Deleting comments from MeTa

April 25, 2013 6:06 PM

Hey, what's the deal with a joke comment being deleted from this recent MetaTalk thread? It was mild joke and I thought the bar for deleting comments from Metatal was much higher. I would ask in the thread, but when someone else did that, their comment was deleted, so here we are.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) to Etiquette/Policy at 6:06 PM (16 comments total)

I deleted it because it read like a pretty mean joke, linking to the follow-up from the original poster asking a touchy question, mocking her boyfriend's nationality (it was a "in soviet russia, joke blah blah" comment). The original poster of the question hasn't left any comments in MetaTalk but I imagine if they wandered in and saw dozens of people debating their question, seeing a joke mocking their boyfriend's nationality looks pretty mean and pointless.

We don't regularly delete comments in MetaTalk, it's true, but this one got flagged and I thought it was a dumb joke that could be unnecessarily mean so I removed it. It's a touchy question with an equally touchy MetaTalk post, so I was hoping to raise the bar a little.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:12 PM on April 25, 2013 [3 favorites]

I would ask in the thread, but when someone else did that, their comment was deleted, so here we are.

The person asking was the person that posted it, which we handled on the contact form instead since it was a derail.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:13 PM on April 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

looky there, contact form works.
posted by sweetkid at 6:22 PM on April 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

It's a touchy question with an equally touchy MetaTalk post, so I was hoping to raise the bar a little.

Thanks for the explanation, it makes the decision a bit clearer.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:27 PM on April 25, 2013

You guys I'm totally going to win this game of Limbo.
posted by carsonb at 6:29 PM on April 25, 2013

___________________________________
posted by eyeballkid at 6:31 PM on April 25, 2013

why does mathowie's tag say "staff" and not "owner" or Most Illustrious Emperor or something? is this a communist site?
posted by desjardins at 6:33 PM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

boobs! amirite?
posted by cjorgensen at 6:34 PM on April 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

testing
posted by cjorgensen at 6:35 PM on April 25, 2013

more like testing my patience amirite?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:39 PM on April 25, 2013 [25 favorites]

A MeTa about a MeTa? Unpossible!

It's turtles all the way dowwwwwwwwwwwwn!
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:52 PM on April 25, 2013 [7 favorites]

why does mathowie's tag say "staff" and not "owner" or Most Illustrious Emperor or something?

He is a humble wizard.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:57 PM on April 25, 2013 [3 favorites]

I am not sure it is to the benefit of this site for people to open MetaTalk threads so frequently when they have a comment removed. Can I put forward a suggestion that, if it is about a specific comment, that discussion happen via the contact form, and MeTa threads be reserved for site-wide concerns -- and "I think there are too many deletions because my comment got deleted" has been addressed and re-addressed, so let's not use that as a pretext for opening a MeTa because your comment got deleted.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:12 PM on April 25, 2013 [37 favorites]

I know this thread is a bit different, by the way, but it feels like there is something like this every single day nowadays.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:13 PM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think that is a decent idea.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:16 PM on April 25, 2013

Yeah, I totally agree Bunny Ultramod. I'll close this up since it's pretty much asked and answered.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:20 PM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]