That's a lot of words.

May 7, 2012 4:54 AM

What is the longest metafilter comment that wasn't a stunt post?
posted by empath to MetaFilter-Related at 4:54 AM (52 comments total)

Fourth one down on this list?
posted by gman at 5:16 AM on May 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

working linky ?
posted by adamvasco at 5:19 AM on May 7, 2012

Capital letters and non baby talk?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:31 AM on May 7, 2012 [7 favorites]

The link works fine for me.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:39 AM on May 7, 2012

linky work good
posted by Meatbomb at 5:40 AM on May 7, 2012

gman's link is good. As he points out, this one appears to be the longest non-stunt comment. But it's sort of a repost of the "here's a billion YouTube videos of things" post with many fixed URLs. This one by jefgodesky (the 9th on gman's list) appears to be the longest comment that's really someone saying something.
posted by Plutor at 5:49 AM on May 7, 2012 [5 favorites]

This one by jefgodesky (the 9th on gman's list) appears to be the longest comment that's really someone saying something.

Good lord. All that work and just one favorite.
posted by empath at 5:52 AM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have the (dubious?) honor of the longest answer on Ask MetaFilter. I posted the answer in 2005 and at the time it turned out that MetaFilter clipped comments to ~32K when displaying them (but the full answer was placed in the database and currently renders correctly).
posted by RichardP at 5:54 AM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

I don't know why that took forever to load. I tried multiple times. (Thanks for the condescension Blatcher; it makes you look a bit grey and jaded).
The joy of that list is that it lead me back to this and more specifically a couple of mega cut and pastes by gramschmidt; who I miss.
posted by adamvasco at 6:10 AM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

MetaTheses !
posted by RolandOfEld at 6:37 AM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

I would have thought Ethereal Bligh.
posted by onlyconnect at 6:55 AM on May 7, 2012 [5 favorites]

Wait, I don't see EB on that list anywhere, and that just seems fucked up. ?
posted by onlyconnect at 6:59 AM on May 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

If you keep scrolling down the list, it refreshes and keeps going. EB's top word count is this one. And his new account has three comments with even more words than that one.
posted by gman at 7:07 AM on May 7, 2012

Metafilter: Thanks for the condescension
posted by John Cohen at 7:35 AM on May 7, 2012 [7 favorites]

FYI I'm getting a malicious URL error on that mycology thread. I've notified the admins.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 7:40 AM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Whoa mind blown gman! Thanks!
posted by onlyconnect at 7:56 AM on May 7, 2012

Damn, I wish jefgodesky's website was still active, that comment (which I am like 1/5 of the way through) is very interesting.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:59 AM on May 7, 2012

Funny, I would've thought it'd be sonascope.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:06 AM on May 7, 2012

"Wait, I don't see EB on that list anywhere, and that just seems fucked up. ?"

Yeah, it surprised me a little, too. I appear first on that list from a comment made during my brief incarnation (as DwW) here at the beginning of 2008. Then, as gman mentions, I've already written three comments as IF (out of about 1,300 over nine months) which are longer than anything I wrote as EB (almost 8,000 comments over 3 1/2 years).

However, I suspect that my average word count as EB was higher than my average word count as IF. I could be wrong — when I first came back last August, I was inclined to be more succinct than I'd been as EB. However, there's in my impression more people here now who write longer comments than there were then...I was notable in an apparent isolation of prolixity in those days (excepting what I mention in the following paragraph). Interestingly, as that list implies, there's fewer people writing fewer extremely long comments recently. That seems to me to be a good thing — the community has perhaps moved toward something in the middle, with a greater proportion of comments of about a paragraph, and fewer three-word quips and fewer many-paragraph treatises.

As the list shows, my comments were not among those of the most extreme length — a couple of very long-time members tended toward quoting large blocks of text, so they show up all over the top of that list.

I think to get a flavor of what is being sought after in this post, we'd need to eliminate the stunt posts, those posts which are composed of a large amount of quoting, and (perhaps) those which are written as free-standing and attention-getting vignettes.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:13 AM on May 7, 2012

I was kind of under the impression that this was the longest comment ever. Not a stunt, even.
posted by item at 9:28 AM on May 7, 2012

I'm pretty sure jefgodesky's substantive comment should rank higher -- if you scroll down a little afterwards, he mentions having hit the character limit (there's a character limit?) and picks up where he left off for a few more screens.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:16 PM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

One could actually go so far as to argue that all long comments (despite length being an utterly subjective quality) are stunt posts. First, the comment format is not a good medium for extensive pieces of writing¹. Second, they defeat the purpose of hypertext - namely, the possibility to just link to something, instead of reproducing it word for word or typing it out (and even if there is no existing text to link to, it would still be much kinder of you to present your piece in a more readable format and then post a link to it, instead of making everyone's eyes bleed from reading it in a suboptimal format). From here it follows (with maybe just a teeny bit of abduction) that all long comments are, to a significant degree, motivated by the attention they bring.

¹ Internet comments could be compared to footnotes in books. Long comments are then comparable to the essay-length footnotes found in certain books (I'm looking at you, Jacques Derrida!)².
² Yes, I'm quite aware of the irony of adding footnotes to my footnote on the nature of footnotes.
posted by daniel_charms at 12:19 PM on May 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

Note: stunty != bad, at least not necessarily.
posted by daniel_charms at 12:26 PM on May 7, 2012

I'm not even in there once? I knew I wouldn't be at the top, but I figured I'd be around 98th place or so.
posted by Bugbread at 12:27 PM on May 7, 2012

daniel_charms, I think you should have used a different indexing scheme for your footnotes within footnotes.
posted by shothotbot at 12:30 PM on May 7, 2012

I've actually been curious – is there a way to find the longest sentence? I sort of think it might be one of mine but I don't know how to check.
posted by churl at 12:33 PM on May 7, 2012

There's not a way with the publicly available data, no. How do you want to define sentence, though? String of words ending in terminal punctuation?
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:41 PM on May 7, 2012

all long comments (despite length being an utterly subjective quality) are stunt posts.

Actually, one could go so far as to argue that all comments are stunt posts.
except mine
posted by Chuckles at 12:43 PM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Is the "last updated" date on the Infodump accurate? It looks to be ~4 months old. (I care somewhat selfishly, as I didn't start commenting until after then and am unable to look up anything about my narcissistic self.)
posted by dotgirl at 12:44 PM on May 7, 2012

We are the stunt posters.
posted by daniel_charms at 12:45 PM on May 7, 2012

The date is sadly accurate, because OH LOOK THAT DOG HAS A PUFFY TAIL

PUFFY TAIL

but I'll try and get it back in gear soon. There was data rearrangement things up in the air earlier this year as we were doing some hardware fiddling and I let it sit for a little bit while all that settled down but have forgotten to get back to it.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:48 PM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Is there a way to find the comment with the most unique characters? I don't mean character length, but all the different characters from ash to cedillaed yogh, with every phagspa combination in between?

It wouldn't prove anything, just if you're bored like.
posted by Jehan at 12:51 PM on May 7, 2012

> How do you want to define sentence, though?

Yeah I'm sure there's murky area there. "Comprehensive sentences" (not lists, etc) with terminal punctuation was what I was picturing but I'm not sure there's a simple regex type thing for that.
posted by churl at 12:53 PM on May 7, 2012

Thanks for the post, which led to gman's comment and my seeing this for (I think) the first time: One of them Animated GIF Comics
posted by lordaych at 1:03 PM on May 7, 2012

Rhaomi: I'm pretty sure jefgodesky's substantive comment should rank higher -- if you scroll down a little afterwards, he mentions having hit the character limit (there's a character limit?) and picks up where he left off for a few more screens.

My favorite part of that is in between jefgodesky's two halves of his epic screed, Evelyn Wood alum tkchrist slippped in with a short comment saying "it's all bullshit". That's so... Metafilter. Guess he's the Al Smith & Jim Bagby of Metafilter.
posted by hincandenza at 1:20 PM on May 7, 2012

I miss tkchrist.
posted by The Whelk at 1:31 PM on May 7, 2012 [5 favorites]

Hi Bugbread. You're good people, and it's nice to see ya.
posted by dios at 1:53 PM on May 7, 2012

Yay! My lucid dreaming/Inception comment made the list!
posted by Eideteker at 2:21 PM on May 7, 2012

This one by jefgodesky (the 9th on gman's list) appears to be the longest comment that's really someone saying something.

Got to the end and saw "Oh, how about that? I guess there's a character limit. OK, continuing from last time..." and my head dropped to the table.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:14 PM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Comments can be much longer in a tribal society of hunter-gatherers.

(I had missed that thread back then. It did bad things to my productivity today.)
posted by Drastic at 3:19 PM on May 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

Hunter gatherers have better orgasms and " indigo" auras
posted by The Whelk at 3:22 PM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also, I have to appreciate the prescience of Sangermaine here.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:33 PM on May 7, 2012

Oh man, I'm all over that list with that ill-advised, before-music-was-easy-to-find-on-Youtube, here's a zillion-links post.

How embarrassing.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:55 PM on May 7, 2012

What I think it really interesting is that comment by jefgodesky had one favorite when I first saw it ( and favorited it) and now has 25.

The way older, less-known comments get thrust to prominence and noticed is interesting to me.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:56 PM on May 7, 2012

How embarrassing.

May favorite part of that was when I was doing some infodump stuff or Markov stuff and "you" kept barfing up random lists of songs and you were like WTF CORTEX YOUR SHIT IS BROKEN WHY WOULD I HAVE SAID THAT and I was like STAVROS YOU DID THAT STUPID POST ONE TIME REMEMBER and that was a good time basically.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:59 PM on May 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

I have the (dubious?) honor of the longest answer on Ask MetaFilter. I posted the answer in 2005 and at the time it turned out that MetaFilter clipped comments to ~32K when displaying them (but the full answer was placed in the database and currently renders correctly).

When I tell my family that there are hundreds of MetaFilter users who wrote longer answers than my longest-ever answer, you know what they will say? Something about how I was freaking born to be a member of this site.
posted by SMPA at 5:10 PM on May 7, 2012

How embarrassing.

No, your effort is commendable. What's embarrassing is two comments later, someone cherrypicks a few wonky links and chides your YouTube search function abilities. That's like, "Hey, here's this 20-tier wedding cake that I've decorated with miniature sugar figurines of the cast of M*A*S*H*" and getting "Ugh, Radar's hat is on backwards, and Hawkeye parted his hair on the right, gawd, did you even watch the show?"
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 5:13 PM on May 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

Wow, jefgodesky really brought out the asshole in me. But also, man, was he maddening. I was trying to remember what his user name was recently, so I'm glad to see it here.
posted by OmieWise at 6:11 PM on May 7, 2012

I miss tkchrist.
posted by The Whelk.

You will be pleased to learn that he, and his entire family including the Colonel, spent yesterday enmeshed in the wild celebrations that engulfed Paris after the election. Really.
posted by mwhybark at 10:59 PM on May 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

Why does size matter?
posted by stormpooper at 11:55 AM on May 8, 2012

Metafilter: Oh, how about that? I guess there's a character limit.
posted by daninnj at 6:36 PM on May 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

(there's a character limit?)

I think we had discussed this a while back—there's no character limit imposed by MetaFilter itself, but browsers place a limit on how much you can put into a TEXTAREA (e.g., the comment box). The figure was different for different browsers, but I think most of them were either 32K or 64K.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:48 PM on May 10, 2012