MetaFilter

someone said there were plums in the icebox

It's beans all the way down.
posted to MetaTalk by terrapin at 8:49 AM on August 30, 2022

So I actually agree with a fair bit of what Violet Blue says, but I disagree with her reasons completely.

I just don't believe there is a group of bullies like VB claims. I don't believe there is any sort of group or cabal of users who can "target" mods and the site owner with impunity. Even if there was, I don't understand how they will be supposedly brought to heel by rules against ad hominem attacks. Cortex and EM both can caution and ban people who behave... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Chrysopoeia at 9:16 PM on May 18, 2022

Conversations can be prevented without being prohibited.

Sure. The MetaTalk queue is the perfect example of this. We used to have free-form discussion about all parts of site management and policy, and now only the conversations that the mods decide are somehow worthy of attention are allowed through. I have no idea what people might want to discuss that hasn't been put through for discussion because this process is entirely opaque and puts power... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hippybear at 5:34 PM on April 14, 2022

Yeah, I know I've only been back for like an hour and a half, but the Steering Committee is being selected by the person who's relinquishing the site in an opaque process that was barely advertised and is expressly not allowed to be discussed?

That is bad.
posted to MetaTalk by Etrigan at 8:47 AM on April 14, 2022

Cortex: I'm glad you're taking this step, for yourself and for the site.

Thanks for giving it your best and thanks for finding a way to step back and let the community find its own way.

As others have said, I hope to see you back in a mode where you can find the joy in participation again.

MetaFilter: I'm looking forward to seeing what this community comes up with for next steps. Community or no, we do not all share a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:51 PM on March 29, 2022

But - what if a given mod has one of their "I just don't like them" people on their "list of problem users"?
I think I might resemble that remark.

Do you arm wrestle, Adam. The thing about lists, they tell you aLOT about who makes them. If in jest...but if you feel this way it is indeed wrong IMO and breaks my heart, half this thread breaks my heart but that adds little. Sure, alot of us have gotten the on-line... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by clavdivs at 10:14 PM on March 24, 2022

No, not nuts. It’s kinda the whole dill.
posted to MetaTalk by iamkimiam at 9:09 PM on March 20, 2022

For delivering a fairly frank and brutal assessment, she was gentle, gracious, and all things considered, magnanimous. She rose to the occasion.Now we will see if they can too.
posted to MetaTalk by y2karl at 5:40 PM on March 19, 2022

Greetings everyone. I’ve waited a long time to post about this, but I think that it’s important to do so now. My silence up until this moment should not be taken as acceptance or agreement. I was dramatically taken aback by both the content and the emotional tenor of cortex’ and EM’s comments directed at me in the 2/9/22 thread. I wanted to avoid any direct reply until I could think carefully, process what’s happened and respond calmly. Also, I was offered the good advice that when someone has... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Miko at 2:34 PM on March 19, 2022

I totally can't believe none of you have figured out that I'm actually Paul Weller's publicist.

oops
posted to MetaTalk by scody at 2:47 PM on June 20, 2011

Thanks for the note, I guess, but… damn. Do you guys realize how disheartening it is to feel like a sucker for believing that these threads are actually being monitored? It’s right there in the post, that loup would be checking in, and oops, no, they’re out of town, and we didn’t bother to let anyone know?

I get that you’re busy. I get that things are hectic. I get that you’re all stretched pretty thin, but damn, I hope you can understand how frustrating it is, making a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ghidorah at 3:18 PM on March 6, 2022

There were some issues that came up over the past couple days in the previous update thread. Any chance those could please be addressed in this thread since that one was closed?

- I’d support a separate MetaTalk thread rather than discussing them in this one (for the sake of consistency). Ideally, the site updates would stick to feedback and questions regarding the specific projects and technical changes being worked on. That being said, as LM... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by loup at 8:22 PM on February 23, 2022

“Apparently all I am allowed to say is this” is not an adult response to being corrected.
posted to MetaTalk by Johnny Wallflower at 7:29 PM on February 22, 2022

Wow. I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for and can relate a lot to cortex and everything he's struggling with right now, I am perfectly willing to accept that a 501(c)3 structure may not fit, legally and practically, for MeFi in something resembling its current form, and I fully respect your rights as staff to choose who to take advice from and to (privately and respectfully, which is not what happened here) decline offers of assistance from those who don't share your desired direction, but... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by zachlipton at 7:22 PM on February 22, 2022

2 delighted at this raffle, ent二ing hopefully
posted to MetaTalk by ilicet at 1:22 PM on February 22, 2022

I remember back in the bad old days when usernumbers were very important to mefi social status. In my mind, a higher user number means I'll be younger, right?
posted to MetaTalk by muddgirl at 2:51 PM on February 22, 2022

It does seem very strange, as a user, when something contentious happens, particularly as a result of a mod statement, and then there’s no mod follow up. Is this situation under discussion, or is there a decision to make no further mod comment on this thread?
posted to MetaTalk by JenMarie at 12:33 PM on February 22, 2022

I think it would've been better to leave loup to make the moderator notes in this thread.
posted to MetaTalk by ambrosen at 1:24 PM on February 21, 2022

When a (former?) staffer doesn't know what's going on, despite talking to the site owner at least once a month for the podcast, that looks bad. When there's no reply to her questions or concerns for going on four days, that looks awful for a site that is trying to attract new users, not to mention retain current users.

I get it, the grey isn't the focus of the site, but jessamyn has (at the time of writing this comment) a "staff" tag next... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by filthy light thief at 2:02 PM on November 22, 2021

I appreciate this update. At the same time I feel like there have been enough MeTas about possible improvements (as noted above) that have gotten tabled for various (often good!) reasons and I'd love to see the mod team going through those and maybe trying to capture them in some sort of way, even if it's just a way to say "Hey, yeah, with current staffing we're not going to get to that before Q2 2022" or something.

The charitable interpretation is: someone is... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:56 PM on November 18, 2021

- We’re working on an “other media” category for FanFare. We are currently testing it and will share more details soon.

I'm so glad to hear this, because it leads me to my other big idea for revamping the site.

The fundamental issue facing MetaFilter is a decline in both ad revenue and inbound traffic from Google. That's what kicked off the original crisis under mathowie, and the state of the site updates show it gets worse... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 12:41 PM on October 20, 2021

Plans for growth
- This is still an open discussion and includes making it easier for members to send out invites to their friends as well as promoting MetaFilter and the subsites externally.

One simple idea that could help a lot: put the the above-the-fold text for posts or an equivalent excerpt for comments in prominent text at the top of every "favorited by" page, along with a link back to the original. This gives people a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:55 AM on October 20, 2021

yes yes yes [these are nsfw, #2 especially so]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:54 PM on May 15, 2006

There are dozens of people in the network who do this professionally, but I suspect most are totally burned out on offering help because past offers have never been taken seriously.
posted to MetaTalk by Miko at 10:16 AM on September 5, 2021

If you're loöking for a publication to make fun of, The New Yorker's ridiculous and pretentious use of diaereses is right there, waiting for you to mö̈ck it.
posted to MetaTalk by schmod at 9:23 AM on April 10, 2021

Got it, Glegrinof - thanks for the clarification there.

But to mid's comment:

We are the ones asking for (and often, very often, over the last few years, proactively suggesting) concrete changes to site structure and norms to make this a more equitable space for everyone. Some of those changes have been implemented (e.g. the update to pronoun fields in user profiles). Some are in process (e.g. the BIPOC board). Some (a real push to codify and... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by tivalasvegas at 8:01 AM on February 16, 2021

Well, I don't know about anyone else, but aggressive responses from mods towards minority members of the site who dare to describe their negative experiences of engaging with the mods certainly makes me feel welcome and valued here.

Perhaps, rather than leaping to an impassioned defence of the site and it's moderators, you could ask why trans people might have the impression of being gaslit, of whether the values that are vocally championed here actually reflect the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by death valley compound at 5:14 AM on February 15, 2021

carsonb: The irony is of course that your first wording was exactly the kind of pointlessly inflammatory statement you're complaining about.
posted to MetaTalk by jaduncan at 5:54 PM on January 7, 2013

Hi, I'm the poster who was, I guess, at the center of the brief dust-up about how Kamala Harris pronounces her name in the MegaThread. This has turned out to be a long post, so be forewarned.

I was about to go to bed when I saw the link to this thread from the top of that one, thinking "hmm, this could be a place to talk about that nagging feeling I've had for the last few days that the mods and the other participants in that brief derail were kind of shitty to me.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by CommonSense at 11:53 PM on June 8, 2019

SoCal: for anyone who's in that "evacuation warning" area around Bobcat (or any other fires that crop up) that's been hovering in the stay-or-go zone for days and days, we don't have very good human crash space right now but we've got some storage space and parking if you want to move a car, store sentimentals, or stash evac supplies. We're in north SFV pretty near the highways but south of 118 and the fire-prone foothills areas.
posted to MetaTalk by Lyn Never at 9:04 AM on September 11, 2020

It's difficult to build a post that's up to the standards expected of a political post. At the end of the megathread era, there were collaborations and a wiki and even an almost-standardized footer with more resources. We have to find good sources that aren't paywalled, that will let you run adblock without a nag window but not AMP because Google is awful, not a Twitter thread because they are hard to navigate, and never the NYT because we all hate it now and there will be a derail... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by octothorpe at 5:45 PM on August 18, 2020

Haven't listened to my group's yet, but I can tell by the track listings that they are going to be excellent. Thanks to signal and all participants! Great fun.
posted to MetaTalk by mykescipark at 2:47 PM on August 9, 2020

For AskMe posts, I would like a way to export the answers I have received.

Right now, wiping your account wipes all answers to the AskMeFi questions you post. That means wiping your account involuntarily erases the works of others (including marginalized groups). It'd be even more disrespectful to the question responders to claim ownership over their answers and that you have the right to both retain their answers yourself as well as the ability to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by saeculorum at 11:28 AM on August 4, 2020

*big inhale* I'm a trans woman.

I was planning to come out on National Coming Out Day in October, but fuck it, my entire life is an absolute mess, I'm losing hope by the day, and the whole goddamn country is on fire, so nothing matters anymore. I'm 40 years old, AMAB, and I spent most of my life in denial and slowly killing myself by neglect until I finally had a breakdown/breakthrough (breakdownthrough?) in February and started seeing a gender therapist. Now I'm on HRT... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Faint of Butt at 9:03 AM on July 29, 2020

trappist system has been in touch with me and shared correspondence between them and cortex. cortex is misrepresenting the ban on their account, it's not just due to the request for a wipe. They are understandably quite upset.
posted to MetaTalk by divabat at 5:10 PM on July 14, 2020

Here are my two recommendations, based on actually having to do this stuff for a living for very large global companies that have had serious issues with fraud and abuse:

1. Update the Mefi AUP (acceptable use policy) to explicitly state that copying and pasting user-contributed comments to other sites without linking back to metafilter is a violation of the AUP
2. Subscribe to a takedown service such as Mark Monitor to send DMCA notices to any websites where... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by nikaspark at 11:26 AM on July 13, 2020

I'd just like to say - I wasn't aware this was going on in any organized fashion, it's extremely shitty, and my heart goes out to everyone impacted.
posted to MetaTalk by Chrysostom at 9:35 PM on July 12, 2020

Parts of metafilter are archived by the Library of Congress (and other libraries) for their cultural significance. It's interesting (and foreign) to compare the language of the extremely open internet that mefi was part of, expressed on Matt Haughey's 'new signup' page in 2001:

One of the guiding principles here is trust in each other. The index page of metafilter.com can be added to by almost everybody that has signed up, as there is very little editing or deleting... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Fiasco da Gama at 9:29 PM on July 12, 2020

The thyme has come to drop a rime
To welcome loup and travelingthyme
And thank anonymøøse benefactors.
Beware of cabals
(That exist not at all)
Of pancakes and mushrooms
Of habits in washrooms
Of trollers and spammers
Of rusty banhammers
And especially of bredly
And plumly malefactors.
posted to MetaTalk by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:57 AM on June 2, 2020

Logged in for the first time in a long while to say: Welcome, new mods, and good luck! We're all counting on you.
posted to MetaTalk by RedOrGreen at 12:23 PM on June 1, 2020

Hi everyone!

I’m loup and I’m one of the new mods! My pronouns are They/Them/Theirs. I’m originally from Costa Rica, so Spanish is my native language, but lived in Germany, Czech Republic, Vietnam, San Francisco and as a nomad while working as a freelancer. I also speak French, Portuguese, and Italian fluently and During my time traveling I learned some basic Mandarin, Polish, Czech, and German (enough to communicate and understand some of the nuances of the language).... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by loup at 11:07 AM on June 1, 2020

Hi all,

I’m travelingthyme, the new Mod! My pronouns are They/Them/Theirs. I am a Queer Womxn of Color in their mid-twenties.

I hail from…well, quite a few places. I arrived in the US as a child refugee and have since spent my adulthood relocating between 3-ish countries.
At the moment, I’m living somewhere around the Mediterranean sea. When I’m not thinking/writing about politics and world events, I’m daydreaming about my ideal... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by travelingthyme at 10:56 AM on June 1, 2020

Devils Rancher: I have at least one CD from you that I've listened to not infrequently, so yay CD swap years!
posted to MetaTalk by hippybear at 4:38 PM on May 30, 2020

I just stumbled on my pile of MeFi Music Swap CD’s a few days ago & got kinda wistful, actually.

I would be good for a file swap in lieu of CD’S & have the Dropbox space for .aif files so it’s full quality. Spotify has literally no meaning to me, so if it goes that way, I can’t participate.
posted to MetaTalk by Devils Rancher at 4:23 PM on May 30, 2020

.zip files of 10-15 songs appropriately numbered and with album titles adjusted so they appear as a single group in iTunes would be welcome. Spotify is a thing I do not partake in and don't plan to sign up for.

The physical CD swaps were fun but I am not sure I'd want to do that right now.
posted to MetaTalk by hippybear at 8:23 AM on May 30, 2020

This is the Ramen Egg recipe that I learned from the great Ramen Egg masters of the Internet:

1. Keep the eggs in the fridge.
2. Start to boil water.
3. When the water is at a rolling boil, take out the eggs from the fridge.
4. Poke the eggs in their wide egg butt with a egg poker. (missed this - OOPS)
5. Put the eggs in the boiling water.
6. Boil for 7 minutes.
7. After 7 minutes, take out and... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by spinifex23 at 1:26 PM on April 18, 2020

I do an Instagram for a public garden. My current goal is as many pretty pictures as possible because we all need some vicarious happy stuff.
posted to MetaTalk by sciencegeek at 12:21 PM on April 17, 2020

I went on a bike ride today to scout some new routes -- unfortunately my hopes were partially dashed by an unfriendly gated community sitting in my way. But I did get a picture of my favorite desert flower.
posted to MetaTalk by egregious theorem at 11:13 AM on April 17, 2020

The only plants I can manage to care for: our succulents Kit and Carson.

The name came about because I was reading Cather's 'Death comes for the Archbishop', now one of my favorite books. The conversation with my partner went something like this:
Her: What are you reading?
Me: Death comes for the Archbishop! Beautiful novel! I love it!
Her: Yeah I liked it a lot too, but why did she have to introduce these dumb, fantastical elements?... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vacapinta at 4:13 AM on April 17, 2020

I went for a bike ride today and it was pretty great. I’m so glad we’re still allowed to exercise outside.
posted to MetaTalk by ClarissaWAM at 2:59 PM on April 16, 2020