So davidmsc says something stupid and provocative, like lots of people do around here, and then he has the balls to own up to it and apologize. And some people refuse to accept the apology and keep piling on. It's no wonder he thinks he's being persecuted around here. When someone offers you his hand, don't spit on it.

"God damn it, you’ve got to be kind", indeed.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 8:00 AM on April 13, 2007

allow the crapper to have the last word

People who worry about having the last word are the reason why we need thread closings in the first place.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 10:34 AM on March 21, 2007

What cortex said. At the center of any trainwreck or flameout, you'll inevitably find one or more people who feel strongly that they have to "win" the argument or get the last word in. At that point, it either turns into a rehash or gets personal.

As for heated debate, heat is the not the same as light. When people think they're having an argument instead of a conversation, the debate becomes more about winning than about anyone actually learning something. If... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 12:22 PM on March 21, 2007

Wow, I'm blown away by this callout. The only way to effectively oppose the "right-wing noise machine" is top-down censorship instead of debate? I thought the left was supposed to be in favor of an open exchange of ideas.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 2:43 AM on February 27, 2007

Why is it okay to post lies to the front page?

Why are you so afraid? When Matt creates the Department of Metafilterland Security in order to enforce truth on the front page, then the conservatives will have already won.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 8:03 AM on February 27, 2007

Matt and Jess: Where is this all going? What do you hope MetaFilter will be in the next year or so? Or are you making it all up as you go along?
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 11:45 AM on February 21, 2007

jessamyn, I'm happy to see you state publicly that you want AskMe to feel like a community and not a question mart, and I'm really happy to see that no one has attacked you for it (yet).

Unfortunately, a community can't scale indefinitely without changing how it feels. It keeps getting bigger around here, and to me AskMe slowly but surely keeps feeling more like a crowd and less like a community. My guess is that the moderation workload keeps getting bigger, too.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 6:01 PM on January 7, 2007

This is great!

I dragged the RSS into iTunes and the Podcast came up with no problem. But then I have to click the "Get" button on each song to download it. Is there any way to get the Podcast to automatically download the songs?

If that can't be done, it would be nice to have the poster's name as part of the description -- it would make it easier to download only what I'm interested in (and save bandwidth).... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 11:55 AM on June 30, 2006

Extra info: for the songs that won't download, iTunes gives me "An unknown error has occurred (-50)".
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 11:58 AM on June 30, 2006

What ikkyu2 said. Not to mention the fact that you have to be pretty obtuse to post a self-link. It shows either an inability to read or contempt for how this community works. People who willfully ignore the warning on the posting page don't really give a shit about this place and shouldn't be here.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 6:25 AM on April 21, 2006

I'm confused. Is this all some kind of roleplaying thing, where one minute people are rolling on the floor throwing childish tantrums and trying to rip each others' throats out, and the next minute they're all friends again?
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 4:39 PM on March 7, 2006

I'd love to see comments in Projects, but with a strong dose of AskMeFi-style moderation to keep things from going off-topic.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 4:12 AM on February 21, 2006

I'll apologize if he goes first. After all, he started it!
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 11:14 AM on February 8, 2006

Agreed. I find it harder to read and harder to skim.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 5:05 AM on January 18, 2006

What was that awesome site/tool that used to compose something akin to this for any given member?

It was GeneFilter (originally posted here), and it's closed now. Shame, it was the best MeFi hack ever.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 5:20 AM on January 12, 2006

This is a great pony! But it makes the old music.metafilter.com disappear. Matt, any plans to revive it one day? I'd love to see a place where we can share music and get feedback. I was disappointed that Projects doesn't accept comments.

Also, any chance of extending the tag subdomains to work with AskMeFi?
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 3:05 AM on January 10, 2006

It takes two to tango. dhoyt put an amazing amount of energy into getting his kicks around here because there were always lots of people happy to feed the troll.

I'd like to think that maybe things will get more civil without the four-headed agitator. But then I see that this thread is full of personal attacks in all directions. The "look Mom, he hit me first!" routine got old and tired a long time ago.

We need less foaming at the mouth... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 4:19 PM on November 16, 2005

cleardawn and people like him are the best allies that the Israeli right wing could hope for. His concept of "collective guilt" requires that any discussion of Jewish culture should include an attack on all Jews as a reprisal for the actions of the Israeli government. That feeds the paranoia that Sharon uses to get elected, and shuts down Jewish moderates searching for a concept of Jewish identity that distances itself from Israel's actions. My guess is that cleardawn is a Mossad... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 2:26 AM on September 27, 2005

So, matteo, are you saying that you shouldn't be civil to people you disagree with? Or that we shouldn't appreciate it when people who disagree with you do it in a civil way? Or are you just taking a principled stand against eating babies?
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 2:45 PM on September 22, 2005

Thanks, this is much faster at satisfying my rat brain than reloading a bunch of open tabs.

I'll put in another vote for placing the "posted by" after the comment, because I like to read what people say before I read their username and remember I'm not supposed to agree with them.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 6:06 PM on August 18, 2005

Groupthink is boring. Trolling is boring too. They reinforce each other and make MeFi less interesting.

Actually, opinions in general are boring. Ideas are interesting, but it's hard to talk about ideas when everyone thinks the conversation is about their opinions.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 5:46 AM on August 13, 2005

Q. I want to paint my kitchen in a color that will please the majority of my houseguests, so what's your favorite color? = bad question.

Useless answer: My favorite color is black.

Useful answer: My favorite color is black, but you want to paint your kitchen in a light color so that you have more light on the food you're cooking.

In the useful answer, the part where the poster talks about his favorite... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 9:39 AM on August 9, 2005

Why does it have to be a separate site? Could it just be a front page that organizes and presents links to AskMe and MeFi posts, using the tag system?
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 6:11 AM on August 4, 2005

Everyone in this thread should go take a look at how parma handled this mess graciously. Sometimes the atheists are more dogmatic and intolerant than the believers.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 5:54 AM on August 4, 2005

posted by mathowie to feature requests at 1:26 AM PST

Late night coding on a Saturday. I haven't been enjoying how moderation and the site in general have been going lately, but we've all got to give Matt credit for trying seriously to make this place work, in the face of an awful lot of childish mud-flinging.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 7:43 AM on February 20, 2005

DaShiv's link is not just my favorite Migs moment, but the most educational MeFi comment ever. I hope he comes back -- this place needs more civility and less flinging.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 3:57 AM on February 5, 2005

Great posts, taz and limitedpie.

I honestly didn't get the point of tagging. I thought it was an an anal-retentive librarian thing. But the tags page is incredibly interesting, and all of a sudden I have an easy way to waste huge amounts of time browsing the MeFi archives. Damn you, Mr. Haughey!
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 7:29 AM on January 20, 2005

No, the funniest thing was quonsar being helpful to newbies.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 12:36 PM on November 22, 2004

Bets are open: how many of these "new" users are really aliases for the usual gang of idiots?
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 7:20 AM on November 18, 2004

y6, that sounds like the kind of thing that would drive me off MeFi really quickly. What I like about this place is the exchange of ideas; if I have to figure out which cliques I need to suck up to in order to get admitted to the good discussions, I might as well go back to high school. Keep it all public, Matt!

As long as we're having a pony-fest, I'd like to see comments on music.MeFi, so that people could give each other advice on their music. Kind of like AskMe, but... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 6:02 AM on October 21, 2004

Chill, y6, just because I disagree with some parts of your idea for closed discussions doesn't mean I need therapy.

I've got no problem with people having to pay for extra features, I just think that one of the strengths of MeFi is the openness of the conversations and the mix of people. I'd like to see even more new members. Yeah, the signal-to-noise ratio has been pretty appalling on the blue lately. I'm hoping it'll get better after the US election, but I'm not sure.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 7:47 AM on October 21, 2004

Anything that makes it easier to post without thinking is probably a bad idea.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 2:32 AM on September 12, 2004

29100 too.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 1:49 PM on July 7, 2004

When was the last time you paid your rent here, Shane?
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 7:04 AM on June 29, 2004

* one-upped by Shane, sheepishly retracts snark and makes another donation
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 8:38 AM on June 29, 2004

Witty wins by managing to get posters I like to descend to his level.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 3:38 AM on June 16, 2004

I love ponies, but I'm with rory on this one. This whole social networking thing confuses me completely. Maybe I'm just autistic, but it looks to me like a way to recreate high-school cliques. Can someone explain the appeal to me?
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 4:15 AM on June 15, 2004

Thanks Matt! Definitely feels faster to me, especially loading big pages. If it stays up during the morning in Europe, then I'll be even happier.

I may have missed it, but is there an explanation for why IIS was behaving so badly? Does Microsoft suck, or is there another reason?
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 8:20 AM on June 10, 2004

Taxonomies are great for random browsing, but they're next to useless for searching. Maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine someone going to the AskMe archives without already having some idea of what they are looking for. What problem are you looking to solve that you can't solve with Google?
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 9:34 AM on June 2, 2004

luser, that's what I was saying, taxonomies are great for random browsing. I was just wondering if there were any other uses. Sorry if I sounded contentious.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 10:58 AM on June 2, 2004

I thought the preaching sounded more like the usual way that hackers like to assert how exclusive their clique should be -- "Don't let just anyone know our secrets! You have to earn them."

I was bothered a lot more that there's apparently no one with enough knowledge of US school rules to warn meatpuff about the possible consequences of what he might be doing.

Or, what thomcatspike said (at least I think that's what he said).
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 10:00 AM on May 18, 2004

You're definitely right, amberglow. I actuallly learned something. Thanks, people!
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 10:18 AM on April 30, 2004

If you guys can figure out where and when, I'll be there, just so that Matt won't be the only out-of-towner.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 5:09 PM on April 28, 2004

Great idea, Matt.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 4:41 AM on April 25, 2004

Previous threads on where people live, and their political leanings.

I'm a lot less interested in polls/numbers/facts about people, and a lot more interested in who they are and why they're here instead of out playing in the sunshine. Noobs, tell us your stories!
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 8:44 AM on April 6, 2004

I want to know what happened to the earlier, funnier quonsar.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 7:21 AM on March 24, 2004

Count me as one of those who reads the blue a lot less these days. It's about signal-to-noise ratio. "Just skip the posts you don't like" becomes "wade through huge quantities of inflammatory childish posturing".

Worse than that, there's a strong negative feedback loop, where righteous shrieking about good vs. evil drives away those interested in other subjects or other ways of discussing politics, so they post less, so the volume of shrieking... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 10:55 AM on January 27, 2004

screw you, too.

Thanks for proving my point.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 11:05 AM on January 27, 2004

If you're going to make a post related to Iraq, please reconsider, as the topic has been discussed previously many times.

Just to be clear: the point of MetaFilter is to find the best and most interesting of the web to share with others
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 5:27 AM on January 24, 2004

Maybe I'm hitting reload too often, but I've seen Matt delete a few really chatty threads on AskMeFi, and I'm glad he's in there moderating.

In this case, I thought the question was better than the responses. I like the "I do this, am I weird or do other MeFites feel the same way" threads, but I think we need to be careful about avoiding the snarky jokefest threads and the "what's your favorite music" threads.
posted to MetaTalk by fuzz at 10:43 AM on December 18, 2003