Comments on: Just a curious question

Just a curious question

SpacemanStix — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:39:11 -0800

Dear mathowie, jessamyn, and cortex: how many hours do you commit to keeping MeFi afloat? Is it a huge time commitment, not a big deal, or somewhere in the middle? It seems like a lot to juggle between three people. True? And if so, what takes up most of your time?

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:42:14 -0800

1. all of them.
2. all of the above.
3. yes.
4. METAFUCKINGTALK.

ahem. I'm sure the other mods will be around shortly.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:46:36 -0800

I look at the website during all waking hours. I probably spend half my waking hours doing admin/mod stuff like checking new posts for spamminess, emailing people their forgotten usernames, tending the flag pile, etc.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:55:25 -0800

I posted a graph a couple months ago showing the most active admin commenting times by hour-of-day. That was before the infodump, though. I bet I could make it better, now.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:56:53 -0800

METAFUCKINGTALK.

There's a section where we talk about fucking? How long have you been keeping this from me?

By: dersins

dersins — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:59:04 -0800

It seems like a lot to juggle between three people.

Poor pb. The forgotten employee.

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:59:06 -0800

Is it a huge time commitment, not a big deal, or somewhere in the middle?

Yes, depending on the day.

I've heard Matt and Jess describe the job as great because you only have to work like ten or fifteen minutes out of the hour—but that that goes for every waking hour of the day. Which is a pretty solid description.

Really, it's pretty uneven. Some days I check in once every hour or half-hour or so and there's just nothing to worry about—no new flags, metatalk is quiet, not much email coming in. Some days it's heavier than heck and we end up deleting four threads and cleaning up after a pile of different messes in the green and the blue and fielding complaints or inquiries via the contact form and explaining admin reasoning over here. There's no Normal Day, really, and what takes up most of my time is really a shifting aggregate.

By: timeistight

timeistight — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:59:14 -0800

METAFUCKINGTALK

Really? More than spammer patrol? More than fan club discipline? More than AskMe humour eradication?

I would have thought MetTalk was more or less self-maintaining.

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:00:04 -0800

Poor pb. The forgotten employee.

We lock him in the bathroom and make him code. His luck or his loss, but he's not really on the front lines administratively, which is a really nice thing because it means he can get productive work done.

By: dersins

dersins — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:03:20 -0800

We lock him in the bathroom and make him code

But you let him out play occasionally.

Or maybe he just breaks down the door when there's Sexy Japanese Anime Girls to delete.

iykim.

aityd.

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:03:29 -0800

I bet I could make it better, now.

Oh, please do. That'd be neat. If I were to do a behind-the-scenes complement to that, I'd love to pit our administrative footprints—when we made deletions, notes, sent mail, etc—against commenting, though. I'd bet that while the two average curves would look similar during daytime hours, there'd be some interesting discrepencies—days when both commenting and admin stuff spike (from, say, a big metatalk thread driven by a big mess) vs. days when commenting dips while admin spikes (from just a bunch of busy little messes that keep us from chilling out and just enjoying the site in comment threads).

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:14:18 -0800

Really? More than spammer patrol? More than fan club discipline? More than AskMe humour eradication?

Spammer patrol tends to manifest in brief, bright flashes of pain: we spend ten or twenty minutes (give or take, depending on the cleverness of the spammer) digging to establish a connection, and then it's delete and ban (or, sometimes, if things seem to check out despite pushing some buttons, shrug and keep an eye on).

It doesn't usually take a whole lot of time to deal with the askme flag queue; barring a real mess of a question (hardly rare, but not a ten-a-day M-F occurrence), cleanup is usually quick enough. We need to check in often, though, and on a heavy week when everyone and their uncle is having a fuckaround on the green it can be a real pain in the ass to keep up with, but overall they're still fairly self-contained make-it-better issues: you fix it and it's done and that's that. Unless someone posts a...

Metatalk thread. And a thread keeps going, and is explicitly interactive in a way that most admin stuff isn't, and is really visible to boot, so it tends to require more attention over the long haul and require more patience to deal with folks being kind of publicly antagonistic—to us, to other users, etc—in a way that eats up a lot more energy and diplomatic capacity than discrete decide-and-fix stuff behind the scenes. Even email, where upset people sometimes are a lot more free with their invective or assertions than even an angry metatalk callout, are in a way a lot less trouble and stress because at least it's just between us and whoever is writing, without a big audience along for the ride.

So...yeah. I love it to death, I think it's a vital part of what makes Metafilter work, but I kind of have to agree with Jessamyn that Metatalk is also (if partly by necessity) kind of the daddy of administrative time/energy drains on a busy week.

By: xorry

xorry — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:19:42 -0800

Oh to imagine a world without admins...

One of the first things that would happen is that the power would go off. A lot of our power comes out of nuclear or coal-fired plants that have automatic fail-safe switches to make sure that they don't go out of control if no humans are monitoring their systems. Once the power goes off, the pumps stop working. Once the pumps stop working, the tubes start filling with water. Within 48 hours you're going to have a lot of flooding in Metafilter. Some of this would be visible on the surface. You might have some sewers overflowing. Those sewers would very quickly become clogged with debris—in the beginning the innumerable plastic bags that are blowing around the city and later, if nobody is trimming the hedges in the parks, you're going to have leaf litter clogging up the sewers.

ripped shamelessly from

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:20:35 -0800

because it means he can get productive work done

We're not productive work?!

By: Dr. Curare

Dr. Curare — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:24:49 -0800

reproductive work you are

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:25:15 -0800

Well, if you can provide another 100K in funding we can give you an executive productive work credit.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:29:35 -0800

Brandon, I assumed we were all here to avoid productivity.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:32:12 -0800

Here you go:

kkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkk
kkkkkkkkkk

I'd like a sans serif font please, something modern.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:41:41 -0800

That's a lot of strikeouts, dude.

By: PeterMcDermott

PeterMcDermott — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:46:07 -0800

Strikeouts? I thought it was a gathering of the Metafilter Klavern.

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:47:37 -0800

Jess, Matt and Cortex are my heroes. They devote ungodly amounts of time to making something that I love wonderful. I know it has become a job and they make money and all that cool stuff. No matter, they rock, rock, rock. (and yes detractors, I have had my issues over the years with their moderation, but that does nothing to detract from the admiration and respect which I have for all of them. It is a very, very, very hard job, in part because we are a very demanding audience. They produce and somehow retain their good humor.)<>

By: Plutor

Plutor — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:47:52 -0800

cortex: "I bet I could make it better, now.

Oh, please do. That'd be neat."

There you go. That's hardly a big URL at all. What time zone is the infodump in? PST, I assume?

By: Plutor

Plutor — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:48:22 -0800

That's since midnight Jan 1, 2008.

By: cobaltnine

cobaltnine — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:49:02 -0800

From here it looks like someone found a whole bunch of kobolds. Which will definitely take up admin time, but not as much as a whole bunch of 'T's.

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:57:35 -0800

There you go.

Gorgeous, laddie. And wow, I love the bracketing on my comments at 7-7:30am and 4-4:30. That's my dayjob commute. Note also that the overall comment level is at a sustained high between those marks.

And yeah, PST.

From here it looks like someone found a whole bunch of kobolds.

Word.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:07:33 -0800

Yeah now that I'm not in a coffee shop en route home from ROFLcon, I'll elaborate...

Those really long MeTa threads that happen? We read every comment. Around about comment 800 when someone says "Hey mods, what about THIS edge case?" we usually reply. AskMe is usually quick but constant, exactly like cortex said, and a lot of the rest of it is just sort of vigilance, being around to keep an eye on stuff that looks sketchy, investigate a self-linky looking thing and giving the other mods a heads up when stuff looks weird. We also do a lot of prosaic link/post/comment/typo correction and back and forth email/MeMail with users about various topics, to say nothing of just interacting with the site as regular old folk, to the extent that we can do that. People contact me via email, MeMail, chat, facebook, phone (rarely) and regular old f2f. We don't have any form letters (except when we were doing the backtagging project) everything's real communication.

Often the weirdest time-consumers are people who email and say "hey can you delete my comment in the tiger thread? I've rethought my position." or something and then we have to track down who the user is by their email address, find out wtf thread they're talking about and then what comment and then delete it, if we even can by that point. No real hassle, but multiply it by four or five in a busy day and there's 20 minutes gone right there.

I know that I personally take a lot of responsibility for AskMe, so I try to at least read all the questions and also the comments in any thread that has a lot of activity or a lot of flags. I also post a lot of the sidebar mentions, keep track of favorite stuff for podcasts, and listen to Every Single Music Track. The podcast alone is a fair chunk of work, an hour or two to record and then mathowie spends some serious time editing and polishing it. I make sure the faq is up to date. We all beta test new feature ideas [usually] and bump bugs over to pb to wrassle with and there's a lot of back and forth that happens doing this, like figuring out why some people were still getting the MeFi "massage" message well after the site was back up, or debugging the image uploader issues, post-upgrade.

We all spend a goodly amount of time also bringing each other up to date on what we've been up to. We can sort of follow each other's admin trail but if something needs communicating we have a little back channel email about who is going to be offline when (outside of normal offline times) and what may need looking after if we're tagging someone else in. I don't know if I'd call it exactly a "huge" time commitment because with few exceptions we can fit it around other fun things and I think of huge committments as things that squeeze out what you'd rather be doing. I like doing this.

By: grouse

grouse — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:08:45 -0800

It looks like cortex is the only admin who regularly comments overnight. So if you want to post something spammy, be sure to do it when you know cortex will be offline for a few days (like that happens).

By: loiseau

loiseau — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:09:50 -0800

Y'all, do you ever get people who are so hell-bent on being assholes that they just sign up again once they're banned and continue what they were doing? Or does the $5 fee prevent that?

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:22:18 -0800

Those really long MeTa threads that happen? We read every comment.

Is this a bad time to point out that I'm drunk half the time?

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:27:17 -0800

It looks like cortex is the only admin who regularly comments overnight.

What happens is that every few weeks give or take The Harvey Girls will play a show and so I get home at 1 or 2 in the morning and check things out; and then every once in a while I'll wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning because I need a drink of water or its trash day and the garbage truck needs a new muffler or whatever and then I blear at the site just in case.

And every once in a while there's some shit post that needs deleting, and I feel like, okay, that justifies it.

Plus I have a script that posts "butts lol" in random threads between 1 and 5 in the morning, just to keep people guessing.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:44:23 -0800

1. DTMFA
2. This will/will not wendell
3. $20, same as in town
4. SLBOE-gin fizzy
5. butts lol

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:44:34 -0800

We all spend a goodly amount of time also bringing each other up to date on what we've been up to. We can sort of follow each other's admin trail but if something needs communicating we have a little back channel email about who is going to be offline when (outside of normal offline times) and what may need looking after if we're tagging someone else in. I don't know if I'd call it exactly a "huge" time commitment because with few exceptions we can fit it around other fun things and I think of huge committments as things that squeeze out what you'd rather be doing. I like doing this.

You see. This sort of commitment is what I was talking about. It really is a big commitment, even though they try to find ways to work it into their daily surf. Some of us, me, spend inordinate amounts of time on the site, but it pales in comparison to what Matt, Jess and Cortex do n monitoring every thread, editing posts, deleting spam, etc., etc. God smiles on you all, and if not that, we all do.

And Cortex, my funny, funny mod. I know you are probably still steamed at me for things, but if you haven't noticed it, I love you a lot. You have made such great improvements to the site. You can be overly silly, but, mostly I love it. The only time I don't is when you use your uber humor to embarrass some noob on a deletion reason. I am not complaining about your "shut up in AskMe" emails. Mostly, you were right.

The real bottom line here is Matt's commitment to minimal moderation. Encourage a committed and intelligent community and allow them to moderate themselves. There is a reason this place is so special. There are oldsters, youngsters, and in betweens, hipsters and nerds, moms and dads, Christians and atheists, etc., nevertheless, the common theme of most members is an intelligent discourse. When you throw in fun and intelligence, there is no compare. It's an Ivy League level site, without the snotty selection process.

So, I am a fan of the eggheads that make this place so much fun and who get me to think. That is what is most fun. I come to MeFi and it engages my brain in a way that very few other sites on the internets can do. It's the mix of interest, intelligence and conversation. Many a thread here has been the equivalent of a precept group in college - very erudite participants give their take on culturally significant texts etc. How cool is that? We are blessed with intelligence and insight which runs very, very deep.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:44:57 -0800

Whoops, there were only 4 of them originally. Don't know where that last one came from.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:51:24 -0800

The real bottom line here is Matt's commitment to minimal moderation. Encourage a committed and intelligent community and allow them to moderate themselves.

The mods do a great job, but compared to any other large community out there, the moderation is not "minimal." MeFi is distinguished by an unusually large amount of moderation.

By: amyms

amyms — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:02:28 -0800

We also do a lot of prosaic link/post/comment/typo correction and back and forth email/MeMail with users

As someone who has ocassionally had to email the admins to fix linking and typo errors in my FPPs, I just wanted to jump in and say that I am always so impressed with how quickly they respond (especially Jessamyn). And they're always very warm and friendly even in the briefest of interactions.

You guys/gal go above and beyond the call of duty in dealing with a very eclectic and unpredictable group of people. Metafilter's moderation balance is one of the things that make it such a great place to be.

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:03:40 -0800

It seems like a lot to juggle between three people.

Is this another attempt to get Matt to name additional moderators?

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:07:30 -0800

I think it's a request for juggling videos. Which, I mean, you know, go crazy.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:22:51 -0800

SLBOE-gin fizzy

Do it till you're dizzy...

By: yhbc

yhbc — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:23:29 -0800

I think the scariest thing is how much time Matt spent on it all by his lonesome (and not getting paid for it) before there were three mods.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again; you all do great stuff and consistently with both humor and perspective. Thanks.

By: Skorgu

Skorgu — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:26:28 -0800

I hate this meme so much but:

As someone who has ocassionally had to email the admins to fix linking and typo errors in my FPPs, I just wanted to jump in and say that I am always so impressed with how quickly they respond (especially Jessamyn). And they're always very warm and friendly even in the briefest of interactions.

QFT, every word.

Why does "preview" take you to #comment? Shouldn't it take you to, you know, the preview?

By: yhbc

yhbc — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:26:40 -0800

* eyes mist over *

So yeah, anyone else remember that time Matt went away for a week's vacation and didn't tell anyone about it? And we all realized he was gone after about the third day?

By: HotPatatta

HotPatatta — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:37:40 -0800

By: dg

dg — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:45:47 -0800

xorry: "Oh to imagine a world without admins...
You might have some sewers overflowing... "

That's not an overflowing sewer, it's MetaTalk.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:09:21 -0800

they used to be hella busy, what with rebooting the server and deleting my comments. lately though, the server hasn't needed nearly as much rebooting.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:38:30 -0800

I've heard Matt and Jess describe the job as great because you only have to work like ten or fifteen minutes out of the hour

Ironically, I work forty-five to fifty minutes out of the hour, and surf MeFi the rest of the time. So I think I could fit the admin job in nicely.

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:46:43 -0800

METAFUCKINGTALK.

There's a section where we talk about fucking? How long have you been keeping this from me?

What, you've never been to The Pink?

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:22:33 -0800

I think it's a very lucky combination of the right users and the right mods just happening to converge in the same tubespace. All these diverse types making something unique; the whole being the sum of the parts or something like that--I'm glad I found it, and I'm proud of the crew for running the ship so well, ensuring that our cruise is "crescent fresh." WOO! high five! anyone? They're free! C'mon, feel th' love people! don't leave me hangin'...

By: amyms

amyms — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:25:56 -0800

*would give not_on_display a high-five if she knew what "crescent fresh" meant*

By: homunculus

homunculus — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:42:01 -0800

FREE pb!

By: owhydididoit

owhydididoit — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:58:00 -0800

*gives clueless high-five*

By: amyms

amyms — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:19:12 -0800

I'm glad I'm not the only one, ohwhydididoit. Sheesh, he hasn't been back to explain it to us yet. Doesn't anyone read their "Recent Activity" tab?

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:21:52 -0800

*would give not_on_display a high-five if she knew what "crescent fresh" meant*

"Crescent Fresh" explained. In song. Now how 'bout that high five! WOO!
MOAR BONG HITS amirite?

By: wendell

wendell — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:34:14 -0800

I wonder if the administrative panel has a kind of "in-joke" sensor, because I'm sure any time somebody posts a "this will not myname" comment it's gotta be worth about 3-4 flags in "you better keep an eye on this thread" awareness... Or am I just wishful thinking that myname generates a Mefi Mod Alarm?

What's really strange is that wendell is not my birth name, but a pen-name/stage-name I've used since 1975, and I try hard to keep my "check signing" name off the internet. So recently, when I did a post about somebody else who has THAT first name, it felt really really weird. But I digress.

By: amyms

amyms — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:43:27 -0800

not_on_display said: "Crescent Fresh" explained. In song. Now how 'bout that high five! WOO!
MOAR BONG HITS amirite?

No high-five for you, young man! Drugs are bad, mmkay?

By: dersins

dersins — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:50:21 -0800

FREE pb!

That's a much better deal than on the London exchange.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:53:01 -0800

It is in long appreciation of all of these things that make try to not antagonize our mods. At least not intentionally.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to lay off easy on the rest of you deck-sucking bilge-barnacles!

By: krautland

krautland — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:47:04 -0800

4. METAFUCKINGTALK.

and I thought talk was just a fucking wankfest...

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:49:23 -0800

^No high-five for you, young man! Drugs are bad, mmkay?

Brand New Day? (checks clock) High Five?
C'mon, everyone needs hugs, not drugs!
Dude, I'd hit it!
(checking clock again) HIGH FIVE!

By: Plutor

Plutor — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:13:42 -0800

wendell: "I wonder if the administrative panel has a kind of "in-joke" sensor, because I'm sure any time somebody posts a "this will not myname" comment it's gotta be worth about 3-4 flags in "you better keep an eye on this thread" awareness..."

This will not Plutor? That doesn't even make sense..

By: grouse

grouse — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:17:07 -0800

I will grouse.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:20:29 -0800

Quit your blatching.

By: grouse

grouse — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:22:08 -0800

I've been unfairly branded!

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:55:14 -0800

Now is as good a time as any to mention something I've been wanting to say for a while. Because I work here, with my odd flexible schedule, and this huge crowd of bright and shiny nerds [and the rest of youse] it also lets me do the other things I do in my life like helping the little libraries of Central Vermont with their tech support issues, teaching email to old people, and travelling around the world teaching librarians why they shouldn't be afraid of computers. This would literally be impossible if I had a "straight" job and unaffordable otherwise.

Add to this that I think AskMe is one of the best proof of concept reference-via-hive-mind sites out there and a terrific living, breathing example of how to expand our idea of "what a library does" to "what people can do, given some structure and guidance and community" and I just wake up pleased about it pretty much every day. We should all be so lucky. Matt really took all the risks and the early slogging to get this all going -- at the ROFLcon panel someone asked him how long he did the site himself before it started making a profit and he was like "um, six years" and everyone laughed like hell because what sort of a business model is THAT -- and cortex and I both feel enriched (if overtired sometimes) getting to help out and, with pb, helping shape the site moving forward.

Sorry to derail your lovely moon music. Man this is good coffee.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:06:20 -0800

listen to Every Single Music Track

OK, now that's just nuts. If someone sings about Celebrities Who Shall Not Be Named or threatens elected officials, I'm sure you'll get an e-mail about it. Sleep in a little more and just listen to the tracks used on the podcast; that's what I do. (Well, except for the sleeping-in part. With cats, that's not an option.)

Also, you guys are great. Thanks for all the hard work and putting up with us crazed gibbering monkeyfolk.

By: readery

readery — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:56:55 -0800

Thanks for the moderation - however you do it, I appreciate it.

I am averse adding more contentious behavior to my life, but it seems many others do not have enough and turn to the internet to fill that void. When threads turn to willful misinterpretation vs enraged chip-on-shoulder-posturing, it is nice to know that peer pressure with moderator backing will cool things off.

Also - can someone post a SYTL that is funny? It's been a while. Is there a baby laughing or animal falling off something to momentarily lighten my day?

Did enjoy the crescent-fresh, thanks n_o_d.

By: quin

quin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:19:21 -0800

FREE pb!

Someone give me a hand here, there is all this lead laying around and they aren't even charging for it!

So I have a use for a large quantity of lead. So what? I mean, it's not like I'm building a reactor in my basement or anything...

*goes back to scraping radium paint off of old clocks*

What?

By: quin

quin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:21:10 -0800

As someone who has ocassionally had to email the admins to fix linking and typo errors in my FPPs, I just wanted to jump in and say that I am always so impressed with how quickly they respond

I'd like to follow this up with a big thanks for all the times they've deleted double comments when my computer freaks out, or I fat finger hitting that 'Post Comment' button.

By: ODiV

ODiV — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:00:19 -0800

Often the weirdest time-consumers are people who email and say "hey can you delete my comment in the tiger thread? I've rethought my position."

That seems a bit odd. I didn't realize that people could request to have their comments deleted. I vote that you guys don't do this anymore (okay, so I don't get a vote, and you probably don't do it much anyway). If someone has rethought their position it would be more valuable to us to have a comment explaining just that. The permanence of comments (non-guideline breaking comments at least) is one of the things I value here.

By: Lynsey

Lynsey — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:18:42 -0800

Thanks for all that you do, quadrumvirate!

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:39:03 -0800

I didn't realize that people could request to have their comments deleted.

My example was bad. Usually they'll say "wow I was being a total dick and now I am embarassed about it" and if it was pretty recent and hasn't already made a dent in the thread [been replied to, etc] we'll oblige. Doesn't happen often. The only other situation that happens where someone will request a comment deleted is if it's got personal information in it that, upon reflection, they'd decided would be better off not being on MeFi.

By: SpacemanStix

SpacemanStix — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:16:57 -0800

Yes, thanks for all your hard work. I've only been onboard for a few months now as a member, but during that time it's been consistently one of the best place (if not the best) to interact with other people on the internet. One thing I've consistently appreciated is the feeling that one can contribute in a significant way while receiving respect, and without simply becoming an impersonal name/number that gets lost in the crowd. (disclaimer here about any downsides, petty arguments, etc., that are a reality of any community, online or off.)

Thanks for all the moderators do to make this a possibility. It's much appreciated.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:29:26 -0800

If this comment gets 500 favorites, I will ask jessamyn to delete it.

By: quin

quin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:36:03 -0800

If this comment gets 500 favorites, I will ask that no one delete it. Because, hey! 500 favorites!

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:56:00 -0800

How do I trade favorites in for money again?

By: pjern

pjern — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:08:17 -0800

How do I trade favorites in for money again?

You can't. There is a finite number of Favorites in the Metafilter database, and if they don't get recycled, we'll run out of them soon.

We came close to peak Favorites when whatshisname started that "I'll close my account if I get 500 favorites" stuff. It's irresponsible behavior in the Metafilter ecology.

All right-thinking people should be recycling their Favorites to make them available for re-use. That post you favorited two years ago because "Someday I'll come back to read this when I have more time". Forget it. You are never going to do it. Go back right now and recycle that favorite. Same for the AskMe post about what digital camera someone wanted to buy in 2004. The camera, the advice, and the post are all obsolete now.

Get with it, people!

By: y2karl

y2karl — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:17:31 -0800

More than fan club discipline?

The first rule of moderator fan club is you don't talk about moderator fan club. You just write the most insipid sycophantic suck up posts and kiss ass comments of which you can possibly think--

Oh, I just don't know how you do it! Thanks a million zillion gabillion!! We are so not worthy!!!

Or so the craven evidence would suggest....

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:20:16 -0800

If this comment gets 500 favorites, I will ask Jessamyn to delete it.

If this account gets 10,000 favorites before the end of 2008, I will disable it and not create another.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:24:23 -0800

^ArtW: It's my understanding you can only trade favorites in for gewgaws, knick-knacks, or pats on the back, but I'm not sure. MeMail the Cabal for cryptic details.

By: [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST]

[NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:25:31 -0800

I had a dream this morning in which I took a sabbatical to visit the MetaFilter Headquarters (which was really just Matt's house). On the day I arrived, there had been a cybercrime at a nearby museum in which LED throwies had been secretly positioned to change the museum's facade into a giant Lite-Brite image of forks twirling spaghetti into bites. The mods had been asked to report to the scene of the crime to help crack the case. Matt was leaving for the museum when I arrived at HQ, and I asked if I could tag along to take some pictures. "You'd better stay here," he said, eyeing me with some suspicion as if my arrival coincided with the crime somehow. I waited back at the house with PB.

Later Matt reappeared with Cortex and Jessamyn. I told Jessamyn, "I can't believe we're meeting in person under such strange circumstances," and she replied, "Do I look a lot different than you thought I would?" And I realized she looked nothing like any of her pictures. Everyone seemed pretty confused as to what I was doing hanging around. I became self-conscious about it, thinking they were still irritated with me over the whole hermitosis-disabling debacle, and determined to make it up to them somehow, I went into the guest room and changed into a much nicer outfit.

*Disclaimer: I had two wisdom teeth out this week and am on all the vicodin I can get my hands on.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:26:42 -0800

^Eideteker: Always wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle.

By: cowbellemoo

cowbellemoo — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:29:08 -0800

I am a better person for having gained a passion for civil interaction and helpfulness through AskMe.

/hug

By: Tehanu

Tehanu — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:08:49 -0800

Dude, I'd hit it!

Does it count it he meant a bong?

By: CitizenD

CitizenD — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:31:14 -0800

wait, there's a guf for mefi favorites?

that's gonna piss off some archangel or someone.

just sayin'.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:42:32 -0800

Nukes would probably have a better rap if the majority of them weren't just scams for production of bomb material. I understand theres some much better modern designs available, but that their less convenient for that sort of thing and so unlikely to be used.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:43:02 -0800

...wrong thread...

By: dg

dg — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:03:35 -0800

jessamyn: "Matt really took all the risks and the early slogging to get this all going -- at the ROFLcon panel someone asked him how long he did the site himself before it started making a profit and he was like "um, six years" and everyone laughed like hell because what sort of a business model is THAT ..."
Something that a lot of people often forget - sure, the site would be nothing special without the community aspect that (despite what the grouches say) has made MetaFilter what it is today, but it would be nothing without the support of mathowie over all those years.

It will be even better once he floats it and we get our share issue in accordance with how long we've been active participants here, of course.

By: misha

misha — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:19:59 -0800

Ooh, sorry, dg, but that offer only applies to members in the states.