MetaFilter

I will say once that I do not understand why the mods allowed the off-color dick jokes or the very obvious derails.

Some of it has to do with the difference between MeFi and MeTa. Some of it has to do with the speed of that thread and the fact that other people were requoting stuff. Some of it has to do with the fact that this is MeTa and different things are expected and allowed. We deleted some comments and left a note, but there is a sense where... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 6:11 AM on July 23, 2011

I stand by that sociopath statement now more than ever.

With respect, calling people sociopaths is really not helping here. I get that people's nerves are raw and that this is a terrible tragedy that a lot of people have a hard time sort of getting their head around or dealing with in an online-website sort of situation. But even if people do things you personally find fairly abhorrent, this is the place where we talk about that stuff and hopefully... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:57 PM on July 22, 2011

So, there's a few things here that apply to a larger context than just that thread, to the extent that they've come up on mefi and in metatalk before and plenty of other places:

1. Some people are really, really bothered by jokey responses to scary or tragic shit going down that directly affects them.
2. Some people are really bothered by it even for scary/tragic shit that only fairly indirectly affects them.
3. Some people cope with scary or... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 3:27 PM on July 22, 2011

The mods have made it clear that the jokes are not appropriate here.

We've made it clear that there are a lot of people who find jokes totally inappropriate in these sorts of situations and we expect people to be mindful about that. I understand some people use humor personally to deal with terrible events. They must also understand that in a large community where that isn't true for everyone, it's worth spending a little bit of time thinking how... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 3:13 PM on July 22, 2011

I thought it was an interesting idea that could in theory help with self-policing, make mods' jobs easier, and help people get more of what they want out of the site

It is an interesting idea, but one that would basically involve turning this site into not-MeFi and would absolutely not work with the level of staffing we have here, a level that is unlikely to change dramatically unless HuffPo/AOL buys us and you wouldn't want to hang out here anymore... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:08 AM on July 17, 2011

We just trust them. Unless there's something sketch, we assume people are on the up and up.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:24 PM on July 16, 2011

How do mods figure out when this happens?

We've got a little heuristic that uses a few of the possibly-related-accounts tricks we have to check to see if a new question just posted is a probable multi-account limit dodge and sends us mods an email with links to the questions and accounts involved.

We then take a look, try and establish whether it looks like actual limit-dodging or something innocent, and if it looks sketchy... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 4:00 PM on July 16, 2011

1. We have an email record external to the database of who has submitted an anony question when, but with no info about what question it was. The database does not know who asked what, so the question in the actual approval queue is anonymous to us; if we need to track down who wrote it for some rare reason, we can do so by putting two and two together based on approximate submission time vs. the email record, but it's a manual process.

In the event of a db hack, who... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 3:48 PM on July 16, 2011

I wanted to unveil the new site for memories we've been collecting for the past two weeks (yes, you can still post one if you missed the deadline). In other words:

YES, I FINALLY TRACKED DOWN THE DOMAIN SQUATTER OWNERS OF CAT-SCAN.COM AND PAID THEM FOR IT.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 12:20 AM on July 14, 2011

Generally speaking, we're really not making any effort to grow the userbase; the current rate at which it plops along is totally fine, we see on the order of a dozen signups every day pretty steadily for a few years now. The $5 does a great job of keeping out driveby spammers and trolls, but it also presents a mild "do I really want to be here" barrier even for good-faith members, which is nice because it means everybody who signs up after has some sort of incentive beyond just It Was... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:58 AM on July 13, 2011

We're actually not that interested in growth actually.

The $5 isn't really an income generator here [I mean it makes money but not the bulk of the money that pays everyone] it's more of a "keep spammers out" system. Allowing people to add a +1 theoretically would be cool on the "hey more people who sort of know how this thing is supposed to work" but would also allow a stream of people with no paypal or personal information details which is a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:56 AM on July 13, 2011

It is my understanding that the $5 dollar fee was to stop spammers and trollers.

That's sort of a nice side-benefit, but really it was done to keep growth slow and steady. It would be cool to get +1 friends from people, but I fear doing that once would add a few thousand new users in a few days and wreak a bit of havoc on us all.

If there was a way to slowly trickle that, sure, I'd consider it.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 8:52 AM on July 13, 2011

I wasn't aware that Metafilter was suffering from a lack of members.
posted to MetaTalk by mattbucher at 8:51 AM on July 13, 2011

Our general rule of thumb is we'd like stuff to be new-to-Mefi but we realize that a lot of people weren't here seven years ago and so might not have seen stuff. That said, anything that's a repeat of something posted in the past few years will likely [but not always] get deleted as a double.

Otherwise, if folks haven't seen it, the content itself doesn't have to be new, though if it's some sort of newsy thing it's better off if it's recent and not from a few months or... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 10:37 PM on July 12, 2011

I guess that's why this post has stayed up when it's so much worse.

If you enjoy this game, keep guessing. Otherwise feel free to straight up ask us. At that point we'll probably tell you that it seemed like a dorky harmless fun video posted a few hours ago and not collecting a lot of flags.

We're really happy to answer contact form email asking us this stuff or answering people's MeTa questions. That said, turning one MeTa... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 10:47 PM on July 12, 2011

I woke up and deleted two heavily flagged threads this morning and that one seemed like next on the chopping block and then I figured I was just being crabby and deletion-crazy and so left it alone. Didn't like it, but it got a few flags trickling in all day and never really hit our "this has to go" radar.

I thought this was pretty thin, as did another commenter.

We deleted a few "this sucks" comments... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:15 PM on July 12, 2011

Wasn't great, wasn't terrible, didn't seem to be starting any fights, and I'm not sure anybody on Team Mod is enough of a yoga person to have a strong context for knowing whether it was interesting content on that front or not?

Borderline "not great" stuff is just that: borderline. Sometimes it stays, sometimes it goes, there's a lot of chance and circumstance involved in that fuzzy grey area stuff. No small part of the difficulty in analyzing it is that... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:59 PM on July 12, 2011

If you're apologizing for how you made the post in your post, it's really starting things off on a weird/bad foot. When I saw the thread when I got up it was getting a lot of flags and people were making a bunch of dopey jokes in the thread. People seemed to think the article was terrible and combined with the odd framing it was one of those "try again" situations.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:32 AM on July 12, 2011

And with the corresponding "Gun posts tend to go terribly here, so if you are doing a post that involves guns or gun violence please be very careful with your framing because if it's Yet Another Gun Trainwreck we will delete it with a 'what were you thinking?' reason for deletion" caveat.

This site is not at all set up to deal with long angry posts on hot button political topics. People are welcome to try to make posts on those topics better, but they're very difficult to do well.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 10:47 AM on July 12, 2011

Yeah, I feel like we may just need to lean a little bit harder on this stuff for a bit if there's an expectation that "a bad thing happened, here's someone's opinions about it" is a solid post rather than borderline-at-best for ordinary circumstances.

The thinking for a post that's pretty much This Is A Bad Thing should really start with a couple of checkpoints before someone gets around to even considering putting it up:

1. Is there a good... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:41 AM on July 12, 2011

But I am used to the fact that many US mefites are completely blithe to the idea that there's a fully functioning world out there.

There are better ways to deal with that than to make an oblique fuss about it in a thread and take weird potshots at other users. Please cut it out, or if you really need to talk about it go to metatalk.
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 10:14 PM on July 11, 2011

Ok, no follow up clarification posts from joeclark 45min into this, I think it's time to close this up.

Note to joeclark: this isn't me flexing my INFALLIBLE MOD POWERS to shut you down, I'm actually doing you a favor because if I left this open people would continue to treat your post like a Piñata for the next month.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 8:35 AM on July 11, 2011

This would be a very bad time for admins, particularly Jessamyn and PB, to act defensive. Just answer the question.

I admitted I was wrong a few days ago. I do it fairly frequently.

* Reopening a closed thread or undeleting a comment or unbanning a user seems never to have happened.
* I have no memory of any admin’s acting contrite or even abashed or hesitant about the decisions they made.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:10 AM on July 11, 2011

It's like you haven't really been reading for 11 years.
posted to MetaTalk by ericost at 8:08 AM on July 11, 2011

Christ, what an asshole.
posted to MetaTalk by Chrysostom at 8:07 AM on July 11, 2011

We've variously apologize on one occasion or another for misreading something or misunderstanding something, for making a decision based one having misapprehended something, etc. Stuff occasionally gets undeleted, though more often it's a sympathetic "try that thing again with a fresh start" situation since deleted comments and posts don't exist in a vacuum and a do-over is usually the simpler plan and the one less likely to haul arguments-about-the-deletion baggage into what is presumably... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:58 AM on July 11, 2011

Wow, so fighty.

Anyway, I admit it all the time. Here's a search for me saying I'm sorry in comments.

If you've really read MetaTalk closely for 11 years you've certainly seen us reverse decisions, admit mistakes, and say we're sorry many, many times.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 7:57 AM on July 11, 2011

This would be a very bad time for admins, particularly Jessamyn and PB, to act defensive. Just answer the question.

This sentence deserves mockery, derision, and no damn answer at all from anyone. I may disagree with the mods from time to time, once or twice vehemently, but this take-them-to-task horseshit has got to go.
posted to MetaTalk by Slap*Happy at 7:55 AM on July 11, 2011

There's no click through kickback, I just get paid a flat fee monthly for running the ads. I find them well targeted myself and have clicked through on a few iPhone apps and I noticed I actually use a backup service being advertised. So click stuff if you find it useful, but there's no need to generate fake clicks to try and raise revenue because that's not how it works.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 10:08 AM on July 9, 2011

[your jokes removed. fyi.]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jessamyn at 5:28 PM on July 7, 2011

Time for a rant.

A very, very long time ago I created the Internet's very first videogame email newsletter* - "Game Master Journal." (Warning: bad formatting.) It was 1992, to be exact, which is nearly forever ago. I was 17, barely, when it first went out over BBSes and then was forwarded along onto the Net.

A few years later, GMJ morphed into the first commercial videogame website*, "Intelligent Gamer Online." IG Online was... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by andreaazure at 9:49 PM on July 5, 2011

I've been priviliged to be able to see behind the curtain a bit in terms of moderation. If there's advice I'd give people who want to help metafilter and make moderation less difficult, I'd say:

1. Flag. I don't think most people realize how powerful flags are, how quickly they get mod attention and how much sway they can have in a decision.

2. Don't threadshit. If you don't like something you see, see Point #1. Snarky comments have the opposite... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vacapinta at 5:04 AM on July 6, 2011

Folks, we need people to do a whole less of the "I think this is your specific problem" out here in public with people who are not really actively participating and/or who are having real trouble. We made an executive decision and cut that comment and follow-ups out and we sort of need people to show some basic decency if this thread is going to stay open.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 6:00 PM on July 5, 2011

Yeah, it really is one of those endless hobbyhorses for Hincandenza

It is, and it's one that pretty much needs to stop being so. I am sorry you are hurting, hincandenza, but this needs to stop being an Oh, It's That Thing He Does trope in threads about dating/socializing/creepy-or-not stuff. If you want to talk about your personal experiences in a way that doesn't involve "this is why you all suck/this is why I hate you" stuff, that's one... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:58 AM on July 5, 2011

Ridiculous thread-sitting by the mods today.

Oh, I'm glad you showed up here.

If you think coming into a thread with a comment that was basically "fucking spoiled bitch thinks she's too good to get hit on in an elevator" is appropriate, you're deranged. And the problem isn't the mods. It's that you need to lurk more.
posted to MetaTalk by Astro Zombie at 4:28 PM on July 4, 2011

Whole great big outdoors, people. Whole yawning dome of sky you can go spend some time under this afternoon or evening or for some of you maybe even the witching hour. Books to read, TV to watch, treadmills to run on, foods to eat. It would really be totally okay to go do any of those things or any number of others, and maybe a good idea if mostly you're hanging out in here because you're in the mood for an argument.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 4:03 PM on July 4, 2011

This is a great community but the self-righteous bullshit and over-moderating needs to stop pronto.

Telling folks to stop doing the metacommentary thing in thread is a bog-standard part of thread moderation here, and has been for years and years. If you're frustrated about something about the site or the community and need to talk about it publicly, that's fine, but you do it here, not in the middle of a thread. That's just how... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:18 AM on July 4, 2011

The post has gotten one flag, that's basically saying to us one of two things

1. no one thinks it's a deleteworthy post
2. no one is around

As much as I don't enjoy this sort of posts, MeFi is not for things that only I am interested in. It hits a few points that this community seems to like discussing [the atheist community, how to speak to women, drama in other communities] so it's here.

This is a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 11:05 AM on July 4, 2011

This is a classic case of Ask Culture meets Guess Culture.

In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it's OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.

In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by tangerine at 11:38 PM on January 16, 2007 marked best answer

I'm drawing a line in the sand [see below]. This is a hotly debated aspect of the site (favorites) to the degree that admin has introduced a way to turn off favorites, and conducted an optional no-favorites period in which people could see how "favoriting" affected or didn't affect their participation. We've had many posts and threads on this, and most people who follow MetaTalk have developed their own deeply held feelings and opinions about this.

Can we spare... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by taz at 3:01 AM on July 3, 2011

This. Not putting the point of a post in the post itself and only in the title is borderline sociopath behavior.

I realize this is probably Ha Ha Hyperbole Is Fun stuff, but it'd do for folks to keep in mind that when someone puts something in the title that would be helpful to see if it were displayed on the front page of the appropriate subsite, it's pretty much certainly because they didn't realize the title wouldn't be displayed, not because... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:56 PM on July 2, 2011

adding a visible signifier is probably easier than policing the entire userbase for shenanigans

Eh, I sort of feel like "don't do this, if you do this there will be consequences" is probably okay. We've had mixed feelings about introducing visible signifiers. We want to be able to interact as users on the site and we try to make it very clear when we're speaking as mods. In MeTa that might be a good idea, but people get confused at that... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 11:06 AM on July 1, 2011

I'm guessing that's ok if not I'll remove it.

Absolutely fine. In fact, you can get your friend a MeFi account and then have them send the link to mathowie to have it put on the MeFi Kickstarter projects page.

But yeah, in the posts is just not going to fly anymore. This is for two reasons

1. the general "is this something cool you found or is this your friend's thing that you want to direct more... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:14 AM on July 1, 2011

Did you do a search? It was discussed in some detail here back in May. The takeaway quote from mathowie:

great posts can be fine without a "donate to kickstarter" or "sign the petition" or "paypal them money" aspects. When a post includes that, it sometimes seems like the whole point of the post was fundraising, which makes for a dodgy reason to make a post. Depending on how big of a thing the donation/petition part of a post is determines... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 3:12 AM on July 1, 2011

I must be the only one who's never heard of this soccer team and sometimes clicks the links of the post before clicking inside. I thought hiding context on the "more inside" was wrong, but I guess that doesn't apply tot the title.

1. It's not wrong in any platonic sense; there are specific sorts of HA HA FOOLED YOU behavior that are not so great and probably a couple occasions ever where it's been something so weird and stunty that we've... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:28 AM on June 29, 2011

And you have to click inside to read the title.

And we expect people to do that if they're complaining about lack of context.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:11 AM on June 29, 2011

It's okay to just bury a hatchet by yourself, and maybe put a little rock on top of the hole, some rock that you picked up because you thought it was neat looking.

And then if you see the other guy wandering around carrying a hatchet, and you feel like maybe you need to go dig up your hatchet too, when you get back to the hole you dug you can see that rock. And you can think, hey, it's that rock! That rock that I thought was neat, that I put by that hole I dug. That's... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 6:09 PM on June 28, 2011

Oh, don't be silly. Thread's only been open for a few hours. I'm sure we can come up with some recrimination eventually.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 3:52 PM on June 28, 2011

I got a jokey comment deleted in my husband's AskMe.

FYI, no you didn't. There are no deleted answers by you or anyone else in that thread.

This sort of thing happens fairly rarely, as folks have said.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:35 PM on June 24, 2011

I was interested in new music that people on metafilter would recommend. Songs that people on metafilter were currently excited about. I'm generally dissatisfied with digging up music online (other than a few specific blogs I like) but generally very satisfied with stuff that's turned up on metafilter.

Which is fine, but that and nothing more is really too broad and undirected for Ask Metafilter. It might be a great conversation to have over on... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 3:35 PM on June 24, 2011