MetaFilter

this seems like a simple statement of disagreement, much like the one-word "No." response to another commenter early in that thread by mediareport.

That was a direct answer to a question. Not the most helpful possible one, certainly, but it's not the same thing at all in terms of policy. In general, if you dislike a thread, flag it and move on. If you dislike the content of a thread and want to discuss it, then discuss it. Doing the verbal... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by restless_nomad at 5:52 PM on June 4, 2012

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the mixed feedback. I just want to clarify a few things.

First, I said the metafilter team did a good job. I think most people agree. My point of the post was to highlight you can't always do this. It was to get community managers/moderators to consider where they draw the line. Do you get involved when members lie about having cancer? About their friends/relatives dying? About getting fired from their job? Drawing the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by RichardMillington at 6:30 AM on May 29, 2012

I don't think Millington is offering advice in the sense of "look for common enemies your members can hate together," more just suggesting that something that seems like a horrible, awful, no good thing can be a horrible, awful thing with some positive side effects. Look at how often the Givewell situation gets mentioned in MeTa.People will tend to bond in adverse situations.
posted to MetaTalk by jacquilynne at 8:46 PM on May 28, 2012

he's an advertising douche.

I had dinner with him last Thursday. He's not. He's a community management guy, does brand strategy and all the rest, but my impression of him was that he was decent and had a lot of experience with various types of online communities which he was more than happy to share. Maybe you've met him and have had different experiences, but I enjoyed his company and had a good time chitchatting about community management stuff with him.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:50 PM on May 28, 2012

I totally hear what you are saying, but to me the point is, we can't reasonably disallow it. We will push to have things attributed accurately but if people want to pullquote stuff from MeFi from time to time, we don't have legal footing to ask them not to. We could go after them and raise a stink and be jerks about it--and we would definitely do that if we felt that there was a person or website that was doing this on a regular basis--but realistically it's the Washington... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 6:41 PM on May 28, 2012

Really, let's not go nuts on the comments. They'll get it. Our snark not required.

Seriously. We need to do actual damage control sometimes when a bunch of angry MeFites go apeshit in someone's comments sections and use their handles from here. Please do everyone a favor and feel free to register your displeasure or make helpful suggestions but don't just go over there being snarky jerks. I think emails to weingarten and/or the Omsbudsman are fine,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 7:10 AM on May 28, 2012

Imagine that thing's user number!

Note the joined date.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 9:47 PM on May 25, 2012

Toad baked some cookies. “These cookies smell very good,” said Toad. He ate one. “And they taste even better,” he said. Toad ran to Frog’s house. “Frog, Frog,” cried Toad, “taste these cookies that I have made.”

Frog ate one of the cookies, “These are the best cookies I have ever eaten!” said Frog.

Frog and Toad ate many cookies, one after another. “You know, Toad,” said Frog, with his mouth full, “I think we should stop eating. We will soon be... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:31 PM on February 1, 2006

Yep, people need to unfollow or quit reading "we've done this before" MeTa threads they are not interested in. The site is already a little hostile to new users and having MeTa available to them is both a little better for Team Mod and better for site cohesion in general. Sorry.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 4:54 PM on May 25, 2012

I'd like to request that MetaTalk feature requests, which have clearly been talked to death before, be considered double posts and closed.

There's a weird intersection where MetaTalk is simultaneously where all the super-hardcore members hang out and where complete newbies come to ask their questions. We don't really want to discourage either group, but it's much more practical to suggest to the hardcore types to just skip repetitive threads than it is... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by restless_nomad at 4:53 PM on May 25, 2012

Yep, not happening. Is actually on the "denied pony requests" list on a page we should be keeping up with better: the Mod Explanations page of the wiki. If you scroll to the bottom there is a good story there about will power.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 4:51 PM on May 25, 2012

There's a greasemonkey script that will do that, I believe, but it is not a feature that we ever intend to support natively. We generally don't favor things that create variations in the reading experience - threaded comments, up/downvotes, and killfiles are all things that don't fit in with the overall experience here and would be really fundamental changes to how the site works.
posted to MetaTalk by restless_nomad at 4:22 PM on May 25, 2012

Does this mean the items under the Popular link aren't really popular?!

Serious answer to a jokey question, but that's one of the things that's come up a bunch of times, you know? Like, the question of whether it's a good idea to automatically aggregate highly-favorited content when the meaning of favorites is fluid and varies from person to person. Or the question of whether automatically highlighting highly-favorited content is doing an injustice... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:56 AM on May 24, 2012

but I don't have a clear understanding of why the current favorites feature is problematic.

Well, there's problematic in objective fact and there's problematic in terms of community perception and disagreement.

The core thing is that favorites are pretty divisive in how they're perceived. Some folks like 'em, some folks hate 'em; some folks think they're a net positive influence on the site, some folks think very much the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:23 AM on May 24, 2012

Not something we plan to do, no. The favorites system is intentionally pretty minimal by design, and something we consider a "use it however you like" sort of feature. If you need to get more granular about how you manage favorites/bookmarks, the best option is to pursue a third-party bookmarking solution to add whatever modality you need to your bookmarks vs. your "i like this/i think this is good/i agree with this" annotations.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 10:58 AM on May 24, 2012

Yeah, no we're not going to be adding a feature like this. When we launched and planned and iterated favorites, we specifically did it to make the feature vague in its use so it could be all things to all people and specifically stayed away from thumbs up/down or rating systems because those are fraught with problems. We've got our own issues to deal with as a result of favorites, but they are staying as they are.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 10:57 AM on May 24, 2012

But reposting something that's been deleted is only good behavior under specialized circumstances I think.

Generally, reposting something that's been deleted while (a) making an earnest attempt to take what the deletion reason had to say into account and (b) not thumbing a nose at the previous deletion somehow is totally okay. If it seems like a tricky situation, dropping us a note of inquiry at the contact form about whether and how to proceed is... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 3:41 PM on May 24, 2012

I call bullshit.

I'm not even sure what that means in this situation. We saw the flags, we checked it out, we talked to each other, we made the decision we made, and we're here to talk to you about it. I don't think it was a good post for MetaFilter. Other people seemed to not think it was a good post for MetaFilter. We deleted it.

Why not frame the deletion reason more... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:56 PM on May 24, 2012

Both this and the Israel deletion both have a whiff of convenience about them. Sometimes it seems it's more important to keep this place tidy than to actually have a meaningful conversation.

For my money, the mods ought to be more protective of stuff which raises hackles. Deleting a thread because the conversation isn't going well is only a cure in the sense that death cures everything.

I am going to say this politely because... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:44 PM on May 24, 2012

I can't think of a reason to do this that would be a net positive for the site. Anything that gives people here more statistics to argue about is not something we'd be likely to implement.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 4:07 AM on May 23, 2012

Okay, now that I've stopped swearing.

I want to publicly hold Scody's words up to the light, because she's right again.

That, I suspect, is what this troll was hoping to accomplish -- to mock and diminish the very idea of empathy and human connection. I'm going to try to make sure it doesn't work.

Amen. I'm going to do my damndest to do the same.

God, this is such a shitty... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by eriko at 12:52 PM on May 22, 2012

People are the best. No, not this lying asshole. But my friends who deal with people like him so that we can have good things on the internet, and have communities where we're able to trust each other. Thanks for being wonderful, MeFi mods!
posted to MetaTalk by anildash at 12:39 PM on May 22, 2012

I sort of want to know more about how this was found out to be fake

It's just like cortex said. A few people had discreetly inquired (thanks for that), we poked around, found no obit, found a discrepancy in a social media setting [someone saying they were hanging out with Marc days after he was supposed to be dead] and I wrote to his "wife" a sort of impossible-to-write email asking if maybe this was some misunderstanding and if not to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:10 PM on May 22, 2012

You know, you could consider a "MeFi death sentence" for him -- remove everything he's ever posted here. Throw all that attention-whoring into the bit bucket.

Not something we're going to do, no. I get the instinct, it sucks in a way to have all this stuff suddenly thrown into serious doubt and have it there as a reminder that someone did something cruel like this to the community, but creating a big hole in the continuity of the site won't fix... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 12:51 PM on May 22, 2012

How does a lifetime ban work exactly? Like, how do you know it's the same person again?

If they're sufficiently sneaky, then in theory we don't. There's no silver bullet. But what would motivate someone to come back after something like this, knowing they're not welcome, knowing what they did, and then take the precautions necessary to be unidentifiable both in terms of technical measures and voice, I don't know. It's sort of deeply doubtful, and I... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 12:22 PM on May 22, 2012

And, probably no one knows the answer to this, but re: the apparent sockpuppet, how much of holdkris99's entire narrative was just bullshit?

I think you're right that it's basically an unknowable. It could be anywhere from totally straight and level storytelling except for a couple of really fucked up fabrications all the way to bullshit across the board. Which is frustrating not to know, but at this point the not-knowing has really been eclipsed for... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 12:21 PM on May 22, 2012

Man, it pisses me off so much when someone abuses the entire community like this. It reminds me of the anon suicide questions. For the first couple ones that came in years ago, I used to go to great lengths to talk people down from the ledge (literally). I talked with clinical psychology friends, sent emails filled with local help for them, and in some cases had a week or two of regular communication. Then some asshole decided to post a couple fake ones and thought it was funny when we went out... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 12:08 PM on May 22, 2012

Well, huh. After coming back to the site after a period of time and finding nullterminated's suicide and balisong's death still on my mind frequently, the only thing I can think is I'm pleased he's alive and I'm pleased he's banned.
posted to MetaTalk by boo_radley at 12:08 PM on May 22, 2012

most of whom would call me a "socialist" if not a "lib tard"

Please do not start these fights in here and do not start generalized fights with groups who aren't here. If you want to talk about something going on on MetaFilter you can link to stuff. Otherwise all the overgeneralization stuff is just non-useful poo flinging. This is not the FPP-by-proxy thread and don't make it one.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:56 PM on May 14, 2012

But we can haz lazy posts to crappy, stupid pop songs. Yay, us.

This is not a binary where we've only got so much room on the front page and it was either a pop song or HERE'S A RACIST BEING RACIST ON A RACIST SITE. Lot's of folks are interested in both or in neither and to the extent that they're posted about well both pop music and weird journo trainwrecks can and do get posted about. To the extent that they're posted not so well both can and do... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 12:00 PM on May 14, 2012

I really don't

Well, again, what we have to work with is what you've actually done on the site, which has been going three for three on deletably problematic "here's a link to something super shitty" posts about racists being racist.

If you really don't think of yourself as having that bent in how you want to participate here, what I am saying is that something is badly amiss. You need to figure out what the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:34 AM on May 14, 2012

A person who has been featured on Metafilter at least twice (with the most recent thread receiving 274 comments)

The recent thread being pretty darned recently and about Derbyshire being fired for being racist. Even that post was not super great and only stood because we we're trying to find a compromise point after a previous iteration had been deleted.

It is totally fine for you to find Derbyshire's... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:21 AM on May 14, 2012

A person who has been featured on Metafilter at least twice

And each time, it's been a nightmare, due to the subject matter. This writer sort of pushed racist ideas without coming right out and saying it in the past and those previous posts were heavily flagged, This time, he seems he went fully over the edge and is now spouting flat out racist diatribes on a white supremacy site. We don't normally allow links/traffic to white supremacist sites and... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:22 AM on May 14, 2012

Speaking of tags, one thing that caught my eye was "xp", way down at the bottom. It seemed to me that that may have been hotter in the past than in the present. So I downloaded the tag file from the infodump, and did some analysis. I pulled the year with each tag in AskMe, and calculated a weighted score for each tag, treating the years like a halflife (i.e. each time a tag was used in 2012* are weighted 1, 2011 are weighted 0.5, 2010 are weighted 0.25,...). This weights tags that are... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Homeboy Trouble at 10:58 PM on May 12, 2012

the young rope-rider: "I'm not trying to be an asshole here (and I don't think the mods are being assholes) but people keep acting like this stuff is obvious and apparent. It's really not."

Hold on - you seriously read the phrase "please reach us at the contact form if you're not clear why" and thought they were asking you to ask about it in MetaTalk? I appreciate that sometimes things can be unclear. I agree that nobody should be... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by koeselitz at 9:10 AM on May 13, 2012

Yeah, self-links in comments are fine as a general thing. Our main provisos there are:

1. Don't be evasive about it. If you're not comfortable saying "here my relationship to this thing I'm linking", it's probably not something you should be linking even if it's otherwise okay. We don't want to feel like people are pulling a fast one on other users and we don't want to be put in the position of mediating the potential outing of your relationship with... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:43 AM on May 13, 2012

I understand the need for discretion and judiciousness, but, as you can understand, I am wary of unilateral decision-making.

It is literally our job to make decisions. That's why Matt employs us. And wary as we are of violating the "why wasn't I consulted" principle about major site changes, of pulling the rug out from folks here with sudden disruptive redirections of site policy or operations, deleting a post is not something that... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:01 PM on May 12, 2012

Whether or not it's reasonable, a veiled message makes me think that the moderators are not being entirely honest with me and the user community at large.

As cortex said we have to draw a line sometimes and people are going to pick at it no matter where we draw it. In this case we had some questions about the post that we needed to talk to with the OP and we felt it was significantly less transparent to make up some other deletion reason, especially... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:24 PM on May 12, 2012

Whether or not it's reasonable, a veiled message makes me think that the moderators are not being entirely honest with me and the user community at large.

I honestly don't know what to say other than that if you otherwise trust us to know what we're doing and to be straightforward and transparent as much as we can, but suddenly start wondering because of the phrasing of a deletion reason, you are putting far too much weight on the phrasing of deletion... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:36 PM on May 12, 2012

Her MeMail is turned on. A mod leaving an obscure message in a place only read by the most curious of users was hardly the most discreet way to deal with the situation.

Maybe this is me overthinking it or something, but as I see it we have four choices when there's something sort of weird involved in a post that we don't want (usually just for reasons of being a little discreet) to broadcast to the world:

1. Delete without... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 5:06 PM on May 12, 2012

Nomyte: "I don't understand. There is one rule. Apply the one rule if it applies. Don't if it doesn't."

There is in fact no unbreakable rule on this web site. Even the rule against self-links has been broken more than once, and that was allowed by mathowie of all people. Accepting and forgiving is better than strict and unstinting.

Also, when a deletion reason is obviously and blatantly engineered toward being... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by koeselitz at 3:06 PM on May 12, 2012

"cage"? Stupid iPhone.

Banning people as soon as possible is not really our top priority even if we expect it might be the outcome, basically.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 2:53 PM on May 12, 2012

why would you put an ad for the website on the website?

We'd like to help people who might not be familiar with Ask MetaFilter understand what's happening in the wall of text below. Visiting the site is one thing, understanding it long enough to stick around is another. This is just a little help, and a bit more visibility for searching so people can find something relevant for them to get a sense of the site.
posted to MetaTalk by pb at 11:47 AM on May 11, 2012

People are already pretty terrible, I can't imagine this is holding anyone back.

I can't really agree. Metafilter falls down a lot on people-being-decent compared to my ideal world's version of the place, but it's routinely non-terrible in ways that are pretty important and have in part to do with the sense of continuity of community here. I find the swiss-cheese feeling of the archives of sites that allow indiscriminate user account wiping really... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:27 AM on May 9, 2012

I know it was never the original intend, but in light of the "all posts are © their original authors" bit, couldn't someone who really wanted to be a pill could someday force you to?

Legally, they own their copyright which means someone has to ask if they reproduce it elsewhere. It has nothing to do with the right to publish, which is more of a terms of service thing (which we've drafted, batted around, but never deployed for all sorts of... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 3:55 PM on May 8, 2012

So, if a close and trusted friend were given the appropriate directions, like contacting the mods to let them know I kicked the bucket, could Meta Filter change my username to something completely unrelated to me, or at least delete every trace of my existence here? Would this also be possible if suddenly my privacy was compromised, like if someone at work found out I'm Tarumba?

This is something we have literally never talked about in this specific... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:18 PM on May 8, 2012

There's no changing your username on well-established accounts, and we do not wipe account histories. They're massively disruptive things in terms of the shared continuity of the site, and we consider them total non-starters.

That said, if you have a couple of specific comments you'd want deleted or edited to remove a key bit of identifying info, or a question or two that need anonymizing, that's something we can accommodate as a one-off sort of thing if you want to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 2:17 PM on May 8, 2012

Here's the thing about the righteous and/or hellish struggle for the right to get personal and call other members insulting things: it hurts the site. It makes the place where you want to come have a relatively informed adult conversation worse, and it makes it less likely to remain a place where people who want to have a relatively informed adult conversation will come.

What are the upsides of calling someone an insulting name?

You might amuse... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by taz at 12:18 AM on May 9, 2012

What a hilarious meta. 100 comments and we're already into rules-lawyering as opposed to acknowledging the fact that if that post had been pro-occupy, no one would bat an eyelash at it. Snark and sarcasm in the service of far-left goals is fine, but not in the service of anyone else's goals.

To be super clear, I mostly agree with klang at an ideological level on the things that I think he is too routinely shitty about in his choice of presentation.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:40 AM on May 8, 2012

There is a MeTa discussing exactly this a couple of posts down. If you are serious, please take this there. If you are not, please do not make sarcastic/jokey MeTas, as they do not help anyone and just make more work for us.
posted to MetaTalk by restless_nomad at 5:39 PM on May 5, 2012