MetaFilter

Posting threads to Metatalk calling out problematic posts or behavior remains a valid use of this part of the site. It's one of the things Metatalk is for.

However, it's possible to do it pretty badly in a few different ways. See previous comments, take a deep breath, consider email as a first step, and caveat postor.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 12:18 PM on June 23, 2008

shmegegge, I hear you (and thanks too for the reply, mjjj).

One thing that strikes me sometimes about mefi is that we don't do a whole lot of proactive user education from the admin side. There's no pop-up tips or Clippy the Paperclip; we don't run rotating boldface announcement banners across the top of the site; we don't blast out emails to the userbase; etc. There's the FAQ, and occasional metatalk posts from us (though these are almost universally about features or... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 12:18 PM on June 23, 2008

I generally agree with every pearl of wisdom from the lovely miss TPS, so it pains me to say I sorta disagree here: I show my hearty disapproval by not reading them. Feel free to do the same.

OK, I do totally agree with this statement when it comes to genres of posts. When people say they don't want news, obits, sports, or celebs - well I totally agree, just skip those posts, it's ridiculous to blacklist entire genres or topics... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by madamjujujive at 10:00 AM on June 23, 2008

while it's very hard to suss out whether there's been a subtle sea-change in the last year or two, or if we're just paying more and more detailed attention to the habits of these guys

I think there has been a shift towards SEO acceptance, which I find unfortunate. Seriously, five years ago I used to hang out on web design mailing lists and guys asking how to raise their position in search engines would get shunned and laughed off the list, as members... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 10:58 AM on June 13, 2008

The relevant FAQ point is here. We say "close friend" so that if it's someone you sort of know who also works at XYZ MegaCorp thats no big deal but if it's someone you do projects with, work in a small company with or are fairly friendly with, we'd really prefer you not link to their site in a post. Links like this in comments are fine, by the way.

The reasoning behind this is we don't want to have to second guess why people are making posts or ferret out if... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:12 PM on June 10, 2008

The general principle I tend to roll out for this stuff is "when in doubt, don't". There will always be kind of grey area stuff (given sufficient distance, sufficient time, sufficient magnitude, etc), especially if it only comes up after the fact, but all of that is secondary to the general notion that it's not a good idea to make posts about things you have a close personal connection to.

If you're not sure, drop us a line to get our take on it. Folks do... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 1:10 PM on June 10, 2008

No, you should not make posts about your friends, period. We don't want to have to figure out what your angle might or might not be, so generally speaking this is a no-no and of course I'm sure there have been exceptions in the past I'm sure, and we're not going to delete that post after the fact but we'll drop the guy a note.

I thought that post was a little iffy at the time but there was no obvious hanky-panky so we left it up. If it was clear at the time that the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:03 PM on June 10, 2008

There is a sort of flattening of the answerer field when you pretty much have to be around forever to sort of notice who is getting best answered and who is maybe not and I agree with Mutant that we do have the Good Googler phenomenon that answers that may not be verifiably "best" [which oh my is a sticky tar pit] sometimes get a lot of faves and marked best. So in order to not put any more weight on this instead of a "hey here's a gold star for you today" we've deliberately... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:54 AM on June 5, 2008

Yeah, if people respond with insults when you offer your advice for free, you might want to consider a way to distribute it for a fee. I'm using two of those posts as I outline a grant proposal at the moment. I keep looking for books on these kinds of things, but they either seem out of touch with reality or something that might possibly be partially useful but probably not worth the price. There seems to be an awful lot of fluff in them before they get to the point. There are the books on how... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tehanu at 8:12 AM on May 9, 2008

That said, I feel very wrong basically having the power to take something off a website that is making someone else feel like they made a big huge mistake...

The valuing of people over hard fast rules is why I like AskMe and is just one part of why I'm glad you're here. Thanks, jessamyn.
posted to MetaTalk by melissa may at 7:48 PM on May 13, 2008

I think the better option for weeding out spammers is to have everyone's first mefi post be pending until one of the mods approves it, then letting people post normally after that. It would suck a little and lose some timeliness and also put us on the spot when we approve stuff, but it would kill all these drive-by spammers dead. Of course, there would be an out where you leave one meh post to get past it then follow it up with your crap, but at worst we'd be at the same place we are now with... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 4:49 PM on May 12, 2008

Yeah I sort of feel that with very few exceptions, we ferret these out and jump on them almost instantly. I could see maybe a "hold for mod aproval" thing if someone was posting this crap in the middle of the night but at the end of the day even though these things are annoying, I don't think they're harmful. Until we can find a way to sort of do the "head on pitchfork" sort of deterrent work (and that goes badly here because people get too gleeful and then the same people... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 4:05 PM on May 12, 2008

I agree with Matt that it might be a good thing to build into our OH SHIT admin alert system, but to be clear I think it'd be bad to implement it as a blind automatic block the way you've proposed it here, davey_darling. As much as it's annoying that self-linkers and spammers do their thing, I don't know if we really want to move over to an automated system based on a heuristic, no matter how good it is. Accidentally pissing off innocent users or thwarting legitimate uses of the site is... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 3:56 PM on May 12, 2008

Yeah, not a bad idea. Really we should internally write some code that scans user accounts and "if comments on mefi = 3 and total words used = less than 10, then EMAIL THE ADMINS ON THE RED FUCKING PHONE WE HAVE A SPAMMER TO BE"
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 3:51 PM on May 12, 2008

I think it's kind of weird how a magazine as headstrong and self-aware of it's tech context as Wired can manage to not include links to the web-based content its quoting when it publishes excerpts of that content on the web. I know that it's heading for print, sure, but c'mon. Come up with a system. I know this internet stuff is pretty new and weird, but you didn't name the magazine "Papery".
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 7:57 AM on May 4, 2008

Too much hate. Why can't people just be nice?

Life is all about conflicting desires and for many people this fundamental struggle causes them a certain amount of internal strife that they have to mete out bit by tiny bit lest they explode from the overwhelming disquietude of it.

I had this problem for a while.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 1:31 PM on April 17, 2008

All you're doing, though, is articulating an entitlement on the part of the "omg serious" crowd.

The "omg serious" crowd and the "please don't be an asshole at every opportunity just because you dislike exercising self-control when a boob joke occurs to you" crowd can get kind of indistinguishable when you're on the other side of the fence from them, is part of the problem here. Just because you can... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:26 PM on April 16, 2008

We don't peek at user's memails for any reason short of some terrible legal threat and even then we'd be talking to our lawyer first. Sometimes, rarely, users send us something that someone else has sent them. This didn't happen here. I don't quite get what's going on here but we haven't warned stinkycheese about anything.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 12:26 PM on April 16, 2008

As I told Coldchef, I was out all day yesterday, moving and painting (I'm moving to a house outside of San Francisco tomorrow, and was doing preliminary work all day on the place). I couldn't believe the "farts in the wind" that happened while I was out all day. They may seem harmless, but they made the regulars of the site look like a bizarre cult (I got a couple emails asking me what they hell was going on and one saying "look at this, you should just shut down the site").... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 8:39 AM on March 29, 2002

Yeah, since the user has no history on the site, they raised the hackles of several users here and one person tied them to a community where the nerd fashion site owner also hung out. Some further digging revealed they may be either the same person or at the same college and likely friends. If you read the nerd fashion site owner's blog, it's pretty much obsessed with getting linked everywhere on earth and trying to make money off the site, so it was just sketchy enough to be pulled.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 5:20 PM on April 3, 2008

I still am not sure I understand what closing signups is supposed to do.

This may be more of a mod-centered sugestions, but with all the SEO spammers we've been combatting lately we've been thinking "gee it might be nice if these came in waves instead of just four or five every week". We do not want to close signups entirely, we were just batting around the idea of maybe having a week a month for open signups or a day a week or something... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:48 AM on March 27, 2008

Could we perhaps, instead of deleting google-gaming posts, wrap them with nofollow and then googlebomb them so they're only high in the search results for 'soulless fuckers'?

I would personally enjoy that, but one thing we've noticed is that SEO spammer types and self-linkers generally are argumentative, often. So not only do we delete their links and ban their account we're usually answering email from them about "why was my post deleted/account... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 10:06 PM on March 26, 2008

Meanwhile, can't the links in fpps get wrapped in nofollow to break any SEO shenanigans?

We've talked about it. It could happen, no real decision yet; the fact that we have found fucking SEO factsheets that tout Mefi's "overlooking" of the nofollow issue as equating to good "juice" for link-builders is a fairly compelling argument for flipping that particular switch.

But that doesn't... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:30 PM on March 26, 2008

Jesus, I hate living in this timezone sometimes, because there are already like 144 comments, and this one should have been the first damn one (with all due respect to the Bomb of Meat:

IMMINENT DEMISE OF METAFILTER PREDICTED.
posted to MetaTalk by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:43 PM on March 26, 2008

Sorry, I was out running errands all day with the family (it's spring break for all the local schools and daycare), but I did want to post as soon as I got back.

Overall, I've been thinking that things aren't going downhill so much as the community feels a bit strained from so many users. The other day I posted something in a thread and wanted to hear reactions to it and someone posted some derail and everyone followed along with the derail instead of sticking to the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 4:38 PM on March 26, 2008

MetaFilter has always sucked more than you remember.

Note that I'm resisting the urge to explicitly call scrump a fustian fuckwit.
posted to MetaTalk by Plutor at 1:09 PM on March 26, 2008

as long as the mix of chosen people isn't so narrow as to stifle instead of guide

Gee thanks aaron for the vote of confidence. I'm down to zero patience here if anyone hasn't noticed yet. If you think I want to stifle opinions or narrow views around here, you're welcome to leave.

Once again, to be perfectly clear to everyone reading this far, I'm trying to promote intelligent discussion on the site. If I'm aiming to limit anything, it will be stupidity.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:33 PM on April 5, 2001

If you intend to restrict the discourse to the topics and viewpoints that you and that handful of "the old guard" find acceptable, you're saying that those of us who have different viewpoints from the majority will be excluded.

I find it pretty offensive that the things I proposed equal "restricting the discourse" to you m.polo. Do people think my goal here is limit viewpoints?

I want the site to go back to intelligent... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 9:37 PM on April 5, 2001

I should allude to what I want to do here. I've been talking to a number of people for a while now about what's wrong with the site, if open communities on the web are even possible, and what can be done. I'm not really looking for input on this, I and a few others have been doing a great deal of thinking about this and we're working hard on the solution, so in that sense everyone has to trust me on this one, while I go into a hole and noodle with a lot of things.

The... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 7:51 PM on April 5, 2001

Nope normy, it's not enough. The last one was purposely to a different URL than their profile. It seemed pretty transparent.

BUT

I've left a couple recent ones up, and you know why? Because I thought they were good self-posts. About 1% of the self posts are good, but because people can't think I have to make a dumb rule making it black and white. If you look at the guidelines, it's not absolutely crystal clear (at least not to everyone, due to so... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 5:15 PM on April 5, 2001

These “Metafilter isn’t as good as it used to be” threads used to be so much better before they let those filthy 2800ers into the joint.
posted to MetaTalk by bondcliff at 12:53 PM on March 26, 2008

does anyone have excellent theories on how mefi manages to attract such delicious peoples?

I have some mediocre theories on some of it, anyway. Mefi started off with a core of pretty web-for-web's-sake motivated people—bloggers and net geeks during a period where blogging was still fairly new and unknown territory. So there was a good seeding of people who were more interested in the process of blogging and the health of web stuff than in... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 1:48 PM on March 21, 2008

What, not MetaTalk t-shirts? Or AskMeFi? Also, if I pre-order one, can I get my user number on it?
posted to MetaTalk by moonbiter at 1:15 AM on March 20, 2008

But I wish I didn't feel that this site is nearly politicophobic at times.

We've had two presidential elections in the previous years of metafilter and the consensus was that by September, everyone was sick of the Nader/Kerry/Bushfilter posts. The audience is a lot more international now as well, and though who becomes the president of the US does have some effect on someone in the UK or Oz or Egypt, it's less important to a growing number of active... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:56 AM on March 18, 2008

Clarke's forward to the novel "2001: A Space Odyssey":

"Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by New Frontier at 3:54 PM on March 18, 2008

I'm thinking more toward the "suicide" and "death threats" side of that, but tales of hellish editing woes are ok

My tale of "hellish editing" was that weird candidate question. It was obviously timely and had a "should I tell what I know about how poorly candidate X's campaign is being run?" but it was a mess and I emailed the user at the provided email address and never heard back. I dont even remember which... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:56 PM on March 14, 2008

I do feel like he started off in the manner of a fuzzy little (though longwinded) kitten and then some of us taught him how to use his claws.

I have no real input into whether this is accurate or not, concerning EB. I'd like to add, however, that it always saddens me to see users basically "give up" and decide to snark right back when previously they had turned the other cheek or whathaveyou. This is for a few reasons, and I refer only to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 11:27 AM on March 10, 2008

isn't that what this site supposed to be about? people engaging with eachother?

Just as a point of reference... Yes the site is about engagement but it's also about everyone engaging with each other. If two users butting heads gets in the way of other people being able to have a discussion, then those users probably need to take it to email or agree to disagree. This isn't about you in particular jonmc, just a note that the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 9:49 PM on March 9, 2008

Actually some people come to MetaTalk just to complain about MetaTalk. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true!
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 5:26 PM on March 24, 2007

I have to say, one of the things that makes metafilter special is how much gets enforced by simply assuming the users are lazy, and so shortcuts for less than desireable behaviors are simply not provided. It's a surprisingly effective system.
posted to MetaTalk by davejay at 3:08 PM on March 7, 2008

here's a bookmarklet for your browser and there are many similar options.

Please don't use the @username convention, it's kind of annoying looking and in general we quote stuff here said by others in italics (and optionally with the username in front and linked to the original).
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 2:05 PM on March 7, 2008

1. Can the U.S government take down any websites it wants? Would it?

The US government can and does censor varieties of speech through a variety of nonviolent (legal) means and violent (extralegal) means.

Since its National Telecommunications and Information Administration has oversight of ICANN, it can control domain registrations and policies. With its connections to the management of AT&T, Verizon and other... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Blazecock Pileon at 1:54 PM on March 7, 2008 marked best answer

Thanks for coming here after cortex and I both deleted comments of yours from that thread.

It's okay to ask about stereotypes, especially if you're not doing so in a jerkish way. Generally what happens is that people ask about stereotypes and someone will say "yeah that's just a stereotype/confirmation bias" or someone will mention "actually, that may be some sort of a cultural/class thing because of XYZ reason"

A good way to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:43 PM on February 25, 2008

All of which is probably right, but I can't help noticing that "VibraAaAaAtoOoOoOo" actually reads more like tremolo.

TremoloOoOoOoOo and vibrat^o_o^o_o^o_o^o_o are different effects.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by flabdablet at 10:57 PM on February 23, 2008

Trolls exists everywhere not just Internet forums. I've seen a 70 year old friend - who never uses the Internet - "troll" in conversations just to get people talking and to make the dead silence a little more interesting. The Internet has magnified and amplified what was already there.
posted to MetaFilter by stbalbach at 7:11 AM on February 19, 2008

Each page of the site is hand-carved like a fine piece of wooden art. And sometimes you forget to leave the horn on the unicorn and you just end up with a horse.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:00 PM on February 10, 2008

I'd still love if someone could take a stab at explaining why the "magic" constant that was chosen works better than any other random number, like 42 or 17, and what sort of genius process was used to find it.

If you're willing to read (or at least skim) some genuine math, this paper by Chris Lomont (linked to from the main link above, and elsewhere in the thread) walks through the whole thing. There's are some CS 101 ideas in there that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 3:16 PM on February 8, 2008

It's not "beautiful" code, it's hacky but fast.

Sufficiently clever optimization in the face of a bottleneck is one measure of beauty; there is beauty in the understanding that makes the hack possible.
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 1:57 PM on February 8, 2008

Because the sidebar is the editorial section.

No, it isn't. You saying it doesn't make it so. Usually I put certain types of things on the sidebar, personally

1. Meta threads people should see, or occasionally music pieces
2. totally hilarious or otherwise "don't miss this" comments
3. personal stories from MeFites (like the solid gold dancer one, and this one) that get a lot of favorites or fantastic... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:18 AM on January 29, 2008

Mmmmm---dark gray text on black background, subtly communicating "you don't want to read this stuff."
posted to MetaFilter by hexatron at 5:27 AM on January 29, 2008