Metafilter History

December 8, 2006 10:01 AM

having stumbled through the wiki and come out no wiser, a query: is there anywhere a concise source for metafilter history? i'm particularly interested in how the 5$ fee came to be conceived, and the effects (short-, mid- & long-term) it had on the blue/green/grey.
posted by progosk to MetaFilter-related at 10:01 AM (59 comments total)

It has yet to be written.
posted by cortex at 10:09 AM on December 8, 2006

Hasn't been done. It would be quite a good read though.
posted by bob sarabia at 10:14 AM on December 8, 2006

No one really knows. It's an ancient taboo...set forth in the Sacred Scrolls. The Lawgiver pronounced the area deadly.
posted by Smart Dalek at 10:14 AM on December 8, 2006

The $5 fee was conceived as a way to keep me out, which it did until recently, when I got a raise and was able to save up for a couple months and scrape $5 together.
posted by Mister_A at 10:17 AM on December 8, 2006

DUDE NAMED POE AT ATLANTIC MONTHLY IS WORKING ON IT.
posted by quonsar at 10:24 AM on December 8, 2006

The fee was, if I remember correctly, put forth as a way to open enrollment while still controlling the flood of new users. Prior to the fee, there was a multi-year period featuring months in a row of no enrollment, interspersed with periods of "20 new users a day at noon" and other such means of joining.
posted by jonson at 10:25 AM on December 8, 2006

Hey, cortex, is ReFi on hiatus, or dead in the water? I thought that was a great idea.
posted by danb at 10:27 AM on December 8, 2006

Hell hath frozenth overth. New user signups are back on, for a one-time five buck cover. And only 12 hours till the first occurrence of (some version of) the phrase "Fi-dolla n00b".
posted by gleuschk at 10:30 AM on December 8, 2006

Heh. Also: "Well, if metafilter starts to suck now, we all know who to blame. Meatbomb."
posted by gleuschk at 10:32 AM on December 8, 2006

I like to think that ReFi is not so much on haitus as just updated Very Infrequently. Not dead, anyway. I just excell at stalling.
posted by cortex at 10:36 AM on December 8, 2006

This is ancient lore you seek, it has power and must be approached with care. The knowledge still exists, but is not for the unworthy. I challenge, a tradition even has been set - if you can pay me, the keeper of lore, five dollars perhaps I will tell you more.
posted by econous at 10:49 AM on December 8, 2006

In the dark times, the huddled masses crowded around their computers in then pale blue glow of an ancient CRT, clicking 'Refresh' on the signup page, until one day, they got in.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:51 AM on December 8, 2006

pay me, the keeper of lore

Warning: lossy compression.
posted by cortex at 11:02 AM on December 8, 2006

I paid five dollars for five records just today: a boz scaggs album, something with some Honky-Tonk piano, the second Sly and the Family Stone record, Neil Young's After the Goldrush, and some weird compilation of banjo tunes from the 60s with a song by Mike Seeger and two by Roger Mcguin, which has such a strange vibe that the liner notes on the back are all about the guitar was the instrument of the 60s, but they thought they'd put out this banjo comp anyway if no one minded too much.
posted by OmieWise at 11:09 AM on December 8, 2006

This is probably the best argument for both MeTa tags and for site-wide tag pages: The hell freezing thread can be tagged with "metafilterhistory". (MeFi, AskMe)
posted by Plutor at 11:11 AM on December 8, 2006

For background on the $5.00 entry fee, research "poll tax", a method of limiting membership to selected people. Note "grandfather clause"; this allows older MeFites to continue to bemoan the flood of $5.00 noobs without paying for the privilege.
posted by Cranberry at 11:46 AM on December 8, 2006

I've told the story a few times so lemme recount it off the top of my head:

- The normal new signups from 1999-2002 were mostly from people that read the site and "got" the site and their numbers were low, probably on the order of 10-15 a day. They joined and mixed in well.

- Periodically, I found that getting big press in the NYT or some magazine would flood the community with say 100-200 new users in a matter of an hour, and they'd stumble around leaving weird comments, sometimes getting in fights, etc. While most would lurk, there's always that 1-5% of people that have to take over the microphone and yell at everyone.

- I was working a full time job and consulting on the side, so running mefi was a constant drain on my time. It ran on fumes from 2001-2003 and dealing with new user disruptions was a major time suck on my limited abilities.

- At one point in 2001 when the kaycee thing was in full media mode, I turned off signups because the site was crashing under the traffic. I realized that it let me breathe a sigh of relief and wasn't an entirely bad thing.

- 2001-2002ish I would turn off signups whenever the server was maxing out or big press was coming down. At some point in late 2002, I turned off new user signups for a while, intending to only turn them back on when things stabilized and I had more technical and time cycles to dedicate to it.

- There was a backdoor 5k signup method a few people found that left the new users at a trickle for a few months before I shut that off as well.

- I would periodically sign people up by hand if they emailed me a sob story or were a journalist looking to check it out for a story. People would email me constantly when they noticed the # of users registered go up by 1 or 2 over a week.

- by fall of 2004, I sort of had reached a lull at my last job. I had finished a major site redesign project that took six months of my time and was ready to sort of chill out and do maintenance for a few months. Consequently, I had some time on my hands and figured I put some of that towards mefi admin.

- I was finally getting real hosting with a real hosting bill. Running two remote servers cost me about $700/mo at the start and I needed something to offset that (I wasn't making that much in ads each month).

- A few people were selling their accounts on ebay and I realized with the 5-10 requests in my inbox everyday, maybe I could both kill the ebay market for a mefi ID and make just those dedicated fans happy by letting them sign up for a small fee. I knew the $5 was a huge barrier to entry, but it would do a couple great things: limit signups to a small amount making it easier to manage (no big rush of newbies when an article hits), and only the most dedicated would actually pay to join.

- I had figured maybe a 100 would sign up on day 1 and then it'd trickle down to 5 a day going forward, which could pay for the hosting fees.

- Much to my surprise, several hundred signed up on day one and it took about a week to go below a hundred new ones per day. It's currently averaging about 10-20 new signups a day. My hosting fees are higher and I pay jessamyn, so that pretty much uses it all up.
posted by mathowie at 12:00 PM on December 8, 2006 [11 favorites]

Some of us (in the 13 and 14 thousands) got in by guessing where mathowie hid the sign-up page. That drove some of the oldtimers nuts.
posted by timeistight at 12:46 PM on December 8, 2006

Holy shit, I remember that day. For weeks I had been trying to get one of the "20 per day" signups, and then, on that wonderful morning, I saw mathowie's thread... I guess I wasn't exactly the first one, but wow, hey, there I am right after the Great One posts that he'd like confirmation that the paypal procedure works ok! I was personally welcomed by Miguel Cardoso! That day was better than Christmas!

Sadly though, as I predicted, MetaFilter started to suck immediately after I joined. And it probably is mostly my fault. Sorry for destroying your site, mathowie.
posted by Meatbomb at 12:49 PM on December 8, 2006

I remember my secret sign up page run like it was yesterday.

Twenty miles of frozen waste, boulders and canyons while fending off sixteen very angry giant ice trolls, twelve stone basilisk, a incredibly fat but incredibly small and angry gnome (of all things) and several thousands of goddamn biting snow pixies. I hate pixies. Pixies suck. I'd rather copulate with a beehive.

I guess it could be worse. I heard one guy had to Ascend without a pet, without eating and totally naked except for the Ring of Conflict and a hat of cursed meat.
posted by loquacious at 1:39 PM on December 8, 2006

Really? Mine just required appending a "2" to to a file name.
posted by timeistight at 1:56 PM on December 8, 2006

and the effects (short-, mid- & long-term) it had on the blue/green/grey

a wash/strongly positive/negative.

I joined August 21, 2001 because I knew there'd be a mad rush to join after September 11, and I wanted to beat the crowd.
posted by pardonyou? at 2:16 PM on December 8, 2006

Pixies suck.

Fuck you, Nirvana owed them everything.
posted by cortex at 2:16 PM on December 8, 2006

It's just like shooting womp-rats in Beggar's Canyon back home!
posted by kirkaracha at 2:29 PM on December 8, 2006

pardonyou?: Sup, registration neighbour?
posted by ODiV at 2:39 PM on December 8, 2006

Interesting fact I noticed after looking through the user pages:

matt123test's profile - user 17579
matttest2's profile - user 17580

These were the two users that preceded the first $5 users (I wonder who they belong to...)

1,500 users signed up between November 18, 2004 and November 19, 2004. This means that matt made $7500 in a single day!
posted by Frankieist at 2:40 PM on December 8, 2006

I guess I'm not the only one who noticed this.
posted by Frankieist at 2:42 PM on December 8, 2006

Looks like this thread is bringing out the 10k'ers...

Our most famous member is of course #10947 himself.

I guess I'm not the only one who noticed this.

And if you research further, you'll see Matt explain that that number includes users who started the registration process but didnt complete it.
posted by vacapinta at 2:46 PM on December 8, 2006

If I hit a 1000 favorites on this account, can I get my 15 dollars back?
posted by econous at 2:46 PM on December 8, 2006

On preview, yeah, what matt said.
posted by Frankieist at 2:49 PM on December 8, 2006

One day all the Metafilter users journeyed to learn who the true essence of Metafilter was. The users trekked across unfathomable obstacles to reach their goal. They braved double posts, callouts, Ask Metafilter questions about declawing, and ColdFusion errors. There were seven valleys and seven peaks they had to cross, the second to last called Flameout, the penultimate called Bannination. Many users were lost along the way, until only seven were left. They circled the final obstacle, a great caldera named Mathowie. They looked at each other and only then realized that it was they who were the true essence of Metafilter. Learning this unfathomable secret they returned to Metafilter, never to reveal their identities. If it was not for these secret users, Metafilter would crumble. This is the true story of Metafilter.

apologies to the Simurgh, Borges, and the real tzaddikim
posted by Falconetti at 2:51 PM on December 8, 2006

Thanks for the blast from the past, gleuschk. It was great to see all those familiar names as new faces: bugbread, hePinkSuperhero, Optimus Chyme... (And a little sad that so many of them have wandered off after that first excitement, never to be heard from again.)

As for the History of MetaFilter, it is not for the uninitiated, and it begins long before mathowie. It has to do with King Solomon, Pythagoras, the Pagan Mysteries, the Rosicrucians, and the Priory of Sion. For details, see quonsar in the Inner Sanctum, and don't come empty-handed.
posted by languagehat at 2:51 PM on December 8, 2006

And vacapinta - durr...
posted by Frankieist at 2:53 PM on December 8, 2006

the april before the 5 dollar n00bs showed up, matt reopened the 20 a day signups after a dead period for a long time. 130 people joined in that one day so he then axed that idea.

sockpuppets for the win
posted by Stynxno at 2:58 PM on December 8, 2006

Looks like user 17584 actually beat Meatbomb by about 15 minutes to that thread. So I think we can safely blame him for everything that has gone wrong with metafilter since. Everything.

I glad this thread is here, I honestly didn't remember if I had paid for an account or not.
posted by quin at 3:11 PM on December 8, 2006

I can't wait to sell this account on Ebay!
posted by Balisong at 3:12 PM on December 8, 2006

bugbread, hePinkSuperhero, Optimus Chyme...

That should be ThePinkSuperhero, of course. TPS is not a he. Mea culpa.
posted by languagehat at 3:15 PM on December 8, 2006

Since I know about quonsar's squatting elephant, I would in fact prefer to come back empty-handed.
posted by found missing at 3:19 PM on December 8, 2006

Bah. A bunch of n00bs.
posted by litlnemo at 3:53 PM on December 8, 2006

I sold my soul on eBay. Does that count? I got 5 bucks and bought a mefi acct!
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 3:58 PM on December 8, 2006

This means that matt made $7500 in a single day!

Again, there's a difference between signups began and paypal payments completed. I think I made about 3k that day.
posted by mathowie at 4:14 PM on December 8, 2006

And then Matt got that new plasma TV (I kid, kid!).
posted by fixedgear at 4:15 PM on December 8, 2006

languagehat, I think I'll get a sock and name it HePinkSuperhero. Then we can get into fights. Whopeeeee.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:25 PM on December 8, 2006 [1 favorite]

... or make whopeeeee.
posted by yeti at 4:50 PM on December 8, 2006

Why did some chatfiltery question about sandwiches get the metafilterhistory tag?
posted by Saucy Intruder at 5:08 PM on December 8, 2006

Some of us (in the 13 and 14 thousands) got in by guessing where mathowie hid the sign-up page. That drove some of the oldtimers nuts.
posted by timeistight

I think it had more to do with you bringing it up over and over and over again...
posted by gtr at 6:53 PM on December 8, 2006

Heck, I just wish someone would explain the whole bevets thing to me. Need a hit from a clue-by-four.
posted by IndigoRain at 7:23 PM on December 8, 2006

My favorite part of the whole $5 n00b thread is that not one, but TWO users confessed to paying the $5 only to find out that they had already registered for free years before, but had forgotten about it.
posted by yhbc at 8:19 PM on December 8, 2006

I think it had more to do with you bringing it up over and over and over again...

Well, whatever works.
posted by timeistight at 10:06 PM on December 8, 2006

And one of the first things the Mefite Militia did was to decide they didn't want "conversatives" around, and "communists", and anti-Islamists (which is not the same thing as hating Muslims: kinda like "Love the sinner, hate the sin."), and people who irked them with "improper" formatting and elaborate sentence structure (which often gets me accused of praising the very thing I'm ranting against, as somewhere those people lost what I was -- I thought painstakingly clearly -- talking about). I don't even think they wanted to tolerate people who did not dig punk and hiphop, yet these broad-minded people also seem to think having children was a good idea. It's a wonder so many Mefites from whichever membership scheme claim to like Cormac McCarthy, or to read him at all, except that maybe his novels remind them of $2 a night rental DVDs or non-pirated copies of for-Windows videogames. What kind of people, after all, will pay good money to be members of Scientology or the Landmark Forum? (And why do they think they're better than redneck fundies, exactly?)
posted by davy at 10:17 PM on December 8, 2006

"Heck, I just wish someone would explain the whole bevets thing to me. Need a hit from a clue-by-four."

Bevets is a known troll in evolution discussions. I think he first attained notoriety on Fark,but he can be found all over.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 11:01 PM on December 8, 2006

I like to think that ReFi is not so much on haitus as just updated Very Infrequently.

Suck it, haitus.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:01 PM on December 8, 2006

I like to think that ReFi is not so much on haitus as just updated Very Infrequently.

Who the fuck do you think you are? Memepool?
posted by loquacious at 6:19 AM on December 9, 2006

No, Memepool needs like five or six different people just to not update. I do it all by myself.
posted by cortex at 7:04 AM on December 9, 2006

This is the 10k meetup thread, right?
posted by arco at 10:45 AM on December 9, 2006

1,500 users signed up between November 18, 2004 and November 19, 2004. This means that matt made $7500 in a single day!

You're welcome, signed, a Day 2 $5.00 n00b. (I watched for months!) I feel like an old-timer, these days.
posted by Devils Rancher at 12:05 PM on December 9, 2006

This is the 10k meetup thread, right?

reprazent.
posted by fishfucker at 4:42 PM on December 9, 2006

Ah yes, November 18, 2004. The day the eternal September came to MetaFilter.
posted by ewagoner at 2:43 AM on December 11, 2006

ewagoner: "Ah yes, November 18, 2004. The day the eternal September came to MetaFilter."

Me, too!
posted by Plutor at 7:04 AM on December 11, 2006