May this burning pony flesh be pleasing unto the nostrils of the MODS July 28, 2011 2:49 PM   Subscribe

And he came to the place which the MODS had told him of; and Troll built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound his 12 ponies, and laid them on the altar upon the wood.

1. Favorites Visible on FP: Show an FPP’s favorites count on the main page. It would look like so: posted by troll at 11:06 - 6 comments (6 new) [6 favorites +].

2. AskeMe OP Reply Count: If an AskMe OP comments in their post, modify the main page description like so: posted by troll to technology at 13:37 - 73 answers (3 new) 3 replies by troll [1 favorite +]. (Example includes pony #1). OPs will often reply to clarify the post, which can be relevant to potential answerers.

3. Ghost Posts: Append (very small) buttons to all posts (comments and FPPs) that functions to display them above the text field and place the curser within the field. This makes it easier to refer to a body of text when replying to it, rather than having to scroll up the thread. If another button is clicked after text has been entered into the field, the Ghost Post is replaced but the text remains.

4. Recent Activity Comment Button: Put a button titled Comment underneath each thread in the Recent Activity section. It would link to the text field of the thread. Clicking the most recent comment currently serves a similar purpose.

5. Return Browser to Comment: After a comment is posted, return the browser to the comment itself instead of the bottom of the page.

6. Isolate status.meta: Put the subsite status.metafiler.com on a separate, geographically isolated server. This allows for emergency updates in the case of DDOS attacks, hacks, Chthulu, and acts of Gaia. (This pony might be unclean - I’m no technician).

7. Pedant Retro-Proofer: Allow users to make very limited word substitutions to their comments. The PR-P pulls from a lexicon of commonly misused heterographs, articles, tenses, spellings, etc. If a word is listed it can be switched to a short-list of corresponding words. Examples: there, their, they’re; a, an, the; that, those, this, these; its, it's; in, on; where, were, we're; might, may; e.g., i.e.; to, too, two; can, will, would, could, should. I’m sure we have a linguist in the crowd (iamkimiam, I’m looking at you) who can build the lexicon. It’s hard to abuse. It saves the mods time. Edited comments would have a small icon (e.g. an asterisk) that could be clicked to see the original version. The PR-P could be limited by time or some arbitrary number of editable words per word-count. (This pony might also be unclean – I’m no linguist).

8. BetaFilter: Open a new subsite called BetaFilter. The clear choice of color is construction site safety orange. It would itself have 'subsites' in the templates of existing subsites and act as a testing ground for new features (evolve or die, amirite?). We could finally use the fireplace without fear of burning down the house. BeFi (pronounced bifi despite the fact that MeFi is pronounced mifaɪ) would be invisible to nonmembers. To prevent the userbase from shifting to the orange, only mods could post FPPs.

9. Editor’s Notes: Corrective ed. notes for false information in FPPs that don’t warrant deletion. The format could be in the style of ‘deleted for the following reason’ appendages. A recent case.

10. ’Embedding Disabled’ Detector: Detects when embedding is disabled for YT videos on preview.

11. Hover Images: Similar to embedded YT videos. Makes any direct link to an image hoverable.

12. Anonymous Answers: Works identically to anonymous questions. Advice can be embarrassing, whether giving or receiving.

These ponies were culled from a much larger herd. I ate the rest.
posted by troll to Feature Requests at 2:49 PM (98 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite

1. Not likely, promoting favorites more than they are already is something I can't see us doing
2. I am not opposed to this in theory
3. I don't understand this
4. No
5. I thought this already worked like htis, no?
6. I think this is already like this, no? Twitter seems to work for this lately.
7. We fight about edit window stuff all the time, this is an ongoing open topic
8. I have wanted an orange site since forever, but I think this is a tough sell. Most importantly, we're not continually adding new stuff, this site sort of evolves slowly and maybe more organically than something like that would allow.
9. We'll add these if it's egregious enough, otherwise we expect people to sort of read along. We've been discussing ways of more clearly machine-linking MeTa's that go along with MeFi posts.
10. I seem to recall this is non-trivial but it's come up before
11. Greasemonkey scripts do this, we will not be building this
12. We talk about this a lot and it's one of the things on the short "we should find a way to do this someday" list

Anything else?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:55 PM on July 28, 2011 [6 favorites]


All these ponies, we're going to need Hercules to clean up the stables #12labors #augeanstables #amirite
posted by 2bucksplus at 2:56 PM on July 28, 2011 [5 favorites]


Some glue factory owners are already rubbing their hands over this list...
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:58 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


:O

you plan to set these innocent ponies on fire?
posted by elizardbits at 2:59 PM on July 28, 2011 [4 favorites]


Five is browser dependent. On my machine, firefox does it and safari doesn't.
posted by klangklangston at 2:59 PM on July 28, 2011


For #3, are you talking about repeating the OP somewhere in the vicinity of the comment box? If so, that isn't a huge deal, but it may very well have the less-than-awesome effect of making it easier to reply to a thread without having actually read any other comments. (If not, I have no idea what you're talking about.)
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:01 PM on July 28, 2011


(And by "not a huge deal" I mean "not a massive conceptual change" - I have no earthly idea about the tech side of anything.)
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:03 PM on July 28, 2011


Suggesting so many features in one post makes it difficult to discuss them. We have discussed many of these in the past and the answers probably haven't changed. You might take some time to go through the MetaTalk archives by searching for things like "YouTube embed".

Having said that, here are a few thoughts:

1. MetaFilter isn't a contest, and having more visible numbers on the front page would make it seem like a scoreboard. We want to steer clear of that.

2. Again, numbers on the front pages are problematic. There could be some gaming here to draw attention to a post.

3. That sounds like a job for a quote script. We were just discussing this a few posts down. You might take a look through that thread and see what the discussion was like.

4. Not sure why this is better than clicking the most comment? A little clearer maybe?

5. Can you elaborate on why? Isn't it functionally the same thing?

6. True, if we're under DNS attack it might be a problem. But the status blog is on a separate service on separate servers in a separate facility.

7. There's a whole sub-genre of MetaTalk devoted to discussing Editing.

8. Any official "testing" site set up by us is a de facto real site set up by us. There's no distinction between a site we run and a site we "run". If we're going to make a site we make a site.

9. Comments serve this purpose much of the time. True that you have to read the thread, but read the thread.

10. Yeah, this a non-trivial addition. MetaFilter stores text-blobs, not discrete links. So extracting those links and performing actions on them (such as YouTube API calls) is not trivial. The results of those API calls would be need to be stored, associated with the links, and then re-checked periodically.

11. Nah.

12. We've discussed this at length as well. We haven't found a solution that protects anonymity enough.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:04 PM on July 28, 2011 [3 favorites]


Re: Ghost Posts - you could 1) copy the text into the reply field and delete the text when done, or 2) use a bookmarklet to quote text and link back to the comment in question.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:04 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


Anon answers would be useful.
posted by bystander at 3:04 PM on July 28, 2011 [5 favorites]


I think this was longer than AngryJaneDoe's Manifesta this morning.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 3:04 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


#sorite
posted by Aizkolari at 3:05 PM on July 28, 2011


Fuck I am slow.
posted by Aizkolari at 3:07 PM on July 28, 2011


Anon answers would be useful.

Thread level pseudonymous answers even more so, then you can have an anonymous conversation but know it's more likely the same person throughout. Also, not get confused with multiple anonymous. This could also allow anonymous posters to reply to questions for clarification without mod intervention.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:08 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


1. If anything, this should be optional, as favorite formats (e.g., "x favorites" or "favorited" or removed entirely from a user's view) are currently.
2. It's pretty easy to see an AskMe poster's in-thread contributions, but still not a terrible idea, especially for quick perusal of closed AskMe's... although it's still very helpful to just read the whole thread in any case.
3. Basically a reply-to or quote function, right? Copy & paste generally works fine if I'm in the middle of writing a reply and I need to reference a post upthread, although I'll admit that's a very mildly-annoying issue (if I'm reading this one correctly) on netbooks, mobile devices and other tiny-screen or no-peripheral devices. If nothing else, opening up a new window linking to that post (which I've only needed to do once on my iphone; for example) has worked just as well.
4. What? Most of these are basically time-saving changes, right? Not sure what this would change.
5. As far as I'm aware, it isn't too difficult to shunt this into a greasemonkey script, right? (IANACoder)
6. *shrug* The one time I've tried to visit MeFi and it's been down, downornot and similar services worked just fine for me, although I admit that I don't usually need actual reasons why something is down.

Everything else, well... *shrug* Though there have been a couple of instances where an anonymous Ask poster has sent a reply through mods when a reply has been absolutely necessary for resolution of the ask, I think. A bit more workload for the mods, but I can't see a very easy solution without opening that subsite up to abuse by people without easy accountability (in other words, giving mods a little more work, but then again, I have no idea what the actual mod-side looks like).
posted by neewom at 3:14 PM on July 28, 2011


> All these ponies, we're going to need Hercules to clean up the stables #12labors
> #augeanstables #amirite

The way H actually did clean those stables might work on a certain kind of thread. Mods could give it a trial run.
posted by jfuller at 3:15 PM on July 28, 2011


And he came to the place which the MODS had told him of;

I read this as "where the MODS had told him off," and expected this thread to go WAY differently.
posted by darksasami at 3:33 PM on July 28, 2011 [4 favorites]


troll: “8. BetaFilter: Open a new subsite called BetaFilter. The clear choice of color is construction site safety orange. It would itself have 'subsites' in the templates of existing subsites and act as a testing ground for new features (evolve or die, amirite?). We could finally use the fireplace without fear of burning down the house. BeFi (pronounced bifi despite the fact that MeFi is pronounced mifaɪ) would be invisible to nonmembers. To prevent the userbase from shifting to the orange, only mods could post FPPs.”

This idea is so insane that it is awesome.
posted by koeselitz at 3:36 PM on July 28, 2011 [8 favorites]


I like #3 a lot. Many times, I have copied the text I wanted to quote, scrolled down to the comment box, pasted it in, then thought "hmm, I should add a link back to the comment," then crap... where was it? Scroll, scroll, scroll in search of it to copy the link.

I know I could think in advance to open the permalink to the timestamp/comment in another tab, then work back and forth between tabs, but this is still cumbersome. Basically, it's harder to make my replies more clear, which stands in the way of me doing so sometimes.
posted by Devils Rancher at 3:37 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


Can't you just ctrl+f the quote to find it?

I'd support BetaFilter if only drunk users were allowed to comment in it
posted by Kattullus at 3:39 PM on July 28, 2011 [4 favorites]


Devils Rancher: “I like #3 a lot. Many times, I have copied the text I wanted to quote, scrolled down to the comment box, pasted it in, then thought "hmm, I should add a link back to the comment," then crap... where was it? Scroll, scroll, scroll in search of it to copy the link.”

Highlight five words, Ctrl-C Ctrl-F Ctrl-V Enter. Bam.

But that's really just for people who haven't already scripted multiple copy-paste buffers.
posted by koeselitz at 3:40 PM on July 28, 2011


I can't believe no one has spotted troll's very, very clever ensconcement of the official and therefore unalterable MeFi pronunciation guide in his list. Oh, troll, nice job burying the lede.
posted by Errant at 3:41 PM on July 28, 2011 [3 favorites]


Kattullus: “I'd support BetaFilter if only drunk users were allowed to comment in it”

For multiple reasons. My favorite of which is the likely effect of reading black text on an orange background when drunk.
posted by koeselitz at 3:41 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


You've been here a month and managed to come up with only 12 ways to change the place? And you call yourself a troll?
posted by crunchland at 3:42 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


I'd support BetaFilter if drunk users were only allowed to comment in it, says the weekend mod.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:43 PM on July 28, 2011 [4 favorites]


e-pony-sterical
posted by not_on_display at 3:48 PM on July 28, 2011 [3 favorites]


I have decided to enthusiastically support the very worst of these ponies, and that sad creature is number 8. Ride pony 8 with me! Pony-eight! Poniate!
posted by Kwine at 3:56 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


I find myself coming around to favoring a 3-minute EDIT window ... but only if it's extended to everybody. That is, if I don't like what you just said, I've got three minutes to make whatever changes I want. This would surely lead to less tension throughout the site.
posted by philip-random at 3:58 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


12. Anonymous Answers: Works identically to anonymous questions. Advice can be embarrassing, whether giving or receiving.

You can do this already, it just happens to cost $5.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:58 PM on July 28, 2011


12. Anonymous Answers: Works identically to anonymous questions. Advice can be embarrassing, whether giving or receiving.

You can do this already, it just happens to cost $5.


As the OP here already knows so well.
posted by hermitosis at 4:02 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


Would 12. (anonymous AskMe answers) be that difficult to do? You'd have the normal comment box, with a checkbox saying "post anonymously," and then you'd get a page of disclaimers and guidelines similar to the one you get with an anonymous question. And then your comment would go into an approval queue -- and that would be the problem, more workload for mods. I'm not sure how time- and labor-intensive looking through that queue is. Is it something you can kind of glance at, like flags?

Obviously, a user would only be able to do this once or twice a year, same as questions.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:02 PM on July 28, 2011


You've been here a month and managed to come up with only 12 ways to change the place?

I think the more pressing question is, how could that username possibly have still been available in June 2011?
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:05 PM on July 28, 2011 [11 favorites]


jessamyn wrote:
7. We fight about edit window stuff all the time, this is an ongoing open topic
Yeah, this is just my contribution to the pile.

klangklangston wrote:
Five is browser dependent. On my machine, firefox does it and safari doesn't.
Oh. Thanks, good to know, but I use FF (on a windows machine) and it doesn't work for me. Hrmph.

restless_nomad wrote:
For #3, are you talking about repeating the OP somewhere in the vicinity of the comment box? If so, that isn't a huge deal, but it may very well have the less-than-awesome effect of making it easier to reply to a thread without having actually read any other comments. (If not, I have no idea what you're talking about.)
Change 'repeating the OP' to 'repeating OPs and comments' and you got it.

pb wrote:
Suggesting so many features in one post makes it difficult to discuss them. We have discussed many of these in the past and the answers probably haven't changed.
Apologies. I thought I had researched these requests adequately but a couple slipped through the cracks. Anyway, I thought it would be better to make 1 post of 12 ponies instead of 12 posts of 1 pony each.

koeselitz wrote:
This idea is so insane that it is awesome.
Thank you.

Kattullus wrote:
I'd support BetaFilter if only drunk users were allowed to comment in it
Brilliant!

crunchland wrote:
You've been here a month and managed to come up with only 12 ways to change the place? And you call yourself a troll?
My mother gave me this name. Anyway, as I said, these ponies were culled from a larger herd.

hermitosis wrote:
As the OP here already knows so well.
I resent that.

Thank you MODS for deigning to smell my ponies. Your answers are just and enlightening. (Though this comment would have been so much easier to write if only I could ghost post).
posted by troll at 4:19 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


PB 8. Any official "testing" site set up by us is a de facto real site set up by us. There's no distinction between a site we run and a site we "run". If we're going to make a site we make a site.

Yo dawg...
posted by Duke999R at 4:20 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


So, now I'm confused. Is the username "troll" or "Troll"? Because I'm seeing it's spelled both ways in the FPP, presumably both written by the bearer of the username in question, and I usually try to make sure to do these things correctly when addressing someone here in MeFiLand.

Clarify, please.
posted by hippybear at 4:20 PM on July 28, 2011


And then your comment would go into an approval queue -- and that would be the problem, more workload for mods.

That and a couple other things:

1. Currently anonymous questions are pretty anonymous but we have a degree of oversight when we really need it. Creating a similar system for comments is non-trivial; making something that was either totally anonymous or not really anonymous at all would be easier, but the former makes it hard to deal with troublemakers and the latter may be not what folks accustomed to our approach to anonymous questions would epxect.

2. Anonymous questions can sit in a queue in part because they're not fundamentally time sensitive; if Jess sees something that really, really needs posting ASAP she can make sure to do so, but otherwise there's 24-72 hours of breathing room because nothing's hanging off that. With comments in a thread, time matters a lot more because comments happen in a specific context, so it would be not just "more work" but "more time-sensitive work", which is not awesome.

An ideal anonymous comment system would obviate point two by addressing point one in such a way as to make it largely anonymous but still accountable such that an approval queue wouldn't be necessary. That might happen at some point but so far we haven't been really satisfied with any potential solutions or convinced that the need for it vs. the current system (drop the mods or a mod a quick "hey could you add this" note).
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:24 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


Think Jekyll and Hyde.
posted by troll at 4:24 PM on July 28, 2011


I can't believe no one has spotted troll's very, very clever ensconcement of the official and therefore unalterable MeFi pronunciation guide in his list. Oh, troll, nice job burying the lede.
Just because it's official (which I will not agree is the case), doesn't make it correct.

The Greasemonkey script MeFiquote (i'd link it, but userscripts.org is blocked at work) does a wonderful job of handling quoting and you can click the 'quote' link under multiple comments as you read down the page and they are all waiting for you when you reach the comments box. The script creates a link back to the quoted comment and defaults to the commonly-used method of italicising the quoted text. Is good.
posted by dg at 4:27 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


Anyway, I thought it would be better to make 1 post of 12 ponies instead of 12 posts of 1 pony each.

Well, not really. If you have like two ideas, sticking them in one post is maybe a sensible and workable thing to do. A dozen is nuts.

Picking the one that you really want to ask about, and then picking the other one you really want to ask about and asking it the next week, and so on, is probably the better way to go, in part because it means the specific requests will be more answerable and probably get more community response in general, and in part because after three or four weeks of back-to-back feature requests you'd probably either have exhausted your enthusiasm or people would gently appeal to your sense of discretion, so to speak, regarding that trending pattern of behavior.

Metafilter's been around for a while, it's not going anywhere soon, and there's plenty of time to chew on ideas. Candle, twice as bright, etc. etc.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:28 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


When you put it that way, I guess I blew my load a little prematurely.

Well this is embarrassing.
posted by troll at 4:34 PM on July 28, 2011


Candlenuts
posted by flabdablet at 4:35 PM on July 28, 2011


2a. Daycare Center Alert: A blinking red exclamation point icon appears next to any AskMe post if the OP's responses exceed a certain percentage of the total responses.

I keed
posted by trunk muffins at 4:41 PM on July 28, 2011


I'd support BetaFilter if only drunk users were allowed to comment in it
posted by Kattullus at 6:39 PM on July 28 [+] [!]

Oi, Beerfilter is not running for office and I'm not a drunk.
posted by clavdivs at 4:42 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


shit
posted by clavdivs at 4:43 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]




troll: “Well this is embarrassing.”

I don't really think you should be embarrassed. Some of them are really good ideas. People are just snarky around here, is all. I wouldn't worry about it.
posted by koeselitz at 4:44 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


Well this is embarrassing.

Not as embarrassing as accidentally dumping paragraph after paragraph into the FPP summary instead of using a [more inside] because you thought [more inside] happened automatically after the first line break.

not that I would know anything about that
posted by davejay at 4:44 PM on July 28, 2011 [4 favorites]


What if it's not called anonymous, but just something like 'hide user name', so there would be a lower expectation of privacy. In terms of accountability... maybe it would automatically be deleted if it got more than a certain number of negative flags (to be restored at a mod's leisure if appropriate). And the mods could follow up with a user who regularly misused the function, if the expectation isn't really anonymity but just not showing the user name?
posted by Salamandrous at 4:45 PM on July 28, 2011 [3 favorites]


It should hide the username with a little countdown, then reveal it at 0:00 along with a burst of HTML5 confetti and a little horn noise.
posted by davejay at 4:48 PM on July 28, 2011 [4 favorites]


I believe the two are
posted by clavdivs at 4:49 PM on July 28, 2011


synonymous
posted by clavdivs at 4:50 PM on July 28, 2011


I do love the BetaFilter idea. I think I proposed something similar some years ago, though I may have just thought about it and not actually said anything. There are great Filter-esque sites out there (GameFilter, SportsFilter, MetaChat, MetaCooler, and others I can't recall off the top of my head) that I think would really have benefitted if they could have opened up within the great and mighty tent that is the Mother Ship. I understand that something like the BetaFilter idea will probably never happen, but I really think it could create some great things if Matt et al could see some way to make it work.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:56 PM on July 28, 2011


Cinammons.
posted by ericb at 4:56 PM on July 28, 2011


Wait, we're not going to be tarring and feathering anyone?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:01 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


12. We talk about this a lot and it's one of the things on the short "we should find a way to do this someday" list
...
12. We've discussed this at length as well. We haven't found a solution that protects anonymity enough.


Why can't there just be a checkbox, next to the comment box on AskMe pages only, that says "Post Anonymously," and if that box is checked it uses the user ID of Anonymous on the SQL insert statement for that comment?

This would be as fully anonymous as the current question procedure. If there is a perceived need to approve anon comments before posting, you could toss them in the anon queue as suggested by Fellini Bank. My gut says this wouldn't be as necessary as for questions, though, as it just might be less of a temptation to crap in an AskMe thread than all over the AskMe front page. Maybe not enough less, though.
posted by rkent at 5:07 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


Wait, we're not going to be tarring and feathering anyone?

The night is
posted by davejay at 5:10 PM on July 28, 2011


synonymous
posted by davejay at 5:11 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


troll: " The clear choice of color is construction site safety orange."

Damn, this sounds awesome.
posted by dunkadunc at 5:20 PM on July 28, 2011


Many of these sound like candidates for Greasemonkey scripts to me. Then again I don't really know anything about creating Greasemonkey scripts, so... grain of salt.

But yeah, mefiquote (not blocked at my work!) will pretty much take care of #3 for you. One less pony in your herd.
posted by stennieville at 5:27 PM on July 28, 2011


Why can't there just be a checkbox, next to the comment box on AskMe pages only, that says "Post Anonymously," and if that box is checked it uses the user ID of Anonymous on the SQL insert statement for that comment?

Because, for the most part, we want people to be commenting with their usernames or, in a pinch, using a sock puppet. There's a degree of difference between "allowing anon questioners to add follow-ups" and "allowing anyone to comment anonymously in any thread" There's the additional complexity that having multiple people commenting under the same username is a disaster waiting to happen, so we'd want something where an anon person was at least distinct from another anon person in the thread. And yeah having a queue for this sort of thing is a non-starter, we don't have round-the-clock moderation and adding it just for something like this isn't on the "to do" list.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:32 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


i demand my own list of ponies, coincidently 12

1 - a button i can push that will send me a beer over the intertubes through my computer

2 - 11 - repeat as needed

every minute i have to go to the party store to replenish my supply of BEER is a minute spent away from metafilter and money spent unwisely

won't anyone hop me?
posted by pyramid termite at 5:32 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


12 - a program to help me count when i'm drinking - it seems to be a necessity
posted by pyramid termite at 5:36 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


Limit suggestions to a maximum of ten. Any more than that, and the tablets get to be too dangerously cumbersome to carry whilst clambouring down a mountainside.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:37 PM on July 28, 2011 [3 favorites]


I think Khal Haughey just fed the hearts of your ponies to pb so he can birth the ColdFusion That Mounts the World.
posted by Dr. Zira at 5:38 PM on July 28, 2011 [8 favorites]


dg: "
The Greasemonkey script MeFiquote (i'd link it, but userscripts.org is blocked at work) does a wonderful job of handling quoting and you can click the 'quote' link under multiple comments as you read down the page and they are all waiting for you when you reach the comments box. The script creates a link back to the quoted comment and defaults to the commonly-used method of italicising the quoted text. Is good.
"

As you can plainly see.
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:44 PM on July 28, 2011


I think Khal Haughey just fed the hearts of your ponies to pb so he can birth the ColdFusion That Mounts the World.

plz for the love of god can someone photoshop this for me immediately
posted by elizardbits at 5:52 PM on July 28, 2011 [4 favorites]


I think Khal Haughey just fed the hearts of your ponies to pb so he can birth the ColdFusion That Mounts the World.

plz for the love of god can someone photoshop this for me immediately


I whipped one up for you, here's the linJRUN ERROR
posted by eyeballkid at 5:54 PM on July 28, 2011 [3 favorites]


We're forgetting the main issue, which is we need a an orange sub site for something. Chop chop.

pumpkin filter?
posted by The Whelk at 6:44 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


We're forgetting the main issue, which is we need a an orange sub site for something. Chop chop.

pumpkin filter?


Orange zester review filter, obvi. I'm sick of every other FPP being about zesting.
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 6:47 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


But I need to know what to do with all these lemons!
posted by The Whelk at 6:52 PM on July 28, 2011


Posting about lemon zesting on Orange Zester Review Filter is a bannable offense.
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 6:55 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


Dead pony.
posted by homunculus at 6:56 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


i demand my own list of ponies, coincidently 12: 1 - a button i can push that will send me a beer over the intertubes through my computer
NORM?!?
posted by smirkette at 7:12 PM on July 28, 2011


8. Any official "testing" site set up by us is a de facto real site set up by us. There's no distinction between a site we run and a site we "run". If we're going to make a site we make a site.

Poor old travel.metafilter.com, airbrushed from history.
posted by jack_mo at 7:16 PM on July 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


this is missing the "mister would you please help my pony" tag IMAO
posted by elizardbits at 7:27 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


FTFY
posted by troll at 8:03 PM on July 28, 2011


Limit suggestions to a maximum of ten. Any more than that, and the tablets get to be too dangerously cumbersome to carry whilst clambouring down a mountainside.

YEAH YEAH
posted by zarq at 8:22 PM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


Pony #8 has been shot and is slowly bleeding to death on the loading dock at the back of the site. We were gonna call a vet, but we can't be certain it's not an undercover unicorn.
posted by mannequito at 8:27 PM on July 28, 2011


Since Jessamyn asked "anything else?"...

This is a tiny thing, but would it be possible to have the "Popular" link added to the top of Ask Metafilter, in the line that has "Home FAQ Archives Tags Random"? Right now, while "Popular" includes posts and comments from both blue and green, the link only appears on the blue, and I often find myself reaching for it on Ask.
posted by cider at 8:41 PM on July 28, 2011




" Favorites Visible on FP: Show an FPP’s favorites count on the main page. It would look like so: [...] by troll at 11:06 - 6 comments (6 new) [6 favorites +]."

Hope to never see favourite count on the front page and really hope never to be able to favourite without opening the post. The former besides adding yet more score keeping would encourage mystery meat posts. The latter is a bad idea as it lets people favourite without reading the more inside or the first comment if made by the poster.

"12. Anonymous Answers: Works identically to anonymous questions. Advice can be embarrassing, whether giving or receiving."

This pony I'd love. Love. I'd ride it and brush it and feed it on a regular basis.

If it was me setting the spec I'd allow a single withheld comment every 3-4 months and only one per post. Rather than the username being anonymous I'd make the username something like "Username obfuscated to users". Because one can only make one comment per post there isn't any need to differentiate the different withheld usernames in a single post.

The name "Username obfuscated to users" would strongly signal that mods would see or could easily reveal who posted any particular comment. Thereby reducing abusive wankery. "Username obfuscated to users"'s profile would contain an explanation of the process in the About section.

Further instead of an easy to select check box (whose status would have to be check with every comment) username withheld comments would require clicking through a link under the comment posting box. That page would test for and display the countdown period, and have a clear disclaimer that username withheld comments are not anonymous to mods. Still discoverable but not something people would idly select.

Because usernames are discover-able by mods there isn't serious need for prescreening of comment. It shouldn't add much work at all to the mod workload with the exception of a Meta every once and a while and the occasional request to have a comment made anonymous after posting. Many of the metas should be inquire and explain rather than rant.
posted by Mitheral at 1:10 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]


√ APPROVED
posted by blue_beetle at 5:49 AM on July 29, 2011


I don't give a damn about anonymous answers to AskMe posts. Actually, I am in general against the idea as (a) a part of the value of an answer comes from the posting history of the person answering, in terms of trust and etc., and (b) quite often a user I think is kind of an asshole on the Blue provides an insightful answer on the Green which completely changes my mind about that person.

What I really WOULD like to see is anonymous replies in thread from anonymous posters. It wouldn't work unless there was some implementation of a thread-specific token (some hash based on the thread number and user number of the anon asker maybe?) that would need to be input before replying.

Kind of like the MeFiMail notices, which send you a link you can click to read your MeFiMail: You do an anon post, you automatically get sent a link that you can use to reply, to the email account linked in your profile. Anything you send in using that link is autoposted back to the anon thread in question. You can't reply directly in-thread to remove worries about accidentally posting a reply non-anonymously.

THAT is a pony I'd like to see us all ride.
posted by caution live frogs at 7:25 AM on July 29, 2011


√ APPROVED = NUH-UH2
posted by Sys Rq at 7:27 AM on July 29, 2011


HOW DARE YOU TRY TO DICTATE HOW BEFI IS PRONOUNCED
posted by penduluum at 8:37 AM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]


ALL THESE PONIES ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.
posted by The Deej at 9:43 AM on July 29, 2011 [4 favorites]




Here's a brilliant pony request.
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:42 AM on July 29, 2011


The fuck just happened here? Did this post come off a Dr. Bronner's label?
posted by yerfatma at 6:39 AM on July 30, 2011 [1 favorite]


18 PONIES IN ONE
posted by The Whelk at 8:07 AM on July 30, 2011


Delete! Delete!
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:39 AM on July 30, 2011


INTERNET DALEKS!
posted by The Whelk at 8:48 AM on July 30, 2011 [1 favorite]


I'd like a template option with a professional orange backgound.
posted by maudlin at 9:35 AM on July 31, 2011


Posting about lemon zesting on Orange Zester Review Filter is a bannable offense.

I swear the first time I skimmed past this I thought it said "bananable offense."

And now I can't stop giggling.
posted by epersonae at 10:58 AM on August 1, 2011 [2 favorites]


banana offender!
posted by The Whelk at 11:08 AM on August 1, 2011


You've slipped up, but you can appeal.
posted by flabdablet at 4:08 PM on August 1, 2011 [2 favorites]


Yes, but which end do you appeal from?
posted by dg at 5:53 PM on August 1, 2011


The tennis ball end.
posted by flabdablet at 9:54 PM on August 1, 2011


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