim.
posted by inigo2 at 8:38 AM on April 15, 2012

To me, it's just as likely that THE ALLEGED STALKER is a victim of her, and that what you are describing as stalking of her, is just him responding suboptimally to his victimization.

I am curious as to how you have come to this conclusion. He did, after all, post 300 times to her kickstarter account. That's not a passive act of being victimized.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 8:38 AM on April 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

The MeTa ceremonial hairshirt, please?

I don't know what this means, but it sounds itchy and warm, especially now that it's 85 in DC today.
posted by inigo2 at 8:39 AM on April 15, 2012

He did, after all, post 300 times to her kickstarter account.

No -- there was a 300 message thread that include her comments plus spam, and it's not even clear that all the messages not from her were from this one person.

"There are now over 300 spam comments that include your own engagement on your project."
posted by inigo2 at 8:42 AM on April 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

So, it's, like, 280 spam comments from Russian penis enlargement, 15 comments from her, and 5 from her presumed stalker?

I don't presume to know enough about the facts of this case to absolutely state that she's being stalked. What bothers me is that people have decided they know enough to say she hasn't.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 8:45 AM on April 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

So, it's, like, 280 spam comments from Russian penis enlargement, 15 comments from her, and 5 from her presumed stalker?

Maybe it was 280 messages from her, 15 from someone else, and 5 from santa clause. I have no idea and neither do you.
posted by inigo2 at 8:51 AM on April 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

Yes, we don't know, do we? And yet so many people have already decided that she's a drama queen who is at fault for all this.

And so there we go. If I want to harass somebody online, all I have to do is select somebody that slashdot decides is a whacko and they'll do all the work for me, dredging up her every bizarre online activity in order to conclude she's a drama queen.

Maybe she is. But that doesn't mean she's not also legitimately being abused, and I'm not prepared to create a category of humanity -- drama queen -- who will never be able to report abuse or have it taken seriously.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 9:04 AM on April 15, 2012 [6 favorites]

Which is a perfect example of why unsubstantiated rants from bloggers make shitty metafilter posts.
posted by empath at 9:08 AM on April 15, 2012 [4 favorites]

One thing we do know is that she is, without question, a professional shit stirrer and toxic person, whose word isn't worth much, so presumably Kickstarter (which has, as we know, a past relationship with her) made a reasoned decision not to deal with this shit-stirring loon anymore.
posted by jayder at 9:27 AM on April 15, 2012

I presume Mike Daisey will likewise not be able to fund his projects through Kiskstarter.

The arts community is filled with weirdos. If Kickstarter is to start banning people for being professional shit stirrers and toxic people who word can't be counted on, they're going to have to start funding something other than artists, theater people, and musicians.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 9:35 AM on April 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

One thing we do know is that she is, without question, a professional shit stirrer and toxic person

But she is a transhumanist. If someone is a transhumanist, does that make them a transperson, because I think that terms is already taken by trans-sex/gender people.

Anyways, does kickstarter not kick people off if they don't actually fulfill their kickstarter obligations to their funders? I can't believe that. Taking people's money and not producing the promised product/whatnot should be grounds for lifetime-banning from Kickstarter.
posted by fuq at 9:36 AM on April 15, 2012

And don't even get me started on stand-up comics.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 9:36 AM on April 15, 2012

nyways, does kickstarter not kick people off if they don't actually fulfill their kickstarter obligations to their funders? I can't believe that.

I'm curious about that too. Stalking questions aside: There's no way I would give her any funds after she failed to complete an earlier project but apparently kept the money.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 9:38 AM on April 15, 2012

Also, artists, theater people, and musicians words can be counted on. It's people who pretend and fail at art, music and theater who cannot be counted on and that is why they have failed.

Also, don't get me started on stand-up comics too. I've worked with a few that were on time and could 'turn it off'. The others, well, let's just say there's a reason they've never been on TV or performed to more than a few dozen college students with nothing to do.
posted by fuq at 9:42 AM on April 15, 2012

Also, got to find more words to use, also.

Also, also.
posted by fuq at 9:42 AM on April 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

> Goddamn it, there is nothing wrong with posts to Metafilter that are composed of a single link. It is the founding purpose of the site.

Quoted for truth and wonderchicken writerly punch.
posted by languagehat at 9:44 AM on April 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh, she's probably a terrible artist. I'm not going to disagree about that.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 9:45 AM on April 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

crunchland: This whole story just seems like a wreck on the highway, and we're all rubbernecking.

I have no dog in this fight but it looks more to me like it's a wreck on the highway that resulted in worthwhile discussion about highway safety, speed limits, road rage, driver training, adapting to unsafe road conditions, sharing the road, etc.
posted by headnsouth at 11:04 AM on April 15, 2012 [6 favorites]

thank you Bunny Ultramod - you've said much better what's been bugging me about this whole thing. she seems like a bad actor in all this, but i don't think we know enough to say she's not being stalked. i think the narrative surrounding it all is disturbing though, with dredging up of comments and casting her as crazy and deciding she must have deserved what ever has happened.

i find myself a little sensitive to all of it, so i tried to stay mostly out of it. i have a family member who was recently raped and her entire peer group decided she wasn't, she was lying, and the boy was the victim of her crazy ways. then other boys jumped in and started making up stories about what she did with them to strengthen the idea that she was a slut. ah high school, i don't miss you one bit.
posted by nadawi at 12:01 PM on April 15, 2012 [3 favorites]

looks more to me like it's a wreck on the highway that resulted in worthwhile discussion -- It didn't when I posted my comment.
posted by crunchland at 1:53 PM on April 15, 2012

I like how that post shows how people decide what they want to believe in the presence of not all the information, and then throw out conflicting information no matter how real it is because it goes against their chosen narrative.

Welcome to ALL OF THE INTERNET
posted by desjardins at 3:10 PM on April 15, 2012 [3 favorites]

stavrosthewonderchicken: "You hush. The Final Cut was brilliant. It was a shitty Pink Floyd album, and it was only intermittently musical, but it was nonetheless pretty great."
Word. It's a shame that their best album wasn't really their album at all, they were really just session musicians but, yeah, it is pretty awesome. Listening to it (particularly Southampton Dock) makes me sad that we really haven't progressed our race to be any more human since the 'war to end all wars'.

PareidoliaticBoy: "I luvs me some Taz."
Yeah, well, I luvsed me some taz way before she was famous.
posted by dg at 4:02 PM on April 15, 2012

mod hipster
posted by desjardins at 4:32 PM on April 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

taz wrote...
It's been said before, but it's incorrect to assume that any moderator's personal preferences, interests, religion or lack thereof, gender, ethnicity, or political leanings determine what is or isn't deleted.

It's almost always incorrect to assume. Y'all ain't superhuman, and personal bias is going to creep in from time to time whether you're conscious of it or not. I'm sure that having multiple mods in on decisions cuts that down a lot, but a few are still going to slip through.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:30 PM on April 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

The stuff on this thread appears to be the genesis of the stalking claims.

It appears that she's been going around accusing someone she has history with of being a neo-nazi. She sought to organize petitions and boycotts against this person.

The 'stalking' complained of appears to consist of single posts of this guys record company rebuttal wherever Rachel goes Haywire.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 11:06 PM on April 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

Tell Me No Lies, I think that would be more true if we were actually specifically greenlighting every post, and we don't do that. Our default setting is that every post stays, but there are some "alert" components that will cause us to look very carefully at certain sorts of posts, and this is really a totally different mindset.

I mean I didn't even quite get this at first, and I would stare at every post and try to evaluate it on the basis of Metafilter site standards, yadda yadda, and let me tell you that that's a very short trip to crazytown. If we were doing that, we'd definitely have a bunch of deletions that ended up reflecting our personal biases, and, honestly, things would be a mess.

Instead, we need to have a specific reason to make any stay-or-go determination about a post. Difficult topics that often result in trainwreck threads get looked at more carefully. Posts by new users are looked at carefully (spam or self-posting factor, plus sometimes new users don't really "get" what the site's about). Posts by watchlisted users (almost all of this is just-in-case spam/seo stuff) – these are the things that will usually catch our eye out of the gate. After that, it's flags: "Oh, hmmm, this is picking up a bunch of flags right away, let's have a look at what's going on here."

So, yes, you are absolutely right that we cannot be 100% certain that our own preferences wouldn't inform a decision, but the way we actually make decisions means that this doesn't often come into play... and we also try to police ourselves in that way. It's not uncommon for moderators to email each other with something like "well, this has X flags, and I think that it could go, but I dislike [topic], so I'm not the best to decide this... what do you guys think?"
posted by taz (staff) at 11:07 PM on April 15, 2012

The Final Cut was brilliant.

Be that as it may, I can't listen to it as it sets off all my nuclear war nightmares again.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:55 AM on April 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: It's what's trending on Twitter.

Beef: It's what's for dinner.

* starts playing Aaron Copland CD *
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:17 AM on April 16, 2012

Be that as it may, I can't listen to it as it sets off all my nuclear war nightmares again.

Oh hell yeah. 'Two suns in the sunset' still gives me shivers after all these years.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:26 AM on April 16, 2012

Yeah, me too. Doesn't stop me listeningto it, but I need to be in the mood.
posted by dg at 5:45 AM on April 16, 2012

The Final Cut -> nuclear war nightmares -> Cold War -> USA vs. USSR -> Bunny Ultramod: "...280 spam comments from Russian penis enlargement..." -> In Soviet Russia, penis enlarges YOU.

/mindwhirr
posted by likeso at 5:59 AM on April 16, 2012

My god, now it all makes sense!
posted by dg at 6:14 AM on April 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

So... here's what I still don't understand. This post was deleted for basically outrage filter. I ran a search on the woman's name and no news articles came up, just reddit threads and G+ posts. So, about as supported as the subject of this meta (I am not saying that the shooting didn't happen and I'm not rendering a judgment on whether it was justified, just that the post is a single link to someone's blog without any corroboration). This is so prevalent throughout social media now and I hate to see it spread to mefi.
posted by desjardins at 6:59 AM on April 16, 2012

about as supported as the subject of this meta

Except it's about

- domestic abuse
- gun control
- terrible injustice
- "I can't see my baby in the ICU because I'm in jail for this bullshit reason"
- states rights/Florida/lawmakers/cops are assholes

Totally different "How will this resonate with MeFi" indicators, plus a little more flagging though not that much. The non-deleted post was about an internet topic (Kickstarter) that people have historically been interested in and/or know something about and were not about any of the above topics except possibly "terrible injustice"
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:04 AM on April 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

What happened to that woman was orders of magnitude worse than what (allegedly) happened to Rachel whatshername, but I still think that "this horrible injustice happened to me" blog posts are not good for mefi regardless of the subject matter. I remember a hysterical blog post here that was along the lines of "my baby was taken away by the TSA" that turned out not to be true based on video evidence. I'm not a mod and we can certainly agree to disagree, but that's my view.
posted by desjardins at 7:48 AM on April 16, 2012

I don't think we particularly disagree with you on that, desjardins. We're inevitably going to call some things a little differently than you would when it gets down to the case-by-case details—this specific issue read to us more in "huh, weird web/community/moderation policy situation" than "OMG KICKSTARTER HATES STALKED PEOPLE" basically—but generally speaking we're not hot on the outrage stuff either.

I feel like to some extent we're just arguing this post in isolation being left up as a proxy for that whole overall stance, when I feel like that doesn't make a lot of sense. Accepting the inevitable bumpiness that comes from disagreement on specific cases, we think outrage stuff is not great post material, yes. There's not really anything we can do about the fact that this specific post didn't hit our radar like that other than to reiterate that fact and shrug.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:07 AM on April 16, 2012

- domestic abuse
- gun control
- terrible injustice
- "I can't see my baby in the ICU because I'm in jail for this bullshit reason"
- states rights/Florida/lawmakers/cops are assholes


What do you call a trifecta when it hits five items? Pentafecta?
posted by Mitheral at 8:08 AM on April 16, 2012

Trifecta With Benefits
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:19 AM on April 16, 2012 [4 favorites]

or, you know, a Benefecta.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:58 AM on April 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

When it happened she was on her way to get her cat declawed so it really is a sexfecta.
posted by birdherder at 1:34 PM on April 16, 2012

Sexfecta was that awful movie starring Mae West and Regis Philbin.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 2:15 PM on April 16, 2012

one of the inevitable side-effects will be that MetaFilter will temporarily become a prime forum for Anti-Kickstarter content. -- Are we still waiting for an explanation of this leap of logic, or did I overlook the answer?
posted by crunchland at 2:37 PM on April 16, 2012

To me it reads like you are balancing a community good (i.e. well done posts) against a personal good (i.e. the conversation you personally want). Perhaps I am misinterpreting things somewhere here.

What Jessamyn considers good here is a community good. She's paid to use her judgment. We pay to have it.
posted by Ironmouth at 10:29 PM on April 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

"Oh, hmmm, this is picking up a bunch of flags right away, let's have a look at what's going on here."

I have to believe this was probably the same thought process the Kicstarter mods employed with regard to Rachel's issue.

Imagine someone asking Metafilter's mods: "My FPP from a year ago got deleted due to X. What can I do to avoid getting deleted again, considering that X is still a probability?"

Mods: "Well, if X is still a probability, you shouldn't make an FPP."

The point is: the mods aren't here to solve X. It's up to an individual to solve X first, then feel free to engage. The only difference here is that "X" is stated to be "cyberstalking" which is a bit of a hot-button issue among a lot of people, and any requirement for a victim to "solve it" before engaging in a community is seen as victim-blaming.

But what about something more innocuous? For example "every time I make an FPP my parents insist on responding to it, which inevitably leads to an online confrontation." Obviously, the community's response is going to be something along the lines of "get that shit taken care of before you post here."

That's a bit of a derail, but I think the original FPP in question here is valid, since it lead to some interesting conversation which was relevant to not only the question of cyberstalking, but the nature of online community "rights" themselves, which Metafilter is also subject to.
posted by ShutterBun at 5:10 AM on April 17, 2012