MetaFilter

People post to Ask Metafilter for help with questions/problems. The utility of the site, it's actual function, is to meet that with answers/solutions. The long-view goal of AskMe as an archive of lots of questions-with-answers is something we certainly think a lot about, but there's never been any goal to make sure there was only exactly one question about one topic or another, and by and large we try not to punish askers for having an insufficiently unique question or... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 4:46 PM on January 14, 2009

So the moral of the story is that if we don't like an askme question, instead of growing up and getting over ourselves, a group of us can be a big enough pain in your collective moderator asses (pun intended) to get it taken down.

I've never seen a sufficiently large group of mefites display that kind of cohesiveness and message discipline. Our inability as a group to fully agree on anything is a feature, not a bug, of the community—it's not so... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 4:08 PM on January 13, 2009

Not here defending the Inaugural Ball tradition, since, as a cater-waiter veteran of several Inaugurations, I despise working them, but a lot of the negative stories (apart from the cost of the tickets) are part of the (largely mythical) quadrennial Washington DC lore that gets trotted out to suppress the numbers of people who turn out to them, and are largely the result of simple jealousy - we like to hear that the balls suck ass, so that we don't feel so bad that we didn't get to attend.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by piedrasyluz at 10:00 PM on January 4, 2009

Except in pubs, people seem to form queues spontaneously at shops, cash machines (ATMs) or anywhere else they have to wait.

There's generally a queue in the pub as well, its just an invisible one in everyone's head.

Queuing is definitely part of the national psyche here. People moan about kids not being brought up badly and not queuing properly but that's just kids being kids and it's always happened.... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by garius at 5:39 AM on October 22, 2008

Reply-All can get even more fun when multiple timezones are involved.

In a previous job for a multinational, I found myself seconded to the States to help hand-hold the newly created US office through their incubation period.

Now whilst we were indeed a multinational, we were very much an old school organisation and privately owned by a rather senior establishment figure. When it came to the internets, we were pretty damn good (if i do say so... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by garius at 6:36 AM on January 12, 2009

Interesting. I'm not American by birth, so to be embarrassingly honest, I didn't know the ins-and-outs of donating to these sorts of initiatives and how the public record aspect of it all functions.

Of course, I'm one of those pesky foreigners who came here believing in the American love of justice, fairness and tolerance . . . and I'm still a little disturbed when something like Prop 8 comes along and legitimizes a point of view that seems something other than... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Dee Xtrovert at 12:51 AM on January 12, 2009

take over for Matt, Jessamyn and Josh on holidays.

I appreciate your concern, but Christmas is actually not my holiday, so this is okay with me. I took a full day+ off for the Solstice weekend and that was what I really wanted.

As much as I mostly love my real-life family, there's a reason geek types like us are drawn to the world of online interactions and sometimes choose it when there are actual in-person human options. I... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:16 AM on December 24, 2008

hattifattener, we've gone over this numerous times. With posts, there is a reason to be completely transparent and to show people reasons why things go away in hopes they learn from it, but with comments, there are diminishing returns and highlighting deleted stuff would basically elevate it to the point people would obsess over it (much more than they do now). There would be no time for moderating of any kind if we were spending our days constantly arguing over and defending each and every last... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:45 PM on December 23, 2008

an answer of "Ron Paul?" to a question of roughly "who predicted the current economic crisis"

One word and two word answers without any explanation (and especially about a unique subject that has lots of fans and enemies of the subject) are regularly deleted because they don't answer the question.

If you think Ron Paul is a good answer, tell us why. Post some links to times he said in interviews or on his... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 10:08 PM on December 23, 2008

not to be an asshole, but what does that exactly mean?

It means that if a lot of people tell you that if you turn a thread that's not really about you or even a topic that's near and dear to you into a "What does jonmc think about topic X and also what does he think about all other MeFites' thoughts about Topic X" then you're taking a website that is for several tens of thousands of people and acting like it's your own corner bar and... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:58 PM on December 23, 2008

Hi Daniel, my name's Anil Dash. I started the Journalist Bailout Program, and I apologize you haven't heard back from us yet -- that's my fault. I've been personally replying to as many of the (hundreds of!) responses we've gotten, and that's what's taken so long.

I did get your follow-up message, and you should get a full response from me in your inbox today. I'm sorry it's taken a while, and I appreciate both your patience and your enthusiasm. If you need, my email... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by anildash at 11:57 AM on December 22, 2008 marked best answer

OK, librarian, not a cataloger, had a cataloging class in library school, way more familiar with Library of Congress than Dewey classification.

Your question kind of presumes that 796.3570 and 796.357 are equal, or at least equivalent, and they're not. Each position in a classification number has meaning, they're not like regular numbers you do math with. The answer to "what does this particular zero mean" lies in a full dewey decimal guide, which I can't... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by donnagirl at 4:35 PM on December 20, 2008

Ambrosia Voyeur: check
shmegegge: check
me (obviously): check

This is looking increasingly like a bad idea. peggynature, I have no doubt that your intentions were good, but throwing down a you're-with-us-or-you're-not issue-specific roll call (and updating it in thread) is a pretty far distance from what Metatalk should be used for, and seems mostly like an excellent way to start about four or five fights all at once. I'm going to go ahead and close thing up.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 3:43 PM on December 8, 2008

It works best as an anonymous reporting mechanism. As moderators we really don't act on every single flag. It takes at least a handful before it pops up against the background noise and then we evaluate whether or not to do something about the flagged item (maybe 1/2 the time something is done). People flag a lot of comments they simply disagree with as "offensive".

So when I consider what MeFi would be like with reported flags exposed to owners I can quickly... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 8:01 AM on December 5, 2008

Having that one, single instant perma-ban rule-that-cannot-be-broken around here, and making that very clear to even the n00bs, means that anyone who breaks it was not respectful towards the site or the community, and didn't deserve to be here.

That's a good way to put it. It's sort of pesty generally playing cat and mouse with self-linkers. Now we have a checkbox that everyone has to click when they make their first post that says "I understand... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 3:03 PM on December 5, 2008

There's a bunch of reasons, but the key one is this: the front page is intended as a filter. Folks are expected to post stuff because they personally think, apropos of nothing else, that what they're posting is worth the time and attention of other folks on the site or the giant pile of non-member readers who come here every day.

Links motivated by self-interest break that filter. The incentive for a self-link is materially different from the incentive for a link that... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 1:04 PM on December 5, 2008

How about best comments?

The bar isn't very high for making a comment, so I don't want to set up a possible reward system for rampant commenting. It's tough to make a front page post, you only get one per 24 hours, and you get the scrutiny of everyone looking at it. With comments, you could be an obnoxious ass and spew all over the site fishing for a reward and as long as you have the occasional lucid story, you could be considered for some sort of... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 8:12 AM on December 2, 2008

Why doesn't vacapinta get a say too? He works just as hard when you guys are dreaming about plates of beans.

Hmm. It might be awkward for anyone else to respond, so let me do so. I've also been meaning to say this before.

There are three moderators here at Metafilter. They are Matt, Jessamyn and Cortex. That's it. In the background is PB of course but I believe he prefers to stay in the background. You'll notice that he never... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by vacapinta at 6:04 AM on December 2, 2008

Flyleaf is correct. From Words into Type:

flyleaf A blank leaf, or page, at the front or back of a book, not to be confused with endpapers.

Note: It's not a good idea to hand out "Best answer" marks indiscriminately, especially to answers that contradict each other. This is not a personal-growth question, it's a factual one that has a correct answer.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by languagehat at 7:33 AM on November 29, 2008

Posting resumes sounds like heading down the road to duplicating LinkedIn features. You can link to a LinkedIn profile from your MeFi profile. And you can view everyone with a LinkedIn link. I wonder if there's some way to use this existing system and maybe add a way to say, "I'm looking for work now in [my industry]. See my resume on LinkedIn.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by pb at 12:25 PM on November 26, 2008

I first noticed Soulbee because over about a 6 month period she favorited 100 or so of my old AskMe answers. It was apparent that she was methodically going back and reading my old posts, one by one, and favoriting them occasionally. So I sent her a teasing MeMail about it, you know, "Hey, thanks for the favorites, hope you enjoyed the read." She sassed me back and that was that.

A couple weeks ago she MeMailed me again. She wanted to know how someone would... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by ikkyu2 at 9:24 PM on November 23, 2008

The answer to the question "should people on metafilter be more paranoid about $x?" is almost always no.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 8:46 AM on November 23, 2008

as a native french speaker I have entered the phrase here and found the result quite conform.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Baud at 3:32 AM on November 20, 2008

You might play around with the manual settings to see if you can get decent pictures without the flash indoors. Set your ISO as high as it will go (probably 400 on that camera), your f-stop as low as it will go (probably somewhere in the 2.4 range) and play around with the shutter speed to see if you can get acceptable photos. The manual mode should be a little quicker too since you in effect did some of the thinking for the camera. My son fences so I take a lot of photos of a high speed sport... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by COD at 8:13 AM on November 19, 2008 marked best answer

Now that this thread is over, I have to say, the emotional blackmail of posting pictures of your little girl to make sure that all of MeFi wants to answer your question is positively machiavellian. I'm going to use her for all my future Ask.Mes.

"Should I have my cat declawed? Before you answer, think about my kitten scratching this adorable little girl."

"Is this guy a jerk, should I DTMFA? He made this charming tot cry.... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jacquilynne at 11:10 AM on November 18, 2008

I've recently been setting up my own wordpress site using some of the channels you suggested, minus any talent or interest from anyone but myself.

A few plugins that are ridiculously good:

FeedWordpress - automatically create posts from RSS feeds. Most of the stuff you mention should be RSS-able, but if not, Yahoo pipes can create a faux RSS feed from most anything

SocialHomes - an easy way to link to all the social... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by kaydo at 4:05 AM on November 17, 2008

What I've learned about selling on craigslist:
-- In San Francisco, where I live, a craigslist ad will get a lot of responses from people looking for a rock-bottom price. I've actually had someone show up with 75% of the agreed-upon price and say that was all she'd pay. Now I explain in the ad why I think my price is a good deal, and state that the price is firm. I still get low-ballers, but not nearly as many.
-- Of several people who have contacted me mid-week and... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by wryly at 1:19 PM on November 16, 2008

I have sold a number of no-longer-wanted electronics and gadgets on eBay only (in 200 auctions). I haven't used Craig's List because I don't want the hassle of setting up appointments and my husband doesn't want strangers coming to the house.

To answer your specific questions:

1. I don't use any of the extras that you have to pay for.
2. I only accept payment from Paypal; anything else is extra hassle.
3. The only bad... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by lgandme0717 at 12:25 PM on November 16, 2008

Try selling on Craigslist first. Put up pictures and write a good, literate description. Do some searches on ebay and CL first to see what a good price for your item would be. Don't be the lowest price but don't price yourself out of the market. If you are new to this it will take you a while to get a sense of what the right place to be is.

For CL, to do the exchange, do not ever give out your address or work information. Find a neutral public location, like a coffee... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by micawber at 12:18 PM on November 16, 2008 marked best answer

1: how much do the nickel-and-dime add-ons (pictures, etc) actually help?

Not as much as a no reserve, .99 cent starting bid auction. Seriously, if you want to generate interest, and get lots of bidders competing, start law, do no reserve, and you'll get whatever is a fair market value for your good.

2: Is paypal as big a deal as they want to tell me it is?

I've been using eBay... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by wfrgms at 12:16 PM on November 16, 2008

Yep, we get a few of those every week, sometimes a couple every morning. We have tools on the admin side that show us all recent comments to old ask mefi posts and we also have a filtered view of all new comments in the last 24 hours with links in them.

I hadn't taken a sweep of the tools yet (just woke up and still catching up on the previous night's support email), but we certainly would have caught it in the next couple hours.

I deleted all... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 8:09 AM on November 5, 2008

I was hoping Sean could pull it out. I gave some money to the campaign when it first launched (got a nice tshirt) and revisited a couple weeks ago and gave enough to sponsor a postcard mailing to every registered voter in the district (I think it was $100 which seemed like a bargain).

I was a wee bit bummed I didn't get a thank you note or picture of what the mailer looked like (I don't even know if they sent one based on it), but I'm still glad I gave.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 11:53 PM on November 4, 2008

would it be too much to ask that...

Yes, actually. Maybe mathowie will get his post on, but honestly it's sort of pulling rank for us to choose to do something like that and there's no good reason to do it. I know that mathowie's word sort of settles disputes and all, but besides deleting stuff that is totally awful or breaks the rules we have no dominion over the front page and that's how it should be.

I know people get... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:48 PM on November 3, 2008

I would like to find...
[ ] a comment
[ ] a post

that was...
[ ] made by this user
[ ] in a thread started by this user
[ ] in a thread also commented in by this user
username: _________________

appearing in...
[ ] MeFi
[ ] AskMe
[ ] MeTa
[ ] Jobs
[ ] Projects
[ ] Music
[ ]... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:39 PM on October 28, 2008

Yeah, we have a backtagging/titles project going for metatalk, and I mentioned to pb today that I can't actually see the output and new posts weren't getting tags on them so they'd keep showing up in our untagged pile, so pb added tagging to the posting page and for five minutes the add tags box was showing along the side.

The backtagging project is about 10% done (it's slow going and a ton of work), but we're trying to pick helpful descriptive tags without goofy stuff... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 5:11 PM on October 28, 2008

Who's this pb guy? Whoever he is, I love you man.

For several years I wrote on Suite101 and then in MSN groups. I've noticed in the last couple of weeks that all my writing has poofed on Suite101, not in the Internet Archive either. Oh well. Got a form letter from MSN groups yesterday saying they are closing. So presumably my writing there will also disappear, unless I meticulously try and sift through each thread over years (not going to happen).... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by nickyskye at 5:20 PM on October 27, 2008

I could see an obvious reason for deleting them all, or an obvious reason for leaving them all. But the pick-and-choosiness is baffling to me.

I'm baffled by this need to be black and white in judgment.

We leave some, major stories about various news items of the day. Six months ago, it was likely only one election-themed post a week, and maybe only 1 or 2 news posts a day, the rest being collections of star wars figures... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 9:56 PM on October 23, 2008

I had nothing deleted.

And I wasn't calling you an aggrieved deletee, or suggesting that a deletion of a post by you motivated this thread. I'm addressing the notion you raised of arbitrary users making inference about moderation by putting it into the context of my practical experience as a mod and as a reader before that.

I just saw six or seven one-link election posts go by. Three or four were deleted, three or... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:54 PM on October 23, 2008

You've had a front row seat for the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe so it is understandable that you might react a little strongly on this issue. Some of the mefi snark and wit that can be so amusing on most occasions can really rub the wrong way when you really care about or have deep knowledge of a particular issue which is getting that treatment. To combat that, I am an advocate of the NOPIPO rule - no posting if pissed off. Glad that you didn't leave over this ;-)
posted to MetaTalk by madamjujujive at 7:42 AM on October 22, 2008

I'd like this. Actually, if pressed I'd like a number of footer widgets that would do different things that people could decide to add or not add to some special widget area. These include

- Related threads
- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago this day on MetaFilter
- other threads posted by this user
- other threads with similar comment patterns
- "likely mod responses to this thread" [based on other mod responses to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:29 PM on October 21, 2008

internationalfeel, you're completely missing that the tone of your comments in the original thread were confrontational, that your post was filled with your own personal ax grinding, and that almost every other post on MetaFilter doesn't carry with it loads of editorializing about how the posting author feels about the subject.

I've already explained it to you and several people have here as well. Sometimes you should just hang out in a crowd for a few hours if your... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 8:24 AM on October 20, 2008

Apples to oranges in terms of business models. Website traffic is usually calculated on an action basis, where newspaper is valued in a combination of impression/branding. The NYT, as a best in breed brand, commands a high price for print advertising. While there's only so many pages that a newspaper can have, and a website doesn't have the same limit due to its delivery method, there's still a bound on how much content can be purchased, edited, etc... so realistic limits to the page count do... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Vantech at 4:41 PM on October 19, 2008

*favorite ancient videos

oooh, that Sally Draper Cocktail Cheat Sheet is brutal, darkly funny.

Wish I knew the real name of this artist. Guess she wants to be known as Dyna Moe. She really does witty, wonderful work.

I love the way Mad Men exposes the alcoholism and cigarette addiction of the 60's among other blunt and ugly realities of that era.

It's a brilliant show. My Sunday favorite the way... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nickyskye at 12:50 PM on October 7, 2008

#1 tip: Post something relevant! I run a multi-user blog, and have had numerous company PR/marketing-y people leave comments in response to various posts about products/companies/services. Sometimes they're really helpful, whether I post a glowing review of a neat product and the CEO (!) of the company replies, or a fellow blogger complains about problems with something and someone actually answers the question / suggests a good fix. In those times, I'm insanely impressed with... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by fogster at 4:59 PM on August 7, 2008 marked best answer

This is more for message boards than blogs per se, but anyway... I'm a member of Ravelry, the big "knitting 2.0" site, and there are a number of yarn manufacturers and retailers who are on there. I run the "Australian Knitters" group and thankfully I haven't had anybody really try to abuse our boards. The suggestions I've given to commercial people when asked are to genuinely become a part of the community; don't just do drive-by posting or commenting. The head of marketing... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by web-goddess at 3:33 PM on August 7, 2008 marked best answer

Why do so many people want rules and guidelines?

To be clear: What we want is rules for you, and guidelines for ourselves.
posted to MetaTalk by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:15 PM on October 9, 2008

What about if whenever someone makes a post (not comment) they get an automatic mefimail with a link to the question that says something along the lines of "congratulations, you made a post.

This is a great idea and something I've wanted to do for some time. We wouldn't even need to say anything about deletions (assuming someone did something bad seems like a bad first impression), but if they followed the link if they couldn't find their post,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 2:03 PM on October 7, 2008

One of the great things about Internet communities with intelligent users is that policy questions can rapidly lead to discussions of SQL calls from the users and ponyplay from the moderators, yet it all somehow seems ... sane.
posted to MetaTalk by adipocere at 12:41 PM on October 7, 2008

You don't want to do it every time because it might be troublesome, but you do it often anyway?

We don't want to automate the process because that doesn't seem to be a decent way to move forward, honestly. No one likes form letters and people especially don't like form letters about something that they perceive to be personal. I probably MeMail one out of every eight posters in threads I delete. For comments it's probably one in fifty. Sending a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 11:58 AM on October 7, 2008

A few old ones.
posted to MetaTalk by timeistight at 3:33 PM on October 7, 2008