"Absolutely - that's what I meant, that it's possible to use an offensive word in a non-offensive way, and it's wrong to say that a word is intrinsically 'full of hate'. (As an aside, I'm having trouble thinking of an example of 'faggot' being used in a neutral or positive way, unlike 'queer' or 'gay' - perhaps another transatlantic difference?)"

Heh. This reminds me of a childhood memory. Here comes a tangent...

The... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 2:57 PM on July 9, 2008

And I will add -- I'm female and American, and the words "cunt" and "twat" don't offend me in the slightest unless they are clearly spoken with hateful, misogynist intent. Which is all a matter of context, really. But I am aware that I am an outlier on this, and some of it probably comes from reading so much British English that I am no longer sensitized to these words.

(I also read the LSG group on Ravelry, and that is no place for the timid.)
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 3:05 PM on July 9, 2008

"This is why Metafilter needs an "I agree" button."

Yup. Ravelry has agree/disagree buttons, and I've gotten so used to them there that it drives me nuts on MeFi sometimes that they aren't here too.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 12:29 AM on July 1, 2008

What mrmojoflying said. The problem wasn't so much the question as the rudeness with which it was asked. "Give me examples of Globalization in urban Ethiopia" indeed. My immediate response is "what happened to your manners? Didn't your mom teach you the magic word?" Combine that with the fairly obvious "do my homework" vibe and it just rubs me the wrong way.

It would have been dead easy to phrase it in a better way.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 6:30 AM on March 16, 2008

'If the poster asks a question in a way that offends you, feel free to ignore it; me, I tend to assume that everybody has a different set of online behaviors, one person may say "Tell me X" with just as much politeness as another may say "Pretty please," and the only important thing is whether you 1) feel like answering and 2) know the answer.'

The thing is, if the tone puts people off, the asker is a lot less likely to get a useful... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 8:54 PM on March 16, 2008

No one expects "mother may I". But there is a difference between "Does anyone know of any sources for..."and "Give me sources for..." It's not even a bit surprising that the latter would put people off, and I don't think it's being Miss Manners to say so.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 12:46 AM on March 18, 2008

Encyclopedia Dramatica is down at the moment anyway. But it's in the Google cache.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 6:39 AM on March 10, 2008

The midnight mod doesn't have to be someone overseas. It can be a North American night owl. (For example, it's 5:14 am on the West Coast and I am just about to go to sleep. It's morning on the East Coast already. So theoretically, someone with my schedule could easily cover the mod-less hours.)
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 5:15 AM on March 5, 2008

I honestly haven't seen any site that combines both threading and flat that is successful -- to me, anyway. Either way it becomes harder and more annoying to read. I am eternally mystified that some people find threaded forums more readable, but I guess we can't all be the same.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 7:12 AM on January 5, 2008

nn represent!

Ha, yes, I am in fact an nn user from back in the day. And a Citadel BBS user, which also had flat MeFi like discussion "rooms".

Back in the BBS days, there were threaded BBSes and there were Citadels, and from the beginning I hated the threads and gravitated to Cits -- because they seemed far better for conversations, and that was why I was calling BBSes. And why I still run one. (Obvious self-link,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 11:32 PM on January 6, 2008

.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 12:53 AM on December 11, 2007

"I would guess that the 'uncritical view of moderation' stems from years of history on MetaTalk of users calling for no more posts about x (elections, news, politics, dumb news, etc), and requests that we delete more and delete stuff more often."

I think I may have said this before, but the folks who post complaints are not necessarily representative of the majority of MeFi users. After all, people aren't generally going to go to MeTa to post... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 3:38 PM on September 13, 2007

"a good majority of MeFi users do not make posts litlnemo. there is the skew."

Well, I meant the majority of active users. There are a lot of people who complain about newsfilter, etc.; it's just that I don't think we should automatically assume that they represent the majority of MeFites. Those who are satisfied with things don't tend to complain, and many don't even enter MetaTalk.

This doesn't mean there shouldn't... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 5:06 PM on September 13, 2007

I ran this on my account, my spouse xiojason's account, and a few others for fun.

The best "posts" from litlnemo:

"Native Seattleite here. In our case, they could have nightmares about this."

"I'm still using it as abandoned property. There is definitely cheese. You have to use the language to keep the reunion near the end)."

"I wear orthotics in my inbox.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 5:49 PM on September 11, 2007

If we could get images turned on for ONE thread only... this year's CAPS LOCK DAY EXTRAVAGANZA!! -- I would be eternally grateful. Because what is the hallowed CAPS LOCK DAY without a gazillion silly images? Blasphemy, that's what.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 10:07 PM on August 30, 2007

I didn't sign up for the swap this time around, did I? I remember thinking about it, but don't remember if I actually got around to signing up...
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 11:40 PM on April 25, 2007

Dammit, I so want to read some of those threads!
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 5:44 AM on April 1, 2007

Wow. Thanks, Matt! I know this wasn't the most fun way to spend a Sunday.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 2:26 AM on March 26, 2007

>Hey, I'm on USENET!
>
>I quote everything like this!
>Sure, it looks funny when the line feeds aren't there,
>but it is the *ONE TRUE WAY!*

Well, no, really, I use the quotes and italics, and occasionally a user name. I hate hate hate when someone just links to the time/date of the prior post without actually quoting it. And the @username... let us not speak of it.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 10:41 PM on March 21, 2007

There was a Pacific Highway or Pacific Coast Highway near the US/Canada border -- it's mentioned on this page. This would be old US 99, I think, as that was the Pacific Highway. Also, lots of old segments of former US 99 have names such as "Pacific Highway" or "Old Pacific Highway" now. I don't find it implausible that people would call one of the old highways near Blaine "Pacific Coast Highway".... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 3:56 AM on March 18, 2007

Ths is very cool. Thanks, Matt!
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 2:05 AM on March 17, 2007

"When I was 13 or 14, one of my Junior High teachers took me to see a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in Seattle (this was the late 70s, when it was still an event)."

Early teens, late '70s, Seattle, Rocky Horror -- yikes, I might have been there too, at the Neptune. But it wasn't a teacher who took me, and my mom thought I was at a friend's slumber party. Ha!
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 4:44 PM on March 16, 2007

Anyone with more than 3 digits in their user # is clearly a n00b.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 5:11 PM on February 19, 2007

Uh oh, melissa may. Now you've done it. Who will take up that gauntlet?
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 7:15 AM on February 15, 2007

Thanks for adding this.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 3:46 AM on February 6, 2007

dw, as a fellow covers geek, we should trade. :)
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 2:04 AM on February 6, 2007

"You know what I wouldn't miss if we got rid of it? The (# New) Count on the front page next to each thread. I don't use them (does anyone?)"

You mean people don't use them? Because I use them all the freaking time.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 3:54 PM on January 25, 2007

If this was a Seattle meetup, I'd be there!
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 6:12 AM on January 24, 2007

"FWIW, I check AskMeFi everyday after work (around 6-7PM EST). I never look at AskMeFi during work, so the last time I visited was last night around this time (perhaps a couple hours later). There were only 45 new questions that I hadn't seen, as opposed to the usual 80-100. FWIW."

This is a very bad week to use for comparison because it's the week before Christmas and volume for most online forums drops at this time. (Here in Seattle things... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 5:02 PM on December 18, 2006

"Please don't conflate those of us who think 2 questions a month is a simple, useful limitation with the folks who delight in attacking certain kinds of questions they don't like. Thankee."

OK, they aren't always the same people, but there certainly is some overlap. I'm clearly on the other end of the spectrum because I'm for more questions and have no problem with mixtape and even chatfiltery questions. It's clear that... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 3:16 AM on December 19, 2006

And yet another vote: leave it alone. Fewer questions will make AskMe lesser, not greater.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 3:45 AM on December 16, 2006

Well, crap. The terrorists have won.

Please go back to the one week limit. (Note that I am not someone who has been abusing it.)
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 4:20 PM on December 18, 2006

Bah. A bunch of n00bs.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 3:53 PM on December 8, 2006

"Hey, would you guys want your flickr and delicious output on the userpage?"

Yes, please!
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 4:01 PM on December 6, 2006

"I hate the tags being listed. Now I am going to have to go strip all the tags from my posts."

I don't get this. Weren't they listed in the old layout? I thought they were. And removing the tags would be an utterly lame response. Tags are helpful.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 5:50 PM on December 6, 2006

jonmc, EB, y2karl (as others have said, posts more than comments), miguel cardoso, languagehat.

What's funnier is that I don't always recognize my own spouse's MeFi posts until I read the name, much of the time. Sometimes I think "heh, I should have Jason read this one, he would like it," and then I see that he wrote it.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 8:39 PM on November 29, 2006

"2. A Honda Element that is missing the alternator, that was given to me by a friend who got it when someone left it at her house over a year ago."

Believe it or not, that's not all that weird an example. A former housemate of mine got a free Honda scooter that way -- it was abandoned in our duplex's laundry room by someone, sat there for a year or more (we thought the people in the other apartment owned it, and they thought it belonged to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 5:09 AM on November 13, 2006

"Tacos, talk to mock. IE and Opera can run js in images, there are demos of img tags grabbing cookie info and passing it on."

Strip images for the IE and Opera users while allowing them for the rest of us. :) (As a Safari user, that FireFox extension doesn't help me much.)

And just another data point here -- I like the images and want them back.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 3:01 PM on November 7, 2006

"It seems to me like the real feature request should be to the Safari devs to have the page layout of one tab not bring the whole app to its knees."

Amen, brother! Though IME, the thread in question has been slow-loading but better than some in Safari.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 10:22 PM on November 6, 2006

Chicago but when in Seattle, Pagliacci's, chai, the Sonics (not the basketball team), the September 1995 Seattle Mariners, peanut sauce.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 4:30 PM on November 6, 2006

And consider that the movie isn't out yet in most of the US. That is way different from spoiling the ending to a movie that's been out a few weeks already. I don't agree that it's considered normal to spoil the end of a film in most online fora -- because in my experience, it's just not true. People will post spoiler warnings, at least.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 3:56 PM on October 30, 2006

xiojason's spoiler tag implementation idea is pretty good, I think. Or we could just use span to color the text and background black, and then you can select it to see what it says. Not as cool as the hover, though, and requires people to know some html/css.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 5:07 PM on October 30, 2006

Or I guess we couldn't, because it stripped out the tags when I posted. *sigh* Matt, if you could consider adding xiojason's code to the style sheet... it would be way useful.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 5:08 PM on October 30, 2006

"I don't understand how spoiler-phobic people decide what to go and see at the pictures - do they just go by the titles?"

Many reviewers, if not most, will allude to plot twists without saying exactly what they are. "The murderer revealed at the end was implausible" as opposed to "The revealing that the murder was Colonel Mustard, in the Library, with the candlestick, was implausible." IIRC, Roger Ebert does this sort of thing frequently.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 5:23 PM on October 30, 2006

"I mean, I can see not wanting to read anything about a movie before seeing it, but your demand to read just so much about it seems a little ridiculous to me."

koeselitz, seriously? Because it seems pretty normal to me. Most people want to know something about what a movie is like. Finding out what The Sixth Sense is like does not require that you find out the twist ending before seeing it -- or even to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 6:12 PM on October 30, 2006

He was dead for the whole movie! He only thinks he's alive!
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 8:04 PM on October 30, 2006

I'm on the West Coast, but I stay up late. It's the schedule that matters, not the location. ;)
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 4:40 AM on September 22, 2006

Actually, I really like lemonfridge's idea.

I also like lemon pie. And lemon cookies. And salmon with lemon pepper.

Damn you, lemonfridge! Now I have to eat!
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 4:54 AM on September 22, 2006

"I still strongly object to any effort to phase out certain kinds of questions. There's not a single kind of question, including NYC-to-do and whatever else gets some folks' undies twisted, that appears so often it affects the usability of the site."

I second this. I've said it before, but I'll repeat: what makes AskMe so great is the variety of questions.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 2:16 AM on September 10, 2006

Yay! I'm a runner-up! With my almost-once-yearly post. :) Oddly, I didn't even remember about the contest when I was posting.
posted to MetaTalk by litlnemo at 3:49 PM on September 3, 2006