MetaFilter

From what I've seen, RelationshipFilter questions often call small, sometimes embittered choirs, to sing loudly.

Indeed. I explain it like this. "Everyone is on the internet for a reason. Sometimes that reason is because they've got a non-traditional relationship, or they keep weird hours, or they have a mobility/disability issue, or they're living someplace where they don't find like-minded people, or they're a little socially awkward, or they're... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:54 PM on October 10, 2010

Obviously I was seeking the true and complete assholes to bond and commune with

Well, it's feeling increasingly like you were looking for a place to randomly bullshit, and while that does happen by accident in the grey sometimes it's really not what this is for. Like Jessamyn said, there's not really a spot specifically for that on the site and while it's fine for you to ask about other places it's not so great for you to shoehorn it in here.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 2:39 PM on October 8, 2010

The story goes that life online and in games is no less "real" than life outside or hanging out with friends in a park. After all, what we think of as real is merely what we perceive, right? And seeing a tree in a game is the same as seeing a tree in real life, because both are acts of seeing.

I'm not sure whose story that is. The one I'm more familiar with, and more willing to defend, is that neither online interactions nor gamic... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 9:19 AM on October 8, 2010

elpea: "Facebook has questions now."

Can I just point out how fucking inane Facebook questions is? A sampling of some current ones:

- What is the capital of France?
- What is your least favorite food?
- What do you call a 30-something woman who dates a 20-something guy?
- Would it be possible to eat 69 hamburgers in a row without ketchup or water?

You guys... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mkultra at 12:25 PM on October 7, 2010

Even though I only ask a question every two months or so, I was yelled at last year for using a sock to ask two in one week. Seemed a little excessive to me.

I can guarantee that no one yelled at you. We email people saying "hey it looks like you're using a sock puppet to get around the one question per week limit, as a once in a while thing in an emergency that is okay but if you do it regularly without seeming to have a good reason we may have... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 11:10 AM on October 7, 2010

I think that's a bit of a shitty attitude. But anyway, happy to be on-board.

I'm not saying it's one of my awesomer comments, just saying that on a website filled with lots of back and forth snark and banter, deciding that you don't like feminism because one woman made a comment that is sort of man-snarky, or deciding to go after her for same, is part of the problem not part of the solution. And if you're implying that the reason you or others can't... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:32 AM on October 7, 2010

My concern isn't for a record of the original to exist somewhere. To me the only real issue is whether the original is right there in its original place.

The original will still, in fact, be there in its original place. I'd have a much bigger problem with editing titles than with adding them; introducing extra metadata into the system is different from destructively editing existing data.

Presentationally, the site is fairly... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:33 AM on October 5, 2010

Usually it starts with mefites saying LOLGOP...

Note that the number of people who obnoxiously engage in this sort of thing—and the number of people who volley back obnoxiously from the other side—is a lot smaller than the number of people being generally civil about it (to say nothing of those avoiding the threads altogether because both kinds of obnoxiousness and the dynamic they create when they inevitably collide).

So we... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 3:42 PM on September 30, 2010

The supposed guideline against having a "take all comers" attitude sounds a lot like a euphemism for "If your opinion goes against the grain of the prevailing ideologies on Metafilter, don't be so open in expressing your views."

I understand that. But when we say that we actively do not want that, that we only want the most egregious chest-thumping fighty LOOKATME derails to wrap up, and that most of the time this is not, to us,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:29 PM on September 30, 2010

Jessamyn, how do the policies you and Cortex just iterated in the last few comments *not* encourage an echo chamber effect?

My take is that they wind up encouraging everyone to move more towards the center. I'm not totally psyched about that as an outcome but it's preferable to feeling that people with opposing viewpoints get shouted down constantly.

And honestly, we spend more of our moderation time trying to keep people... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 12:20 PM on September 30, 2010

Mods I have a question. When you are commenting in a thread and you are the only person holding and/or commenting for your particular position one is then obligated to self moderate ones posting because we don't want 1 v metafilter?

When you are commenting in a thread ever under any conditions you are obligated by general community expectations to do some basic self-moderation. There's no special exception for when you're a lone voice arguing one side... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:42 AM on September 30, 2010

Isn't that an oblique form of censorship that can stifle debate?

No, it isn't. I think what you are thinking of is "chilling effect." We are not the government, this is one website among millions of websites where people discuss topics every day. In order to maintain this website as a place where people want to come talk about things, we have a baseline set of standards for how the 40,000 participating members need to deal with each other.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 11:31 AM on September 30, 2010

But users with a minority viewpoint have faced the opposite criticism, too -- that they refuse to substantiate their viewpoint with links and evidence and continued debate.

There's a line to walk there, certainly, and some of that may just be a bit of an unfair systemic effect of relatively popular vs. unpopular views in any conversational context and so I can understand that being frustrating. If I could snap my fingers and make that not be a problem,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 10:02 AM on September 30, 2010

I'm seeing a lot of bullying lately of people like AElfwine and Joe Beese who have voiced opinions contrary to the group.

We've been talking about that a little lately in Modland. There are a few people who seem to think that because their viewpoints are more closely aligned with the normative view here on MeFi that it's okay to call people names and just generally berate them for their viewpoints. This is not okay. We've said this enough times and... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:57 AM on September 30, 2010

For this you broke the blessed quiet of the MetaTalk page?
posted to MetaTalk by languagehat at 8:24 AM on September 30, 2010

I'm fine closing this up, but while I appreciate that you may be understandably a little frustrated and on the defensive from the reception you've gotten here you've also, maybe just as a result of that, been coming on kind of strong yourself.

My advice is basically: feel free to ask us via the contact form if you've got a question about anything; please hold off on sticking metacommentary in places other than metatalk; and if you're going to come to metatalk with... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:07 PM on September 27, 2010

But it seemed to me that the FPP was pretty obviously flamebait, which as I understand it, is not condoned on MeFi.

I don't even understand the term flamebait as you are using it here.

The right way to deal with this is to either email us "Wtf is going on here?" or come to MeTa before you crap in a thread. Or flag and move on which we prefer.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:04 PM on September 27, 2010

Yeah, I wasn't looking very hard at that one (I was AWOL much of yesterday on a family outing where internet was spotty at best) but at a glance that's about how I felt. The Steinem essay's a bit of a lightning rod and in that respect I'd rather it hadn't been the lede, but for all that it didn't seem like a terrible post and neither did most people.

Once people got over their initial adjustment phase, the thread turned out sort of well actually. I... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:03 PM on September 27, 2010

So basically it came down to everything but that essay was kind of cool looking and provocative without being horrible. Also, not that this matters the most but it wasn't flagged very much as bad, you'd probably be surprised how few people thought it was flag-worthy.

Yeah, I wasn't looking very hard at that one (I was AWOL much of yesterday on a family outing where internet was spotty at best) but at a glance that's about how I felt. The Steinem... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 6:53 PM on September 27, 2010

I'm not the last word on it, I never actually asked Josh or Jessamyn about it, but I thought the skateboard graphics and idea of a normally male-dominated skateboard culture having a brand and message like that was new and interesting, even though one of the links was to an old essay. So basically it came down to everything but that essay was kind of cool looking and provocative without being horrible. Also, not that this matters the most but it wasn't flagged very much as bad, you'd probably be... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 6:39 PM on September 27, 2010

I would guess that your comment was deleted not because you were incorrect, but because you should use the flags rather than the comment box to indicate that a post should be deleted.
posted to MetaTalk by Salvor Hardin at 6:21 PM on September 27, 2010

ODiV i writes "I'm interested. Go on..."

See new comment in old AskMe (via recent comments) from someone I don't recognize.Click on username to see what else they've posted.If it's less than a few dozen comments read other comments.If all the comments are links to a web site then alert Mods.If all of the comments are on the same topic (IE: AskMe selection appears to be driven by google search) watch for post by that... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Mitheral at 10:23 PM on September 25, 2010

Also, one of the weird rejoinders we get sometimes from banned spammers is that there are other people who are totally astroturfing or otherwise undermining the integrity of our fine website and the fact that we're banning them for above-board spamming is such fucking bullshit bla bla bla. We're sometimes curious if this is in fact true, if there are long time members who are sekritly working for some sort of underground street team that is posting crappy links here [in posts or comments]... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 4:05 PM on September 25, 2010

Also the pattern of shitty post plus aggressively clueless email right afterwards is another predictable trend. There may have been times where people seemed to truly not grok the place, or were confused about friendslinking and we've swapped some totally polite emails and given them a second chance [not recently that I can recall, and NEVER about self-linking that I can recall] and then watched them like hawks, but basically anyone who self-links is immediately banned and we don't allow them to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 3:43 PM on September 25, 2010

Answering these questions would help the spammers.

There's a bit of truth to that, but honestly by and far most of the spammers and self-linkers we ban are defined by their cluelessness. If someone is paying close enough attention to pick up a foolproof gameplan by attending closely to back-room discussions in Metatalk, they're far outside the norm. The post-ban email exchange, when we hear from them at all, is usually characterized by some mix of... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 3:38 PM on September 25, 2010

We have some basic things we do that aren't that secret.

Brand new users with spammy sounding URLs or usernames can get flagged on our side. Sometimes other users alert us to people leaving what seem like totally non-sequitor comments which seems like a prelude for a self-link. We can flag them as well. We already see everyone's first post [comes to us in email] and the first posts from the people who are flagged on our side come specially marked. That said, we don't... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 3:21 PM on September 25, 2010

To be honest WCityMike, we have to be purposely vague in our deletion reasons because often people tear them apart word by word and read too much into things. If I ever sound vague in deletion reasons it's because someone has misinterpreted what I've said before or taken a single deletion reason and turned it into a blanket statement about site policy.

Honestly, I don't know what exactly prompted this and we've explained many, many times (often on late Friday nights it... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:20 PM on September 24, 2010

Close it up cortex, it is attention-whoring.
posted to MetaTalk by Rumple at 11:07 PM on September 24, 2010

which I feel is disingenuous in many, many a case

Seriously, what? I won't tell you not to feel however the hell you feel but that's fairly insulting. We've been clear many times in the past that deletion reasons aren't essays and so detailed discussion of deletion reasoning beyond the basic gestural stuff there is better suited to email or metatalk in any specific case, but we sure as fuck don't make a habit of hiding behind fake-out reasoning in... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:03 PM on September 24, 2010

WCityMike, this post of yours is nearly 700 words long, or about 650 words too many, so it shouldn't be a surprise people are interpreting it different ways.

As others have said, it sucks to drop this at nearly midnight on Friday. It means god-knows-what will get posted all night and we'll have to nurse this thread all weekend. A thread like this can ruin the weekend plans for three people helping run the site and if me or cortex sounds crabby, that's why.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:42 PM on September 24, 2010

Deep within an abandoned fallout shelter, a cluster of government grade supercomputers have been generating the comments you see at this website to train artificial intelligence scientists for the coming robot wars. The exact specifications of this system are, of course, classified.

Or it's two servers and an iPhone for each mod.
posted to MetaTalk by pb at 5:49 PM on September 22, 2010

Could you maybe share some secrets as to how you do that? Interested minds would love to know...

Nothing fancy, just a search bar in Tweetdeck. Download it and start up a new search column and throw in your appropriate keywords, and exclusions with -keyword for false positives and stuff that you just don't need to see. My current string is:

metafilter OR mefi OR metatalk -DZTHERAPPER -mefigreen -mefiblue -mefi_tweed... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 4:20 AM on September 13, 2010

Shakesperien I simply offered my take on bow the situation might function to the advantage of the OP. I may have exceeded the remit of the original question, but isn't that a positive thing? "You may not even have thought of it, but..."

I think we're done here. Biru, if you actually want to make your time on Askme work, you've got to make a connection here that you don't seem to be making so far. We've tried from our end and we're getting... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 5:35 PM on September 21, 2010

MetaFilter has a specific and NOT unlimited scope, and this post fell well outside it. There are good reasons for that - for every one good post like that, there would be DOZENS of crappy ones. I wish I knew a place that it WOULD fit in; if I did, it'd be on my regular reading list.
posted to MetaTalk by oneswellfoop at 11:00 PM on September 18, 2010

Well, you just saved it from obscurity. So there's that.
posted to MetaTalk by killdevil at 10:44 PM on September 18, 2010

Thanks for explaining the intricacies of this. It hadn't occurred to me that people would sign up to spam in such an obvious way.

Yeah, it's kind of nuts. My main theory of behavior for this stuff is two-pronged:

1. The degree to which we are vigilant about keeping spam and linkfarming and self-promotion off of metafilter far exceeds the norm for the internet—many sites lack either the toolset, the awareness of or nose... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 6:30 PM on September 18, 2010

user: gum
what is the problem? check all that apply:

[ ] I am a new member
[x] I am a longtime member
[ ] One of my comments was deleted
[ ] One of my posts was deleted
[ ] I've spotted a particularly egregious use of "special snowflake"
[ ] I've spotted a particularly egregious use of "hamburger"
[ ] I've spotted a use of "hamburger"
[x]... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by .kobayashi. at 6:28 AM on September 18, 2010

Ad impressions?

Seriously? We'd allow suicide questions too if that were the case. And chatfilter. And torches. And pitchforks. And the IMG tag. And we'd never ban anyone. And we'd try even harder to cultivate people's anxiety and feelings of low self-esteem that cause them to make bad relationship choices thus leading to more controversial relationship questions. And outreach, we'd do a lot of outreach, maybe even flat out user-stealing from other... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:15 PM on September 9, 2010

We pulled a few things from that thread, your comment was not primarily what I was referring to in the note I left, just to be clear.

If we're cleaning up derailing exchanges and arguments between users, it's often not the result of one or two people just deciding to go completely non sequitur—the derails start with attempts to answer the question but then just start heading further and further afield, either in terms of topic drift of the users getting sort of... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 3:25 PM on September 8, 2010

I deleted it since it seemed more fragmented and chatty and like "I too am interested" than an actual constructive attempt to answer the question, and had picked up a couple flags which is how I saw it in the first place.

I'm sorry if that came off as heavy-handed; it's nothing personal against Mr. Yuck and not a big deal from our end, we just try to keep askme from descending into sort of loosey-goosey Let's Chat About This territory or tone and pulling... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 6:55 AM on September 8, 2010

So:

- The contact form reaches all of us. When you send something to that, me and Matt and Jess all get a copy, as does pb though if it's not a tech issue he pretty much ignores them entirely.

- Mefimail goes only to whichever person you're writing to.

And so, depending on what you want to accomplish, you could do either one to reach us; there's no hard and fast rule about it. But there's definitely reasons to go with... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 3:31 PM on September 7, 2010

Clarification? Which contact method is the least wrong for contacting a mod who really is more closely concerned than the others, but for what's definitely an administrative matter that could involve deleting comments, if not an entire thread?

I'm sure you'll hear from Josh and/or Jessamyn, but I think we're pretty clear as you found out, routing all responses to the contact form whenever possible. That means every mod sees it, including the one you... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 3:27 PM on September 7, 2010

We'd never do "folders" but we have considered tags before and it's on the maybe someday pile of things to code for the site.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 2:55 PM on September 3, 2010

The problem we ran into when we wanted to build this earlier is that we were trying to duplicate all of the delicious.com functionality here. They've been building that site for almost seven years and have a lot of features that have evolved over time. Trying to get to a point where our system is even close turned out to be more than we wanted to tackle.

I wonder if we could instead come up with a way to transfer all favorites to delicious for organization. They have a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by pb at 3:14 PM on September 3, 2010

If somebody signed up JUST for the purpose of asking favors and you felt they were taking advantage of the community, you could just...not help.

It becomes a site issue though when people say "this person signed up for the site in bad faith, what are you [mods] going to do about it?" We see this every once in a while with spammy looking users who, while they're not doing anything too shady just seem sketchy. And we get emails. And... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 3:01 PM on September 3, 2010

Is there some other U.N. Owen I should know?

Hmm, I don't see a page about her anywhere on the wiki. In short, she was a user who was around for a bit [and famous for creating the HURF DURF BUTTER EATER meme locally] who then "hit a bit of a rough patch" and asked for quasi help via an AskMe question which then got elevated to MetaTalk by a concerned individual, starting a "where's the line" sort of discussion [and some people gave her money, and... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:33 PM on September 3, 2010

I think it's kind of a shame.

Then you should organize this off-site if you like the idea.

I also agree with your general assertion, that I think it's worth putting up with a lot of crap if we do wind up helping people. The issue is that the crap and the help are not evenly distributed. If this becomes a site thing then the moderation team are put in the position of being arbiters of every exchange that happens.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:25 PM on September 3, 2010

This is absolutely something that needs to take place offsite or only happen sort of randomly like it does now.

Any sort of official nod to this sort of stuff gets us in a position we very badly do not want to be in. As it is, the few times this stuff has come up in MeTa it's been a very large behind the scenes headache [in addition to the stuff people read here] and in fact we'd probably like less of this, not more. People can use their MeFi affiliations to band... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 11:33 AM on September 3, 2010

This is terrific but I'm wondering if it makes sense to noindex this stuff so people don't get crawled all over by sketch "recruiter" types.

Well, noindex is like a suggestion for bots. Google follows that suggestion fairly well, but there's no reason that Joe Scraper running SketchRecruiting.com will follow that suggestion. And I'm not sure a members-only site like greekphilosophy is suggesting would be the answer because there's nothing... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by pb at 10:34 PM on September 2, 2010

If you have the password, you can log in as anonymous? That's awesome.

There's a lot of things that we could in theory do and that would in some narrow sense be awesome that is nonetheless sequestered in We Are Never Going To Do That* territory. Such is the burden of having root.

* or maybe "WANGTDT Again" for historical curiosities long passed.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:55 AM on September 1, 2010