MetaFilter

Yes it's angry, it's emotional. That doesn't make it a bad post.

A single link to a "this is why you people suck" blog post needs to be pretty awesome to remain as a post on MeFi. Unfortunately, this blog post was not awesome. There's a lot to be said about US-centrism, awareness of racial and gender issues here vs elsewhere and just how annoying it must be to be wished a Happy Thanksgiving. This just wasn't a great essay on the subject.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:07 PM on March 28, 2010

I accept #1, but feel that as craichead said the vitrol would't be as bad if there wasn't defensiveness along with it.

Though, again, this is people reacting to (a) a bad post, which tends to put people on less-than-careful footing in the first place for better or for worse (I generally vote "worse"), and to what was (b) essentially a fight-starter of a link at that in terms of intentionally and aggressively flipping its readers the bird.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 10:07 PM on March 28, 2010

Seriously, fuck you.

Please let's not do this.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:34 PM on March 28, 2010

cortex: I'm frustrated that a post that does involve emotion but goes straight to the point is deleted as "ranty" so quickly. It seems to have hit the privilege of most of the Mefi readership (and the mods) and it seems really suspect.

divabat, you've been here a long time and I respect the hell out of you as a contributor to this place, but on this point I think you are really, really not up to speed on the frequency with which posts... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:09 PM on March 28, 2010

Just because "everybody" (35 comments, really) reacted badly doesn't mean the post doesn't have any merit. Rather, it proves the post nicely.

A post in a ready position to "prove itself" by example is almost certainly a bad idea for a front page post, though. A post likely to pick a fight with its readers: not what the front page is for. That does not mean the blog post may not have some merit, but not everything that has merit is a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:03 PM on March 28, 2010

It seems to have hit the privilege of most of the Mefi readership (and the mods)

I wish you'd stop stating this as fact. I agree that US-centrism is bad. Many people here are saying the same thing, but we can say a single link post to a screed on the front page is also a bad way to raise the issues and have a discussion about it.

25 comments is hardly anything compared to the 3 digits "hot button" issues... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 7:09 PM on March 28, 2010

Mathowie: Just because "everybody" (35 comments, really) reacted badly doesn't mean the post doesn't have any merit. Rather, it proves the post nicely. It was hardly even an hour after I posted; most other "ranty" posts have had some time to simmer.

There are very few threads that stick around when not a single comment is made in support of the post. It was removed quickly due to the tremendous flagging as well, it was one of the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 7:03 PM on March 28, 2010

And it's not derailing per se when everyone is talking about the subject itself. It's not like the thread was overrun with talk about some tiny aspect of it, as a classic derail would, it was more editorial but I think it's pretty clear it wasn't an impressive piece of writing and people weren't offended by it because they were the subject of the writer's scorn, they just thought it was a lame post.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 6:45 PM on March 28, 2010

I didn't delete it because I was offended by any of it, and not because I live in the US. As you can see from the responses in the thread itself, not a single person seemed to like any of it, everyone found fault with it, and it got a metric ton of flags from people saying it was a bad post. I took a look at the post and it's a fairly garden variety rant from someone. It's not particularly noteworthy or well-written, and we remove ranty stuff from the front page with regularity when it's not... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 6:43 PM on March 28, 2010

Single link and-let-me-tell-you-another-thing-flavored editorials, regardless of subject, are powderkeg material on mefi. They tend to start fights, they often go very badly, and they usually get flagged to hell and back and deleted fairly quickly when they do get posted. This doesn't look like an exceptional case to me.

Whatever legitimate problems there are with e.g. American parochialism or US-centricism or so on (and I think there are plenty of legit things to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:00 PM on March 28, 2010

Next.

I've been trying to be pretty patient and understanding with you on this, Skygazer, but three days later I don't know what you were or are hoping for with this thread. To be told that it's okay to call a woman a cunt and a whore?

Your comment was really fucked up. That you made it that way upset a lot of people because the language you chose to use is really offensive to a bunch of people. That much... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 10:42 AM on March 27, 2010

I don't understand the need to get stuck on the misogynist aspects of it.

In the US, it's used primarily as hate speech against women. There is not ambiguity in what the word means in the US. This is not me or the other people in this thread being "stuck" on anything. This is saying "In the US, using this word is like calling someone who is Jewish a kike. It's saying someone is nasty and subhuman because of this one aspect of their person." The only... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 11:15 AM on March 25, 2010

Different people, different cultures have different standards.

And MetaFilter has a cultural standard. And we have explained what it is and why it exists. I don't think your slippery slope/lowest common denominator argument holds any water whatsoever. The site has been around over ten years and there is a short list of "things we'd prefer you did not say" which has changed very little in that amount of time.

If I am writing... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:46 AM on March 25, 2010

He was using it in the American sense of the word.

Exactly. Which takes it from the "Hey, I've been misunderstood!" camp to the "I should be able to call a woman I perceive as evil a cunt because she's really really horrible" which, to my read, is arguing that you should be able to call people kikes on the site. You can't. It's not okay. You heard it, it's the "doomsday word." There is no worse word to call Sarah Palin... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:26 AM on March 25, 2010

It's one thing to say the use of cunt as a gendered insult is verboten, but to say the use of the word at all is forbidden is indeed a precedent, and it speaks to the site's ongoing US-centricity.

But we're not saying that. We're saying that using it a a gendered insult is fucked up and not okay, and that using it in general outside of that context needs to be done with care.

That the word used as a gendered... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 1:52 PM on March 25, 2010

On Metafilter apparently some people can't see it beyond their own context so it means only one thing, the apparent U.S. meaning. Is it in the rules?

No, it's not in the rules, because that's not actually the rules, and a careful review of where and how the word does stand in use on the site should make it clear that it's not nearly that simple. There is zero ambiguity here about how Skygazer was using the word or why, and it had... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:25 AM on March 25, 2010

> Would be great to hear from Languagehat on this. Can someone shine the Languagehat bat-signal.

"Cunt" is a nasty, sexist insult that I do not use, and I think less of anyone (any American) I hear using it. I recognize that the situation is different outside the US, but we Americans can't magically transform ourselves into Brits or Aussies and say "Oh, it's OK because that person isn't American." I also recognize that Brits or... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by languagehat at 3:13 PM on March 25, 2010

A photo is not contact information.

The existence of a photo is not the issue. The dynamic created by e.g. goading folks to go track down a photo is the issue.

The mob dynamic is an awful, fucked up thing. People generally understand that when it's something manifesting in a context that they find loathsome; they sometimes don't make the same connection when it's something they see as just or righteous. That's one of the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:48 PM on March 24, 2010

When is it not okay?

The grade-A number one time when it's not okay is when it's being used as an epithet against a woman. We haven't banned the word from the site, but it's one of the very most tricky ones to use in an okay way here and is a lot more likely to be problematic and hence get a comment deleted than most other things.

It's a very complicated word, and like with most epithets there's no satisfyingly clinical,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:10 PM on March 24, 2010

We'd appreciate if you didn't use it on the site. We're aware that it's not as harsh an epithet in the UK as it is in the US but there's a long troublesome history of people using the word as a really shitty slur against women [which we've talked about at length on the site before] and it's just flat out not okay, just like racial epithets [which are used occasionally in the "I'm quoting someone" or an "I'm pretending to be a horrible racist" [not so great actually] way, but otherwise not okay... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:03 PM on March 24, 2010

And just for the policy line here. We absolutely forbid people from including people's personal information [email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses, whatever] no matter how despicable they are. We prefer, but aren't 100% uptight about, people linking to people's personal sites in a thread on a non-related topic [notably in the recent Joel Johnson thread people were all "hey here's his molester stepdad's twitter feed!" and we were like "please don't"] but if it's... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 6:57 PM on March 24, 2010

It's clearly a pretty dicey situation the asker is grappling with. I'm glad AskMe is there in this case to give him a chance to ask about it in a safe way and get frank and even blunt good-faith responses from folks; hopefully that will help him find some way to move forward in a healthy way with the situation.

Beyond that, I agree that there doesn't seem like a whole lot of need for this metatalk; if there's no site-policy issue in question or any other major issue... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:56 PM on March 22, 2010

Hey 256, I did see your project and I declined to post it, since it was just a link to Kickstarter to fund a project. We let a few early Kickstarter projects onto Projects, but soon after I started deleting them so as not to set a trend for Projects being a place to raise funds for eventual projects.

The Projects area was set up for fully formed, new, completed projects to be announced by MeFi members. Stuff on Kickstarter is more in the proposed... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 1:57 PM on March 22, 2010

But clearly there were a number of us who read that comment and went, huh?

Yep, totally agree with your interpretation about this. The problem we more generally have is that calling someone out in thread is or can be derailing and problematic. And at the same time, we don't want that to cause the sort of reinforcement of the status quo [i.e. don't make a fuss, just smile and deal with it] so I'm a lot happier personally when we can talk about this in... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 11:42 AM on March 17, 2010

[few comments removed - if you are not answering this question, please do not comment, thanks]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jessamyn at 10:42 AM on March 18, 2010

[few comments removed "don't do this" is really not what the OP is looking for]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jessamyn at 9:06 AM on March 19, 2010

[few comments removed - if you want/need to call out other commenters on what you perceive to be their philosophical failings, go to email or MetaTalk, do not do this here. thank you.]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jessamyn at 2:27 PM on March 19, 2010

People who do not like MeTa posts or their frequency are welcome, nay invited, to not read them.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 12:59 PM on March 19, 2010

if Lady Gaga deserves 2-3 a day

We have, by point of example, deleted at least one and probably more than one Gaga-related doubles. New vs. not-new can be a little sticky, but two posts about Telephone, for example, is one too many, and if it got to the point of people making lazy posts about every new thing she puts out that'd be moving into heavier-deletion-hand territory in its own right. See also: political cycles.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 12:34 PM on March 19, 2010

No sweat, blahblahblah, it might have gotten gummed up in a spam box or something. Let me know if you don't find it.

I'll paste in what I said there:

It's a bit of a shame that the timing on the first post pre-empted the actual content going up, but it was pretty manifestly posted about and not that long ago. So I think this is more of a "yay, interested people are probably checking the site out now" situation than anything that really merits... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 12:32 PM on March 19, 2010

Sorry I didn't remove the preceding post as well as yours, ascullion. A lot of people flagged yours and I must have missed the one previous to it.

she's in the pointing and laughing at penises camp

untrue and unfounded.

The issue is not deletions; it's arbitrary, inconsistent, personalized deletions by jessamyn. Matt doesn't do this.

Matt doesn't do this... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 4:54 PM on August 18, 2006

I knew that name sounded familiar. Fuck those guys.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 4:35 PM on March 16, 2010

Okay, so we're all in agreement about registering and then shitting all over this travesty in the comments section?

I can't tell you what to do with your time not spent on mefi, but I'd really prefer it if you didn't. There are a million skeezy motherfuckers out on the web, merrily shitting up the place, and trying to go after them in the name of Metafilter (a) doesn't scale and (b) just makes mefi look bad.

I'm not overjoyed... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 6:46 PM on March 16, 2010

Short version is that

- we're okay with people occasionally asking stuff for a friend, ideally with clear disclosure when that's going on so folks who are trying to put the question in context don't misread that poster's identity into it, but

- anybody who might need to be the friend being asked for more than once ever should really just sign up and use their own account, to keep the identity stuff clear in general—we... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:42 AM on March 16, 2010

Fixed!
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 6:10 AM on March 16, 2010

boo-hoo-hoo, it's not like they have to work for a living.

I know it may be tough to get your head around, but our jobs actually involve more than just moderating MeFi. There's a lot of email to answer, features to code, threads to read, people to interact with, discussions to have and plans to make. However, our jobs sort of expand to fit most of the time we have available to do them and when something requires more of our time, other things get... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:12 AM on March 14, 2010

It is disgusting that anyone, especially a mod, could think that the idea of painting an entire institution with the failings of some of its members is anything but prejudice, bigotry and cheap.

What? I'm saying if the topic of the thread is sexual abuse of children and knowledge of same by high ranking members of the Catholic Church, it's tough to figure out where to draw the line on comments that talk about sexual abuse of children by the Catholic... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:16 PM on March 13, 2010

Apparently, the mods' repeated request that people not try to be dicks is simply too much to ask. If 4chan-style commenting, with quick lulzy drive-by assholish potshots that contribute nothing to an actual discussion become to norm, rather than an aberration from the norm, and people insist on defending it with "Oh, poor widdle babies, can't take the heat, get off the Internet," I'm fucking done with this site. Metafilter is supposed to be better than the best of the Web, nad I come... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Astro Zombie at 8:42 AM on March 14, 2010

please stop asking for the mods to protect you from reading things you disagree with.

That may be his perspective, but it's not totally in line with how we feel that the site should run. People should have some level of being decent to each other and we're willing to enforce that. The thread really was not great out of the gate. I'm not sure what there was to say about it except "wow that totally and completely sucks" though the infallibility of the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:35 PM on March 13, 2010

okay loq, I removed your comment. If you want the text of it to repost the parts that weren't quoting now-deleted comments, let me know.

So the bigots who made those comments now have their slates wiped clean.

This is one of those tricky policy issues. On the one hand, yeah, their shitty comments aren't still there and people can't make a mental note "Oh that user made that crappy comment in the lesbian prom... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 6:19 AM on March 12, 2010

People are actually criticizing the use of adblockers? Let me make it simple for you:

The computer is not a television. It's not the open end of a sewer where you can flush down it whatever shit you want so you can make money. It's my computer. It's my internet connection. It's my monitor, and it's my browser. I display want I want to display, and I don't display want I don't want to see. You can't make money if I don't show your ads on my screen? Sucks to be you.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Pastabagel at 9:21 PM on March 7, 2010

Can you please clarify what you define abuse as?

Using the editing feature to accomplish anything other than minor editing issues, which more or less falls to typos, forgotten words, mispastes, html errors, etc.

The rollout of an editing feature would come with the rollout of a clear rundown of what is and is not okay and what the consequences of doing the not-okay stuff will be. Our general position is that intentionally... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:24 AM on March 1, 2010

The argument that it's necessary for site continuity doesn't seem that great to me when balanced against an individual's desire for privacy

This is the heart of the problem of running a community -- how do you balance the needs of individual members versus the community sphere as the sum of all contributions from everyone? I'm saying letting people remove their contributions to the sphere is a tad selfish (because you can make permanent changes on a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 10:27 PM on February 28, 2010

At some point I might say--hey--moderators--I'm trying to get a job, and I don't want to be connected to that anymore

This happens every summer when members graduate from college and hit the job market. It'll start happening again in just a couple months.

Typically, we educate people on how to remove their full name from their userpage (which isn't supposed to be indexed by Google anyway) and other identifying info. That... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:06 PM on February 28, 2010

I really don't understand that point of view

I read that as saying such a wholesale change to a site that could have massive unforeseen repercussions shouldn't be easy and the alternative to picking and choosing your problematic comments is better in the long run for the site even though it's more work for the contributor.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:13 PM on February 28, 2010

It's not a point system, you don't get to fuck over the whole site because you answered someone's question. I would even go as far as to argue that answers in AskMe are NOT for the one person that asked the question but for the hundred people that searched google for the same thing and found the thread. These hundred people are, by the way, the ones that view the ads that pay all the bills that run this site and pay the moderators' salaries, not the measly registration fee of the one person... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhomboid at 11:35 PM on February 28, 2010

Could you make this more transparent?

90% of the graduating seniors problem is removing their full name from the name field in their settings. Sometimes we make a question anonymous after the fact.

You're disappointed this isn't somehow more transparent, but how should we make this more transparent? Put a big fat EDITED on their user profile page to show the name was removed? Make a new FAQ entry about people graduating from college?
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:29 PM on February 28, 2010

> Why are you people trying to ruin Metafilter?

No kidding. This is one of the worst MeTa threads I've ever seen; if I were mathowie, I'd be considering just shutting the site down if it's going to lead to this kind of bullshit. Every petty legalistic shit-stirrer on the site is coming here to stick pins in him and try to change the site drastically and for the worse. If you don't like it here, go do something else. If you do like it here, stop... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by languagehat at 7:04 AM on March 1, 2010

I'm SOL unless I can produce a concrete stalker?

No. You need to talk to us personally, over email, not through comments on MetaTalk, explain your concerns, why you have them, why you didn't have these concerns when you made the comments [i.e. what changed?] and let us know what you'd like us to do. It's a process, not a button you can click. This is, to my mind, exactly how it should be.

In some cases with people who aren't... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:04 PM on February 28, 2010

We also make a more-than-usual effort to allow users the level of anonymity they want for themselves. We specifically disallow linking real names to internet handles, or pulling people's profile information from their no-followed user profiles to any of the rest of the site. Someone's outing your personal information? We'll police that. We have assumed, and possibly wrongly so, that people who found their way to MeFi would grok the import of having personal information in profiles and choose a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 6:42 PM on February 28, 2010