MetaFilter

Yeah, I'm going to call this interesting. I've never read anything by her before, so I don't have any previous biases against the author.

Like nebulawindphone and hermitosis said, it's a good reminder to know that people experience things much differently than I do. I have my own set of mental gremlins, and when I sit and explain my thought process to my wife, I realize everyone doesn't think like I do. When I feel completely overwhelmed, and everyone else seems fine,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by SNWidget at 7:42 AM on November 19, 2010

Yeah, narcissism has that affect on me.

So does whatever it is you just did.

I love it when people work this hard to articulate the differences between the way their mind works and the way most other people's do. What you learn from them might not always be pleasant, but I think it's very important to have constant reminders that the world is full of people whose thoughts are nothing like you'd imagine -- sometimes there is a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hermitosis at 7:38 AM on November 19, 2010

I decided to come clean with the food bank.

My email: You guys are my local charity this year. Someone on the internet asked if I would do a dramatic [and to them, amusing] reading of a web page full of insults [nominally funny nicknames you have for your friends that are sort of nicknames and sort of insults] and they'd make a donation to my favorite charity. I did the reading and recorded it and then a lot of other people decided to make donations as well, as thanks.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:49 PM on November 17, 2010

Can someone lookup the average length of time it takes for questions about female pubic hair grooming to turn into men fighting with each other about it? I have a current record today of 106 minutes. Thanks!
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 11:04 AM on November 16, 2010

No. Things are working pretty much okay right now. What sort of gets me is how the new TSA threads are basically "new shitty thing happening with TSA!" which is sort of the definition of what needs to get posted in the open thread. If someone wanted to make a post that was comprehensive, not filled with free-floating rage and actually was a good summary of what's been going on and what is going to go on, I am certain people would enjoy it and we'd probably not delete it.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 12:26 PM on November 15, 2010

This new post on the front page is textbook example of outragefilter.

Was just coming here to say that.

Using the phrase 'recreational outrage' is most often a fundamentally craven and bad faith attempt to justify not being moved by things that are, in fact, very moving to emotionally intact human beings.

We use it here as mods, not often, but as shorthand to explain that... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:22 PM on November 14, 2010

Is it saved from the outrage bin by the strength of the nonrage comments alone?

I feel like some of it is also the tone and wording of the post. The post is just "hey this is what's up with Uwe Boll lately" not "Uwe Boll is a huge fucking asshole and should die in a prison" and that sort of thing helps both set the tone of the discussion and also affect how people respond to it with flagging and the like.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 11:00 AM on November 14, 2010

I don't really know Uwe Boll. That post has almost no flags. It's possible that your assessment of where the thread could and did go is somewhat off. Outragefilter is basically a borrowed term for some sort of "Persona does something totally reprehensible, here's very little information about it. Grar!" and then the thread is basically full of people being like "this is so fucking awful!" but again, there's no there there. This is just a post about someone that a lot of... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:15 AM on November 14, 2010

Film-making vs. acts of violence, meme-stuff (Uwe Boll, Awful Director) vs. pitchfork-gathering. Those are the two big dynamic differences, to me: there's something to discuss (primarily but not entirely in a snarky vein, in this case) rather than just be angry and holler about, the stakes are very different from an actual Awful Thing Happened sort of situation, and there's a general understanding going in that the transgressive aspect of the subject of the post is more like Tacky Guy Is Tacky... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:24 AM on November 14, 2010

sorry i was made these post because a error...

administrator!!! please hope me!
posted to MetaTalk by goliche at 5:31 PM on November 22, 2001

I think the mods do a good job of deleting answers that don't actually answer the question. Flag it and move on.
posted to MetaTalk by MaryDellamorte at 9:30 PM on November 11, 2010

I think it's good Metafilter. It's a great example of a small dispute getting amplified by things (YouTube, Facebook, Google Local) that didn't exist seven years ago.
posted to MetaFilter by DanCall at 4:15 AM on November 10, 2010

Would there be any actual legal precedent for "I listened to advice on the internet, and as a result, now have no limbs?"

This is the Big Big Question. It's come up in MetaTalk before.

There are lawyers and other members who feel that anyone giving advice [especially advice that slants in a legal direction like landlord/tenant sorts of things, or family law] is in potential very serious danger of getting in trouble... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 10:27 AM on November 7, 2010

I am your moderator.

Having a standard disclaimer is not going to keep people from making the same statements anyhow. Having a disclaimer isn't really going to be legally binding in the crazy off chance that someone takes someone's advice, gets themselves into trouble and decides to sue us or the person giving the advice, whether the advice giver is or is not a professional of any stripe.

So, I sympathize, it seems like one of those repetitive... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:58 AM on November 7, 2010

The "Faze is a troll" meme that occasionally crops up is not based on any actual record of trollish behavior

Actually, it pretty much is. I've got at best mixed feelings about the usefulness of as nebulous and overloaded a term as "troll" as a descriptor of users in a community environment because of the vagueness and lack of objective consensus on what it actually means, but insofar as there's a general gist to what people intend... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:00 AM on November 6, 2010

Faze, I fucking love you. I disagree with almost everything that you write, and I disagree with the manner in which you write it, but those two things aside there's no arguing that you're anything but a master of the inflamed invective.

You're only allowed to be over the top in your arguments if you're trying to out-favourite the other good MeFites in your attempt to agree the strongest. Faze is great because he articulates unpopular views in a reasoned but... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rory Marinich at 11:06 AM on November 6, 2010

[comments removed - we don't do the whole "I hope he gets killed/raped in prison" thing here]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 10:51 AM on November 6, 2010

Ooh, do tell!

I was fortunate enough in college to find a handful of professors whom I would follow anywhere and from whom I would take any class, because the energy and love of knowledge that they brought to task could make any subject interesting and instructive. One of these professors was in the media studies department, a youngish guy who used to teach creative writing before moving on to film and communications. It was from him that I learned... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by shakespeherian at 7:26 AM on November 5, 2010

[any answers with "fuck you" in them are deleted by a robot. I am here to tell you this. Please try harder so the robot works less. Thank you.]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jessamyn at 1:00 PM on November 4, 2010

bru: "Knowing that communities start from the ground up"

This is why Facebook Questions is going to have a really hard time succeeding.

MeFi succeeded because it was actually pretty small for a (relatively) long time. Active users tended to know each other by username, if not more. A de facto "editorial tone" settled around some basic principles that the community got behind (no self linking, don't make... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mkultra at 9:37 AM on November 2, 2010

More good news, Joe:

Stop hounding Joe Beese and making this thread about him. He's been good in here. Don't bring in baggage from other threads.
posted to MetaFilter by shakespeherian at 8:54 AM on November 3, 2010

Is it still ok, in AskMe, to respond to wrong factual statements, in neutral or polite manner.

Totally. The "measure twice, cut once" maxim applies though. Remove snark, then remove it again.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 4:53 PM on November 2, 2010

Flag it, move on, drop us an email if you think what they said was deleteworthy or if you'd like someone to commiserate with. You can even write a reply and send it to me instead of posting it to the thread, that seems to work okay for some people.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:32 PM on November 2, 2010

When do we find out the webz were actually a defense establishment project all along?
posted to MetaFilter by The Lady is a designer at 11:02 AM on November 1, 2010

There is a reason why there has been a certain amount of sarcasm, hyperbole and condescension here recently, and that is because there have been some really, really annoying examples of people being so unbelievably fragile and precious that it is all one can do not to verbally slap them upside the head and call out their behaviour for what it is, in direct and robust terms. And of course, we are not allowed to do that on Metafilter.

Those aren't the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:28 AM on November 1, 2010

And really, thousands of moderators? Can't imagine that is any fun at all.

Yeah, it's the sort of thing where, when you scale it like that, you're inherently dealing with a different sort of job. There is literally no way that what me and Jess and Matt do on metafilter could work for a place with a thousand times as many users and a thousand times as many moderators—it's just a fundamentally different situation at that point. Constant close... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:47 AM on November 1, 2010

Jessamyn already turned this job down when they offered it to her, and that is the single smartest interweb decision I have seen anyone make all year, so good times all around.

To be fair, I'm not totally sure what they were offering me, but I got an email from someone with a facebook email address who wanted me to come out and "discuss opportunities" with them about somethingorother related to their "questions" product and I said... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:35 AM on November 1, 2010

I'm sorry I wasn't clear in my earlier MeMails to you. Answers in AskMe need to help the OP answer their question, not just bitch out other commenters. Calling another commenter a racist is basically stopping a thread dead. If you think someone is speaking in racist ways or betraying some sort of prejudice, use your words, explain it and talk about it with an eye towards having the OP have a better understanding of the situation they're involved in.

We pretty much leave... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 4:08 PM on October 30, 2010

Previously.

Oh man, only 14 comments? This post has twice that in less than an hour.

it does seem to contradict her earlier guidance to me on this matter, communicated in a MeFi Mail sent

And just for the record, while we're happy to try to clarify policy sorts of things in MeMail for people who don't feel totally comfortable taking something to MeTa, we'd appreciate if every... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:47 AM on October 28, 2010

There is a big difference between something that is up and available to the entire public on YouTube and "here's a blind link to download copyrighted material" Sometimes people link to copyrighted stuff on YouTube that gets taken down.

So, to be more clear about my MeMail. Personally we don't have a "this is bad" value judgment about people linking to copyrighted material, or general copyright infringement. From a professional standpoint we absolutely... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:01 AM on October 28, 2010

> I think you missed the point where I asserted that these posts aren't discussions, they're calls for bans.

That is a lie and you should feel bad for lying about a fellow member in good standing. Nobody has called for a ban. Bearwife obviously wishes people wouldn't use "pussy" that way, but what's wrong with that? I wish people wouldn't say "he may have caught it" in contrary-to-fact situations where I would say "he... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by languagehat at 2:12 PM on October 27, 2010

Ha! You know it's shocking how many people call it The Owl. I'm always shocked! I would name some names here but that's awkward.

The Internet is weird. Everyone likes so many different kinds of things on it.

Anyway, in response to some questions above: I have a number of friends who do amazing jobs running niche websites--and LIVING OFF THEM. It's fantastic. But more than that, I talk to suddenly un- or under-employed journalists, and they don't... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by RJ Reynolds at 2:46 PM on October 25, 2010

Since the park you're looking for is in China, it's possible Google simply doesn't have it in their system. Their coverage isn't perfect across the globe, but we can usually come up with a way to make a location work. Send me a MeFi Mail with the location (a link to a Google Map with the spot would be great) and I'll add it for you.

When we started working with Japanese addresses I had to make some changes to make them work with the site because Google handles them... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by pb at 8:50 AM on October 22, 2010

Our parks coverage used to be sort of less-great because of whichever data sets we were and were not able to access and I worked with pb specifically to get a location that was at a beach a little more postable. This sort of thing has come up a few times similarly and talking to pb directly [he's pretty easy to get ahold of and super duper friendly] is the way to resolve your specific issue. The Google map thing is useful/necessary because a lot of the other geoloc stuff depends on the data we... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:12 AM on October 22, 2010

Also, Jessamyn West deserves singling out as one of the finest human beings on planet earth.

Last year, in the middle of a terrible snow storm, I fought my way home from work (a more than two hour drive in white out conditions) to find my driveway completely impassable, and I had to clear it because the plows needed to come through, so I couldn't leave my car on the road. My puny snow blower was barely up to the task and, because it was on it's last... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by quin at 8:37 AM on October 21, 2010

I spent the entirety of my adolescence on forums. In 2003, when I joined my first forum (the sadly departed rpg2knet), I was 13 and not yet out of middle school. Before the Internet I'd mainly stuck to fantasy/SF novels, video games, and Dungeons & Dragons. Escapism. If you're reading this you probably know why.

I joined 2knet because I wanted to learn how to make video games. But I think I realized pretty quickly I cared more about the forum than I cared about the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rory Marinich at 12:06 AM on October 21, 2010

And whoever it was got the anonymous question approved!

Yeah this is a side effect of us really not checking to see who has posted the questions. Without the context, this question looks normal. With the context of the asker, it looks completely and totally crazy. I didn't dig for the user's identity because I'm sort of a trusting dork that way.

And me personally I feel that this sort of stuff is a lot more about people's... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 11:09 AM on October 20, 2010

Mod question: What's the determining factor in making a banned-for-a-week/banned-for-life decision like this? What changed your minds?

For me it's a question of whether the fuckup is part of a pattern of behavior or not. This guy has been a source of a whole lot of crap on the site, some of it visible and some of it more behind-the-scenes mod work. Capping that off with this Mary Sue sockpuppet bullshit is more the nail in the coffin than anything.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 10:55 AM on October 20, 2010

What's the determining factor in making a banned-for-a-week/banned-for-life decision like this? What changed your minds?

I thought banned for life was too harsh and something has to be beyond the pale to warrant that. Then I looked at his posting history more and saw the relentless posting of the same question and they were already on thin ice, so fucking with the community is enough for a total ban. Good riddance, the guy was nothing but stress for us.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 10:55 AM on October 20, 2010

One of the few people who is really, really banned from mefi keeps trying to come back. He knows he's not welcome, he was banned on a couple separate occasions for repeatedly fucking around with the site and we've made it really clear that he needs to stay gone. For whatever reason he refuses to respect that and keeps trying to slip under the radar, mostly by either cadging Paypal favors off of friends or in at least one case co-opting someone's functionally abandoned account (presumably with... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 1:01 PM on October 16, 2010

You can really tell who gets high around here.

They are usually the ones who are aggressively fighting with people in every thread that can loosely be perceived to be about pot, is what I remember. But my memory isn't so good lately....

And yeah as cortex said, we probably should have deleted that but it never reached the "truly terrible" level. I was at a library conference and had to wake up early and was, as they... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:13 AM on October 16, 2010

andreaazure: “Disagree with me - that's fine. But deleting the comment? Especially since I followed the rules and didn't insult anyone? Rather crappy.”

I appreciate that you care about this issue, but I think you shot yourself in the foot here. Specifically: you're talking about two different things. Do you disagree with the legalization of marijuana? That's a fair opinion. But that's not what you said. You made a comment about... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by koeselitz at 8:59 AM on October 16, 2010

Like folks said, we pretty routinely delete comments that are nothing but "this post sucks" or rhetorical "really, you posted this?" sort of stuff. That's what flags are for, or email, or metatalk, or if you absolutely must say something in thread about the flaws or unsuitability of the post then take the time to actually put together a detailed and substantial comment on the subject.

It has nothing to do with the topic of the post... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:31 AM on October 16, 2010

You're not being censored. MeTaTalk is entire subsite where (among other things,) discussion about whether a post is appropriate to Metafilter is okay. If you had complained here first instead, your opinion would have not been deleted.

The mods (I assume) deleted the comment you made in an inappropriate place to keep thread from derailing.
posted to MetaTalk by zarq at 7:58 AM on October 16, 2010

I think that sort of comment falls under derail, personally. Also, you can contact the mods directly for these types of concerns rather than post a MeTa about it...
posted to MetaTalk by elpea at 7:18 AM on October 16, 2010

A sample of non-American FPP's on the frontpage right now:Charlie Brooker calls it Quits.

Bye bye Big Mal. Malcolm Allison.

50 Cabbage "kimchi crisis" Warning.

Town in England turns off traffic lights, surprising results.

Gotthardt rail tunnel breakthrough in pictures.

A story in pictures -- The Secret of Kells.

Laila Kinnunen.I think... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by ericb at 3:50 PM on October 15, 2010

I have ignored
your country
which lies
on that other
continent

and I know
you will probably
take
offense to this now

Forgive me
but I never think of it
and all the cool shit
seems to be over here
right now
posted to MetaTalk by From Bklyn at 3:24 PM on October 15, 2010

Aw shucks.

The downside of longpostitis is that right now I've got a Notepad file of ~30 post ideas, and a bookmark folder of ~60 FPP links. It's easy to find cool stuff on the web, but harder to post it, especially if you've come into the idea that every post should try to be great. Which I sorta do; Mefi is basically my Internet of Record, so when I want to post about something (especially something near and dear to me), I tend to want to post All The Things. Sometimes... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 3:51 PM on October 15, 2010

I'm sure jessamyn and josh will chime in, but this post had several problems. It's a very long post, and would take a reader hours to really check out each and every of the 78(!!!) linked articles. This encourages people to NOT read anything and merely post their knee jerk reactions based on the excerpts. It contains loads of excerpts, so much that I don't think any of it was actually written by the original poster (it's hard to tell, which makes it all the more confusing). Finally, it's about a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:24 AM on October 14, 2010

Here are some things metafilter thinks:

Sleep hygeine makes many things in your life better.
Dale Carnegie had some good points even if his book is dated and somewhat glib.
There is probably a nurse line phone number on the back of your insurance card. Call that before you go to the ER.
Talking to people can sometimes help with the problems you are having with them.
It's a good idea to be clear if you... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:57 PM on October 10, 2010