T w e n t y S i d e d
James Lilek’s new blog at Buzz.mn is already dealing with F1RST P0ST! issues. He suggests a “disabling jolt of electricity” for anyone first-posting his site, but I notice comment #1 is just such a post.
It’s time to respond in kind: I’m going to senselessly delete the very first comment on this post, no matter what it is. :)
UPDATE: And the victim was Telas, whose musings are now lost forever, alas. Seems sort of stupid now, but I promised. who cheated by double posting. Curse you Telas! I’ll get you for this!
Fable II
The plot of this game isn't just dumb, it's actively hostile to the player. This game hates you and thinks you are stupid.
Best. Plot Twist. Ever.
Few people remember BioWare's Jade Empire, but it had a unique setting and a really well-executed plot twist.
Stolen Pixels
A screencap comic that poked fun at videogames and the industry. The comic has ended, but there's plenty of archives for you to binge on.
Twelve Years
Even allegedly smart people can make life-changing blunders that seem very, very obvious in retrospect.
Skylines of the Future
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
Fark.com converts “first post” into “boobies”.
For a while, they were changing the time on any post with “first post” to add a few hours to it.
Yay! Delete me! )
Actually I can go around your “measures” by doubleposting! :P
I just posted twice. Back button, “Submit Comment”.
And yes, you’re probably going mad as well… :D
And then, while fumbling around in control panel, I managed to delete my OWN comment, where I asked Telas if the comment was double-posted. So… The only person to TRULY have their comment deleted, was me.
Teh Intarwebs are fun!!11eleventy-one
So you see, Shamus, that this won’t work :)
And if you would delete every first comment, then next one would become first, and you would end up deleting ALL comments :) //that’s a programmer’s side of view ^__^
On the subject of ‘boobies’… my software product uses the (.) operator. It means, pass the current context to this XPath function. We do affectionately call it the nipple operator, although I don’t think it’s made it into any official design documentation yet (we don’t have any, which makes it easier to be sure).
boobies.
You misspelled “senselessly”. Other errors include
*** disabling jolt of electricity ***
Ow, that really stings.
slashdot, when it originally encountered this problem, added an automatic first comment to their blog that said “first post!”
i’ve no idea how effective it was… anyone care to weigh in on that?
Personally, if I had a blog that attracted “first!” comments, any such would result in a permaban.
Aaron M — ditto, or the LJ equivalent, anyway. [vehement nod] Luckily the people who comment on my journal aren’t into that, for which I am eternally grateful.
Angie
I have to say, any measure to get rid of the annoying ‘first posters’ would be nice. I often miss out on interesting discussions here because I’m dissuaded by the first few rubbish competition posts.
I CAN HAS DISABLIN JOLT UF LECTRITY?
I like Alan’s idea at number 10.
Somehow “First post after the automatice first post!!” just doesn’t have the zing of a “real” first post.
In the rare event that I add a new category to my forum, it’s inevitable that someone will make a topic called “FIRST” just for the sake of postcount++. I’ve been countering it by making the section admin-only until I have time to nip it at the bud and do it myself. ;)
Whatever measures are used to try and take the zing out of it, if they’re known to be in use then people will just compete to get the first “real” post
The Slashdot solution is pretty clever though, good example of techy style lateral thinking
Alan Post says:
“slashdot, when it originally encountered this problem, added an automatic first comment to their blog that said “first post!”
i've no idea how effective it was… anyone care to weigh in on that?”
Somehow, I think this would be even more insulting to “first post!” types than actually deleting the comment would be. Some might not even realize it’s an automatic thing and would go insane hitting f5 on the blog to try and beat this imaginary foe.
This is hilarious.
I think the word “First” in any first post should be replaced by a photo of Bill Frist with the word FRIST! over it.
Perhaps a good old-fashioned word filter is in order, set to apply only to the first post? Just enter common combinations of words used by “first post!” types (such as “first post!” “first comment!” “f1rst p0st!” or whatever).
Or you could do something where if the first comment is under a certain number of characters — in this case, between 11 and 15 (depending on how much punctuation is used), the body is replaced by something very insulting message. Or, in a more extreme case, automatically bans that user.
I think the last one is what I’d do. If the first comment is under 11 characters long, it gets replaced by an extremely rude and mean message, examples of which I will not elaborate on.
IMAO.us (the other site I post at) went through a “First!” phase, but it seems to have disappeared.
Truth be told, I kinda miss it :-)
If the first comment is under 11 characters long, it gets replaced by an extremely rude and mean message, examples of which I will not elaborate on.
I’ll go there. Have it say, “I don’t have a life, so I try to get “first post” status on message boards.”
And then change the date code to +1 hour.
“And then change the date code to +1 hour.”
Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I’m surprised that we haven’t seen a “last post!” craze. Even if it was popular for no more than a week or two, it would bring the comment-enabled interweb to its knees.
Once it is known that ´first post´ is automated, wouldn´t everyone be going crazy to get the second?
It could be a fun 1 minute or less diversion per post for the author of this sort blog to attach the first comment to each post from a set of made-up posters making benign comments like “great comic, loved panel 3”, “lol!!”, etc. If he keeps it secret, it might take away a lot of the ‘first’ silliness.