.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 8:46 AM on July 25, 2008

desuetude

That's a real word?!? I always thought it was just another user name, and didn't bother to investigate. Nice.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 2:25 PM on July 16, 2008

Just stopping by to say thank you! I saw it in an Ask thread and my heart nearly bubbled over with joy.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 8:48 PM on June 4, 2008

I'd like to point out again, as I've done in previous MeTa posts requesting this feature, that this kind of highlighting would improve both readability AND the quality of answers given on AskMe. Yeah, it would make things more convenient for readers/commenters who would like to look for follow-up info from the original poster, but it's also more likely to get the attention of people who would otherwise have commented without reading the follow-up.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 10:05 AM on May 8, 2008

I, too, would love to see this implemented.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 9:55 AM on May 8, 2008

MIPPLES! My new favorite term for this place.

I will be out of town that day, but recommend that the rest of you be very specific as you concoct your meeting-up plans. Last time there was a mpls meetup, people left because they couldn't find the other mefites. And that was in a bar. Possibly even with a sign. I've been in Powderhorn Park during the May Day festival, and I doubt I could have located my own mother unless she specified something like "2:03pm,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 10:42 AM on April 10, 2008

Desuetude's idea actually makes a lot of sense. "Please favorite this comment if you plan to attend, so we can get a rough headcount for reserving bowling lanes." You'd have to trust people to play along nicely, but that'd be true for any other "click this button to rsvp" type functionality, too.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 11:31 AM on March 28, 2008

Sounds like fun to me!
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 12:05 PM on January 9, 2008

I'm sad that I missed it too! Any chance of getting usernames on those photos?
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 7:15 PM on January 27, 2008

Yay, thanks for the labels!
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 8:14 AM on February 7, 2008

As far as I can tell, the only person above languagehat in that thread who posted "in a tone of absolute certainty" is seanyboy, and that's the comment LH said was best. Everyone else offered their suggestions with disclaimers.

"The best I could find was..."

"I once heard... but I don't know what my informant was basing that on."

"I'm not sure if this is common usage, or if this is... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 9:35 AM on January 10, 2008

Some people put mayo on their freedom fries. That's weird.

In a gas station bathroom a while back, I saw a vending machine selling "freedom ticklers" for a couple quarters. That's weird.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 11:05 AM on December 12, 2007

I always read decathecting as DECK-uh-THEKT-ing, until somebody used the word "decathect" in a relationship-filter AskMe a few weeks ago. Now it's my new favorite word.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 8:22 AM on November 26, 2007

I'm with grumblebee in wishing that there was a better forum to take those serious-yet-chatfilter questions for discussion. I checked out MetaChat for exactly that reason, but it didn't seem like the right place either. The few weeks I spent lurking over there, I learned a lot about what people were angry about in THREADS FOR YELLING, a lot about what people were eating, and a lot about various members' interior decorating projects. It was entertaining, to be sure, but not the forum I was... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 9:33 PM on November 18, 2007

Thanks, seanyboy. I will check out those other sites.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 7:41 AM on November 19, 2007

I was struck by the uncommonly awesome collection of glasses frames. Y'all are quite stylish.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 2:58 PM on November 13, 2007

Yay! Thanks for the follow up. I had been meaning to check that thread again.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 2:40 PM on November 13, 2007

Is it properly parsed (Big Girl's) Blouse or Big (Girl's Blouse)?

Don't they end up referring to pretty much identical pieces of clothing?
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 2:35 PM on October 30, 2007

I, too, adore the plain theme. It only took one, "What's that green website you're always looking at?" comment from a coworker to convince me to switch, and I've never looked back.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 12:29 PM on October 29, 2007

The only one of mine that matters is this: my dad didn't die after all. After lots of physical, speech, and occupational therapy, he is home and pretty much back to his old self again. His doctors can't explain it, they just smile and shake their heads. Thank you all so very much for your ideas and support.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 12:48 PM on October 8, 2007

Anyone say nunnery?

That seems kind of mean, I must say.

I would disagree that it's mean. If you've got the appropriate religious convictions, and you don't want to get married, a convent could provide a nice group of like-minded people to be friends/roommates/coworkers/etc. I'm certainly not saying a forever-single girl must become a nun, just that it might be a pleasant option.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 1:53 PM on September 26, 2007

When I was in 1st grade, I gleefully confided to a social worker at school that I loved getting time outs when I did something bad. My parents thought it was a big punishment (I explained to the nice lady), but in reality I just got to go to my room and play with my toys. Some punishment! Boy, were my parents dumb!

Many years later, I realized that the point of time outs wasn't punishment, it was to let me calm down and break the cycle of escalation towards a tantrum... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 11:16 AM on September 10, 2007

you can now tag your mutual contacts' posts (and vice versa)

I'm curious - what prompted this? If I had a bunch of contacts (and I don't, which is why this is idle curiosity and not genuine freaked-out-ness), this would bug me a lot. It seems like the point of contacts is to let you keep track of contributions from people whose work you've enjoyed in the past. Using that as a criteria for who should be allowed to tweak a part of your post (an... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 10:02 AM on August 1, 2007

I think people are missing the point here. Highlighting the original poster's comments (especially in AskMe, which is what kdern was talking about) benefits the original poster more than it benefits the readers/commenters. People give better answers when they read the follow-up info, but people frequently miss that info because they don't notice the follow-up. No matter how many extensions you install or how often you use ctrl-F, you can't make your potential answerers do... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 9:23 PM on July 11, 2007

it's up to the individual participants to make AskMe worthwhile

Totally agreed, carsonb. I try to read as thoroughly as you do before responding to a question, but I've seen plenty of instances where a commenter missed the follow-up and thus gave a useless or even insulting response. You seem doubtful, but I think this interface change would actually do a lot to thwart the quick-draw McGraws.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 7:33 AM on July 12, 2007

I've most ignored the "x new" messages up until now, because as far as I could tell they were never even close to accurate.

Now that I'm paying attention, I'm even more confused. If I click on a thread on the front page of Mefi, read all the comments, and then go back and reload the front page, it still tells me that all those comments are new. What do I have to do to make the site know the comments aren't new to me anymore?
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 2:16 PM on July 5, 2007

mostly
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 2:18 PM on July 5, 2007

So is it basically still working like it was in 2001?

Here's what's going on: you come to metafilter for the first time today, it says 3 new links and 24 new comments. You read the site, hitting the index page as many times as you want, and you'll never lose that 3 links and 24 comments status.

then you go away for a few hours, and you come back. it should say "1 new link and 13 new comments" (if that much changed between... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 2:53 PM on July 5, 2007

Huh. OK. Thanks for the clarification. I'll continue to ignore those messages then. :)
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 3:08 PM on July 5, 2007

Matt, is there any way that you could expand the cookie info to keep the records of pages recently viewed on the user's computer, instead of in your database? (I'm not sure whether that would help that much, even if it is possible. I'm just tossing the idea out there.)

If you can't make the interface act the way people expect it to, it seems like the best solution would be to tweak the interface so people expect what it already does. It really is a pretty accurate... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 3:36 PM on July 5, 2007

Yeah, I get that it's more work for the server. But if the info that says "the user who is loading the page last visited these threads at these times" was sitting on the user's machine instead of in the database, some of the load on the server would be reduced. Right?

I'm more in favor of rephrasing the link, personally, but it'll take somebody smarter than me to find that magic phrase.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 3:45 PM on July 5, 2007

It would reduce storage slightly but increase compute costs.

Increase compute costs compared to what? Compared to what's going on now? Obviously. But compared to the strategy Matt described ("a ton of extra processing to record every page you have viewed") it would reduce database hits for both storing and retrieving the "who visited what pages, when," since that stuff wouldn't be stored in the database at all.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 5:29 PM on July 5, 2007

I used to read lifehacker every day, and would read the green when lh posted links to some of their favorite questions. Pretty soon I was mostly reading AskMe and ignoring lifehacker.

As a lurker, I was frustrated to see questions go by unanswered when I could have contributed. Still, the thing that finally got me to sign up was the investigation of the viral marketing site that turned out to be for a lame ski resort. I didn't have anything to contribute to that... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 1:37 PM on July 4, 2007

Also, I didn't want to add noise to the original thread, but I think his question is perfectly valid. In some dysfunctional relationships, winning is more important than . . . well, anything. It's no stretch to think that both of these people would see the effort to find a couples therapist as a power issue - neither one wants to do it, because that means the other person didn't have to do the work.

If a friend is willing to find a recommendation for the troubled... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 12:52 PM on July 2, 2007

But the obstacles facing a counseling relationship in which neither partner wants to be there seem more or less insurmountable

He never actually said that they're unwilling to see a therapist, only that "neither seems willing to sit down and go through the phone book, or ask their therapists for a recommendation". Of course it could be that they really don't want to go, in which case bigbigdog's recommendation of a therapist isn't likely to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 1:27 PM on July 2, 2007

I don't want unsolicited help, and I certainly don't want unwanted help, which is what I imagine advice on my marriage or exercise routine would be.

I would think that this mindset would preclude an answer of the form, "I know you didn't ask for this advice, but I think you should leave them alone."
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 2:24 PM on July 2, 2007

Therefore, on a lot of the "How do I change someone else?" questions, the only realistic answer is, "You can't."

I definitely agree with that, but to me this didn't seem like a "How do I change someone else?" question. It wasn't "How do I fix their marriage," it was "Who's a good marriage therapist?" I would have thought the guidelines would give some pretty clear restrictions on what kind of answers... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 3:32 PM on July 2, 2007

This is even more cryptic now that whoever edited the post edited it.

Yeah, I saw 1-800-XXX-XXXX and thought of
Woz.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 2:27 PM on June 28, 2007

I'm here because his defense lawyer thinks I will understand Reiser. [...] Just because he doesn't behave like the rest of us — and just because he evaded police surveillance and bought a book titled Masterpieces of Murder shortly after his wife's disappearance — doesn't mean he's guilty. I have been asked to try to understand this, to try to understand the man.

The lawyer who gave this writer access was clearly hoping for a sympathetic story, and I... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 10:20 AM on June 27, 2007

Can anybody explain why the cellphone battery would be removed but present in her purse in the car? That detail just really baffled me. What's the point?
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 8:38 PM on June 27, 2007

I'ma go nap right now!
posted by Astro Zombie

My favorite contraction ever! "I am going to" in three letters and a punctuation mark. It's brilliant. It's elegant. It's economical. Two thumbs up, highly recommended.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 4:02 PM on June 26, 2007

I think there are still some mixed messages being given by the admins here. "this is not at all right for here" implies that this topic is not appropriate for metafilter, and many of you in this thread have claimed that the deletion is a good way to stave off the coming PoliticsFilter for a bit longer. That makes sense to me, but then the later comment "The OP can do [some cleaning up and filling out] 24 hours from now or anyone else can take a shot at it" says basically... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 8:15 AM on June 20, 2007

Thanks for the clarification, jessamyn. That was exactly the kind of explanation I was looking for.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 11:25 AM on June 20, 2007

I'm with ya, 0xFCAF. I think what people are trying to say with the derails here is "flag it and move on." Which is funny, now that I think about it, because adding noise here instead of just moving on is exactly the opposite of what they seem to be asking you to do.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 2:33 PM on May 23, 2007

Personally, I didn't flag it on first reading because it was so clearly chatfilter that I figured it'd get quickly deleted whether I flagged or not. I went back to flag it after seeing this post, because I was stunned to see that the lack of flags was being used as reasoning for leaving it.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 8:20 AM on May 24, 2007

The current setup is kind of nice, I've just discovered, because you can search the page for the text "best" to quickly see how amazing you are. I don't know how to make firefox search a page for a checkmark graphic.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 12:54 PM on May 18, 2007

Hey, can anybody tell me what I need to do to make Firefox on WinXP display all these fun characters? This whole page is full of ????? ?? ??? for me.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 12:14 PM on May 14, 2007

Thanks, derMax. That didn't get rid of the question marks, so I'm thinking maybe this poor old workstation doesn't have the right character sets installed (or something? I totally made that explanation up). I guess I'll try again when I get home to my own machine.
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 12:47 PM on May 14, 2007

Were [more inside] to get replaced with [+], there would be far fewer jokes incorporating it.

But now we've got [+] to let us favorite things, so the double-usage would be a bit confusing. On preview, yeah.

Honestly, I don't understand why everyone is ignoring handee's simple and level-headed suggestion to add some "[more inside]"-style text to the rss feed when needed. As far as I've heard, people have two problems... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 2:15 PM on May 11, 2007

Oh god... AskMe, not AksMe! sorry!
posted to MetaTalk by vytae at 2:22 PM on May 11, 2007