metaquotes

"Funny and occasionally deep" things said on LJ.

This isn't for news, or for the latest PANIC! at the LJ... unless it's funny.

It's been a little while since we met like this. Things doing good? Life treatin' ya okay? Ever figure out what the hell the thing with the box and mirror from Gett Off by Prince is all about? Good, good.

Look, can we talk about something? Something's been bothering your mods recently, and I think before one of us puts up a real stink, we'd better clear the air.

Every once in a while there's a slew of posts that all have the same problem and makes us mods feel like total douchebags for sitting around constantly pointing it out. Recently, of all things, that's been with Rule #1.

There's a recurrence in the past few weeks of folks not understanding or thinking of the very first rule. People are 'metaquoting' IM conversations, transcriptions of offline conversations, RSS feeds, and stuff first posted on other boards. They're passing it off as original to livejournal because they found it on livejournal. Just because it eventually oozed it's way onto your flist doesn't mean it started out there. A snippet of conversation with some reaction is fine, an entire transcription of What Mary At Work Said to John, while probably hilarious, is not metaquotable. And no one likes sloppy seconds anyway.

So this is me, being the modly douche that washes away all misunderstanding, cluelessness, and possibly an ill-advised one night stand with overheardinnyc, to bring us into the sweet-smelling and freshly trimmed MQ for tomorrow. And I think we can all agree that's a Very Good Thing.

And there's a metaphor I never want to have to use again, so please, can we stick with LJ funneh? Otherwise I'll have to move on to enemas and no one wants to deal with that shit.

Thank you.

(PS- I still love you, overheardinnyc, call me, okay?)

How's things? Folks doing well? That haircut looks great on you. Hey, are those new shoes? Awesome.

Alright, now that the small talk is over, I'd like to direct your attention to something. Let's all turn the to the userinfo page. Go ahead, I'll wait here.



*da dum de dum...*



Okay- now that we're all on the same webpage; you see the name of the comm? Right below it, there's the purpose of the comm. It says :For posting funny (and occasionally deep) things said on LiveJournal

Funny. Occasionally deep, but mostly funny.

Recently, it's been brought to my attention a lot of people don't know this. I'm not sure how, but okay. Well, let's rectify this situation.

I'm sending out an all-points bulletin.

This community is not a soapbox. It's not a megaphone. It is not a grudgewank forum. It's about funny stuff found on LJ. Very occasionally, that humor makes us see things in a different light. I, and a lot of other members, have had it UP TO HERE (and you can't see me, but my hand is up over my head) with the stuff getting dragged in under false pretenses.

There are TONS of debate comms, political interest comms, news-of-the-day sort of thing, and hell, if you want to start your own about 'Interesting and controversial quotes found on Livejournal" I'll be happy to leave a note on the userinfo directing people to it. 'WorldofLJ' or something would be an awesome community. But this community has a much more narrowed focus, even if our eyes have wandered a little recently. (EDIT: worldoflj is up and running, catecumen invites you to drop by and chat.)

There's been a noticable trend of non-funny but interesting stuff. Without making any judgement call on the content, they were totally not good MQ posts. And I've tried stemming the flow one post at a time, but it hasn't worked. So please, if you're not busting a gut, don't assume it belongs here. Thank you.

(PS I have to go hang with the family so I'm not ignoring new comments, it's just time for some Seuss, pie, and bubble baths.)

After a great deal of discussion mod-side, it's been decided that obvious icon trolling is still obvious trolling. Obviously graphic/trolling icons will be grounds for post-deletion, and may be cause, like obvious text-trolling, for immediate banning. Yes, this is what happened in this case.

No need for a further rule; this was a pretty obvious case of trolling, and we'll handle further cases as they arise. The offending post (and its 413 comments) are now gone.

Folks:

If you check the comm info, you will see that we have a team of moderators; while we do have some long-standing posters who often like to act as though they are backseat moderators -- and to a certain extent, we appreciate the self-moderating qualities of this community -- jumping on a poster and telling someone to FIX THIS (especially in accordance with the newly clarified Rule 9) when there are plenty of mods who are around to do that job is not appreciated and will not be tolerated. If you're on the mod team, you know it. If you're not on the mod team, don't act like it, because not only do we not appreciate that, if the behavior continues, your ability to continue in that behavior will disappear.

Secondly, while we do appreciate feedback and do take that into consideration, metaquotes is not a democracy. When the newly clarified Rule 9 was rolled out, it had already been discussed extensively by the team of moderators on the modcom; as a result, while thoughtful feedback may very well be taken into consideration if and when the unlikely circumstance arises that we decide to revise Rule 9 yet again, this is not something on which people get to vote. We're not electing a new rule; the new rule was already set by the mods when it was announced. Once again, extensive arguing on something that's already set is only going to annoy us as a whole. It's not going to change anything.

Thank you for your kind attention. We now return you to your regularly scheduled humor generally regarding menstruation, buttsex, and/or fandom-of-choice.

vaspider

Hey, recently there's been a couple queries as to Rule 9:

If the explanation is longer than the quote, don't bother.

Well, some folks have been rightly asking:
What's too long? Where's the line between setup and explanation? What if some explanation is needed? Why are you asking me to edit but not them? Who decides what's bothersome? Why does it seem arbitrary?

Well, the simple answer is that it seems arbitrary because until now, we couldn't figure out a way to make it simple and across the board. ( Now, we can.Collapse )

Basically, I deleted a quote that read to me as a quote from somewhere else being reproduced on metaquotes. However, it has been pointed out to me that I read it incorrectly, and the content was in fact original. So, chaya, I'm sorry that I mistakenly deleted your post, which I reproduce here:

According to a comment left in the linked journal, BBC Radio said something like this about [V for Vendetta]: "This is a film about modern America that they set in London because they were too scared to set it in the US." Is being a slack-jawed malfing idiot incapable of doing even the most basic research a prerequisite of working in entertainment media? Can I, too, get paid to not know what I'm on about? I could really use the money to buy brains for my children.
-hollowpoint, here.

Enough with the unoriginal quotes. Don't make me break out the big sparkly fonts.

Folks, the mods have deleted two unoriginal quotes from the comm in the space of two hours. This leads me to believe that we have some new folks here (hi, new folks) who have not read the rules (tsk tsk).

Please read the comm info before posting. Quoting someone quoting someone else in their journal is not a metaquote. The purpose of this comm is not to provide somewhere for you to post funny email forwards that have finally made their tired, limping and sad little way onto LJ. It is not a place to post quotes from professional writers or newspapers or whatever that someone has seen fit to post in their LJ. If it were, I have a whole mess of John Adams quotes that are a hell of a lot more interesting than seeing Yet Another Email forward regurgitated here like a momma AOL bird feeding her little internet babies. It's not.

In short, if it is not original to the poster you are quoting, do not post it here.

Please don't make me repeat this in much larger type.

Because I will.

Thank you.