Your Favorite Band/Album/Film/Book/Techie thing Sucks Filter June 3, 2007 6:12 PM   Subscribe

#1 Said. Can we come to some consensus with MetaReviews and get something rolling? I'm not trying to be a pesterbuggy, especially in light of all of the cool new things going on here, but a nice MetaReviews/Recommends would be teh awesome! (I'm posting this because I watched a film today that would probably be the first film that I would actually write about in more than a decade.)
posted by snsranch to Feature Requests at 6:12 PM (51 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

Reading through this bike recommendation question, I had a similar thought... pop.metafilter.?
posted by acro at 6:35 PM on June 3, 2007


So... what movie was it?
posted by one_bean at 6:38 PM on June 3, 2007


MetaReviews is something I'd actually contribute to. Mostly novels, some movies. I don't spend much time in Music, Jobs, or Projects, but Reviews I would love.
posted by Justinian at 6:54 PM on June 3, 2007


one_bean: I am so going to get in trouble for this and this.
posted by snsranch at 6:54 PM on June 3, 2007


It's a small budget Irish film about love and busking and music and well, love. It did well at Sundance but I don't think that it's eligible for the Oscars. I'll be writing about it in my blog-wait, hold that, I don't have one other than my friendly neighborhood community blog.
posted by snsranch at 7:07 PM on June 3, 2007


You can also check here for the music, which aside from the really great acting, was what made the movie. Yea, my favorite new band sucks. As good as I think this might be, it's not FPP material.
posted by snsranch at 7:31 PM on June 3, 2007


I'd probably review some films and/or music there, esp. if it would be kosher to reuse already written/already posted entries (I'm not sure how many times I could write about something without getting redundant anyway).

I'm really interested in hearing from TPTB on this; it sounds like a great idea....

Would it include only discrete and easily purchased items, like in-print films and CDs, or would it also include out of print items and indie/underground items? What about things not for sale? Things which are for sale but in vastly different manners (tabouli, dahl)? Events/attractions/businesses specific to certain locations and not of international (or even national) interest?
posted by Tuwa at 8:07 PM on June 3, 2007


I have another new site in the pipe for mefi, but a reviews one could certainly follow eventually. It's not the first thing on my mind at the moment, but it's not super hard to produce so it may happen this summer.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:09 PM on June 3, 2007


Wow, I see in the earlier thread I said "how will this be different from allconsuming?" and the obvious answer is "thumbs up/down is not a review."
posted by Tuwa at 8:09 PM on June 3, 2007


I have another new site in the pipe for mefi

You tease!
posted by carsonb at 8:42 PM on June 3, 2007


Your favorite new section of MetaFilter...
posted by Partial Law at 8:58 PM on June 3, 2007


I have another new site in the pipe for mefi

You tease!
posted by carsonb at 8:42 PM on June 3 [+] [!]


Well, no chit hombre, what is this new site of which you speak? Curiosity is killing this cat.

And, thank you for considering the Reviews/Recommendations idea!
posted by snsranch at 9:12 PM on June 3, 2007


I want this.
posted by smably at 9:12 PM on June 3, 2007


what is this new site of which you speak?

I'm betting/hoping its TravelFilter. If not, that gets my vote over this. I just used some of the old Maui threads before heading there a week ago.

Now I'm back and feel like there's several additions/corrections I'd like to add to the info there, to update the thread I used for someone wanting to go soon. But the thread is closed.
posted by vacapinta at 9:20 PM on June 3, 2007


It's Travelfilter. I've talked about it in several places, but me and pb have been bringing the parts together for it for the past couple weeks. We're hoping to crank out a first version this week that everyone can check out (with shitloads of updates and bugfixes and new features to follow).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:28 PM on June 3, 2007 [1 favorite]


btw, here's the entire structure of the site, sitting on my whiteboard.

It'll have four main categories, covering where to go, what to do, how to travel, and trip reports. Within the "what to do" area, jjg came up with five categories that cover every travel question to date: getting there, getting around, where to stay, where to eat and what to do. We poured through hundreds of questions from the travel category and could drop each one into those categories and sub-categories.

Trip reports will be basic one-page essays you can write about a place (with links to any photos you've taken), the other sections are pretty much ask mefi travel focused. There will be a location-aware search (like the one on jobs now) so you can plop in Maui or NYC and see all related questions in every category along with people's trip reports.

The backend is almost done, but I have a shitload of UI work to do this week, and I'll have to spend a day or two explaining it before I launch it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:34 PM on June 3, 2007 [1 favorite]


First Bobby getting popped and now this. Not sure if my head can take much more excitement in one evening.
posted by Razzle Bathbone at 10:31 PM on June 3, 2007


First Bobby getting popped and now this.

I normally get annoyed by people whining about spoilers, but: nice spoiler, fucknuckle. Goddamn you.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:53 PM on June 3, 2007


(assuming what I understood it to mean was correct...)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:54 PM on June 3, 2007


I am SOOO glad I had already watched the episode before reading this thread. Fucknozzle indeed. There's. Just. No. Need.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:53 PM on June 3, 2007


I love that whiteboard photo.
posted by ludwig_van at 11:54 PM on June 3, 2007


It's like watching an artist at work.
posted by ludwig_van at 11:54 PM on June 3, 2007


Travelfilter....yeah...+++A111+++*taps foot impatiently*
posted by adamvasco at 12:06 AM on June 4, 2007


Darn. I was hoping we'd get EatMe (for recipes and cooking tips) next.
posted by orange swan at 5:44 AM on June 4, 2007


What is spoiled by talking about Bobby being popped? RFK's been dead for almost forty years.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:39 AM on June 4, 2007


Seeing the whiteboard was utterly thrilling. Seems so...invasive and a bit pervy! Yeah - travel filter!
posted by typewriter at 6:41 AM on June 4, 2007


Cooking was next on the list of subsites, orange swan.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:48 AM on June 4, 2007


Yay! I eat far more than I travel, sadly.
posted by orange swan at 9:10 AM on June 4, 2007


Jesus no.
Look, Metafilter is not the only site on the internet— it doesn't have to do everything, especially not at the cost of doing some things poorly.
TravelFilter is good, and could be an interesting way of putting the community together in the real world. Reviews? Fuck, man, why? Because you want the opinion of some MeFite on an album? Well, either start a MeCha thread, an AskMe, or just email someone you think might know. But MetaFilter should not be a dessert topping and a floor wax! You may have to use other sites on the internet to get everything you need. THIS IS A FEATURE, NOT A BUG.

Focus on doing some things well, rather than doing everything in a way that's easily duplicated around the web.
I mean, reviews are the classic GYOBFW. Does that mean that Matt should start hosting blogs, so that we can all be username.metafilter.com?

Also, while cooking could be interesting, still why? What can we do that no one else can? Filter recipes? We aren't a magazine, and there are six million user-submitted recipe sites on the web already.
Which goes along with the very real constraint that each new subsite is going to require more moderation ("Orange Cucumber Kitten and Foreskin Stew"), and we've only just finally gotten around to matching demand with supply on that.

Is the ultimate goal to have MetaFilter replicate AOL? An unweildy behemoth of all things to all people?
posted by klangklangston at 9:28 AM on June 4, 2007 [1 favorite]


klangklangston, cooking could be really useful. It's one of the most popular tags on ask mefi and people love to swap recipies (I've baked a few things based on stuff I've seen in ask mefi to good results). Plus with stuff like ingredient lists and tags, you can just search for stuff with whatever's left in your fridge to see what you'd want to make. I think travel and cooking are very specific things everyone's really interested in and enjoys (according to ask mefi's load) and could work well with this specific audience.

Is the ultimate goal to have MetaFilter replicate AOL? An unweildy behemoth of all things to all people?

If that was my goal, there'd be twenty subsites with 50 more planned. I'd be spending my time building out "verticals" as fast as I could to maximize traffic and profits. That's not what is happening -- I'm very selectively doing one often-requested subsite every six months or so when I see a need and a novel way to fulfill it (ask, projects, music, jobs, etc)
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:57 AM on June 4, 2007


matthowie, travel looks great. The only thing I might suggest is a general category for travel matters that may not be related to a specific locations: a place to put general travel resources & links, misc. travel tips, packing, accoutrements, gadgets, etc.
posted by madamjujujive at 10:17 AM on June 4, 2007


madamjujujive, that is covered by the "travel smart" section -- how to get the best seat on a plane, what to pack, how to get a rental car faster, etc.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:45 AM on June 4, 2007


"klangklangston, cooking could be really useful. It's one of the most popular tags on ask mefi and people love to swap recipies (I've baked a few things based on stuff I've seen in ask mefi to good results). Plus with stuff like ingredient lists and tags, you can just search for stuff with whatever's left in your fridge to see what you'd want to make. I think travel and cooking are very specific things everyone's really interested in and enjoys (according to ask mefi's load) and could work well with this specific audience."

I see less utility in cooking than in travel, but I'm willing to concede that might be because I tend to have more trouble finding good travel info than cooking info.

And aside from routing traffic away from Ask, I still don't really see what the ultimate benefit is of having a new subsite for travel or cooking. Neither seem well-suited to the freeform content that makes up the blue or the green. And if the model is roughly the same as the green, well, why not keep it with the green? I think both jobs and music made more sense on their own (though music might be expanded to all user-generated art, were I in charge of taxonomies).

But reviews? Again, why not just have username blogs? The distance between that and a million subsites for what would essentially be specialized blog entries is pretty thin.

This isn't meant to be an "I hate all y'all" thing, and I didn't mean the AOL thing to be a direct attack on you, but I see a site that I like that does some things well, and I'm worried that a desire to come up with novel solutions to not-really-problems will dillute and worsen Metafilter as a whole. I hope you can understand that as a user concern.
posted by klangklangston at 12:03 PM on June 4, 2007


Can the cooking site have the much-requested Do I Eat This? category?
posted by yeti at 12:10 PM on June 4, 2007


Jesus no.

I agree - no MetaJesus.

However, I look forward to MetaTravel. I use a couple of travel sites (LP Thorn Tree, mostly), and I think the Matthowie approach could do it a lot better than it's being done.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 12:13 PM on June 4, 2007


I'm worried that a desire to come up with novel solutions to not-really-problems will dillute and worsen Metafilter as a whole. I hope you can understand that as a user concern.

I don't think anything I've done so far or plan to in the future would actually dilute or worsen the experience of mefi or ask mefi. Some things like Jobs were specifically designed to be zero interaction so that they were easy to maintain (pretty much ignore until someone emails you a problem) and the use of those sites is a total take it or leave it. Even if I add five new subsites in a year, you can choose to use them or not, and if not, it shouldn't have any affect on your current browsing habits. I don't think any of the proposed ideas add much to the admin workload and can be worked into the flagging system easily.

I'm not planning to do reviews anytime soon if you thought that was too weird of an idea for MeFi. And the parts of the site we have done have been fairly different. The travel site is sorta like ask mefi but in specializing it, it allows us to do more stuff with the data and add more info around it in a way that general questions can't. It'll be a model for if we ever do it again or not. If it works, cool, if not, no big deal.

For Cooking, it's kind of like music in my mind in that recipes are completely different than anything else on mefi and could benefit from a new section. I plan to have probably three sections of a general cooking site, one for recipes, one for Q&A, and one for blog posts about food. So it'd be parts of mefi and ask mefi along with recipes.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:11 PM on June 4, 2007




"So it'd be parts of mefi and ask mefi along with recipes."

Would it duplicate those areas or would those posts/questions be moved from MeFi/AskMe?
posted by klangklangston at 3:05 PM on June 4, 2007


klangklangston: I'm a fan of yours, but this doesn't make sense to me.

AOL? No. The beauty of the idea is that if I read a review or recommendation by you or miss lynnster or any other MeFite, it's going to have much deeper meaning than a review from "The Rooster Poot Gazette" or "Review".

Mainstream reviewers/writers are cogs in an industry, we're not. We either like something or we don't, and even though it's only my humble opinion, I'd rather hear from you.

Re: Travel Filter and EatMe, hell yea! I've been baking some awesome bread as a result of an AskMe.
posted by snsranch at 7:05 PM on June 4, 2007


*awaits onslaught of Metatalk threads starting 'Shouldn't this post be on TravelFilter instead?'*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:45 PM on June 4, 2007


Haha. Snsranch, I do write reviews for regular places, y'know? And the only real difference is that I swear less, as per style guide. Further, I have a blog (which I really should update more, and having people like you interested might provide the impetus), and you can always ask me!

Even more than that, places like ILXor.com (I Love Music) are a much better place to get recommendations than MetaFilter, where tastes tend to run toward petite-hipster, with a few exceptions. (Hey, I like Arcade Fire too, I just don't recommend them as a musical panacea).

And Stav brings up something else that I was worried about— I like seeing the travel and food questions as part of the regular mix, just like I like seeing the travel and food posts as part of the regular mix. I don't want another site to keep track of when I already get what I want through existing channels. My preference would be for more robust tagged sorting, allowing users to create their own TraFi, rather than segregating out the rest of the data.

But I'm also a guy who just alphabetizes all of my albums, rather than sorting by genre or any other Nick Harcort bullshit.
posted by klangklangston at 8:02 AM on June 5, 2007


Hey, I like Arcade Fire too

Welly welly well, look who's hopped on the ol' bandwagon!
posted by ludwig_van at 10:50 AM on June 5, 2007


Heh. I still think they're over-rated, but my roommate was playing Neon Bible a fair amount right before I moved, and I was getting into it.
And the glowing NYT piece on the making of it was so utter bullshit that it was almost unfathomable.
posted by klangklangston at 11:26 AM on June 5, 2007


Yeah, well, Funeral is way better anyway.
posted by ludwig_van at 11:35 AM on June 5, 2007


Haven't listened to Neon Bible enough to decide.
posted by klangklangston at 12:04 PM on June 5, 2007


Jury's still out on Neon Bible for me, but "mirror mirror on the wall / tell me where the bombs will fall" is an amazingly daft couplet. That said, it took me from when Said the Gramophone first posted Arcade Fire to sometime last month before I began to like it.
posted by Tuwa at 12:18 PM on June 5, 2007


("it" being Funeral, of course)
posted by Tuwa at 12:19 PM on June 5, 2007


I like Neon Bible, but it's filled with daft couplets. It did take me a bunch of listens to make up my mind, but Funeral is head and shoulders above NB.
posted by ludwig_van at 1:23 PM on June 5, 2007


I tend to ignore the lyrics, since even a fair amount of Funeral seemed pretentious or stupid.
posted by klangklangston at 3:54 PM on June 5, 2007


klangklangston: I definitely agree with you on stavros' point. It would be a shame to see some of the meat and potatoes shift into their own sub-sites. Even MetaFilter Music is a slow grower, but I think that's the point, especially if I try to see it through Matt's eyes.

As those sub-sites emerge and grow fan bases then MetaFilter grows as a whole; that's good biz for #1. But it's good for us too, as those resources will grow and give us more places to talk shit and eff with people and/or just enjoy them.

Now, if you don't mind, pimp that blog of yours. I will check it out, as I'm sure others will too.
posted by snsranch at 5:21 PM on June 5, 2007


Oh no! Let me get around to adding content to it again! (It's linked through my profile).
posted by klangklangston at 5:54 PM on June 5, 2007


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