MetaFilter

Accidental flags are ok.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:47 AM on December 31, 2009

It's actually ok to have the errant flag or two, we don't judge things based on single reports usually, and when we do review something it's easy to ignore (none of the mods act immediately on every single flag, there's a lot of noise in the system). So it's totally innocuous to have an accidental flag here and there, we're mostly interested in what a dozen or more mefites think is bad.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 8:45 AM on December 31, 2009

Just don't worry about it; flags work mostly in aggregate, so a stray flag here or there is not a big deal.

We don't provide an un-flag/re-flag interface because the headache caused by a rare misflag is less than the effort required to test and implement and maintain a more complicated flagging interface, basically.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:44 AM on December 31, 2009

Seriously though, I'm giddy about the prognosis. It was never quite a death sentence but there was always what seemed like a 5% chance it could go that way with a slim chance it could go completely right.

I was always hoping for the no brain surgery option but every doctor cautioned it was rarely the case so I'm super stoked to be in that position. It feels like a new lease on life for me.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 3:27 AM on December 30, 2009

Do we have to do a meta EVERY time gender is discussed in the blue?

No, and we don't. I made a few comments in the thread itself.

I really feel that taking out of context comments from another site and using it as the basis for discussion here isn't really a great way to frame a discussion, especially one about rape. I think we're all aware that some people have repellent opinions about the subject, both servicemen and... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 12:35 PM on December 28, 2009

As for the post itself, I don't think there's much wrong with it. It's not what every post should look like, but it's not to my mind clearly overstepping any guidelines; including a comment or comments as the linked content of a post is, like anything in posting, a question of context and selectiveness and this seems like a fairly restrained and carefully considered case (vs. "hey check out this idiotic forum amirite"); and I'm surprised and a little dismayed at some of the content of... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:39 AM on December 28, 2009

we don't attack other communities

To be clear, the unwritten rule is more along the lines of "we don't engage in cross-site flamewars". There's a distinction between commentary and confrontation.

I don't think it's particularly awesome when mefites sit around just slagging on other places for the sake of slagging, but there's a difference between sitting around talking some shit on mefi and actively going... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:33 AM on December 28, 2009

Where it is upsidedown land is that concealing text is considered dickish and open spoilers are not. Sorry, never going to understand or agree with that.

It's not a direct comparison, and you're not putting either of those in context.

Dickish things: intentionally, obnoxiously spoiling stuff for people; throwing obfuscation in the way of normal expectations of conversational procedure.

Non-dickish... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 2:05 PM on December 27, 2009

Also, not everything needs to be on MetaFilter.
posted to MetaTalk by armage at 3:10 PM on December 27, 2009

ROT13 a barrier to entry, making a thread exclusive rather than inclusive, confusing the folks who might otherwise be interested in the conversation. It's absolutely no better than the incredibly stupid, ill-thought-out, power-tripping, nose-rubbing, petty, childish, tinpot-dictator fuck-wad crutch that is "disemvoweling."

Unless spoilers are showing up out of nowhere in an unrelated thread ("Obama has the votes to pass health care JUST LIKE LUKE'S FATHER... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by maxwelton at 9:53 PM on December 25, 2009

So I guess what we are saying here is that if I want to discuss sepcifics on something that people might not have seen I just shouldn't? Because that's not very satisfying either.

I think what we're saying here is that if you want to discuss specifics on something that people might not have seen, you should evaluate the specific context and make a decision about how to proceed from there. I don't think there's any really great shortcut for that... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:16 PM on December 25, 2009

TBH It had never occured to me in the slighttest that obscuring spoilers would actually anger people.

I think it's an order-of-precedence thing; I doubt anyone would object, in a null context, to the idea of not-spoiling-stuff-for-people, because, okay, that's a nice considerate thing to do. What matters is how it happens, and what people are likely to object to is the idea of making-the-site-hard-to-read. And they're going to, in... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:13 PM on December 25, 2009

The issues are implementation, education, enforcement, and policing. You have to make the tag work; you have to teach people how to and when to use the tag; you have to deal with situations where people are (by explicit policy or implicit community expectations) failing to use the tag; and you have to deal with the unintended consequences that come with people using the tag for things other than it was intended to be used for.

I don't think it's rocket science or... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 6:15 PM on December 25, 2009

I sort of view it like the NSFW stuff. It would be nice if people would be slightly overcautious about indicating this sort of thing. That said, I'm not personally that gung ho about implementing something that would then need to be enforced. We have a "be cool" position about spoilers generally and people who really get bent out of shape if spoilers are revealed to them have to tread with caution in threads about current events and movies. We try to keep spoilers off the front page of... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:02 PM on December 25, 2009

Our take, whenever this has come up before, basically boils down to this:

- Metafilter is a generalist site, not dedicated specifically or primarly to spoiler-sensitive discussion of narrative works, so building in a UI feature specifically for the purpose of spoiler management seems like overkill;

- It's polite for folks to be mindful of spoilers when discussing something relatively recent and to avoid spoiling... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 4:09 PM on December 25, 2009

We stay on top of questions with linked paypal accounts asked within a seven day window. It's basically our feeling that using a sock puppet to ask a once in a while emergency question [where once in a while is like once ever, not once every few months] is okay, but people who are heavy users of AskMe who also seem to need "emergency" questions more than, say, once ever are probably overusing the system. The same is true for the AnonyMe feature which can sometimes... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 12:02 PM on December 25, 2009

fighty-grindy right-wing (Republican, Christian, etc.) people face a shorter fuse than fighty-grindy left-wing (Democrat, atheist, etc.) folks.

Actually it's nearly the opposite, though it may not seem that way from the outside. We've spent more email and mod time trying to work with people with, I guess you'd call it "minority viewpoints" [where minority - "on MeFi minority"] than with people who are more mainstream MeFites in... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:43 AM on December 21, 2009

Instead, the this is raging, people are going to try and keep trying to post something to the front, and all that will happen in the end is that the mods will lose some credibility.

No, the mods have a lot of credibility among those who refuse to have a dog in the fight. I've got no time for those who demand a gigantic political flamewar on the front page, and throw a tantrum when they don't get it.
posted to MetaTalk by Slap*Happy at 8:59 AM on December 21, 2009

Is there any precedent for an FPP that is allowed to remain with comments closed and a link to a META?

Nope. We don't do closed-commments posts anywhere but in Metatalk itself, and even that is more an artifact of older architecture decisions than anything.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:47 AM on December 21, 2009

I think we should be allowed to discuss it, even though it will be a roller coaster of a thread to moderate. Just as we would for any other topic that some people would find extremely uncomfortable.

"Allowed to discuss it" implies that we're against it being discussed. We're not. There's no "this subject is forbidden" edict.

But we're also not going to issue carte blanche on a subject just because there's... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:10 AM on December 21, 2009

Because someone who posts an FPP seems to be interested in talking about it in comments doesn't mean you should just delete the thread.

I don't think most folks even particularly disagree with this. There's a world of difference between "interested in talking about it" and "jumping into an argument about it", though, just as there's a difference between "here's a neat thing I found" and "let's argue about something... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:07 AM on December 21, 2009

Mods, I'm going to press on this.

I think it's a stupid, bullshitty approach to conversation that makes this place a bit worse and makes the person saying it look like a ham-handed jerk. Swap out "ISRAELIS" for a lot of other values of X and that holds. In some cases, that sort of thing crosses over the line even into deletability, though much of the time it's more of a let-it-stand thing where folks are welcome to call it out critically themselves.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:02 AM on December 21, 2009

So you'd be OK with someone else reposting it, someone you'd give the benefit of the doubt to?

Yes, actually. You pretty badly fucked up the benefit-of-the-doubt thing here. We try awfully hard to extend it to people, but it's not a bottomless well and you emptied it pretty thoroughly in the way you went about your business tonight. I'm sorry if you felt cheesed off at having people think your initial shitty comment about Jews was a shitty comment... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 10:21 PM on December 20, 2009

The real difference is commentary vs. editorializing. Commentary is fine, or explanation or I guess context. Editorializing is usually not a good thing, though maybe some in moderation can be okay but over the top editorializing is pretty much no good.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:54 PM on December 19, 2009

or Jessamyn would have marked the link when she read it

I read it when it came up in MeTa. I'm aware that some people are at workplaces where looking at certain images may get them fired. It is the position of MetaFilter LLC that those people should take extra care when surfing MeFi from work because not every NSFW link will be marked NSFW. This is in the faq.

And I don't want to get terribly nitpicky, but the above-the-fold... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 6:01 PM on December 17, 2009

People really need to just email us. I've been home all day. Automating this seems to me to be

1. overkill
2. a chance for people to add a NSFW tag and then get a NSFW annotation on a post that doesn't merit it
3. inexact, in the case of a multi link post with one or two NSFW links

The FAQ is pretty clear, you click links on MeFi at your own risk and we try decently hard to make those links marked but they won't always be.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 3:24 PM on December 17, 2009

the comments say to Christians very clearly, "You kind is not welcome here".


What is clear to you is not clear to other people and I have to say I don't agree with this sentiment but I am sorry you feel this way. We make a big effort to keep potshots against Christians out of the general discourse here, but I don't think people saying not-nice things about Oral Roberts can be equated to them taking potshots at Christianity... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:52 PM on December 15, 2009

There's a tradition to basically not be like "great, I piss on his grave, farewell to that piece of shit" but the occasional "good riddance" is not such a big deal. The bigger deal is when someone dies who has great importance in some good way to part of the community and is reviled by some other portion of the community. I hope the Oral Roberts obit doesn't turn toxic, but people saying "good riddance" doesn't seem like that big a deal because I suspect we're... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:53 PM on December 15, 2009

I must be reading this wrong. Posts must be potentially interesting to *everyone*?

Definitely not, but when you're posting about a local politics issue it's always good to do a reality check to think about whether the topic even could be interesting to someone else.

It's like when you see the occasional "Local restaurant closes!" post on MeFi. Sometimes there's a real story there that's... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:43 PM on December 11, 2009

Yeah, there's no firm line in the sand as far as what's a good vs. bad new post, but the questions FishBike lays out there are pretty good ones.

Generally speaking, if there's an open post on a given topic, followups should go in that thread. If there's no open post but there was a post that caught the community's attention and there's some followup/closure news about it, a Metatalk post is usually okay (with the caveat that they're not too common and that's what makes... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 1:41 PM on December 11, 2009

mathowie promises that MeFi will not be next. I do not want SEOgrandmaster2203 to be my new boss.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:48 PM on December 11, 2009

I've killed your comment for you.

Normal convention if you want something of yours gone as a case of commenter's regret is to drop us a note via the contact form post-haste. While it's fine for you to flag your own comment (i.e. it doesn't cause us problems on our end or anything), note that we're going to see it as just another flag, and if something not-really-problematic has one flag on it we're unlikely to do anything about it.

The... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 10:31 AM on December 12, 2009

I saw the flag, checked out the comment and assumed it was some irritated MeFite claiming that the @ convention "breaks the guidelines". When we first check out flags, we don't know who is flagging them. It's only later in the game [if there seem to be a lot of weird flags, or someone's flagging a lot in MeTa for example] that we'll check things out. So yeah we have no idea if you self-flag most of the time. I deleted your comment. You can just email or IM us if you need something like that done,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 10:30 AM on December 12, 2009

They're hell for pregnant women, apparently.

I'm going to politely suggest you step away from the keyboard. You're having a fight with people who are not here at the expense of people who are here.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:32 PM on December 10, 2009

And to be more specific, if your general reason for posting something is "oh my god this totally sucks!" that's pretty much a guarantee of the thread being a mess.

Nearly every topic imaginable is going to have at least one person on MeFi being like "Oh yeah, what's the big deal?!" and then adopting a "take on all comers" stance for all the "oh my god this totally sucks" people who showed up to the thread pretty neatly... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 4:00 PM on December 10, 2009

Mostly I'm bored with my new droid phone, so I'm forwarding Google Voice calls to it during those hours.

For the last few years I've been meaning to add a little "office-like" structure in my workday by allowing incoming phone calls from people hitting the contact form or whatever, and I figured this was a good test. Eventually you might see the phone number automatically pop up in the footer of the website during pacific timezone daylight hours.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 10:44 AM on December 10, 2009

I'll add a version of pb & mathowie's answer to the faq.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:04 AM on December 7, 2009

All cookies that start with an underscore are from Google Analytics and required for running stats on the site. About 2/3 of what you see in that screenshot is Google Analytics cookies, not from MeFi.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 8:01 AM on December 7, 2009

MetaFilter site preferences are set with cookies so the settings can be per browser. That way you can use a different font setting on your laptop vs. your work computer without re-saving your preferences each time you switch machines. So if you head over to your preferences and look under the heading Website Settings we have one cookie for each of those. That's around 10. We have four cookies to identify which user you are, those are: USER_ID, USER_TOKEN, USER_NAME, and... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by pb at 7:56 AM on December 7, 2009

No, I think the gender based sorting was rather violent as well. It would be good if we could minimize the violence (including sexual violence) on the front page.

This may be one of those situations where your perspective is far enough away from MetaFilter-mainstream perspective that this may not be something that is going to happen. I encourage you to have a discussion about this if you think it's important, but to my eyes the leap from... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:38 PM on December 6, 2009

His views on feminism, Nazism, Islam, drunk driving, etc., have been marked by a decided contrariness, coupled with a demonstrable lack of actual information backing up those opinions (his comments on feminists and Muslims were especially egregious examples.) I don't believe that PLA is trolling, but I suspect he fancies himself as demonstrating that his intellect is unburdened by the constraints of political correctness by siding with unfashionable viewpoints, and he also has a certain tone... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Astro Zombie at 9:37 AM on December 6, 2009

Somehow I don't see this thread going anywhere good.

If that's the case, it's because of your contributions. If you have an axe to grind with this particular topic and just want to fight with everyone on MetaFilter, please go to MetaTalk. Otherwise you're displaying a problematic lack of understanding of how this community works and what it's for. Further derails and attacks on other members will be removed. Attacks on pla will be removed - people... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 8:53 AM on December 6, 2009

I'm irrationally angry about this. Maybe we need to set up a non-profit Friends of MetaFilter group so that we can occasionally do the odd good work here and there?
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:50 PM on December 3, 2009

why not admit they had a point instead of being so defensive about it?

We've maintained, from the beginning, that this wasn't science. People's insistence that yes it is science and it's bad science is tiresome.

We have been, since the get-go, totally acknowledging that yeah people will be unhappy and we'd like them to bear with us for a few weeks. There's a lot of space between admitting people have a point -- which we've... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:20 PM on November 28, 2009

Calling it an experiment changed my view of what science is.

I know you're probably taking the piss here, but this sort of statement just makes me frustrated and sad.

We made a post about this and explained what we were doing and why. We did not say we were approaching this scientifically, just that cortex would do his usual number-crunching after the month was up. I would be hard to keep him from doing... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 12:28 PM on November 28, 2009

the mods should have broke the whole keeping anonymous anonymous rule for; well, that and preventing suicide.

Also the reason we don't allow suicide questions is that because of the seriousness and often emergency nature of the topic we feel that posting them would be creating a conflict between 1) wanting to allow people to preserve their anonymity 2) wanting to prevent someone from self-harm. So, we do contact people who ask suicide questions, they... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 12:38 PM on November 25, 2009

I have an 85 year old aunt.

The key for her was making sure she didn't have to remember how to do anything.

I set the machine so that closing the lid sleeps it, and opening the lid takes it back to the desktop. I turned on some of the accessibility features (search for "make the computer easier to see" in the search bar) like a thicker focus border, etc and put shortcuts to the Magnifier in the taskbar.
I installed... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by disclaimer at 2:37 PM on November 21, 2009 marked best answer

My father was about 70 when we got him his first computer. He has problems with fine motor skills due to a previous illness. And, he wears trifocal lenses.

We started him with a laptop, because he was a full-time RVer. He now has a desktop and lives in a 65+ community, and I get to know his friends' computer setups as well as his own. A few things we learned:

1. With fine motor skill problems, your hands shake when you try to do something that... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Houstonian at 1:00 PM on November 21, 2009 marked best answer

The OP is a stupid, stupid person. We are NOT dealing with a first-rate intellect here.

This sort of blind reading of someone's basic intellectual worth is neither helpful nor fair. There's a lot to be said about what they did and why they did it, but writing people off for the sake of justifying some laugh-in-their-face fantasy is a pretty crappy way to deal with fellow community members, even if they fucked up pretty badly in a way a lot of us find... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 12:58 AM on November 12, 2009

MetaChat has its own flavor. It's not really for also-ran stuff from MeFi but a certain subsection of the weird news/cute animal stuff that goes on in a limited amount over here is also appropriate over there. Like any site, get a feel for it, it's a place here a lot of MeFites and others hang out with a different tone, style and purpose.

Really the other stuff needs to go Not on MetaFilter. We're wary of feature-creep. The site doesn't have to be everything to everyone,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 10:01 AM on November 12, 2009